Christ Honoring Church (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendra.

Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures verse by verse with No Compromise.

We believe in monergism, God alone working in salvation. Do we respond?

Of course. But who's on first? The cause of your salvation, right there in the text. Take a look at it again.

God made us alive. We were impotent spiritually.

Churches want us we proclaim, pastor we proclaim, congregational size we proclaim, buildings we proclaim.

I'll show you a church that's on its way down into spiritual dwarfism. But here, he made you alive.

So that's why Paul says we preach him. Not man and God as co -authors, not man alone,

God forbid. And then he just keeps going. This God that Paul proclaims,

Jesus Christ, he does all kinds of things. Here's a God I proclaim to you. Verse 13, having forgiven all your transgressions.

Can you imagine if you're a Christian today, God has granted you forgiveness. Just how many sins can a person commit in their lifetime?

Just how many sins does it take for God to banish you into eternal judgment because of his justice?

And God is forgiving us every one of our sins? We all have skeletons. We all have issues.

And here the word for forgiveness is where we get the word grace. He granted us a favor.

Could I ask a favor of you, please? Oh, I'd like to do you a favor. The favor God gives at the expense of his son is forgiveness.

And this is not the word for missing the mark sin. This is transgression.

It's at the end of a sentence, emphatic, high -handed sin.

That's why I love these verses in the Psalms. How blessed is he whose transgression is what? Forgiven.

Oh, Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who could stand but there is forgiveness with you? Armica, who is a

God like you who pardons iniquity? Paul says, you know, I'm just going to keep proclaiming

Christ. Look at the next part of the verse, in verse 14, rather. He cancels out the debt of sin. That's why we proclaim

Christ. Having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us and which was hostile towards us.

This debt is where we get the word from chiropractic. Chiro is hand. There's a debt against us, and it's written in hand, as it were.

This is just a good way to think about it. And so, if I got a debt against you back in those days, I would write it on some animal skin probably, and I would write it, and I would give it to you, or I could keep a copy as well, write one for myself.

And here the text is saying, God can take something like an eraser and erase the debt that was against us for all of our sins, erased.

What's the point? Paul is trying to say, no matter how many times you've sinned or what you've done in your past,

God erases it. I'm thankful for that. I know he can do a work that I can't do.

Friends, I can't even erase sins out of my own mind that I did before I was saved and after I was saved.

Yet, God can erase every one of those sins. If two people could erase them, then I'd preach two people.

The sin debt against God has been blotted out. It means to wipe off or to erase.

You've got a black marker, except like upstairs in the room at IBS, sometimes I go up there to teach a class, and I think, somebody has taken indelible ink and doodled on my wall.

Not my wall, whatever it is. Whiteboard. You know what, in 10 years from now, we're not even going to know what a whiteboard is because it's all going to be linked up to the computer like they have now.

I think Dave Myers knows something about that. And it's,

I can't get it off. Scrub. From now on, I'm going to say to Caleb Johansson, I got a job for you, okay,

I'll do whatever you say. Scrub that off. You can't do it. Friends, even if we could deal with our sins by this.

You know what, I sinned a lot in the past, but I'm not going to sin one more time as long as I live. Our sins in the past that have been indelibly marked against the law of God must be punished.

One sin, right? That's James chapter 2, verse 10. And yet God relieved the debt by punishing

Jesus in our place. Isaiah 43, I am the one who wipes out your transgressions.

Same language. Paul can't stand it. He just keeps going on. Look at the text in verse 14, and he's taken it out of the way.

Not just wiped it out, but takes it away. Same language. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And then with finality, what does Paul do? He talks about this Christ who, having done all this, verse 14, nailed it to the cross.

The document itself is gone. The charge that was put above Jesus was our charge.

And then it gets better. You don't need crazy Christian quote unquote

TV. If you want spiritual warfare, watch this. Verse 15. Paul is preaching Christ.

He wants the church of Colossae to grow up. You preach Christ at Sunday school, your kids mature. You preach

Christ at home, your kids mature. Preach Christ from the pulpit, they mature.

And here, what else did Jesus do? Could there even be anything else? He vanquishes Satan and all the hordes of Satan.

And when he had disarmed the rulers and authorities, he made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through him.

He disarmed the rulers. Here's the picture. It's figurative language, all pointing to one thing.

Jesus triumphs over evil and Satan and his minions. But here's the language. It could be two different ways you could look at it.

That here Jesus is, and all the demons are grabbing him from every side, trying to pull him down, trying to hold on to him, trying to grab him.

And they're just trying to kind of gorilla glue themselves on with their nasty fingernails, as it were, and they're attached to him.

I mean, this is figurative language because these are, for the most part, invisible beings unless they would inhabit someone, but they're all grabbing

Jesus. And it's like Jesus, like a bad set of, like a bad tunic, just rips them all off.

He displays triumph over them. Or it could be the demons, as it were, had weapons and they had arms and they had different things to attack

Jesus, and he just strips them of their weapons and armor, puts them to public shame.

Either way, Jesus is triumphing over them, and that's what the text says, having triumphed over them through him.

Back in the old days, if you were an adulteress, they cut off your hair and the society would just treat you like a pariah.

Here, Jesus publicly makes all these look like a pariah in front of everyone.

Triumphed over them through him. So Paul has practiced what he's preaching. By the way, if you have weak faith,

I'm starting to get hot. How about you? All right, we're just going to reload for a second. If you're weak and struggling,

I can't seem to do that. I don't have enough strength. Life is difficult. It's hard to be a

Christian and say no to sin. It's hard to love my wife like Christ loved the church. It's hard to submit to him.

It's hard to evangelize. I feel weak. I've fallen last week. I don't seem to measure up.

Life is difficult. This is kind of a down season in my life spiritually. Why do you think we proclaim

Christ? Because a weak faith that has the right object is where we want to go.

Listen to Sinclair Ferguson. True faith takes its character and quality from its object and not from itself.

Faith gets a man out of himself and into Christ. Its strength, therefore, depends on the character of Christ.

Even those of us who have weak faith have the same strong Christ as others. Oh, I struggle with my salvation.

What do you do if you struggle with your salvation? Years ago, I struggled with my salvation. What do you do?

I need my salvation assurance back. I need my assurance back. I need my assurance back. I need my assurance back. I'm focused on my weak faith again and my weak assurance.

And I'm going to find myself never getting out of that. So when you find someone who's got assurance of salvation issues, and they theologically believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, et cetera, but they're struggling with those things, what do you tell them?

Do better. Keep going. Pray more. Stop it. You could say a variety of things, but here's what you should say.

Let me remind you who Jesus Christ is again. Your faith isn't the Savior. Your will isn't the

Savior. He's the Savior. And so you preach Christ Jesus to people. And as you preach Christ Jesus, then that person says, you know what?

At least this is how I did it 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. The claims of Christ Jesus, I believe them.

And I'm willing to stake my eternal life on these facts. It doesn't mean if my faith is not as strong as Billy Graham's or John MacArthur's or Mary Schleser's.

But you know what? On my deathbed when I die, I'm going to say Jesus Christ is Lord. He's the only one that I can trust.

He's the one that I believe is the only Savior. And he died in my place and was raised from the dead, and I'm staking all on him.

That's the work of the Spirit of God. Weak faith, strong object. By the way, if you ask me, why do

I preach 45, 55 minutes on a hot day? Because I want you to grow. Number three, the right process.

Let's go to Colossians 1, verse 28, the right process. So how does a church honor Christ? Number one, since he bought the church, he should determine what the purpose of the church is.

So we need to have the right purpose, maturity. He bought the church, he died for the church, he redeemed the church.

He planned it all out in eternity past with the Father and the Spirit. So we want to preach him, he's the one whose fame needs to increase.

And lastly, you need to have the right process. And I call this Holy Spirit energized sweat.

Holy Spirit energized sweat, it's going to be a very easy illustration today. I hope this is

Holy Spirit energized. Paul wasn't some kind of hyper person that said, it's lay back and let

God, pietistically just let God do all the work. He knew, like Kuyper did, if there's a pulley up in heaven that you can't see, but the rope come down, one rope over that pulley comes down.

And here's the rope of, it's the Spirit of God who works, we can't do anything, the sovereignty of the Spirit of God.

I'm grabbing hold of that. Paul is simultaneously grabbing hold of another side of the same rope that says, we don't just lay back and let

God. We respond to God's grace with what? Work and toil and responsibility. Is God sovereign?

Is man responsible? The answer is what? God sovereignly works and matures his church through the hard work of men and women.

I love that. Take a look at the passage. Him we proclaim, warning everyone.

That's the first thing Paul was required to do as he proclaimed Christ. How do you proclaim Christ? By warning.

You say, you know what? I am so tired of ministries that warn other ministries.

Warn about other ministries. They do this wrong, they do that wrong, stay away from this,

I don't like that. Now, I think churches can be too much, we contend, and everybody's wrong, and we're the only ones who's right.

Soon we're gonna see you've gotta teach the positive. But Paul said, if you wanna be mature, you're gonna have to know what's right and what's wrong.

And if you've got kids over there, show me a kid. Sometimes your kids will come to me, and if you wanna come and let them be babysat at our house,

I'm gonna get some jacks and some marbles and some safety pins, and I'll put them all in the center of the room, and I'll put your kid to the side and just let them go.

Over they go. What's the first thing kids do? Pick them up and put them in their mouth, they gotta try them out.

And if you're a good parent, what do you do? Won't take long for him to learn when that needle hits his tongue.

Parents do what? They put sense into. Now, it's a little bit different with a little kid, cuz they can't understand all these things.

But you say, no, that's bad for you, that's wrong, don't do that. And that's exactly what

Paul was doing. This is a bad teaching. If you wanna grow, you will throw away your

Joyce Meyer books. That's what admonishment is. You will throw them away, and you will say, you know what?

First of all, she's not qualified to preach to men. Second of all, when you believe Jesus Christ had to pay an atoning sacrifice to Satan, something's wrong.

Yeah, but pastor, he says stuff about these people all the time. Friends, I want you to grow,

I want you to learn. I'm not any better than anyone else, but I've been given a charge, and here's the charge.

If you want to groan, I have groan. If you want to groan, if you want to grow in grace, is what

I wanted to say, then I've got to put it into your mind. Wolf, wolf.

Paul said after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. From among your own selves, men will arise, speaking perverse things to draw away the disciples after them.

Be on the alert. Remembering that night and day for a period of three years, I did not cease to admonish you with tears.

Admonishing is good. Correcting behavior is good. Paul didn't say, well, you know what?

If I admonish by talking about false teachers or correct behavior, nobody will show up.

I was thinking the other day, to the glory of God, I can probably say about anything I want to you and you'll still come, as long as it's from the text.

Matter of fact, if I don't keep telling you things from the text, you'll leave. That's a sign of maturity.

Good job, church. Man said to Socrates, Socrates, I hate you because every time

I meet you, you make me see what I am. Why do we preach sin at this church?

Because we have the vanquisher of sin. And when you know how bad sin is, you know how great Jesus Christ is.

Here's a little recipe for you if you struggle with depression. Here's one factor that you need to consider.

Depression does this. I believe what the world says and I deserve this. I deserve it all.

The good life, the best life, the filled life, the money life, the life that they sell on advertisements, on TV, and in the print.

I deserve this. And you know what the world delivers? This. And the gap between what you think you deserve and what you actually get in this day and age of what?

It's going to happen more and more and more when people think the government just owes me things.

Entitlement, entitlement, entitlement. And now it's going to be spiritual entitlement as well. I'm entitled, here is what

I get. But the world doesn't deliver. Because A, God is sovereign, B, evil is real.

The world has fallen and the difference is depression. So what does a faithful pastor or faithful apostle do?

He says this, this is what you deserve right here. You deserve this right here.

You deserve a hell so bad. For sinning against such a holy God who created you, who designed you to worship him.

And you just spit in his face and did everything you wanted, didn't believe him, attacks on his character, and you deserve hell forever.

You deserve all your family, like Edwards would talk about, they're standing at the gates of hell. Every one of your family members, father and mother and brothers and aunts and grandparents, all standing there saying,

God, throw him in hell. He deserves it. Throw him in. He won't worship

Jesus, throw him in. That's what we deserve. Yet, what do we get based on Christ's work?

What do we get? He's blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

Forgiveness, adoption, communion, hope, trust, we have everything.

And what's the difference between what you get and what you have been given? Mercy, grace, but I'm thinking joy.

Sometimes on my worst days, I'm driving down the street and I go, I deserve hell, it's pretty good. That's why when

I go to Haniford and I say to the people, it's not like other parts of the country where people say, hi, how are you?

You're a customer, you're valued here. Do you need a coupon? Somebody else has got one, how are you?

Here's what happens right down here at this store. Are you sick?

So I have to make them talk. Hi, how are you today? Once I say that, they usually say,

I'm fine, how are you? And I say, I'm better than I deserve. They don't know what to do.

I mean, if you don't have a step in your jump thinking, God has chosen me in eternity past, I get to go to heaven.

I can't help you by saying, you know what? Here's how you have your best life now.

Your best life isn't now. You can have a wonderful life now with sin, and pain, and toil, and hardship, because we know the promises of God, but the best is coming.

John Newton said, my grand point in preaching is to break the hard heart and to heal the broken one.

He teaches positively, we've got to finish this. He teaches positively, teaching every man. Doctrine, why do

I have to know doctrine? Doctrine divides, I don't want all this doctrine, all this stuff. Friends, I'm trying to have you see

Christ, who is incarnate doctrine, a fact about God is doctrine. And if you want to grow, and learn, and say no to temptations, and be more mature, have more joy, you need to have doctrine.

That's why we have IBS class, that's why we have doctrinal preaching. Jesus was a doctrinal preacher, Paul was a doctrinal preacher,

Isaiah was a doctrinal preacher. It just means instruction, that's all. Truth about God, and they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' doctrine and the fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer.

He does it with wisdom, look at the text, with all wisdom. There's a certain way to do it to make people see the relevance of admonishment, to see the relevance of teaching.

And then he has this great dependent sweat on God, look at that verse 29. For this I toil,

I'm a constant, tireless worker, struggling with all the energy that he powerfully works within me.

By the power of the resurrection, I struggle. Paul didn't have a good constitution. Say, boy, that guy really is sold out for the

Lord. He's just got a good constitution. No, that wasn't Paul, he was a broken man, and yet he labored.

Look at that word labor, or toil. It means to work so hard you sweat.

It means to work so hard you have to go home and sit down on your couch and go. And when you learn about Christ Jesus and what he's done, and you're admonished, and you're taught in a wise way, you're gonna do that all the more.

I think many of you do it, but I'd like to encourage the rest. If you don't have a ministry that so exhausts you physically, mentally, spiritually, or any other way, that you go home and say,

God, I'm exhausted. You need to get one of those ministries. Cuz that'll take your focus right off yourself.

I'm just so exhausted. But you know what? I'm weary in the work, I'm not weary of it, as the slogan goes.

It's to work hard. Actually, striving there is where we get the word agony, agony.

According, verse 29, to his power which mightily works within me. So here's the scoop.

We have a really good time now at the church. It's a exciting time. The Lord is blessing us. You know the Lord is blessing

Bethlehem Bible Church? Not because of us, but because God has just chosen to bless us. And we could have ten people, or we could have a thousand.

Neither of those show blessing. Here's where the blessing has come. He's maturing people. He's maturing people.

Men and women are maturing. And instead of calling me all the time saying, Pastor, could you come and do this?

You know the kind of phone calls I'm getting now? Pastor, I just wanted to call you and tell you know what the Lord did through me as I helped this other saint.

It's exciting. But now it'll be a good test for us. The test of the new land, prosperity, new building, what are we gonna do?

It's gonna be a good test for Bethlehem Bible Church. So I wanted to remind you, my goal is for you to mature, to look more like Christ.

We're gonna do that by preaching the Bible. It's not gonna be preaching all kinds of fundraising. I'm not gonna pull out next week,

I'm gonna take Malachi three out of context, three and four out of context for a double ten week whammy on how you're gonna give like the

Old Testament. Not gonna do that, we're just gonna keep going. Chapter seven next week.

By the way, read chapter seven next week at the end of it, and you'll go, who would ever preach a sermon like that in their entire lives? Betrothed, but we're just gonna keep preaching, because God uses that teaching, that admonishing, to make us mature.

Our goal is maturation. And here's the greatest news of all, you ready? See a lot of fans going. If you're a

Christian, one day you'll be perfectly mature. When phones go off now, everybody's afraid to turn them off, because you'll be had.

You have to have mercy on some, you have to have judgment on the others. Ushers, told you one time

I was, people falling asleep in church, that's worse than the phones. And I remember one time

I was super late, I was staying up all night long, in full -time work, full -time seminary, full -time ministry, preaching every week.

And I sat in the front row one time at Grace Community Church, and I couldn't stop my head bobbing. When John MacArthur was preaching, it was the worst.

John thought I was slain in the spirit or something, I don't know. The right purpose, your maturity, the right person, preach

Christ the right way through labor energized by the spirit of God.

Sunday school teachers, IBS teachers, personal evangelism, Jesus Christ is the one we proclaim, he's the one, no maturity any other way.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m.

We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org

or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.