The Forgotten Command (Part 2)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth, Michael Lee Abendroth, and it�s called

No Compromise Radio for what reason, people ask. Well, in the old days, it�s because I did not want to compromise, and I still don�t want to compromise, and in a world of compromisers, who likes compromise?

But then we slowly matured�I like to think of the word �mature� instead of �evolve��to talk more about the

Lord Jesus and how He never compromised. He always pleased the Father, and that�s kind of the maturation of the show.

If we have fewer listeners, and I�m sure we do, A, because there are tons of new podcasts, really good podcasts, and maybe weekly is the best, but we still do daily.

Why do we do daily? I�m mainly on Spotify and iTunes, but we are carried in Wyoming and Alaska.

Why places like that where it just snows a lot? You think we�d be down in Florida or something, right?

West Palm. Maybe that should be my new headquarters, West Palm. No Compromise Bible Church.

No, no, that sounds so bad. My health is,

I guess, okay. I don�t really feel like I�m getting better weekly like I used to feel.

I see the pulmonologist tomorrow, had a CAT scan yesterday, and the

CAT scan says there�s still glassy fragment, kind of lung -looking. But I can walk up and down the steps, and I can go to the gym and work out some.

I was shoveling yesterday, shoveling today. Sometimes a frog in my throat, still super tired, some cloudy, fog stuff, not really, you know,

I�m not very motivated. I�m motivated to study for my sermon because I just realize how important that is.

But a lot of the other stuff, not so much. The meetings that I do have are usually Zoom. The reason why

I do Zoom meetings is because then I don�t have to drive somewhere, and that adds time. I also can kind of cut it off after 45, 50 minutes, and we can get what we need to do.

People are used to Zoom. It�s not as good, but that�s that. A PS, and when it comes to pastoral ministry, if you�re a congregant and you need to talk with a pastor, may

I gently nudge you along and say, if you need to meet with a pastor, say, �Dear pastor, my name�s so -and -so.

I�d like to meet with you, or one of the other pastors or leaders.�

And it�s about such and such. And you can just give a general. It�s about marriage counseling.

It�s about finances. It�s about health issue. It�s about depression. It�s just some kind of general thing, because pastors, especially if there�s 40 people at the church, 100 people at the church, 300 at the church, there are a lot of people and a lot of problems.

The pastor has his own problems, by the way, his own people problems. That is himself and his own family.

And it�s good for pastors to know if this is an emergency 911, if this is drop everything and go talk to the person.

Somebody�s at death�s door, please get here fast. Somebody�s talking about suicide, discussing committing suicide, let�s get here real fast.

Other times it�s, well, I have a particular problem and I can wait some. So if you do that for the pastor,

I think that would help him. And if you�re a pastor, you�re going to have to do what I have done, and I do quite a bit.

I�d just like to know why we�re meeting. And it can just be generic. It can just be marriage problems.

It can be, you know, questions about the church or problems at the church. Something so we go, oh,

I can kind of put this where I need to put it. And is this an A priority, B priority, or C priority?

Do I need to do this right now? Could I delegate this? Could I wait a little bit?

All that stuff. And of course for pastors, like for instance for me today, it�s Wednesday, and I finished up my sermon last night,

Tuesday night, and I thought, you know what? I don�t know if it�s ready to preach yet, but most of my study�s done.

The way I�m going to craft it and mold it for homiletics, that still needs work, but then

I work on that Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and most times review it on Sunday morning too.

Just a little friendly reminder. Today is part two of the message

I started last time called The Forgotten Commandment. Lots of commands in scripture.

You look at the Old Testament, there are lots of commands, especially to the nation of Israel. And there are commands, of course, in the

New Testament for Christ�s church. And there are commands that are reflective of God�s nature, i .e.

the Ten Commandments, that would be seen for both. Well, on No Compromise Radio Ministry, we realize that commands to Christians, third use of the law, guide us and direct us.

And if we disobey them, we�re not kicked out of the family. This is not some surrender all or else kind of thing.

And this is not new perspectives on Paul or federal vision or John Piper�s final justification stuff.

We want to obey as fruit of thankfulness.

And it�s good for us. It�s glorifying the Lord. Obedience is good.

The motivation for obedience is found in the early chapters of Paul. And then he transitions to the imperatives, the commands for the scripture.

And he tends to do that in pretty much block chunks. Ephesians 1 -3, indicative. 4 -6, imperative.

But there are little exceptions here and there. Romans 6, there�s an indicative. In the sea of indicatives, there�s a little imperative there.

And similarly here in Ephesians 2, verse 11 is the forgotten commandment that we looked at last time.

Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands, remember that you were at that time separated from Christ.

You know, I have NES in my mind and I�m reading ESV. It happens to me all the time.

At that time, separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

But now in Christ Jesus, you who were far off, once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

When�s the last time you obeyed that command? And you said, yesterday when I listened to the show.

I applaud you. That, you know, that kind of thing is so happy, makes me so happy.

I think, okay, there needs to be some encouragement to the people that have obeyed that recently. I declare that you have a sound mind filled with good thoughts, not thoughts of defeat, but thoughts of faith.

You are well -able, you are anointed, you are equipped, you are empowered. Your thoughts are guided by God�s word.

No obstacle can defeat you because your mind is programmed for peace. Peace to the Lord. Wow. That was affirmation 17.

You know, they have the de -motivation stuff, those de -motivating posters.

We need to have the de -affirmation, daily de -affirmation. My friend does the

Joel not Joel on Twitter account, and he's usually pretty funny. I like his little sermon helps hashtag.

The forgotten commandment, remember, as we said yesterday, and I've said from the pulpit in the series in Ephesians, we're not to look back with nostalgia and say, oh,

I loved it when I was an unbeliever and I could do all these sins and did all these sins. You hear some people's testimonies, and it sounds like they just were so in love with,

I will, they were in love with doing those sins, but it sounds like they're still in love with that. There's nothing nostalgic or romantic about sin and a breach of God's command.

But it is good for us to look back and say, well, we used to be dead in trespasses and sins, dominated by the world,

Satan and her own lust, doomed as children of wrath, but God, there's something to be said for at a vertical level, we were alienated from God.

And then now we're together because God's rich mercy, love, grace, and kindness.

There's something to be said for more of a corporate, more of a social level, where you have

Jews and Gentiles, they're separated, and then now they're together. The Jews had everything, and then now we're included with the

Jews in one people of God. That's important to know. And for every look that you have to your sinful past, to your sinful state as Gentiles, then we want to look to the

Lord with 10 to 100 more looks, depending on Samuel Rutherford's 10 or Robert and Mary McShane's 100.

I think that was the number that each of them had. But the Joel cube, he might solve the problem sometime.

So far, I've not had to charge up this Joel cube on the USB, UBS. UBS?

Isn't that my Greek Bible? USB. Yes, USB. I don't even know what USB stands for.

United Standard Bible. Remember, you were separate from Christ we saw last week.

You didn't have Messiah of Israel, the only Messiah. You were excluded from the commonwealth of Israel and citizenship thereof, excluded our strangers to the covenants of promise, and that's kind of where we left off.

The covenants and the great promise that God would send his

Messiah that undergird the rest of, you know, are all the covenants.

Future blessings of the Abrahamic covenant. They didn't have any of those.

Acts 13, and we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers,

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that God has fulfilled this promise to our children and that he raised up Jesus as it is written in the second

Psalm, thou art my son, today I have begotten thee. This great promise, the covenants of promise.

What did we as Gentiles have to look forward to? To hope in education, politics, philosophy, better than other people, pagan religions.

We didn't have any of these covenants that were given by special revelation to Israel.

The text goes on, having no hope. No hope. That's a pretty bad state.

I mean, it's just right out there in an emphatic Greek position grammatically.

Absolutely no hope. No messianic hope. No salvation, no forgiveness of sins.

To whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Nothing. In Galatians 3 .8

and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, all the nation shall be blessed in you.

We were far from Israel. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

Galatians 3 .16, he does not say and to seeds as referring to many, but rather to the one and to your seed, that is

Christ. I have in my notes that maybe

Dante slogan would be the theme song for the

Gentiles. Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here. Job 7 .6,

my days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle and come to an end without hope. Sophocles, the best thing to happen to a man is never to be born.

The next best thing is to be born and to die immediately. And this makes sense, doesn't it?

If you have no Messiah, no Israel, you have no hope. What are you going to do? Cross your fingers, it'll all work out when you die.

Maybe God's not quite omniscient and I had done some sins that he didn't see.

Maybe he'll just forget my sins. Maybe other people were more grievous in their sins. So mine will be somehow covered.

Maybe God's nature won't be immutable, unchangeable. So maybe when

I'm going to die and stand before him, he won't be as holy as he used to be. We were, in summary, the text says, without God in the world.

Yeah, yeah, but we had many gods. We had the god of sex and the god of power and the god of money and the god of other religions.

No, no, there's one God. No fellowship with the real

God. Without God. It's where we get the word atheist, a theos, without God.

That's sad. God forsaken. Not in lustful passion, 1

Thessalonians 4, 5, like the Gentiles who do not know God. Galatians 4, 8, however, at that time when you did not know

God, you were slaves to those which by nature are no gods. That's a precarious position.

And therefore, when we go to the next verse, as 2, 4 is, so too is 2, 13.

But God be in rich in mercy, chapter 2, verse 4, chapter 2, verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus.

So we have the but God and now but now. We had nothing.

We had no one but God. But now. And so he wants us,

Paul does, to remember our position, not just what our old position was, but our new position, our privileged position.

And it says in verse 13, but now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Who were the people that were far off? Well, he just told us we were the Gentiles and we were far off.

That's a good summary of all these things. There's Israel as a nation. She has the promises. She will bear the

Messiah. And we're far away from them. We are far away.

We didn't have Messiah. We didn't have citizenship in Israel. We didn't have covenants of Israel. We had no hope of the future.

We had no God, no God of Israel, but now.

See how Paul does that, but God, in chapter 2, verse 4, and now, but now.

In Christ Jesus, the Messiah, the Jewish Messiah, Israel's Messiah, there's a dramatic change.

You're brought near. You're formerly far off, and you're brought near, creating the praise of the lips.

Peace, peace to him who is far, and to him who is near, Isaiah 57, says the

Lord, and I will heal him. Now, probably what was going on here with the

Bible teaching of Paul, the Ephesians knew what was going on, and I'm sure you know when you study the

Old Testament and you look at the temple, that the Gentiles didn't have access into the

Holy of Holies. Well, nobody did, except the high priest once a year. They didn't have access to the holy place.

They didn't have access to the temple area. They didn't have access to the court of the women.

There was a sign. There was a gate. Gentiles were not supposed to go anywhere close to the temple.

They were to be far away. They were to be in a different zip code, different area code.

We'd say not even in the ballpark. You can't do that. You want to stay away, far away, if you're a

Gentile, because the Jews required that. Now I start to see what he's trying to say here.

Now I'm trying to say, oh yes, I can get that. I see what he's doing. And how is this done?

It says, brought near by the blood of Christ. I don't have a whole lot of time here on No Compromise Radio Ministry to talk all about that, but just remember when you see the word blood in context like these, it's a shorthand for a vicious substitutionary death.

It's not just, you know, the one animal goes out in the wilderness, expiation, sins far removed, but it's sins are propitiated, our sins, the wrath that our sins deserved is exhausted, propitiated, assuaged.

It says in scriptures regularly, the blood of Christ, that is his sin bearing, his sin atoning death is in our place.

It's not talking about red blood cells and white blood cells and platelets and plasma.

We get the word for, the Greek word for blood is the

English word hemorrhage. It's a close equivalent. And hematology, it's the same thing.

H -A -I -M -A is where we get, that's that Greek word, like leukemia, leuko, white, and hemia, the blood.

So when you're singing washed in the blood, power in the blood, what does that mean?

Well, without the shedding of blood, there's no forgiveness. And Jesus is not going to be strangled in our place or shot with bows and arrows.

His blood represents his life and his life is going to be poured out.

This is theological shorthand for violent death. This is the life of the flesh is in the blood.

Now you might say to me, you can die and not have any blood come out.

That's true. You can die without having to be a bloody death. You can die without losing blood.

But when there is blood, what does that tell you? Well, in this particular case, violence.

It's a violent death. Yes, it's vicarious, substitutionary, but it's violent.

Say, well, Jesus came and he had to die so he could die in his bed at 70 years old, kind of like an old man would die.

No, no, we're talking about bloody. We're talking about, as some say, gory.

Here's a man hanging on a cross, blood streaming down his sides, and it's a bloody death by the blood of Christ.

All things are cleansed with blood and without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. And whether you're

Jew or Gentile, blood, the blood of Jesus, the vicious death of Jesus, the vicarious, vicious, violent death of is what brings us close.

It makes us reconciled. We were separate, but the blood of Christ. We were excluded, the blood of Christ.

We were strangers, the blood of Christ. No hope, the blood of Christ. Without God in the world, the blood of Christ.

So today on No Compromise Radio, we're just working through the forgotten commandment. And it's good for everyone listening to look back and say, this is what

I was like before I was a Christian. This was my life. Yes, sin can be fun, but it's a bear when you have to pay for it.

And we look back and we think God has rescued us, but God, rich in mercy, that's my brother calling.

He's on the pactum. You ought to listen to the pactum. And we look back at our lives and say, oh, look at where God brought me.

That's chapter 2, the first 10 verses. But now what Paul is doing in chapter 2, 11 and following, and not many people love these verses.

It's 2, 1 to 10, 2, 1 to 10, 2, 1 to 10. But these verses, it's on the corporate level.

You think, okay, how did I even come into contact with this Messiah? Because I'm not Jewish. So I didn't have this

Jewish Messiah. I didn't have these covenants from God that he gave to Israel.

I didn't have any of these things. So it's even one more step of praise and thanksgiving and boasting because of what the

Lord has done. We were without hope in the world. And that could be our description for all of us.

I'm talking about myself and for you. No hope, no God. You're going to have to have only hope in the

Messiah and hope in the God of Israel. That's the only God. And that's what Paul is after here as he's extolling who

Jesus is. In the next few verses, he just talks about how great this Prince of Peace is.

He himself is our peace who made us both one and has broken down in his flesh, the dividing wall of hostility.

My name is Mike Ebendroth. We actually finished off some of the Moroccan mint tea today because of my throat.

And I think it was actually kind of good. It was nice and soothing, a soothing effect.

But please don't be sending me any Moroccan mint in that mail. It's still Pete's. Pete's at No Compromise Radio.

You know, I read today that Starbucks has dropped its vax mandate. Carhartt's going to use theirs.

And you know, even though the Supreme Court ruled against it, Carhartt still says everybody has to be vaxed or you lose your job.

Star Trek, Star Wars. Starbucks just said today they're not enforcing the vax mandate any longer.

Now, I mean, doesn't it just seem funny to you? Starbucks is the liberal big corporation and Carhartt, you'd think, would be good old boys stuff.

You'd think. But maybe I'm all wrong in these things. So I'd rather be right about the

Bible and wrong about that. My name's Mike Ebendroth. This is No Compromise Radio ministry. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.