Lordship Salvation?

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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
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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.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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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
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.
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I think I say that every single time, but I do mean it. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. It is a great joy and delight to hear from people who listen to the show on a regular basis who get on Facebook and make some kind of strange comments.
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Some are very encouraging, only a few are, we don't like the show. So I guess you could write in either and tell the station management at WVNE that you like the show or you don't like the show.
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Either way, I hope you listen. I hate to quote the Rolling Stones here and Mick Jagger, but Mick Jagger said, bad publicity is still publicity.
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Can I say that on the radio? Are you able to quote Mick Jagger? Well, some pastors do, even when they talk about being content and I can't get no satisfaction, but the pop culture references need to go.
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I want to answer a question today, and that is a question from a listener, a listener named Robert emailed us.
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I'll keep his last name anonymous. And Robert emailed us a couple of times and asked questions about free will and asked some other questions, and then
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Robert was not liking it that we would adhere to what is commonly referred to as Lordship Salvation.
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So today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I want to talk about this doctrine called Lordship Salvation.
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And in his notes, I think this was a quote from someone else, cut and paste from another website, this subject needs to be preached about on a regular basis because the damnable heresy of Lordship Salvation has infiltrated our churches and is leading multitudes into hell.
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Wow! Damnable, heresy, infiltration, multitudes into hell.
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That's Lordship Salvation. Here's what they say it is, and you'll be able to tell right away that this cut and paste deal has nothing to do with anything.
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It's a false caricature. What is Lordship Salvation, according to this article? Lordship Salvation is the unbiblical teaching that a person must cease from sinful lifestyle to be saved.
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That is wrong. That is flat -out wrong. I guess we could go about it this way before I keep reading.
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If you meet a homosexual or adulterer and they say, must I stop sinning before God can save me?
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This caricature would say, yes, you must. Now they have no resources to do that, they don't have the Spirit of God to help them do that.
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They're slaves to sin, they're in the flesh, they cannot please God, and so that would be the wrong thing to say.
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What you should say is, God is righteous and holy, and you must repent from your sins and believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ. That's what you say, and you say people like you do not inherit the
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Kingdom of God. But God can save and God can cleanse, so ask God for forgiveness. Ask Him, the
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Lord, to cleanse you. So this goes on to say, Lordship salvation, just pervert the true meaning of the word repent and the
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Word of God. Before I read anything else, I'll just stop and say the word repent means to change your mind.
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And they'll say, I'm sure, coming up in the letter, I haven't read the rest, I promise, they're going to say something about it means to change your mind, not to change your lifestyle.
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And they, etymologically, would be correct. But I'd ask this question. If your mind is really changed, everything else will change.
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That's why, by the way, I preach to people's minds, because I know if I capture their mind and have it captive to the
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Word of God, they'll do what the Word of God says. When you change your mind, everything else will change, and if everything else hasn't changed, your mind has not changed.
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And so, the word repentance means to change your mind, and it will lead, of course, to a change of life.
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Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand. So, what do they say? Whereas biblical repentance means that a person recognizes their guilt of sin, lordship salvation is to corrupt the meaning of the word, teaching that a person must cease from a sinful lifestyle to be saved.
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That's not true, that's false. God does not ask us to give up anything to be saved.
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Well, if you're going to parse words and say you must do this in order to do that, then
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I think there's some truth there. But Jesus asked somebody called the rich young ruler to give up everything, didn't he?
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You've got to give this up, that's called repentance, you must repent. These people go on to say eternal life is the gift of God, Romans 6, salvation is receiving, not giving,
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God gave His only begotten Son to pay for our debt, all we have to do to be saved is acknowledge our guilt, coming to God on that basis, believing, etc.
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And so Josh, our producer, our director, our know -all, be -all man,
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No Compromise Radio Ministry Executive Director, he answered that email. So the rest of the time
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I'd like to talk a little bit more about lordship salvation. Now let's look at it from a little bit larger perspective, back up a little bit, now let's think about a king, let's think about the
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Lord. Now just imagine if there's a local rich and powerful king who's about ready to address his assembled people in the realm.
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And you can imagine with full pomp and royal regalia and circumstance, the king makes a grand and elegant entrance.
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When the king steps up to the speaking platform, a hush moves over the crowd, then he begins to speak.
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Since I became your king you are now safe from all your old enemies, you have been given wives from foreign lands that I have conquered and you have had stockpiles of food that I have richly given you from my personal storehouses.
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Can you picture that? Now the king says, even though I have not had to raise taxes for the past six years,
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I must raise them for the good of the kingdom. What would the response of those people be? How would they receive such an edict from their good and wonderful monarch?
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It would be treasonous for the people in the kingdom to respond, we will not have you rule over us, we will not obey you, we will take you as provider of everything that we need, from wives to food, but we will not take you as king that we have to obey.
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Let the riot begin. That's exactly what people who say, you can have Jesus as Savior, but he doesn't have to be
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Lord. Friends, Acts chapter 2, Peter makes it clear. You don't make Jesus Lord, Jesus is
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Lord. God has made him both Lord and Savior. You can imagine this scenario as well regarding a king.
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A king approaches a group of renegades from another land. He tells them, my requirements for you to enter into my kingdom are simple, completely renounce your old king and be willing to submit to my rule and reign.
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No negotiations, this is my final and only offer for clemency.
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Never would you expect to hear a person respond, my daughter wants to have you be king when she needs you, but besides that, she wants to act like she is your king while she lives in your kingdom.
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She will give you the title of king, but it is a vacuous title, void of meaning because she still wants to do what she wants, as often as she wants to whom she wants.
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Now that's ludicrous. Jesus is Lord, he is master, he is sovereign, he is Yahweh.
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And we, when you come to him, you come to him as such. There's no other God, there aren't two gods,
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Savior Jesus and Lord Jesus. How about this scenario? A man with a large family initially says, yes king, we will give you total allegiance if you allow us the privilege of becoming members in your kingdom.
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The king allows his family entrance. As the months turn into years, the family begins to waver in their allegiance to the good king.
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Only two options seem available to this man. The first option is keeping his word, that is, he entered on the king's terms and his family must do what the king says.
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The second option is less objective, but it helps soothe the inner recesses of the man's conscience.
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With reluctance, the man mentally lowers the bar, quote unquote, of standards that the king originally set for kingdom citizens.
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Nothing has actually changed, but the man feels much better about his wife and children because they are no longer in their hearts actually bowing to the king and his standards.
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Their homage is false and fake, but the man is so grief -stricken that he either misremembers the king's initial demands or he purposely dilutes them.
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What do I mean by that? What I mean by that is this. You believe Jesus is Lord and King, and then your wife maybe doesn't really believe anymore, but you can't get that through your mind because you know the horrors of hell.
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So you reconstruct a system that Jesus is now in charge of hell insurance, and he's just Savior.
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He's no longer Lord. Those scenarios that I gave perfectly describe what anti -lordship people and some non -lordship people do.
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They want to take Jesus as Savior but not submit to him as Lord. Jesus is not just a king, but the
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King of kings, the Lord Jesus Christ. God is a monarch, and he is not going to accept anything less than full obedience.
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So today what we have is this group running around lowering the standards of God's salvation, lowering the bar.
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You say, well, I don't like the term lordship salvation. Well, MacArthur doesn't like it either. He said, I don't like the term lordship salvation.
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I reject the connotation intended by those who coined the phrase. It insinuates that a submissive heart is extraneous or supplementary to saving faith.
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Although I have reluctantly used the term to describe my views, it is a concession to popular usage.
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And so that's exactly right. I don't even like the term. It's salvation. Jesus is
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Lord. And when God redeems a sinner, that sinner is predisposed by nature now to follow
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God as his new master, Lord, and King. It would be horrible to somehow say, you know,
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I'll take Jesus as my Savior and make him King later in my life. If he's got a crown on, he is the
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King. He is the King of Kings. William Webster said this insightfully,
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The controversy is not over the essential nature of Christ, but whether submission to him as Lord of one's life is a necessary aspect of saving faith.
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There are those who claim that Lordship is a betrayal of the Reformation and that it undermines the vital
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Reformation principle of faith alone. And there are those who state that rather than a betrayal, the teaching of Lordship is in fact an affirmation of both the biblical gospel and historic
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Protestant faith. And so what we want to do is that we're arguing for saving faith that involves, as R .C.
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Sproul would say, embracing Christ as both Savior and Lord. R .C.
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says, and that true faith inevitably, necessarily, and immediately begins to display the fruit of obedience.
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In other words, when you're justified, sanctification begins. It's not some kind of Keswick two -step.
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No, not at all. It begins, maybe imperceptibly to the naked eye, certainly by steps of maturation, that is true.
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But when you are a Christian, you acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and to some degree you submit to his
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Lordship. God is not going to save people and not change them.
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He changes you. He makes you born again. He makes you walk no longer as the
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Gentiles walk, Ephesians 4, in futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them.
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No, he turns you around. He points you in the other direction. God the
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King, by the power of the Holy Spirit, changes people from the inside out. When you look at Christians in the
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New Testament, you have a hard time finding out something in their life that isn't new.
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Christians have a new standing with God. They are now counted righteous by the work of Christ Jesus.
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Christians have a new relationship to their sins, completely forgiven by Christ's death for them.
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Christians are new creations in Christ Jesus, 2 Corinthians 5. Christians have new friends.
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Christians have a new family, the local church. Christians have new goals to glorify God, to evangelize, to pray.
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Christians have a new master, Jesus, not Satan. Christians have new eternal destiny, heaven not hell.
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Christians have new priorities, that is, the Lord masters the priorities, not your own.
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Christians have new longings, spiritual longings, not so much with earthly and temporal. They're all put in the right priority.
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Christians have a new view of the Bible, study of the Bible, worship, giving.
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Christians have new affections, Jonathan Edwards would say. What you used to love, you hate, and what you used to hate, you love. Christians have new love for virtue, godliness, holiness.
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The Christian slogan can never be, same old, same old. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry on WVNE .net.
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So you want to pull up old shows or see who the lineup is, that will be fine. Sadly, all the shows after us, you've got some of these crazy people like John MacArthur, R .C.
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Sproul, Alistair Begg. I don't know what the station is doing anymore to have people like that on who believe in lordship salvation.
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R .C., lordship. MacArthur, lordship. Begg, lordship. I mean, what's this country coming to?
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I mean, come on. Christians are different. Leon Morris said, it does not mean to carry on with the old way with perhaps a few of our worst habits dusted off.
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God changes not just the status or position of the person, imputed righteousness.
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He changes their hearts. He regenerates them. And this is something that is not just, you know, intellectual assent only.
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Oh God, he's satisfied with just kind of initial intellectual assent.
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No, no, no. He's not. He's not after that. He wants it all. Charles Hodge is right when he discusses a person's conversion, noting that it was then that Jesus was, quote, set forth as the object of supreme love and confidence.
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So to learn Christ, Ephesians 4, does not mean merely to learn his doctrines, but to attain the knowledge of Christ as the
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Son of God, God in our nature, the Holy One of God, the Savior from sin, whom to know is holiness and life, end quote.
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That is miles apart from Zane Hodges. We go from Charles Hodge lordship to Zane Hodges, no relationship by family or theology.
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Who declared this? Zane Hodges in Absolutely Free, page 50. Thus, it is utterly impossible for us to give credence to the gospel message without knowing we are saved.
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Hodges is stressing a mere learning about, not learning Christ. Jesus isn't just going around saying we want intellectual response to me.
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No. We want just emotional response to me. No. You believe that God is one,
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James 2? You do well. Clap. Way to go. You believe
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God is one. The demons believe and tremble. Demons have an intellectual faith that is followed by an emotional response.
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Demons shudder. The word shudder describes what happens to hair on a dog's back when scared or fearful.
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If demons had hair, it would bristle because of horror. Did you know the Latin word for shudder is horreo?
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What turns into our English word horror? Matter of fact, in Jewish traditional writings, demons were called hairy ones.
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Why did I have to say it that way? Hairy ones. Far from being stoic about God, demons have an emotional response.
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But no one would consider them saved or holy, would they? Emotions themselves prove nothing.
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But in our day, sadly, emotions seem to rule secularism and spirituality. Hordes of people are self -described mystics who are led by subjective experiences instead of truth.
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Specifically, truth concerning the historical Jesus. This elevation of personal reality contributes to the church's misunderstanding of the role of emotions.
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I ask you, listener, have you learned Jesus the King in a way that goes beyond an emotional, intellectual experience?
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Well, back to this whole idea of repentance. You can imagine the king who subdues his enemies and then says,
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Lay down your arms or perish where you stand. Turn your allegiance away from your disposed dead king and bow to me with complete loyalty and live.
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Not one of those captive soldiers would dare exclaim in public, While I now acknowledge you as my king,
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I will never turn from servicing my old king. No way! But then you read
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Zane Hodges again, page 146, absolutely free. Thus, though genuine repentance may precede salvation, it need not do so.
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And because it is not essential to the saving transaction as such, it is in no sense a condition for that transaction.
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But the fact still remains that God demands repentance from all, and he conditions their fellowship with him on that. Say what?
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What do you mean? That's, you know, standing Mr. Bothways, that's what that is.
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You must repent. Salvation is impossible apart from repentance. Well, I think they forget as repentance is a command, yes, but it's also a gift.
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God grants that. Faith presupposes repentance. MacArthur said, how can those who are mortal enemies of God, Romans 5, sincerely believe in his
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Son without repenting? How can anyone truly comprehend the truth of salvation from sin and its consequences, unless that person also genuinely understands and hates what is sin?
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Faith works, page 33. Everywhere you go, you see the word repentance in the
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Bible, even if it doesn't use that word. Incline your hearts to the Lord. Circumcise yourself to the
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Lord. Wash your hearts from evil. Break up fallow ground. Turn from your wicked way.
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Turn to serve a living God. Well, God hasn't called me to be a fruit inspector.
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Oh, really? Really? So, when you meet someone, they say they're
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Christian, but there's no fruit in their life, you're just supposed to say, they're in? The old Puritan Gernal said, with emphasis,
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Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins, and art born of God, except thou canst prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy.
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Now, I have to say amen to that. That's worth it. That's worth this whole show today. The word king and lord is not simply a title of God, like president, mister, or doctor.
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God is the Lord. God is the king. He is good, and He is gracious, and He demands obedience.
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This obedience will be, at times, wavering, immature, slow, sinful, but at the end of the day, it will be present.
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Why? When the God of the universe changes a person, that person is changed. Well, let's let that sink in.
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Selah. If there is no change present in the person's life, there is every reason to suspect that there has never been a change in the person's status before the
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Holy Lord and King, Jesus. Listen to these haunting words from A .W.
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Tozer while thinking about God as king and committing treason against such a king.
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Tozer said, We are sons of disobedience.
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Sin is the breaking of the law, and we are in rebellion, and we are fugitives from the just laws of God while we are sinners.
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The root of sin is rebellion against the law, rebellion against God. Does not the sinner say, I belong to myself,
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I owe allegiance to no one unless I give it freely? That is the essence of sin.
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Thus, in repentance, we reverse that relationship and we fully submit to the Word of God and the will of God as obedient children.
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We have no basis to believe that we can come casually and sprightly to the Lord Jesus and say,
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I have come for some help, Lord Jesus, I understand your Savior, so I'm going to believe and be saved, and then
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I'm going to turn away and think about other matters of lordship and allegiance and obedience at some other time in the future. Tozer says,
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I warn you, you will not get help from him in that way, for the Lord will not save those whom he cannot command.
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He will not divide his offices. You cannot believe on half a Christ. We take him for what he is, the anointed
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Savior and Lord who is King of kings and Lord of lords. Friends, WVNE listeners, podcast listeners, there are no fences to straddle.
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There is no third option. There is no time to delay. If you say you believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ and you do not submit to him as Lord, you've got the wrong Jesus. You've got the wrong
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Jesus. This is just some kind of wimpy effeminate Jesus that doesn't require any loyalty.
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That's not the Jesus of the Bible. You say, well, you know, I used to believe and now I live with my girlfriend or now
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I, you know, do this and now I do that. So that's worse, some of you. 1
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Corinthians 6. And if you are some of those things now, you haven't been washed, you haven't been cleaned, you haven't been justified by the
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Spirit of God through the Word of God. And so today would be a good day to repent, to say, you know,
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I've been tricking myself. Here's the trick. I want to live my life however
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I please, throw a bone or two to God, and then go to heaven. That's a trick.
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That's fantasy. And Judgment Day will prove it. So now I'm asking you, you have one life to live.
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God has created you and you are dependent upon God for life and breath and health and salvation.
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Why don't you say to the Lord, Lord, I'm sinful, I'm selfish, I'm self -righteous, I'm prideful, and I am a rebel.
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And I have rebelled against your Lordship. Would you break my heart and give me a clean heart? Would you cleanse me of my sins?
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I know I don't deserve it. But to magnify Christ Jesus and His great substitutionary offering on Calvary, shown by the power of the resurrection, would you give me a new heart?
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Would you give me a clean heart? Would you save me from the nonsense that goes around thinking you can be a
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Savior and not a Lord? Would you help me to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, Acts 16 .31,
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that I might be saved? Would you lead on, O King Eternal? The day of marches come.
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Henceforth in fields of conquents, thy tent shall be our home. Through days of preparation, thy grace has made us strong.
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And now, O King Eternal, we lift our battle song. King Jesus, would you save me?
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Help me to put my trust in you. I don't have enough faith. Would you grant me faith? Lord, increase my faith.
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Lord, forgive me for my weak faith and help me to trust in you. My name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.
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And we're responding today from a letter to info at nocompromiseradio .com from Robert.
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And so, Robert, I'd ask you to repent as well from this silly notion of caricaturizing
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Lordship salvation and then somehow spouting off things, believing, excuse me, that you can have
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Jesus as Savior and not Lord. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.