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Why do we need preaching?
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. I'm your host, Mike Abendroth, and we are coming up into our second year of No Compromise Radio. I don't know how many shows I've recorded. I was gonna say taped, but nothing's on actual tape.
My guess is 260 shows, something like that, and time just goes by quickly, very quickly, and so I wanna thank each and every one of my listeners. Thank you if you like the stuff or don't like it, but you just listen.
I hope you've learned. I hope you know more about the Lord and His word than you did before you listened. How about that? I guess that would be a good gauge of, I don't think success. I'm not after success.
I just would like to be faithful and God bless His word, so if He has blessed His word in your life for that, I am happy. I'm talking about preaching in this particular series, and why in the world do we have such a dearth of preaching?
Well, nobody really wants to be told what to do today. They'd like to be part of the conversation. They'd like to weigh in. They'd like to give their two cents worth. People have forgotten that God is a king.
He's more than a king, but He is certainly the king. Jesus is the king of kings, and people back in the old days in the Near East, in the Far East, they would just not stroll up to the king. First of all, they'd have no presence or access to the king unless they were going to be judged or especially favored by the king, but if they did have access to the king, you can be sure that they would not stroll up to the king and whisper sweet nothings into his ear.
They would not saunter up doing the Henry David Thoreau, I like to saunter, and saunter up and say, you know, king, I know you've been judging some of these other foreign lands. You've been working on taxes.
You've been saying things that you want people to transcribe and record for you, but I'd really like to be part of this conversation. Do you know, I'd like to hit reply all, and I'd like to be part of this too.
I don't know who you think you are, some kind of monarch or something. So we just live in a bad state. The good news is, no matter what happens with the government, no matter what happens with the nuclear bombs, no matter what happens with anything else, God is building His church, and if you're part of that church, if you've been made born again by grace alone, looking to Christ Jesus, the risen Savior who died in the place of sinners like you, you can rest assured that God is in control and that you cannot lose what God has given you, and that is salvation.
You can't lose what God gave you. How could you do that? God gave you salvation, but you can lose it, and so no matter what comes our way, we can be bolstered in the fact, we can be buttressed in the fact that we have a king who loves us like he loves his son, and so the church will continue to grow.
We are going to continue to suffer and be persecuted, but God's kingdom will come, and so when you say, thy kingdom come, I think there's gonna be a coming kingdom, and I think Jesus is going to be the king.
Well, where are the preachers today? Where are preachers like Hugh Latimer? Remember the martyr Hugh Latimer? I stood in Oxford, and you've got the Cramner, Ridley, and Latimer obelisk memorial, and it has there, it's been appointed to you to not only to believe, but also to suffer for my sake, Philippians chapter 129, rough memory translation, and he was martyred, and he, in his life, was a, S. Lewis Johnson describes him as a crusty kind of fellow, but he said something when he was preaching for the king.
Now, can you imagine if you get called in to preach for President Obama? That'd be one thing. Probably can't use the name of Jesus, and they would tell you what to say ahead of time, and all that, but if, actually, you got a couple words in edgewise, there might be some problems, but the news cycle would quickly change that, but if you were asked to speak in front of the king, not the king or queen today, who's kind of a constitutional monarch, but back in these days, I believe the 1600s, and you had to preach in front of the king, and then you offended the king in one of your sermons.
That poses a big problem. So the king said, Hugh Latimer, come and apologize for what you have said, and Latimer said, I will come before the king. So that day came, on that specific day, Latimer was going to go to the king, and all the people in England were happy because Hugh Latimer's finally going to be muzzled.
Who wants to hear a prophet? This is like Judah saying, Isaiah, would you please stop preaching to us about the Holy One of God? And now they all get to see Hugh Latimer, the great preacher, forced to bow, forced to apologize, forced to say, I'm sorry for offending you with the Bible.
So all the lords came, many people came, and boy, they wanted to get in there, and so we had a packed house. Latimer walks in, and he starts his sermon with these words. Hugh Latimer said this, bethink thee, thou art in the presence of thy earthly king, who can destroy the body.
But bethink thee, Hugh Latimer, that thou art in the presence of the king of heaven and earth, who can destroy both the body and the soul in hellfire. O king, curseth be thy crimes, end quote. Doesn't that make you think, what a man?
Courage, duty, loyalty, faithfulness. I feel like I'm walking around West Point Military Academy looking at the benches that would say things like that. Duty, courage, honor, sacrifice. Except not for our country, for the Lord God.
We need preachers like that today. Unfortunately, churches vote those kind of preachers out. Got some congregation, congregational rule, we're gonna hire a guy, you do what we say, and if you don't do what we say, you're thrown out.
And by the way, we might give you 10 days severance pay, we might give you a couple weeks, but you and your wife and kids and medical insurance and all that, you go fend for yourself. We will not have that man rule over us.
Everything's fine with the preacher until he opens his mouth and begins actually preaching the word of God. If he wants to preach psychology, if he wants to preach focus on the family, if he wants to preach feel good messages, well, he's their best friend.
But if he starts getting up preaching like Hugh Latimer, like Paul, like Ezekiel, like Spurgeon, like Boyce, like MacArthur, you've got a segment of people who just cannot take that. So the pastor has to say to himself, the elder has to say to himself, I don't think everybody in this congregation is going to like the message.
I'm quite positive that the culture is not going to like the message, the media is not going to like the message, my neighbors aren't going to like the message, my wife might not even like the message, but I have a message from God and I have a choice to make.
Faithfulness or cowardice. And I need to either bow to the King, Jesus, and do what he says, preach the word, or I need to bow to what I think is best. And so show me a pastor that will not preach Christ Jesus in a high way, high and lifted up, hopefully in a verse by verse method.
And I'll show you a pastor who isn't a pastor at all, because he's not pastoring. He's not saying, wolves stay away, sheep be careful, sheep don't eat that kind of food, sheep, here's the clean water over here, sheep, avoid that pasture over there.
He's not doing it. He's a hireling, he's a man pleaser, he's exactly the kind of person Jesus negatively describes in John chapter 10, opposite of Jesus, the good shepherd who sacrifices himself, who willingly lays down his life for the sheep.
And so where are the pastors today that will stand up and preach the truth, all the truth of God, not just the love of God, but the justice of God as well, and everything in between? Where are those pastors today?
And if you have one of those pastors today and you're listening in New Zealand, Singapore, Philadelphia, Virginia, California, wherever you're listening, you ought to say to God today, thank you for giving me a faithful preacher.
Thank you for giving him the desire to sweat and toil and labor, even though the fields might not be very white for harvest, he is faithful. And I can't wait to get to church on Sunday to hear from God.
I don't know if that's the way you think. My name's Mike Abendroth, I think that way. It's hard for me to think that way now because I'm the preacher. But when I wasn't the preacher and I would go to church on Sunday, whether my pastor was Raul Reis at Calvary Chapel when I first got saved, or whether it was my pastor John MacArthur for many years, I could not wait.
It was exciting. Do you know what was so exciting to hear the word of God preached? I even sometimes went on Wednesday night to hear from the living God after all those decades. I was 29 years old when God saved me.
After all those decades of living for self and talking to self and listening to the people that I wanted to listen to that would stroke my ego, my sin, my vanity, et cetera, whether it was a talking head, whether it was a politician, whether it was some kind of Robert Shuler kind of preacher, because I still went to church.
I mean, I'm not a pagan after all. But after all those years of doing that, I wanted to hear from God. And it was so wonderful to hear God do things and hear about God doing things, hear God's voice speaking.
And I would say things like this. Do you say things like this? I don't know who else is listening to this message, but that message was written for me. That sermon was for me. I don't know how John MacArthur knows my business, knows my private life, knows my private thoughts.
I don't know what's going on, but that message is for me. And it would humble me and it would devastate me and it would tear me down. And then simultaneously, what does the word of God do through the ministry of the spirit of God?
Because it's not John MacArthur, it's not Raul Reis, it's the spirit of the word. And then that same word would put the balm on. It would soothe me and it would comfort me and it would stand me up and dust me off and confirm to me that in spite of my sins, the God of the universe, because of Christ, loved me, loves me.
And I would sit there and say to myself, I can't wait to go to church and hear the preaching. I know people that try to get to church late because they don't want to hear the preaching. Who are you to preach to me?
That we get to hear from God. What if you were just left with natural revelation? Psalm 19 says that we have general revelation, the sun and the moon and the stars, babies being born and those things all shout, God is great.
There is a God. God is wise. The Lord has power. That's Romans one as well. And what if that's all we had? It still would be great because we can learn a lot about the power of God. We could still sing the mighty power of God, but we wouldn't know any of the details.
We wouldn't have any of the intricacies of how great God's plan was in eternity past where you have God's great plan for salvation, the Father choosing, the Son dying for, the Spirit sealing and quickening.
We wouldn't understand any of the great prophecies about the Virgin who would bear with a great virgin conception. We wouldn't understand any of those things. We wouldn't understand about how God saves us and we can't unsave ourselves.
There's a lot of things we could never understand. So God's told us, here's my point, back to the big picture here. You get to hear preaching. And if you've got a pastor who preaches, I hope you pray for that pastor.
I hope you pray that he keep preaching, that he keep preaching harder, finer, greater truths about Christ Jesus and his salvation. That's what we want. And so I'm on here a little, I don't know, I'm not looking at any of my notes today.
I sometimes look at my notes, but today's not one of those days. I'm just fired up about preaching because the world hates it. That maybe should tell you we should probably love it. And that's exactly true.
We just don't do what the world does in an opposite fashion. Many times that's a true thing. We need to love preaching because that's how God speaks to us. And we want to sit under faithful preachers, men.
If you've got a woman preacher, that's by definition an oxymoron, and you should revisit 1 Timothy 2. But if you've got a man who preaches, I think you should go up and you should say, just thank you for your faithfulness.
Thank you for your determination to preach the word. And you don't have to kiss the guy's feet or anything like that. I'm not asking for any gifts. I'm not asking for a pound of Starbucks coffee or anything like that.
I would never stoop so low to ask for gifts in some kind of circuitous fashion, Starbucks coffee, that somehow that I would benefit from my position. Starbucks coffee, I put one pound, dark roast. That to me is just appalling.
Honestly, I'm not asking for anything. I get plenty. Here's what I'm asking for. If you go to another church, not Bethlehem Bible Church, and you've got a pastor who preaches, I just think you should say thank you for being faithful.
How could I pray for you? And try to encourage the pastor because these kinds of preachers are few and far between. Every pastor has the inkling, has the temptations to cut corners, to make the message nicer, brighter, more palatable for the people because he knows there are people in the church that don't really like his style and they like softer messages all the time, soothing messages all the time.
They don't really like woodshed messages. And so he has the pressure. I feel the pressure. And hey, I'm no compromise radio. Well, if no compromise radio can feel the pressure, I think your pastor can feel the pressure too because we are frail, fallible, fragile men.
We are. And so it's easy to back down in your mind until you think, I answer to somebody who is God incarnate. I don't answer to these people. And these people will come and go, but one day I'm going to have to consider my latter end and face God.
And so I'd rather be a Latimer than someone else. And when Jesus says, be ready in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction, after he just said, preach the word, Jesus saying this through his apostle Paul, for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
So we need preachers today because Jesus told us to preach. That's how people get saved under the preaching of the word of God. Romans chapter 10, spirit of God. Spirit of God demands preaching as well.
The spirit of God demands preaching for you see, the spirit uses his word to convict, to confront. That is why G. Campbell Morgan, who was the man who preceded David Martin Lloyd-Jones, held this view of preaching.
He called preaching the supreme work of the Christian minister. I think of first Thessalonians chapter two, verse 13. For this reason, we also constantly thank God, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which performs also its work in you who believe.
We ought to preach because that is the vehicle of salvation. That is the instrument of sanctification, the word of God. That is what the Holy Spirit uses. Christians aren't sanctified by sermonettes, void of the word, and stories, and drama, and how to.
First Peter two says, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. We need to preach in such a way that we show the glories of Christ Jesus and teach people his truth.
Sanctify them in truth, Jesus said. Your word is truth. And that is where real soul work can be accomplished. Real soul work. And we are people today who need to be preached to. We need our pastors to be preachers.
We don't want to put a one ad out to say, we'd really like a pastor who, according to Michael Horton, is an innovator. He's against this, by the way. He's progressive, he's a change initiator, he's a change man, he's a team leader, he's a builder, he's a coach, he's a people developer, he's good with organizational skills, he can relate to boomers, he can relate to fast track commuters, he knows how to build infrastructures, he knows how to create ministry delivery teams.
And this is a big one now, I mean, this is just, this gets under my proverbial skin. He's approachable, he's kind. I guess maybe kind would be biblical. Dynamic, catalytic, mosaic. Horton didn't say that one.
He's relevant, he's got a close walk with the Lord, he's able to lead worship through drama, audiovisual technology, banners and dance. That's a real one, can you imagine? These are things that Horton really found in real one ads for ministry, pastors, some kind of CEO, entertainer, coach, put them all together and what do you have?
Pull a rabbit out of the hat and what comes out? Bullwinkle, a rhino. Degrees in business or music required, a degree in theology preferred. Oh, I just kind of think of the Charlie Brown teacher. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.
The other day I said, you know, I wish I had a barf bag. I don't know why I'm talking about barfing so much lately, but I think there's some biblical illustrations of barfing and I guess I should probably keep going.
I know I have friends who would say, stay on target. It's kind of like Luke Skywalker before he blows up the Death Star. Stay on target, stay on target, Luke. People left to themselves, church search committees made up of lay people are going to have no idea.
That's why if you have, you don't have a pastor, you don't need a pastoral search committee, you have one. If you have elders, qualified elders, you have a committee. Now, if the elders would like to say, could some people send out emails?
Could some people post on websites? Could some people follow up? Could some people listen to sermons? Could some people write letters? That's fine, but the buck stops at the leadership. Doesn't it? So, you have a pastoral search committee if you have elders.
If you don't have elders, well, there's, I guess you're going to have to go for second best, maybe deacons, but we are after pastors who preach. Yes, it would be mandatory that they are spirit-filled, that is saved.
If you are saved, you have the spirit, but we want pastors who are willing to preach. What if you had the greatest preacher in the world, but he really wasn't relevant? He's actually kind of dorky, and he was not a good change agent.
He was just kind of a simple old, same old, same old. He actually was probably 65 years old and didn't really relate to the 20-year-olds that much. He might think, he might've heard of the band Jane's Addiction, but didn't really know.
You know, 10 years ago, they were the hot band. What if you had somebody who was a real good preacher, but he couldn't lead worship if he had to, that is songs. I don't think that's worship alone. Preaching's even worship, but quote-unquote worship.
What if he didn't know anything about technology and he just had to do things the old-fashioned way, maybe with a pencil and paper? Maybe he had no degree in business. What if he had no progressive nature to him at all and his wife was, well, you know, she couldn't even really get out of the house because she was frail and she was an invalid and she required his care and his tender compassion and love.
Most of the time, he wasn't preparing for sermons. He was taking care of his wife. And I would wonder how many churches today would hire a guy like that. I wonder. I think people today would rather have everything else, forget preaching, forget faithfulness, forget showing the love of Christ to his wife.
I think they want cool, fast-paced action because they want families. They want the go-getters. And you are going to somehow, people think, get the kind of people that the pastor is. So if the pastor's 30, you're gonna get a lot of 30-year-olds if the pastor's 60, you're gonna get a lot of 60-year-olds.
And who wants the old people at the church? Who want the kind of crusty old people? This needs to be young and dynamic and we can't have the old. Can't play speed metal worship songs with a bunch of old fogies in the place.
See how this thinking goes? It's wrong to the very core. We want preachers and you should hire preachers based on 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, period, paragraph. That's how you should hire them. Not, oh, let's hire some preacher because he's got cool glasses and he listens to the Smiths and the Ramones and he could really reach out to people who are like that and he's a rap music guy.
Okay, if he listens to any of those bands, what do I care? But I care about his preaching. Will he pull the trigger? Will he preach? Will he say, I'm actually gonna lead these people? And what leadership means is they don't need authentic.
They don't need relevant. They don't need transparent. They don't need conversations. They don't need mosaic. They don't need emerging. We need somebody, they need somebody who does not preach themselves, but Christ.
That's the one thing. They don't preach themselves, but they preach Christ. So my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio. We today are talking about preachers who preach the word like Jesus, like Paul, like Peter, like Stephen, like Ezekiel, like Isaiah.
Those are the ones that we can look to and say, God, you're great for giving us your truths, your verities, the sure counsel of the word of God that's eternal.
Settle for nothing less. 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 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. 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.