Listening to Sermons to the Glory of God

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, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and what you don�t know, this is show three for me today. And so what I try to do, since I have a daytime job, I just try to quickly record some shows so it doesn�t take too much of the work week.

And that�s the scoop. I have my wonder words in front of me from the Joe Osteen board game. Sometimes you just have to pull out a wonder word. It�s like a stack of cards. I don�t think it�s 52 pickup cards, but they�re called wonder words.

That�s what�s on the, not the face, but the opposite side. The front, the top? What�s the part of the card that all looks the same? The top of the card, the format of the card, the shuffle of the card.

And I�m just going to flip over a couple of wonder words because I�ve actually had a difficult week in ministry, and that�s no lie. And so I need to talk to myself and pep myself up a little bit. The question of the hour is, how do you get encouragement?

If somebody said, I�d like to encourage another brother, what should I do? How could we encourage other people? And so that�s a good question because then we can preach to ourselves as well. How do we encourage other people?

Well, if I�m going to use X, Y, and Z for that, I can use the same for myself. So I regularly preach to myself, talk to myself, get mad at myself, all kinds of things. And so this is good because when you have a tough week, difficult week, well, you could do some wonder words.

So here�s the first one. I kid you not, this is not staged, as you�ll soon find out. This is bombs. I�m just going to give myself your Best Life Now board game wonder cards. Number one. This is all, again, unrehearsed.

Nobody�s forcing me to do this. I didn�t stack the deck, I didn�t cheat, I didn�t, you know, I don�t have any cards up my sleeve or anything. This is just, I shuffled, cut the cards, cut the deck, and off we go.

Flip. Number one. Trust. Hmm. My daughter was filling out a resume, and I said, �Make sure you use action words. So see? Wonder words. Trust. All right? You know, honestly, what I do is I think, �Okay, trust in the Lord with all my heart.

That would help. But just kind of trust. Trust in whom? The object of myself? My faith? All right. We�re going to do another one. Let�s hope this gets better. Purpose. Nice. What is my purpose in life?

What am I here for? Sometimes I say to myself, �Yes, why am I here? What is my purpose It�s not going so well. I need a Stephen Wright joke. If corn oil comes from corn, where does baby oil come from?

Okay. Here�s a word. This is not rehearsed. I�m saying it again for the third time. I don�t want to create illusion, deceive, or anything. Wonder words number three. Magical. That is a wonderful word, by the way.

Magical. But it�s not helping me so much, right? When I think about the magic and stuff like that, I think of maybe Ouija boards. Dear Ouija board, am I going to win the swim contest as I swim the 100 IM at the Monroe Junior High when I�m an eighth grade or ninth grade student?

My mom and I got down on the floor and did the Ouija board. That was magical is what it was. All right. Let�s try another one. Hope. All right. Let�s keep going. Energy. Energy. Energy. Nice. Okay. Now, see, finally.

Now, we have a good lead into the show. Nice. So, when you need your best life now and you�ve got the wonder words and the cards and stuff like that, you just keep flipping until you get the card you want.

It�s kind of like tarot cards, I would imagine, although I�ve never done tarot cards. Family. Freedom. Success. Prayer. Approval. Fantastic. Dynamite. Satisfy. Affirm. Prosperity. Friends. Confidence.

Tithe. Seed. Give. No. Sorry. I�m sorry. Those weren�t there. I made those up. Sorry. All right. What do we have? Now, here at No Compromise Radio, I could ask you this question. How do you listen to sermons?

Have you ever thought to yourself, we�ve talked about this quite often, I think even my friend Ken Ramey wrote a book, Expository Listening. That�s true. Expository Listening. Ken Ramey, actually, I think is from New England, maybe from Massachusetts.

One day I was preaching a sermon. He lives in Texas as a pastor, and I looked up and there he was. There he was in the congregation, and he and I know each other from seminary and ministering in India together as well.

So you could read Expository Listening. That would be helpful when it comes to how do you listen to a sermon. And really, I think Jay Adams has written on the subject, Ken Ramey, but the one I have in front of me here today is Newton, Jonathan Newton, John Newton, John Newton.

We have a Jonathan Newton at our church, and he helps at No Compromise Radio strategically, a computer extraordinaire, a computer guy extraordinaire. John Newton, though, here�s the man who wrote, of course, Amazing Grace.

Not the last stanza. I don�t think he wrote the last stanza, but it�s still a nice stanza. From the works of John Newton, printed by Banner of Truth, Volume 1, page 218 and following, On Hearing Sermons, Letter 13.

The Ministry of the Word in Corporate Worship

So let�s think about this for a second. You�re going to go to corporate worship service on Sunday with other saints. And I think if the church is set up properly, the highlight will be, and it�s not because I�m a pastor or like pastors or no pastors, but the apex, what everything�s driving toward is having God speak to us.

It�s the ministry of the Word of God. Yes, we�ve talked many times before, if I were God, I would have just had scripture reading during that time. Pastor, get up and read the Bible for 30 minutes. Practice what you read, work on inflection, but just get up and read because we don�t want anything messed up.

Your own words. We don�t want anything said that would be untrue or unbiblical. And of course, once a fallible man gets up to start preaching, then you could have error come in. So it�s an amazing thing to me, the foolishness of preaching.

There�s a lot of reasons why people would think it would be foolish. But nonetheless, God has said for pastors to preach the Word. And so what I like to do is I like to take the template in 2 Timothy 4 of pastors preach the Word, and then I like to apply that, invert that, and say if this is the command of scripture to preach the Word, then it should be the command to congregations to what?

Listen to the Word preached. And so if Paul says to Timothy, �Preach the Word in season, be ready in season, not a season then it�s easy for me to go to that same passage and say, as a congregant, I should be ready to hear the Bible in season, not a season.

When it�s popular, when it�s not popular. To move further in 2 Timothy 4, �Reprove, rebuke, exhort. So when the pastor is preaching, I must not just expect candy-coated chocolates. Is that any good, candy-coated chocolate?

A chocolate-coated espresso bean? Now that�s good. And if you were at the Shepherd�s Conference and at the coffee shop there that Friday and you ordered a quad espresso like I did, and then Aaron, a no-compromise radio listener standing next to me, he would be glad I ordered that.

The only thing that would have been nicer than meeting one of the listeners is he should have offered to buy the coffee. Because that would have been a wonder word for me, �buy the coffee. So when I read the passage, I say to myself, if the passage mandates pastors to preach with reproof, rebuke, and exhortation, I must be ready for all those.

There are three aspects in 2 Timothy 4 that Paul hones in on. �Reprove, this is sin. �Rebuke, you sin. Or, �If you do this, you sin. And �exhort it comes from where we get the word �comforter.

It comes alongside �of. And �exhort someone that comes alongside �of� with comfort-slash-exhortation. It's a softer word. It's maybe a more positive word. If �reprove� and �rebuke� are negative, this would be positive exhortation.

So I know when I listen to a sermon, I must expect the Word of God. No additions, no subtractions, no book reviews, no get-up-on-stage-and-let's-interview-people-who-are-movie-stars-and-who-are-producers-in-Hollywood-let's-act-something-out-let's-make-it-a-drama-ministry.

It's to preach the Word. And it's to preach with a proclamation. So when the text says, �Preach the Word to �kerux� the Word, �kerusso� is the word, the root word, the verb form, that's a declaration.

This isn't sharing. This isn't softer delivery. I think when I see the word �preach well, I don't think when I see it. When I see it, I often say to myself, �Armpit sweat Like why do I listen to this show?

So if I were talking to young men, teaching them preaching class, which I have the privilege to do at Southern Seminary, adjunct campus, I tell them, �This is putting some oomph into it. What's the difference between teaching and preaching to preaching and enthusiasm by proclamation of the content of the message and the delivery of the message, we have good news.

�Hiri-hiri�, I've got good news for you. War is over. Or lay down your arms. There's clemency for sinners because the gracious triune God has meted out the truth via the punishment of his son on behalf of all those who would ever believe.

Jesus has been raised from the dead. And so it's this kind of preaching. So if you want your pastor just to kind of share, you know, okay, I go to the church today. I want him to talk about me. I want him to be nice in his delivery and share and not kind of raise his voice.

I want kind of a bedside manner. And I want him to say only encouraging things. I've had a hard week and I need to be stroked and talk to like this. All right, well, how do you listen to a sermon to the glory of God?

Well, what I do is I just see all the different ways we are told to preach the Bible, the way the elders and pastors are to preach the Bible, the way that prophets used to preach the Bible in the Old Testament.

And I need to listen to the way they are commanded to preach. In other words, it's godly to say, this man is going to get up in the pulpit and rebuke, reprove and exhort me. And I'm ready for that. And on a side note, and I've said it many times and after you do 1500 shows, just everything's a repeat anyway.

It's just all smashed together. I like to be affected, no effected. I like to be effected, effected. I wanna be stirred up. I wanna be shown, do you know, my complaining is a slam upon the sovereignty of God.

God could have gotten me out of the situation. He didn't have to put me into the situation. He could have rearranged things. I could have been miles away when all these things happen. And the list goes on and on and on.

I just recently, my daughters and myself, my two daughters, Gracie and Maddie and I, driving down the street. Some guy's at a red light and he just pulls out, hits us, swerved a little bit. And then we just did a big like 360 spun around and car had a lot of damage, but we got out.

We walked out and, you know, you're not careful. You're just playing the game in your mind. If we would have went a different way, if I would have stopped at that stop sign earlier and just sat there for an extra 20 seconds, if I would have checked my email at the restaurant, I mean, you know, whatever you want to do, but you have to say God is sovereign.

And so I need to hear sermons about the sovereignty of God and how that affects my complaining about the weather, the snow, the ice, all kinds of things. And so I like that. In other words, how do you listen to a sermon?

You listen to a sermon based on the inverse of how it's to be preached. That's the way I go through this. Now, Ken Ramey's probably got a better way to say it. So does Jay Adams, listening to sermons or something.

I can't remember what it was called. Here's what John Newton says. The faithful ministers of the gospel are all the servants and ambassadors of Christ. They're called and furnished by his Holy Spirit.

They speak in his name and their success in the discharge of their office, be it more or less, depends entirely upon his blessings. So far, they are all upon a par. But in the measure of their ministerial abilities and in the peculiar turn of their preaching, there is a great variety.

And he talks about how some do this and others do that. This would be more evidently the case if the remaining depravity of our hearts did not afford Satan but too much advantage in his subtle attempts to hurt and ensnare us.

But alas, how often has he prevailed to infuse a spirit of envy or dislike in ministers towards each other, to withdraw their hearers from their proper concernment by dividing them into parties and stirring them up to contend for a Paul or a Paulis or a Cephas.

So see, he's working through what we do for a sermon listener. And so this actually helps us when we think I can get the best preaching in all the world on my internet, but my pastor's not as good as these preachers.

But as a human nature is prone to extremes, as human nature is prone to extremes, permit me to give you a caution on the other hand. If the minister under whom you statedly attend is made very acceptable to you, you will be in the less danger of slighting him.

But be careful that you do not slight any other minister of Christ. If therefore when you come to hear your own preacher, you find another in the pulpit, do not let your looks tell him that if you had known he had been there, you would not have come.

I wish indeed you may never think so in your heart, but though we cannot prevail, prevent evil thoughts from rising in our minds, we should endeavor to combat and suppress them. Some persons are so curious or rather so weak that if their favorite minister is occasionally absent, they hardly think it is worth their while to hear another.

A judicious and faithful minister in this case, instead of being delighted with such a mark of peculiar attachment to himself, will be grieved to think that they have profited no more by his labors. For it is his desire to win souls, not to himself, but to Jesus Christ.

Hearing Sermons Without Favoritism

Newton goes on. I hope you, my friend, will always attend the ordinances with a view to the Lord's presence. And when you are in your proper place, consider the preacher, if he preaches the truth, as one providentially and expressly sent by the Lord to you at that time, and that you could not choose better for yourself, all things considered, than he has chosen for you.

Do not limit the Almighty by confining your expectations to a single instrument. If you do, you will probably procure your own disappointment. If you fix your hopes upon the man, the Lord may withhold his blessing.

And then the best men and the best sermons will prove to you but as clouds without water. But besides the more stated reasons of worship on the Lord's day, you have many opportunities of hearing sermons occasionally in the course of the week, and thus you may partake of that variety of gifts which I've already spoken of.

This will be either a benefit or otherwise, according to the use you make of it. I would recommend to you to improve these occasions, but under some restrictions. All right, let's stop there. Isn't that good advice by John Newton?

All right, how do you listen to a sermon? Well, of course, if the guy's not preaching the word, then he should be out, right? You should get rid of him. That's grounds for dismissal. But if he is preaching the Bible, and you're thankful that he does preach the Bible, you ought to say to yourself, if I want variety, you can listen to other people throughout the week, but Newton understands what it's all about, that it's not about the man, and it never has been about the man, and that man is, he's probably the biggest sinner in the church, right?

And we think of how Paul talks about himself in 1 Timothy 1. You go there as a hearer, and as fast as you can, I guess this is my point, when you listen to the sermon, you try to just get the guy out of your mind.

Oh, what's he wearing? What's his haircut? Does he have a tie that's new? Does he wear a robe? Does he, I don't know, does he have a lisp? Does he pronounce his, does he say idea or idea? The sooner you can think, as a man, I got to think about the Lord, thinking about the Lord when a man's preaching.

I think it can be done. And I think maybe the best thing you can do is pray, Lord, help me to focus on the message, not the messenger. And of course, from the pastoral side, he's going to be preaching the word, so he tries to get out of his way, out of your way.

But if you have a Bible open in front of you, I'm not arguing, do you have to have an iPad or not? But if you have a Bible open, as this man's teaching me the Bible, I'm hearing from God. Now see what that does?

That then tends towards worship, and it gets away from the person. By the way, if you know your pastor well enough, you're never going to worship him. The TV pastors, the megachurch pastor on the big screens and multi-campus and all that, I don't know.

I think people are more tempted to worship those guys because they never see them. And if you never see them, you never see them sin. You never see them act in a way that is not right. I'm ashamed of times, if I act short with someone, if I am impatient toward my children, around church people.

I mean, that's awful. I'm sure it's happened though. I've been here 17 years. It is not an excuse, but it does tell the people, he's not the Savior, but he tells me about the Savior every week. And we are all a bunch of sinners, and we want to hear from the Savior through the divinely ordained means of a sinner preaching the text about Jesus Christ.

Tell me about Jesus. And in addition, that is why it's so important not to be a moralist and not to just tell people what to do every single week. Oh, outside of who they are in Christ and union with Christ and how the gospel strengthens because Jesus Christ strengthens.

Hearing Sermons with Humility and Discernment

And so John Newton, how to listen to sermons. Father, I advise you when you hear a gospel sermon and it is not all in respects to your satisfaction, be not too hasty to lay the whole blame upon the preacher.

The Lord's ministers have not much to say in their own behalf. They feel, it is to be hoped, their own weaknesses and defects and the greatness and difficulty of their work. They are conscious that their warmest endeavors to proclaim the Savior's glory are too cold.

And their most importunate addresses to the consciences of men are too taint. And sometimes they are burdened with such discouragements that even their enemies would pity them if they knew their case.

Indeed, they have much to be ashamed of, but it will be more useful for you who are a hearer to consider whether the fault may not possibly be in yourself. Perhaps you thought too highly of the man, expected too much from him, or perhaps you thought too meanly of him and expected too little.

In the former case, the Lord justly disappointed you. In the latter, you received according to your faith. Perhaps you neglected to pray for him. And then, though he might be useful to others, it is not at all strange that he was not so to you.

Or possibly you have indulged a trifling spirit and brought a dearth and deadness upon your own soul for which you have not been duly humbled and the Lord chose that time to rebuke you. Lastly, as a hearer, you have a right to try all doctrines by the word of God.

And it is your duty so to do. Faithful ministers will remind you of this. They will not wish to hold you by an implicit and blind obedience to what they say upon their own authority, nor desire that you should follow them farther than they have the scripture for their warrant.

They would not want to be lords over your conscience, but helpers of your joy. Prize this gospel liberty, which sets you free from the doctrines and commandments of men. But do not abuse it to the purposes of pride and sell.

There are hearers who make themselves and not scripture the standard of their judgment. They attend not so much to be instructed as to pass their sentence. To them, the pulpit is the bar at which the minister stands to take his trial before them, a bar at which few escape censure from judges at once so severe and inconsistent.

For as these censors are not all of a mind and perhaps agree in nothing so much as the opinion as they have of their own wisdom, it is often happened that in the course of one and the same sermon, the minister has been condemned as legalist and an antinomian.

It's too high in his notions and too low. It's having too little action, too much. I pray God to preserve you from such a spirit, which I fear is spreading and infects us like the pestilence and to guide you in all things.

I am John Newton. And so my name is Mike Abendroth. We've been thinking about worship and the listening of sermons. And what do we do? There's a man preaching and we want to pray that that man would hide himself behind the scriptures and that we would look past the man to the Lord God and his word.

That's what we're after. And if you can do those things, then I think you're going to have a much better worship experience. We as pastors want to hide behind the word of God and you ought to see us in that very fashion.

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.