Luke Abendroth and Ministry

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.

Luke Abendroth, College, and the Value of Faithful Teaching

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today, part two, Luke Abendroth. Luke Haferhoff, welcome to the show again. Thank you. It seems like a long time since last week, like about five minutes since we recorded the last week's show.

At least 10. At least 10. What classes are you taking at Master's College this coming semester?

This coming semester, I actually just switched my major over from political studies to business. So Lord willing, I'll be taking business communication and macroeconomics, and then some gen eds, essentials of philosophy, essentials of biology, and what's the last class?

US history.

Oh, nice. So did you mention a Bible chapter in there or no?

No, no Bible classes this semester. So hopefully I'll be, I might sit in on some of Dr. Chow's classes, maybe one of them, just his Old Testament class,.

Just when I can. Now see, it's because of you that in 2015, I probably listened to Dr. Chow, Abner Chow's lectures from the Master's College. Over 200 hours I listened to him. Teach through Deuteronomy verse by verse.

What else did I listen to? Zachariah. Job. Job. And I just listened because you were so excited that he was a teacher who was faithful to the text, excited about his topic, loved to teach the Old Testament.

Tell me about Chow. What do you think of him? I can call him Chow. You have to call him Dr. Chow. Okay, I'll call him Dr. Chow.

I really like him a lot. I haven't had a class with him for a while, so it's been a while. It'll be good to go back and listen to his teaching again. But when I was there, I really was excited about his teaching.

And just one of his goals, I think, is to just get people that are not desiring to be pastors or anything like that to be excited about the word. And I think he does a good job in that and he's successful.

So I'm excited to go back and hopefully I'll be able to sit in on a class if I have enough time and stuff like that. So we'll see. But yeah, it's interesting. You've listened to a lot more of Dr. Chow than I have.

Yeah, well, when I email him, he responds. It's a tardy response, but he still responds to me, so that's good. Luke, the new book you know about, Sexual Fidelity, No Compromise. And I dedicated that book to you.

It says, to my son, Luke, and then I quote Proverbs 5, one to two. My son, be attentive to my wisdom, incline your ear to my understanding that you may keep discretion and your lips may guard knowledge in the context of sexual sin and sexual morality as well, later on in the chapter.

Some books about sex, written even by Christians, are vulgar, say things they ought not to. I tried to write this book stemming from conversations you and I had, and those conversations were direct, but I didn't wanna be gross about it or anything like that.

The Bible teaches the subject of sex not with, hey, come along and sin sexually, but when there's sexual sin, it's put in a repulsive fashion that it would be wrong to do. And are you getting any flack for this book?

And I've dedicated the book to you.

Any problems with that? Not yet. Yeah, I think you're right. And it's interesting, I was just looking up, because of all the Islam stuff, people are always saying, oh, Islam's a religion of peace and stuff.

So I think it's interesting for me, I look up some verses in the Quran and stuff, and it's interesting to see how even, I mean, the Quran's more like the book of Proverbs and it's not a narrative or anything, but it'll mention things about what you can do and what you can't do, talking about sex and stuff, and it's gross and it's weird, and it's a weird way to mention it.

And I think you're right, the Bible doesn't do that. It's not some kind of, oh, this is gross, and I don't know, it makes sexual sin look gross.

I say in the book, the origin of this book stems from regular conversations I had with my teenage son, Luke. I wanted him to think rightly about this delicate subject. It's a topic that needed an ongoing and open dialogue.

It still does. So I'm glad we had those conversations. You asked me some pretty good questions, and I think I said to you, Luke, do you remember? You can ask me any question you want and I'll give you an answer.

And sometimes I kind of blushed when I answered, but I tried to give you a legit answer. Yeah, I think so. Hopefully I'll do the same thing one day if I ever have kids. Well, the running theme in Proverbs 2, 5, 6, 7, my son, my son, my son, think rightly about it.

And it is incumbent upon parents, especially dads, to teach their children about this subject because the world will be glad to teach them versus a mom and a dad sitting down saying God created this, God is in charge, here's what's going on when it comes to sexual fidelity.

So thanks for being my guinea pig, by the way. Yeah, I'm glad.

I'm glad to be your guinea pig. Well, you know what? I think there's a, I just recently listened to John MacArthur's sermon, We Will Not Bow. And it's interesting just talking about, like you were just saying, the world, I mean, basically teaches, will teach you about, your kids about sex or you about sex.

And he just basically talks about how the family unit and how it's a sovereign unit and how it's kind of like the removal from the world inside the family and just how our society is working to destroy that.

So I'd recommend that sermon.

Parenting, Church Involvement, and Dating Wisdom

Luke, you're a sophomore now, coming up to be a fresh, a junior pretty soon at the Master's College. For your freshman year, I think I gave you two rules. Do you remember those two rules?

Two rules. You have to go to Grace Community Church and no dating. All right, so. First two years. Now, I'm not right on everything.

And I'm not wanting you to say, yeah, Dad, you're right on everything because you know that's not true as well. But those are two good rules. Those prove to be right. I think so. Tell me why. Why do you think those were two good fatherly wisdom things?

Well, hopefully I would have gone to Grace Community Church anyways.

I love the church. It's great. I kind of blew it the first year at Master's and I didn't really get super involved, but I'm excited to get back in about a week or so and hopefully just get immediately plugged in.

And I've got some friends that are doing that right now. So I'm motivated by what they're doing and pushed by them. So I'm excited for that. So I think that's great. And then I think it saves a lot of time and wasted time and hurt when you're trying to date right, or at least for me, dating right when I got into college.

Because you know what happens? You go to college and you meet, there's girls there that are fun and sweet. And right away, it's like, there's people that, they kind of start dating right away. And then a lot of times it doesn't work out.

And then it's kind of like, okay, well, maybe you should have waited a little bit longer when you first got to college. So I think that was good advice from you. And then I, you know what, if I never meet a girl at Master's that I'll marry or be interested in or whatever, I think I'll have a good picture in my mind from friends that I have that are godly girls of what a godly girl is like, so.

Luke, one of my subplots for this whole thing with Master's College, and even though it's expensive, I think to myself, well, you know, if you meet a godly girl there and get married to her, wonderful.

You know, God's sovereign over all that. But if you don't get married to somebody from Master's College, you will at least realize that there are godly young girls who are pretty. Yep. Right? There's nothing wrong with trying to say, you know, God made ladies pretty.

And so you think, oh, she's pretty. And, you know, how many people go to a church, maybe out in the middle of nowhere in Massachusetts, and then they are in corporate America, they meet a lady, she's kind, she's patient, she's pretty, she's got a wholesome family, but she's, you know, a Roman Catholic or she's a liberal Methodist.

And then you, in your mind, create, well, she really is a Christian. Yeah. Right? So it's been probably neat for you to see maybe some of the best of the best young ladies at Master's College. This is how a female is to act in a godly fashion.

Right. Yeah.

I think she's got it right. I was just saying something about the other night, so.

Six-Day Creation, Inerrancy, and a Biblical Worldview at Master's College

Luke, when we moved, we, Kim and I, and Haley, when she was five, you were five months old, from Los Angeles and Grace Church to the Siberian tundra here in Massachusetts. I was sad for Kim in a sense, because her pastor was John MacArthur for many years, and then her new pastor was me.

My Kim and I, I was 36 at the time. And now the flip side, the converse, the inverse is true. For 19 years, 18 years, you had me as your pastor, and then now you're Pastor John MacArthur, so you're stepping on up.

I'll just be quiet so I don't get in trouble. Funny. Tell us what goes on at the Master's College and why it's different than other colleges. I'm thinking six-day creation. I'm thinking inerrancy. I'm thinking John MacArthur is the president.

Give us some plugs for the Master's College.

Yeah, so I think, I mean, the main goal of Master's, they talk about a lot, you'll hear all the time in chapel when you first go there and the tours, hopefully, things like that, is they talk a lot about a biblical worldview and just developing a biblical worldview.

So it's accredited by a secular organization. So we're accredited, it's a liberal arts school. We've got all kinds of different majors, secular degrees, but what they do is, even though you get everything that you'd learn at another college and things like that, they just try to provide a biblical worldview of whatever it is you're doing.

So if you're a teacher ed major, how to teach for the glory of God, whether that be trying to incorporate, I don't know, just biblical principles in your teaching, or if you're a business major, what you can and cannot do as a Christian in the business world, and then you have a mandatory Bible classes.

So that's what we're really all about is, I think it's for Christ and for scripture. It's just like, everything is based on the Bible and we're very obviously solid on inerrancy and the Pleno inspiration of scripture.

And it's not something that it's, okay, well, it's infallible and it contains the message of God, but that scripture is the word of God. So, and that shapes everything that we do. So, I mean, I think if you look up any college, basically, any Christian college, you can really find out what their true colors are by looking up things like that, like inerrancy, what's their position on inerrancy.

And one of the big things is a six day creation. There's not, I think there's hardly any schools in America, Christian colleges that teach a literal six day creation. And we're one of the schools that does that.

And one of the great things about masters is the professors have to sign, re-sign a contract every year, or basically a piece of paper that says that agrees with the doctrinal statement. And not in every issue.

I mean, there's little disagreements that people joke around about, whatever they are, all meal versus pre meal, maybe, or something like that. But there's about, let's say, six day creation. So that when the professors sign that paper, the science professors do, and so do the theology or Bible professors.

So you don't go to the Bible department and learn, okay, there's a little six day creation. There's no way in the Hebrew that it can be, one day as thousand years, people use that small amount of context or whatever.

And then go to the science department and then they say, oh, well, we know from science that the Bible teaches that it has to actually be thousands, millions of years that the earth is created or God used evolution.

So it is cool to see that consistency there where there's disagreement in little areas that aren't as important in those primary issues. There's an agreement and something like that. So I appreciate that.

And I think that's something to look for in colleges. What do they say about creation? And what do they say about the inspiration of scripture?

Ministry Goals, Church Discipline, and Guarding Against Gossip

Talking to Luke Gabendroth today on No Compromise Radio. Luke's 19, he's a sophomore at the Master's College. I don't know if I give two exhortations, two laws, two rules all the time, Luke, but I gave you the two when you started school.

Don't date the first year and get involved at Grace Church or attend. And then I have two goals for you when it comes to ministry. So I don't know why it's always two, everything's two. So my two goals for you in ministry, I'm not trying to be the pushy dad.

You must follow my footsteps and be in gospel ministry as a pastor, teach verse by verse. I don't want that. I want what the Lord wants for you. And so my goals were, Luke, I want you, number one, to be able to preach a sermon.

If you're at a small church, the pastor's out of town, pastor's sick, you, even if you didn't have the gift of teaching, could stand up and say, this is what the Bible says in context. Here's some exhortations from it.

I know what it says, what it means. And here's the application, either with our attitudes or our actions. And here's how we see it in context. And then number two, you know enough so that you could be an elder qualified man, especially when there's busyness going on, people slandering, people running around and they go to you, Luke, and they're like, well, what do you think of the pastor?

And didn't he do this right or that? And you have enough sense to say, do you know what? This pastor, I follow, I endorse, he teaches the Bible. He's far from perfect, but he's faithful and qualified.

As for me and my house, we're staying right here and you should too, and you should zip your lip. Those are my two goals for you. What do you think of those? I like those goals.

Lord willing, especially for the second one, I hope that I would already do that. I know enough that I could be held accountable to do that. So I know what to do, so I better do it. If that ever happens, you know, I think it's cool that one of the, I think it is, I believe it's the first time that the Lord mentioned the church was in Matthew 18, talking about church discipline.

So even before we even know really what the called out community in the church is, we know how to deal with these people that are trying to cause division and cause problems because it's such a big deal.

So I think it's cool and it's encouraging to see that the way that the Lord said, okay, you know what? When somebody comes up to you or when somebody sins, this is what you do. This is the format for how you deal with sin in the church.

And it's never, okay, I'm gonna go and slander and gossip, no matter what the truth value of the statement is. If no matter what's true about the person, that's not the right channel. So whenever somebody can come up to you and say, okay, let's talk about this, let's talk about these people in the church or talk about their sin or the pastor or the elders, you can just immediately shut them down and say, I don't care what you say.

If you're either gonna go right now, in the next week, you're gonna go talk to that person and tell them what you said and confront them about it, or I'm gonna go with you and confront them about it. So I think it's cool that we have such a clear layout in scripture of how to deal with sin.

And it's never, no matter how true anything is, to go behind someone's back and talk and lead the church or gossip or things like that, so.

Amen. Well, Matthew 16, Jesus did say I'd build a church, so then, yeah. Well, that's why I said, I think, so you didn't want to be too But see, everything else you said was spot on. Good job. I don't know if I taught you that at the master's college, but either way, I'm glad you know.

Luke, in light of those two goals that I have for you as a young man and then maturing into an older man, mature man, when it comes to teaching, you said to me, back for vacation here this Christmas break, dad, I want to serve more.

And so I said, you know what? I can arrange a couple things, and I only arranged two, but the Lord arranged so many others. I said, why don't you preach the gospel at the rest home? It's like a 20-minute message.

And then why don't you teach at the high school group, kind of maybe a message on, now that you're out a couple years, what you want them to know. And then the Lord opened up all kinds of other doors.

Tell me what you've been teaching. Let's start with the rest home, and then how it's just wonderful to be able to stand up and tell people about sovereign grace found in Christ Jesus.

Zacchaeus, Repentance, and Careful Bible Teaching

Yeah, so at the rest home, I preached on Luke 19, the first couple of verses talking about Zacchaeus and the nature of true repentance and how that's found in the narrative about Zacchaeus and just Jesus' sovereignty and salvation and his deity and things like that.

So that was a cool opportunity for me to be able to stand up and preach God's word. And it's kind of humbling and you really have to check yourself. It's interesting because you can, let's say we're doing this show, you can kind of just talk for 20 minutes, but when you're trying to teach the Bible, it's like you got to make sure you're not just forcing the text to say what you want to say.

So it's been good for me and being good for my own study of scripture to make sure I know what the authorial intent is and things like that. So it was a good opportunity. And just to see how the Lord uses that and provides other opportunities to do that is pretty cool.

Luke, when you study the Bible.

Like we've been taught to study, you begin to see connections between chapters. Sometimes we'll see a chapter break between 12 and 13 and we forget, you know what? We should draw an arrow at the end of that chapter 12 verse 21 in 2 Corinthians and forward that with a line to chapter 13 verse 1 because it's connected.

Tell us about the wonderful connection you learned about between Luke 18 and then Luke 19 with Zacchaeus in the previous passage.

Yeah, so I mean, what I actually just taught on last night for the college and career group was Luke chapter 18 about the rich young ruler and about how he comes up to Jesus and says, you know, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus says, you know, keep the law. And then he pinpoints exactly what the rich young ruler is not willing to give up and things like that. And it's interesting because Jesus makes a statement about riches in Luke chapter 18.

He says, you know what? It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. And that's what Jesus says about rich people. And, you know, of course the apostles and the disciples are amazed by that statement.

And Peter says, then who can be saved? And Jesus says, what is impossible with man is possible with God. And it's interesting because then we read about, okay, in Luke, Jesus, he foretells his death again.

He heals blind Bartimaeus on his way into Jericho on his final journey to Jerusalem for passion week. And then the very next chapter, not very many verses later, we're introduced to Zacchaeus and we're told two things about Zacchaeus.

He's a chief tax collector, which means he's probably rich anyways. Chief, he's probably in charge of other tax collectors, but he's, and he's rich. It even says explicitly that he's rich. So we see in chapter 18, Jesus says about rich people.

It's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for them to go to heaven. And then we're introduced to somebody that goes, that's Zacchaeus and he's a rich man. So I think it's cool to see, like my dad was saying, that's a connection.

The chapter break doesn't necessarily need to be there. And it's like, here's this rich man we're introduced to. And Jesus says only God can save rich people. And then Jesus saves a rich person in the very next chapter.

So that's cool.

Pastor's Kid Pressure, Joy, and Abundant Life in Christ

No Compromise Radio, talking to Luke Avendroth. Luke, of course, I'm no big shot or anything like that, but the radio station has weaved its way through some homes. Do you feel any added pressure? You're at the master's college and you think, okay, my mom is Kim Avendroth and my dad's, you know, Mike Avendroth, and I want to honor the Lord with my life, but I also have other pressure, like I don't want to let my parents down, but they're in gospel ministry.

So there's extra pressure. How do you think through that? And how do you deal with it if there's any there?

Yeah, you know what? People talk about that. Pastors will say, or pastor's kids that I've come into contact with will, you know, kind of talk about that. Oh, well, it's so hard being a pastor's kid. You know what, I think even as an unbeliever, I never really had that.

Oh, well, it's such a bummer to be a pastor's kid. I mean, we got to travel. We went to Germany for your sabbatical for three months and got to see all kinds of cool places and see, you know, here's where Martin Luther was.

We were, I think we were in Wittenberg on Reformation Day. And even things like that. I thought they were cool when I was an unbeliever and, you know, I get to go to Shepherd's Conference and do all kinds of fun things, travel around, surf, spend time in different places around the world.

I went to South Africa with you. So I think even, I think I was excited, even as an unbeliever, it was a lot of fun to be a pastor's kid. And I never really, I don't think I ever really felt the extra pressure unless it was in a good way.

So I don't have any of the bitterness that other people might have about being a pastor's kid and extra pressure. I think any of the pressure that you put on me, and I think this is something that I can appreciate about you and mom and the way that you guys taught me was in a good way.

So let's say I was down the street at the neighbor's house and, you know, he wants to smoke marijuana. It's like, well, even though I'm an unbeliever, I don't want to smoke marijuana because then my dad's going to lose his job.

So there's things like that where it's not, it wasn't a bad thing. I think it probably, even as an unbeliever, provided me with extra accountability. But I was just talking to mom about this yesterday.

I think that even if you weren't a pastor and you were doing something else, I probably would have the same, you'd have the same expectations and same, I mean, obviously there's different pressures, but I think it's been something that's been good for me.

And of course I want to honor you, but I think that that's not something that I struggle with in opposition to honoring the Lord.

That's a good answer, Luke. I'm encouraged by that. I think a lot of that has to do with God's goodness through your mom because she's exciting and she likes to do fun things. And you look at the neighborhood, for instance, or pretty much everybody I know, no one has a more fun time, exciting time than Kim.

Sometimes it makes me tired trying to go along with her. But everybody, but you know, when you're a kid growing up, you have fun. And I think even as I look at the word shalom in Hebrew, this whole living, and as Christians, I mean, the main issue where enemies of God, that's been taken care of, we've been reconciled by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so if we've got the major issue solved, it's been solved for us, then all the other things, it's like, you know, life's a drink kind of thing. And it's like, hey, just enjoy yourself. And don't you see that even in Ecclesiastes, enjoy your wife, you know, enjoy the wife of your youth in Proverbs.

I mean, it's just, you have fun. You can have fun as a Christian young man.

I don't think there's many pastors that like the ska band, the specials, but I just can think about the song that I was brought up singing or listening to. Enjoy yourself. So look up, enjoy yourself by the specials.

Hopefully I don't have any wrong words in there. See, well, even the theme song here with the English beat. That's another ska band. I'm going to switch it to New Order though, soon enough, but I haven't been able to do it yet.

Of course, new wave pastor.

Yeah, I think it's been something that's been, I've had so much fun as your son. And I think the Lord's really just blessed me. And like you were talking about earlier, I get to go to Israel and Rome and I mean, Israel and Italy and Greece and South Africa and Germany and just travel all around the world and have so many opportunities.

So I really want to make sure that I'm a good steward of that and not using those, wasting my time. And I think to go back to something that you said earlier about how we can have so much fun is like John chapter 10, Jesus says in verse 10, I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.

And I think of course, eternal life is the ultimate outcome of salvation. But even if we have trials in this life and stuff, our life is, nobody wants to go back to being an unbeliever. Okay, I can just live how I want if I still could go to heaven.

I mean, it's a lot more fun to be a Christian, I think.

Shepherds Conference, Motives, and Final Encouragement

Amen. Well, Luke, thanks for being on the show again today. It's fun to see you and watch you grow up. And then now when I go to the Shepherd's Conference, you're serving there. What'd you serve, what'd you do last time?

You work, was it as a barber or what'd you do? He shines you? The men's shop.

So he sold some like racers and cologne probably and stuff like that. I don't think I had the right out, I like signed up and somehow I didn't have the right outfit. So this time, hopefully I'll wear the right clothes.

Well, having all those men sing songs. I loved it when you said, I even love to sing all those songs with the men when I was an unbeliever. That's why you got to check your motives.

Check your motives. It's like if we sing, whatever it is, if there's 5 ,000 men and you sing the national anthem or even if there's a band playing and you sing the national anthem, you probably get some kind of fuzzy feeling.

That's right. Well, I could not be more thankful that the Lord has put you at the Master's College and at Grace Community Church and having Pastor John MacArthur be your pastor. And I look forward to seeing what the Lord will do in your life, Luke.

I'm proud to be your dad and proud of you. And I look forward to seeing how you learn and grow and don't drop the ball. That's all. Okay.

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.