Program Premiere! An introduction to No Compromise Radio

The Gospel of Grace and the Call to No Compromise

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.

We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio. I like that intro a little bit, a little English beat, a rhythm in the background. And as I was listening to that introduction, I thought, if I was driving in my car, if I was home, or podcasting, I'd listen to that show.

That would be good. Controversy always sells. While I certainly don't want to be only controversial, I would like to say right at the beginning that controversy is all throughout Scripture. It is hard to open a book of the Bible without finding some kind of controversial truth.

It isn't controversial in the triune God's mind, but it is controversial as we humans, finite and fallen, receive that truth and try to understand God. And so I believe it was Machen who said, J. Gresham Machen, the great lion of Princeton and then Westminster, he said, if you want no controversy, don't open your Bibles.

And so my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio, and we will be on live Monday through Friday from 3 .30 to 4. You can pick up the podcast shows on NoCompromiseRadio .com if you would like.

And we hope that the audience grows and grows, not only here locally in Worcester, but also throughout the internet. Let me just give you a little background. First of all, I want to say thank you to the management at WVNE.

I've noticed a desire for biblical truth that the staff has. I have also noticed that they love local churches and know the importance of local church ministry. And in my interactions with them, they've been godly and a wonderful Christian company to work with.

I don't think I work for them, but I work with them. And so it's been a real pleasure to do that. It's going to be exciting to see what the Lord might do. Here's the format. Mondays, except for today, Mondays will typically be one of my sermons taped live at Bethlehem Bible Church and then played by cassette or digital recording.

I guess cassette is an 8-track reel-to-reel. I don't know the copying devices. It'll probably be MP3. That'll be Mondays. Tuesdays, we'll look at issues in a local church. That is to say, call-in counseling, what to look for in a church, issues of pastoral ministry, ministry, local church ministry, call-in for questions about what do I do, marriage advice.

It could be all kinds of things on Tuesday. Wednesday, we'll call it bring the books or bring the parchments. We'll have interviews with authors. We'll discuss books. We'll look at bad books, good books.

This Wednesday, we're going to look at the top 10 books that if you have them in your library, you ought to burn them. That'll be this Wednesday. And so, you know, it's good for something, those books.

So get the kerosene out, get a safe fireplace, bring the kids over. They will never forget it when you begin to burn those bad books. So Wednesday will be kind of a book day. We'll learn theology. We'll learn about our Lord and His Word as God has gifted men and women to help the body of Christ with writing.

So that's Wednesday. Thursday, it's going to be issues in evangelicalism. What's going on in the local landscape across the country and across the world in evangelical churches? And we'll try to analyze that from a biblical perspective.

And then Friday, it is Mystery Friday, question mark Friday. And basically what that means is I get to do whatever I want, but I wait to the last minute. So we might do some call-ins. We might look at some issues that might interest you.

And I hope if you agree with me, you stay tuned. I hope if you disagree, you stay tuned. And I hope I can serve as some kind of divine sharpening device for you. And iron sharpens iron, and that's what I'm looking for.

NoCompromiseRadio .com. Why the name, you might ask? Well, before we get to that name, let me just tell you who I am a little bit. This will be the only show that I want to do this, but just to give you a little background so you know what you're getting.

My name is Mike Abendroth. I'm 49 years old, and I'm the senior pastor of Bethlehem Bible Church just north of Worcester. And my background is, of course, pagan, like everyone else's, Gentile, barbarian.

I wasn't born a Christian or anything like that. God saved me when I was 29 years old. I was living in Los Angeles, and I was there for all the reasons sinners go to Los Angeles, and that is to sin. So you can sin morning, noon, and night there a lot easier than you could in Omaha, Nebraska.

And so I went to Los Angeles. God saved me as I began to read the Word of God. Starting in Genesis, I knew that there was a God. I had a conscience that needed to be assuaged of the guilt of my sin. And the Lord showed himself mercifully to me in the Scriptures.

The other thing that the Lord used was Christian radio. I began to listen to this man on the radio at 11 o 'clock in Los Angeles, and he would preach the Bible like I've never heard anyone preach in my life.

And he would explain things. He would give the intent of the passage. And I thought, well, he seems a little stuffy. He seems a little over my head. But this man teaches the Bible. And I was so impressed, I'd have to get in my car, and before a sales call to even go into the hospital, I would sit there—hospital to sell operating room supplies—I would sit there and listen to this man preach the Bible, verse by verse by verse.

I'd never heard anything like it in my life. And so God used that program, Grace to You, with Pastor John MacArthur, to renew my mind, and I got saved and immediately thought, I better drop everything and get into pastoral ministry.

I probably should have asked my wife first. That would have been a good thing, to pray and get together with her and talk to the elders of the church. But I wanted to learn the Bible. And so after about a year or two, I joined the Master's Seminary, was enrolled there on probation, by the way, because I was such a new convert, and graduated six years later.

And I love John MacArthur for lots of reasons. But one of the reasons I love John MacArthur is he will not compromise. Simply put, compromise leads to more compromise, and John MacArthur stands up. I mean, after all, Neville Chamberlain, when I say those two words, what do you think of?

I'll tell you what I think of, somebody that compromises. I don't have Neville Chamberlain books in my office. I don't look up to him. I'm sure he was a fine man. You know, if you say that, then you're going to say anything negative about the person.

Oh, he was a really good man, and then you blast away. But we don't respect Neville Chamberlain because he was a compromiser. When World War II really needed some man to step up and say, these are principles, these are morals, this is not even a spiritual issue, but this is the right thing to do, there was not Neville Chamberlain, but there was Winston Churchill.

And so like Churchill, MacArthur on the spiritual side and the Christian side stands there and says, this is the Word of God, and like it or not, we're going to preach it. I was also drawn to another man named Al Mohler, Dr. Mohler, who is the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky, almohler .com.

You've probably heard of that radio show and podcast show. Al Mohler was another one of those men, and he began to be the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, I think 16, 17 years ago, as a young man of 33 years old.

And he basically said this to the staff, you have to believe in the doctrinal statement and affirm that you do, and you have to say, I will teach what's in the doctrinal statement at this seminary, or you're fired.

They had pornography videos that were being shown. They had homosexual marriages in the courtyard, all kinds of just grotesque, corrupted, non-Christian things. And the Lord God used Al Mohler to clean up that septic system.

And I look at those kind of men, and I say, they're my heroes. They're heroes, not because they compromise, not because they were wishy-washy, not because they sought the lowest common denominator, not because they said, you know, for the sake of pragmatics, let's join together with people that don't believe like we do.

No, the MacArthur's, the Boyce's, the JC Riles, the John Calvin's, the Martin Luther's, the Jonathan Edwards, people like that stood up and said, we won't compromise. And of course, it's by the grace of our Lord Jesus through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

But don't you admire people like that? And certainly I'm not in the same category of those men, but that's my desire. And so this radio show is built around the thesis that we don't need to compromise the truth.

Sure, we can be nice. Certainly we can be kind, but we don't have to back down. If I had a theme song probably right now to play in the background, if Dave was on the ball as a producer, he'd play for me, Tom Petty, I Won't Back Down.

But we'll work on that at a future show. Listen to Galatians. Here's what Paul said in Galatians. He said, but it was because of the false brethren, Galatians 2, 4, secretly brought in these pseudo Philadelphia's, these false brothers, these sham Christians, these pseudo Christians, these false brethren, they were like spies.

They were like spies covertly seeking to destroy the church by subterfuge. And Galatians 2, 4 says they were brought in secretly who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Christ Jesus in order to bring us into bondage.

These false workers, this kind of, they weren't really Jews. They weren't really Christians. I call them Frankenstein monster faith people because it was this weird hybrid. It was neither man nor beast.

It was neither Jew nor Christian. And they're sneaking into the local church. And what do you think Paul did? Well, at least they're religious. Well, maybe at least they're spiritual. You know, there's a lot of political issues that if all the people who are spiritual could get together, maybe we could serve the cause of God.

Paul didn't do that at all. Although I love John MacArthur and I love Dr. Mohler, Paul the Apostle stood up and said, I am not going to allow any person to come and say you've got to add something to earn your salvation.

It is grace alone. No smidgen added to earn your salvation. No iota. You are going to destroy grace. Can you imagine if you have one part of works and three billion parts of grace, what do you have? Well, Hebrews chapter 11 says, you've got works.

You can't do that. And these people with a covert kind of operation spy out the liberty that they have, energized by Satan, their father as the catalyst for this. And Paul says, I won't back down. I'm not going to go for this.

Romans 7 says, having been released from the law, having died to that which by which we were bound so that we serve in newness of spirit and not an oldness of the letter. Paul says, you're not going to taint this gospel.

You're not going to adulterate it. I'm not going to be Neville Chamberlain. And I will oppose you to the faith, to the faith, to the face. That's what I'm going to do. I will defend the purity of the gospel.

And so then he says in verse five, and this is the theme of the show, the No Compromise Radio theme verse. You go to the website, this is what you'll see. But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour.

So that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. Paul said it wasn't a day. It wasn't a month. It wasn't a second. It wasn't for pragmatics. It wasn't for a moment. I'm not going to let this in for any particular reason.

I will not let someone besmirch and bedob my bride with some kind of repulsive behavior. Here Paul says the bride of Christ is to be stood up for as well. I'm not going to back down. Not for an hour. Why?

For something positive. No Compromise Radio is not always against things, but we're against something because we're for something. We are for Christ, for grace alone, for the gospel. And that's what Paul says, Galatians 2 .5, so that the truth of the gospel would remain in you.

Let error creep in. You no longer have the gospel. Let some kind of ecumenical outreach invade the gospel if you're going to change the gospel. It can't be done. Spurgeon said you get some kind of confederacy without the gospel.

It turns into a conspiracy. And so we don't want the church ruined. I think too often the church is bought into some kind of works, sanctification, and why would we in Galatians chapter 3, Paul would say, why do we want to start with grace and then end up with law?

You foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Start off by grace. We finish by grace. And so what we'll do at No Compromise Radio is we'll look at a variety of different issues in life, and in one sense they'll be controversial by design because I think that sells radio.

I think that'll make you tune in. I hate to be a pragmatist with radio. I wouldn't be a pragmatist with the gospel. But what I want to do is draw you in and you'll say to yourself, well, I really like what he's saying.

I better tune in to see what he says today. Or maybe you'll say I'd like to tune in today because that guy really makes me mad and I better hear him again before I write some email to him at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

And so I think there's a place in Christian radio for local men who will get on the station. And so that's exactly what WVNE wants. You can go to John Piper or John MacArthur's website and hear him any time, but we're the local pastors on local radio stations.

And so with Tom Krause, Engage in Your World at 2 o 'clock, now we have something else. It'll be 3 .30 to 4 with Mike Abendroth, nocompromiseradio .com. The guys working on the website have done a good job, Josh especially, and you want to go there and check that out.

And soon it'll be filled with all kinds of things. We've got t-shirts coming, bumper stickers, all kinds of issues like that to be in the future. Just to give you a little background on the church that I am pastoring, we are a church that believes mainly in one kind of methodological approach, and that is verse-by-verse teaching.

I pick a book and we just preach through it. And the Spirit of God uses that preaching to change people into Christ's image is what he basically does. And so what we do is we want to say, we'll pick a book and we'll preach through it.

When the issue isn't necessarily music or youth groups or anything like that, we'll talk about that tomorrow. What do you look for in a local church? But the issue is the exposition of Christ Jesus, the heralding of Christ Jesus verse-by-verse.

I believe in the five solas. I believe in the creeds that you'll find in 1689 and the Westminster Confession. I am not a charismatic, although there's been a wonderful movement with some Calvinistic charismatics these days with Grudem and Piper and C .J. Mahaney, but I would be a non-cessationist.

I believe what the Bible teaches in Titus chapter 1 and 1 Timothy 3, elder rule. And so that's just a little bit of my background. If you'd like to go to the church website, you can listen to the old sermons there, bbcchurch .org.

But that's kind of the overview of who I am, what this show desires to be, and where we're going from there. I don't know if you have a Bible, but something struck me the other day, and it was found in Revelation chapter 2.

The Church That Compromised at Pergamum

I hear over and over and over and over. Did I say over? I did. People say, we don't want to be known as a church for what we're against. We want to be known for what we're for. And of course, it sounds good.

It sounds special. It sounds kind. It sounds very generous. It's a generous orthodoxy, but that's not biblical. We need to be known for what we're for and what we're against. Those two things cannot be separated.

It is post-modernism to say, well, take one and not the other, and it's no big deal. Propositional truth, black and white truth, Bible doctrine forces you to say, I'm for this, which means I'm against that.

Quite frankly, if you're for evangelical Christianity, you're against Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnessism and every other kind of work salvation. If you're for the authority of Scripture, you're against tradition that somehow tries to sneak in and place itself on the same level.

Some kind of magisterium that says we're equal to Scripture. Some kind of experience that says we're equal to Scripture. If you're for the Bible, you're against anything that impinges upon the Bible. I want to show you in Revelation chapter 2, a church that was known for what it was for.

And do you know what? Hold on to your seats. If you've got a seatbelt on, you better buckle it right now. A, it's the law, and B, you're going to need it for this theological truth. It reminds me when I took my daughter to Space Mountain this last summer in Disneyland.

When that little thing comes down on your thighs, on your hips to kind of lock you in, and it's clicking, click, click, click, click, and it locks you in. You better be ready for the ride. And so, listen to Revelation chapter 2, a church that Jesus castigates, He chides, He disciplines because they weren't for things, no, they were for things.

They did good things, but they weren't against error. They weren't against things that attacked the local church. If you're an elder, Titus makes it clear, you better teach sound doctrine and you better refute those that contradict.

There's no way you can live in a world, frankly, in a feminine world that says, you better not be against anything. Well, we don't want to be against anything. Friends, I love effeminacy. I love femininity, but not in men.

And so, that's the issue. I love femininity in a woman, but there's something about men who stand up with courage and honor and strength to say, this is what we'll do. So, listen to Revelation chapter 2, verse 12, the message to Pergamum.

And I want you to remember this, they weren't known for what they were against. They compromised, in other words. The angel of the church to Pergamum, write, the one who has the sharp two-edged sword says this, and we know that's Christ Jesus.

I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is, and you hold fast my name. You're in a bad place, lots of kind of satanic issues, all kinds of things going on, but positively you hold fast my name. It's riveted into your conscience.

It's super glued to your hands. You've got my name there and you did not deny my faith. It's a worldly place and you're not backsliding. Even in the days of Antipas, my witness, my faithful one who was killed among you.

You can have people killed among you and you still won't back down from your faith. Even though it's where Satan dwells, he says that again. But I have a few things against you. I mean, who could have something against a church like that?

I have a few things against you because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching, he kept on teaching this thing that Balak put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel to eat the same thing sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality.

Thus you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans. Easy for me to say. Repent therefore or else I'm coming to you quickly and I make war against them with the sword of my mouth.

So here's the story. They were for things and they're to be applauded for that. But they weren't against things. They weren't against air and they compromised. So here at WVNE 760 AM, Monday through Friday, we'll have no compromise radio ministry.

And as the Lord allows, we'll have sermons from Bethlehem Bible Church on Monday. Tuesday, we'll look at church issues, call in counseling, marriage counseling, life counseling, pastoral issues, church issues.

Wednesday, we'll have book reviews and look at books. And so we'll make sure we deal with authors and interviews, it should be exciting. I can't wait to get some of the authors interviewed. And then Thursday, we'll look at current issues in evangelicalism and Friday, kind of mystery show.

Now these might change over time, but at least gives us kind of a path to go on as we look at no compromise radio. Now I have to say this, I'd like to be biblical first and edgy second, as Tom Crouse would yell, biblical and edgy.

I don't want to be edgy first. I think it's a pastor's job, of course, to teach the Bible. But if the people are sitting there in the pews and they're bored out of their brains, and he is not doing anything to help them understand, and he's monotonally discussing things, and he himself acts bored, I think that pastor ought to be shaken up a little bit.

I think it's a sin to make the Bible boring, don't you? And so we want to have the show, of course, if I had to pick one or the other, I'd rather pick biblical and boring. I wouldn't pick edgy, but not biblical.

But I think there's a way that you can teach the Bible dynamically so people get enthusiastically involved, and they want to read. My goal, if you're not a Christian listening to this show, is that you would bow your knee and repent, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen Savior.

If you're a Christian, my goal is that you'd be a good, discerning Christian, that you would say to yourself, I may not like the way Abendroth goes about it, but I don't want to compromise either. I don't want to back down from anything in Scripture.

And I would like people who are Christians to listen to the show and say, I don't really know what he was saying, but I think I better study the Bible to see if that's true. I think I want to be a good Berean to find out if these things are right.

Did you know 1 Thessalonians 5 says that you are to discern everything carefully. You are to examine everything carefully. You're to examine what I say carefully, what Tom Krause says carefully, what anyone says carefully.

And so while we may be controversial and it might get people to tune in, that is only a vehicle or a platform because I want to teach you the Bible. I want to get the right books in your hands. I want to get the right tapes in your hands, the right 8-tracks, the right reel-to-reels, the MP3s, I just can't keep up on the technology.

I want to saturate your brain with the Bible. That's my goal. And a high view of the Bible. The kind of Bible that we read that says, you know, salvation is wonderful, but primarily salvation shows the glory of God and it's not getting forgiveness.

It's God is glorified as He rescues a people. And so we're glad that the spillover effect is salvation and eternal life in heaven. But we're especially glad that the Lord God of the universe gets glory.

So NoCompromiseRadio .com, we'd love to have you go to the website and check it out. We're going to be expanding in our ministry there, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, as the Lord wills, NoCompromiseRadio .com.

Lord willing, see you tomorrow.

Station Identification and Legal Disclaimer

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 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston with plenty of spacious parking. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .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. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.