Top Ten Books that Changed Pastor Mike's Life (Part 1)

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.

My name is Mike Abendroth, and today I'm taping the show. It happens to be a Friday while I'm taping it. I don't know when it plays, but it is raining outside, and it is a raw day, as they would say. Here in New England, it was very raw, and I have a deep voice because of that.

I don't know if I'm a little stuffy. I'm catching a cold. I am doing Wretched Radio live later today, and so maybe this works out perfectly for my voice, my Todd Friel voice. Sir? I guess that didn't sound like Todd Friel, but whatever.

If you go to nocompromiseradio .com to our website, you can pull up a whole potpourri of things. You can check out the book. We have a book on sale, The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus, brand new, Understanding Jesus as a Despot.

Hmm, what must that be? You can go there and order that, or you can click on any of the old, past 500, 600 shows or so. Between Jonathan, Jim, Tim, Mario, and Josh, the website, both visual and audio, really looks excellent, and you can pull up different interviews.

Go to the old links for the old podcasts or catch a new show as well. You can go to Facebook under Wretched Radio, under No Compromise Radio, or Twitter, too. You can go to NoCoRadio for Twitter, and as my friend says, a no-co a day keeps the confusion away, so always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

No Compromise Radio, we're a ministry from Bethlehem Bible Church, and we promote Bethlehem Bible Church and No Compromise Radio, and books like The Supremacy and Sovereignty of King Jesus. We promote those for a particular reason, and that particular reason is because those organisms, those institutions, the church is an organism, BBC, No Compromise Radio, rather, is an institution.

I guess that's a ministry. These promote Christ Jesus, and that's what we want to do. We want to promote Christ Jesus, and we want you to be familiar with the Word of God, from Genesis to Revelation, all extolling the Messiah, the coming of the Messiah, the need of the Messiah, how the Messiah would fulfill prophecy.

You need to be a student of the Bible, and that's what we want to try to do here on No Compromise Radio. If I had the gifts of John MacArthur, I'd probably just play sermons every day, but since I don't have those gifts, we have a different format.

Someone came to the church on Sunday, and they said, we don't really like you on the radio, but we enjoyed the message today, and we enjoyed the worship service, so if you only know me here at No Compromise Radio, you probably don't know me.

I am a father. I am a dad. That's the same thing. I am a husband. I hope I'm a friend to my friends. I'm a pastor. I'm a preacher, and I'm a No Compromise Radio host, so I don't know. If you'd like to come to the church, we'd love to meet you.

Actually, someone a while ago called and said, we want to meet you first, and then we'll decide if we want to come to the church, and it was like a Mexican standoff. No, sorry, you come to the church first, and then after that, we'll see if we want to meet you, so anyway, that's No Compromise Radio.

Enough said there. I do have a book giveaway. I'd like to give away five of these books, and so I'll probably give out one a day for the next five shows, and the first one, the first day, I'd like to give out this book, Glorifying God, a year-long collection of classic devotional writings by the Puritan Thomas Watson.

Thomas Watson is probably the easiest Puritan to read, but he's also, I think, the best because his use of language, his book on repentance, his book on godly men, it is an excellent book. He writes very well.

This is compiled and adopted by Patty Hummel. Patty's a friend of mine, and Patty has got this book published on Thomas Nelson, Thomas Nelson, and actually, my friend, let's see if it's true, I think it's true, my friend Byron Yon did the introduction.

Let's see if that's true. Yes, Byron Forrest Yon, Boo Yon, as I call him, he did the introduction, so Glorifying God, and it has got every day a little section of Thomas Watson's writings, and you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com, and then you can receive that free book, Glorifying God by Thomas Watson, compiled by Patty Hummel, and it's on Thomas Nelson, and so that will be our free book giveaway, so go ahead and write us, and we'll be glad to send you a copy of that book.

It's packaged nicely. I like this red cover. It looks kind of ancient. It looks older. It's old writing about a great subject, Christ Jesus, and see here, too, I want to promote this book because I'm promoting Christ Jesus.

Why Christians Should Read Books That Help Them Understand Christ

Well, today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I'd like to talk about books. You need to be a reader. You need to read books that help you understand the Bible and therefore help you understand Christ Jesus.

If you are one of those people who hide underneath the pious banner of it's just the Bible and the Holy Spirit for me, I don't need any books, we don't read any books, then I guess you stay at home and never hear your pastor preach, which would also be something that would be wrong.

Why would it be wrong? Well, it would be wrong because God, in his Bible, has given us gifts. He's given the church gifts. Now, he gives individual spiritual gifts. Maybe you have the gift of encouragement, gift of helps, or something like that, but he's also given gifts for the church that would be, in particular, according to Ephesians 4, it'd be people, people who are gifted teachers.

Those are God's gifts to the church as well. Now, some of them are older, some of them are younger, some of them are dead, some of them are alive, some of them publish things in a book form, and some you just hear on Sundays when they preach.

And so, don't fall for the whole, well, you know what, we don't study anybody else, we only study the Bible, because the Bible tells you, get help to understand the Bible, hermeneutics and Bible interpretation and exegesis and church history.

Use these men that have been gifted throughout time as a help for you today. So, we're talking about books and you need to read. That's helped me more than anything else in my Christian life, reading books about the Bible to help me understand God better and Christ Jesus better.

It's a fascinating thing, the object of your study is the one you become like. Now, I don't mean in some word faith nonsense, you become little gods, but as you reflect the glory of Christ Jesus in the scriptures, as 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18 discusses, you become more reflective of His grace.

Now, certainly, you are declared righteous based on Christ's life, death, confirmed by His resurrection, but then you begin to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, 2 Peter 3, and so your position stays the same.

Every Christian, the Apostle Paul, to somebody who's a brand new Christian today, positionally, they have the same righteousness because they have Christ's righteousness. John Bunyan said in the 1600s, late 1600s, he said, my righteousness has been in heaven for 1700 years, and so for the weak Christian, the strong Christian, the immature Christian, the mature Christian, they all have the righteousness of Christ, an alien righteousness credited to their account, forensically declared to their spiritual bank account, as it were, but then in sanctification, we grow and we want to balance the beam of, balance the scale of our position and our practice, so you can imagine if you thought of a scale weighing something, and on the left-hand side, you put a justification, and it bends a scale way down because of the weight and the glory and the gravity of justification is so great, and then on the right-hand side, it's tilted up a little bit, like a seesaw would be on the upside on the right-hand side, and so as you begin to live out your Christian faith and mature and say yes to righteousness and no to sin more often, doing things with the right motives, trying to love God and love your neighbor in light of who you are and what God has done for you, that scale begins to tip down a little bit, therefore balancing what's going on between justification and sanctification, and that balancing starts, it begins at least, at salvation because sanctification, although different from justification, begins at justification.

We don't believe in a two-step process, some Lewis Perry Chafer double-deck deal, two-tier thing, no, it starts right away. Paul says, after three chapters of doctrine and hardly any commands, you might find one or two in there, I know Ephesians 2 .11, remember that you're Gentiles, that you used to be a Gentile, that is a command, but mainly it's indicatives of the gospel and who Christ is, what God has done.

Then it says in chapter four, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, to walk in a manner worthy. In other words, to flesh out who you are.

If you've been declared by the military, you're a general, now begin to act like a general, act like who you are. And so when it comes to the Bible, we live out who we are. And so the more you study Christ Jesus, the more you become like him.

So now coming full circle back to the study of the Bible, men and women as well have been gifted and given to the church to teach us to study Christ Jesus, to understand who he is. And if you don't use books that are published by authors to help you, I think you're just saying, you know what, I don't want all the resources that God would have for me.

He's given me a lot of other resources, but this particular one, I don't want. And you don't want to do that. You want to use books and study them to help you understand who Jesus is, and you will become more like who you already have been declared to be.

That's the point on No Compromise Radio. So in the next series of days, I don't know if this is going to be played on Thursdays or Fridays or whatever, whatever my free will chooses, whatever day this is going to be played, I'm going to give you a series of books, the top 10 books that changed my life.

And these pretty much changed my life early on. I've read some other books lately that have been wonderful, classic, thrilling, and maybe I'll do a modern set, but in my salvation, which books have been used by the Lord to affect me the most, to infect me the most?

Which books have been used by God to teach me who He is and to teach me what He's done for me in Christ Jesus? And so I have 10 of those books, and we'll just go one by one by one, not necessarily in order of importance.

Maybe there's a top five and then the second five. And the reason why I'm doing this today is everyone likes to hear what other people's top books are. And so there's so many books out there. You just go to the CBD catalog, or you go online, or you can even go to respected publishers like Crossway.

Where do you start? And so I remember when MacArthur would preach and he would say, Ralph Venning, with a V, wrote a small little Puritan book and a Puritan paperback series, Banner of Truth. They picked it up years later, centuries later, and it's called The Sinfulness of Sin.

And you need to read that book. I read it every year, he said. I immediately marched down to the library at Grace Church, Master's Seminary, and found that book to read it because I respected John and I wanted to learn in a way similar to the way he has learned.

And so that's why I'm doing this. I don't expect, I don't want you to think of me as a John MacArthur, but I am a radio host after all. But seriously, if you have learned from someone and if you're a regular listener, then I hope you say Mike's not perfect, yet he points me to the perfect one.

I don't believe everything he says, but in general, he's teaching me the truth and I'd like to know the Bible well and I'd like to know what he knows. Whatever way you process it, I want to then influence you when it comes to books.

Now you're probably saying, Mike, you're 12 minutes and 42 seconds into the show and you haven't, besides a free book giveaway, The Glorifying God by Thomas Watson, you haven't done anything yet. You haven't told us any books.

This is gonna be a long series. And so that's true, it is gonna be a long series, but I don't know, maybe we have a lot of time, maybe we don't. I also want to say that in the top 10 books, my two books, Jesus Christ, The Prince of Preachers and The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus, they aren't in the list, but my flesh wants them to be.

No, actually those books have been basically the result of studying these other books. That is to say, whatever I've written, whatever I say, I don't want to come up with something new. I'm not after new, I'm not after novel, I'm not after original, I'm after faithfulness and stewardship and God has given me the baton of Jesus Christ and Him crucified and my job is to run with that baton.

And if the arena, the breadth of that running is Bethlehem Bible Church, then great. If it's the airwaves in Worcester, well, that's better. If it's Wretched Radio, great. So whatever influence I have, I want to influence you to study who God is, this great God.

So my top 10 books, not necessarily for the top 10 books of all time, that might be a different list for me because I'd put classics in there. I'd probably put Calvin's Institutes there, but the books that influenced me the most early on in my Christian faith and would influence you if you haven't read them.

If you're even a Christian for 20 years, actually, I need to go just reread all these books again, but these books rocked my world. These books you should put on your list. You should go to Amazon, Wishlist, whatever it's called and say, these are the books I need to get.

And then if you just read one per month, you'll have read 12 books a year, not forgetting your normal Bible reading, but 12 books a year. And then you will have read 12 times the amount of books that the typical American reads.

And now with internet and now with things like that, even though we're doing research about the Bible and doing other things, we just don't read as much as we ought to read. And so I wanna try to promote your reading.

John Wesley, I know Arminian, but he said some good things once in a while. He wrote a good song or two here or there. He said, if you're in the ministry, you need to read four hours a day or get out of the ministry.

And even in believers, Harry Truman, I think he was an unbeliever, maybe not. I hope he wasn't when he died. Leaders must be readers. There's something to be said about reading. I wanna know what people are reading.

When I go to Southern Seminary's bookstore, I wanna see the little section, Al Mohler's recommendations, John MacArthur. I like to talk to people, what books have you been reading? So today on No Compromise Radio, reading, reading, reading.

The First Book in the Top Ten: Arthur W. Pink's The Attributes of God

First book, and by the way, here's what I'm going to do. I'm gonna tell you the book, tell you the publisher, et cetera. And then I'm going to, it's not totally randomly, but I've just got a few quotes from each book that I'll read to hopefully wet your whistle and to get you to think about the book and if you should buy it.

And that will be the way I promote Christ, promote the book, et cetera. So the first book, and this really is at the top of the list, Arthur W. Pink, The Attributes of God. Now mine happens to be published by Baker Book House.

And I even leave prices on the books because I like to then see what they are now worth. This was 396 at the Grace Book Shack. Actually lent my book, some book to a friend and then he took off all the price tags.

And no, I leave the price tags on. I think that's an interesting thing. And I also don't like things underlined in pen or yellow bold marker. That is sacrilegious. That is blasphemous. You cannot do that to a book.

That defaces, that mars, that sullies, that soils the book. Don't do that. You write in pencil. Didn't you know Vatican II said that? Pencil only in your books. Wreck the value if you don't. This book here, Arthur Pink's The Attributes of God.

You can also get online, I believe. If you get online and pull it up, I think it used to be at least, you can kind of cut and paste it. Here's what I like about Arthur Pink's book. First of all, I like his subject, the object of his research, his God himself.

But I like it that there are 17 chapters and they are just drenched with scripture. And then also drenched with the dew of Puritan quotes from Jonathan Edwards to other people. And every chapter is on an attribute.

I'm working on attributes book now. I don't know when it'll be out, but working on that too. 26 chapters, one for every letter of the alphabet. English, that is, English alphabet. The solitariness of God, the decrees of God, the knowledge of God, the foreknowledge of God.

And it works its way down through the love of God and the wrath of God, the contemplation of God. And it teaches you who God is. And so this is a great book. I love this book, The Attributes of God for Evangelism too, because today people are so biblically illiterate.

They don't know the one that they're supposed to look to and place their faith in. You just say, believe in Jesus. To them, Jesus is a white Republican or some girly man driving a Cabriolet with feathered hair or something.

I don't know what they think Jesus is, but they don't know that he's the son of God, that he's the son of man, that he was the great I am, that he was to fulfill the prophecies of Isaiah, that he was a lamb led to the slaughter, that he died a substitutionary death on behalf of sinners, that he himself was sinless, that he was physically raised from the dead.

There's all kinds of things they don't know. They don't know that he was God on earth, that he was omnipresent, omniscient, holy, yet sometimes deciding not to use certain prerogatives he had for his Godhead.

So this book is really, really wonderful. And even when you start off the book, The Attributes of God, it just begins with a bang. Acquaint now thyself with him and be at peace. Thereby good shall come unto thee, Job 22, 1.

Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty glory in his might, let not the rich glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me that I am the Lord, Jeremiah 23 and 24, verses of chapter nine.

And then Arthur Pink says, after these two Bible quotes, a spiritual and saving knowledge of God is the greatest need of every human creature. And so he just starts off with a bang. That's what we should be boasting in.

Can you imagine boasting, not in the Red Sox, not in the Boston Bruins, not in the Los Angeles Lakers or whoever you liked in sports team, not even in your kids or your career or your money, or your house, not in, I think it was Alistair Begg.

And when he said of Jeremiah nine, that we ought not to boast in our brawn, that is strength, our bucks, that is our riches and our brains, that is our wisdom. That's pretty smart. I didn't know Scottish people, Scots were alliterationists.

Is that a word alliterationists? I don't want to say he's illiterate, but alliterationists. So on No Compromise Radio Ministry, the first book that really rocked my world. And I read it monthly for a long time.

So here's the cool thing. With 17 chapters, you just read one chapter a day after you read your Bible. And if you miss a few days, well, that's okay because you've got 13 to miss. And then once a month for a year, you just read through this to get to know God better, to think of him scripturally, to use Tozer's words, if you think of God in a certain way that he's not revealed himself, that's idolatry.

That's a wrong way to think about God. And so this great book, The Sovereignty of God, talks about God. Now in the chapter, chapter three, The Knowledge of God, it says, God is omniscient. He knows everything possible, everything actual, all events and all creatures of the past, the present and the future.

He is perfectly acquainted with every detail in the life of every being in heaven, in earth and in hell. He knoweth what is in the darkness, Daniel 2. Nothing escapes his notice. Nothing can be hidden from him.

Nothing is forgotten by him. Well, may we say with a psalmist, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain unto it, Psalm 139. His knowledge is perfect, Pink says. He never errs, never changes, never overlooks anything.

Yes, such is the God with whom we have to do. So when it comes to God and his knowledge and you read that, you just think, that is amazing that God never learned anything, that God knows everything. Pink says, though he be invisible to us, we are not so to him.

Neither the darkness of night, the closest curtains, nor the deepest dungeon can hide any sinner from the eyes of omniscience. The trees of the garden were not able to conceal our first parents. No human eye beheld Cain murder his brother, but his maker witnessed his crime.

Sarah might laugh derisively in the seclusion of her tent, yet was it heard by Jehovah. Achan stole a wedge of gold and carefully hid it in the earth, but God brought it to the light. David was at pains to cover up his wickedness, but ere long the all-seeing God sent one of his servants to say to him, thou art the man.

And to writer and reader is also said, be sure your sin will find you out. This is a book that talks about God's greatness, God's holiness, God's knowledge. It says in the chapter on the knowledge of God, he foresaw my every fall, my every sin, my every backsliding, yet nonetheless, fixed his heart upon me.

Oh, how the realization of this should bow me and wonder and worship before him. Doesn't that make you want to sing amazing love? How can it be that thou my God should die for me? That is amazing. He knew every sin you'd ever commit.

And if you're a Christian, he knew all that and still sent his son to die for you. This is a great God we serve. And this is the kind of thing you need. You need to be focused on who God is and not what you are like, what your problems are, the immensity of your problems.

I've said before several times that when you have God in between you and your problems, your problems are seen with the proper perspective in the right size. But when your problems are between you and the Lord, things are askew, things are out of whack, things are haywire.

And reading this book, The Attributes of God by A .W. Pink, would really help you make sure that this God that you serve is seen rightly. It's like with a telescope. If you put your eye in the small piece and look out, things are magnified.

And that's exactly what this book does. It magnifies the glory of God in the minds of the hearer, in the eyes of the reader. But if you flip it around the other way, what do you see? If you look into the wrong side of the lens of a telescope, you basically see a reflection of your eye.

You see yourself. And so we don't want you to see yourself. We want you to see the great God, the Lord Jesus Christ in all his splendor, the triune God. That's who we want you to see. So No Compromise Radio Ministry, today we've been talking about books, top 10 books that have rocked my world.

And unfortunately, we only got a little bit into book one, but that's okay. We have more days. You can write us an info at nocompromiseradio .com and order that free book, Glorifying God by Thomas Watson.

First come, first served. 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.