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Leviticus and Hebrews (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. Let me adjust these headphones here. This sounds better. I was just in Orlando, officiated a wedding at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church. I�m not a Presbyterian, but I did preach the gospel there, and had a little coffee time with Burke Parsons, really neat guy, and did the rehearsal for the wedding last Thursday, and then when my microphone was given to me for the real wedding, and I walked out with the groom and the bridesman, it was a funny kind of wedding, the groomsman.
We walked out, and then I said, �Dearly beloved right following Thomas Kramner, 1549-ish or something, we are gathered together here in the sight of God and these witnesses. The voices, the voice, the acoustics, the amplification, man, it sounded great.
I thought, �My voice sounds really good, why does it always sound that way In front of me, I don�t know why I have this here, �No true Scotsman Wikipedia. No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.
Rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric without reference to any specific objective rule.
No true Scotsman would do such a thing, i .e., those who perform that action are not part of our group and thus criticism of that action is not criticism of the group. Did you know about that? No true Scotsman?
A philosophy professor, Bradley Dowden, explains the fallacy as an ad hoc rescue or of a refuted generalization attempt. Here is an illustration. Person A, no true, sorry, no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
Person B, but my uncle Agnes, Angus, she's a bridesman, a groomed lady. My uncle, Angus, is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge. Person A, ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.
There you go. The introduction of this term is attributed to British philosopher Anthony Flew because the term originally appeared in Flew's 1971 book, An Introduction to Western Philosophy. No true Scotsman would ever criticize No Compromise Radio.
If you've got a question for me, it would be mike at nocompromiseradio .com. If you've got a question about a show or something else, Spencer will field your questions, info at nocompromiseradio .com.
What is going on with me? Feeling good with my health, I appreciate that. I would ask that you would keep Janet Cooley in prayer, Pastor Steve, Tuesday Guy's wife. She's going through some radiation and some chemo, so if you can redirect the prayers for me to her, that would probably be the right thing to do, or that'd be a good thing to do.
And I'm looking forward to speaking in Portland in August. Let's see what's my schedule. Portland in August, Vallejo, California in early September, going to Canada, I think in late September, speaking with Phil Johnson, Saskatoon, baby, and then I think in October I'm going to do something in Pennsylvania, near Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I'm trying to remember the city.
Harrisburg? Does that make sense? Harrisville? Harris groomsmen women? If you want me to speak at your church, it's going to cost you. Seriously, if you want to have some kind of conference and Phil Johnson's not available, Mike at, now let's see, we should make up a new one, bookingagentatnocompromiseradio .com.
See if that doesn't come back, kick back to you. I don't know what we'll do. I'm going to take the rest of my sabbatical this year that I didn't get to take last year because of the radiation. I don't know what we do with No Compromise Radio.
I think it's on cruise control. I probably am going to do shows in California. I think that's the plan. So anyway, right now it's Mondays, sermon, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I did record one with Steve recently.
He's back in action. He's been taking care of his wife. And then Fridays are usually reruns. They're Fridays for Fred. Fred Fridays. Fred Butler. He's the mailroom guy. All right. What do I have here?
In front of me I have the book of Hebrews. And as you know, when I have to preach Hebrews, and it's Friday or Saturday, and I think to myself, all right, I need to fill up the queue for No Compromise Radio, what do I do?
And really in front of me here I have Bob Inc. things, I have William Perkins things, I have No True Scotsman things, I have People's Last Words, I have Anglican Prayer book, I have Key Findings About Americans' Belief in God, I have all kinds of stuff here.
But I need to think through Hebrews, and you are my guinea pigs. I'll just talk about it, and here's what I end up doing. I talk about it in kind of No Compromise style, that is to say, my style, and then I listen to myself talk about it, and I realize that's not the good way to say it.
That's not the right way to say it. That is, that seems to sound good. That's the right way to phrase that. And then I put that in or delete it, depending on which one, for Sunday. So see, you're the practice, and it's a different kind or style of talking because I'm not really preaching, right?
I'm here by myself. It is actually here Friday. What's the date today? I have the phone in front of me here. Friday, May 25th, and it is warm, sunny. I left Orlando, and it was, you know, Orlando weather, hot and humid and snake, snaky, alligator-y.
I was walking one day by the, I was walking on the Riverwalk in Sanford by the lake. I don't know why it's called the Riverwalk when it's really a lake. Lake Elsinore or something, I don't know the name of it.
Lake Moore. Lake Moore, Beth Moore, Russell Moore. I could talk a little bit about Southern Baptist life, but I'm not gonna do it today. Maybe later. And there's these spiders that come down off the trees, and you can see them if there's no background.
If there is a background, I can't see them, and then you feel something weird on your head or your arms or something. Man, I hate that. How do people live there? Walking, spiders, yuck. But anyway, I would live there if I had to live there.
I would live there if I was Burke, and I'd live there. Why? Because I'd there be it. Ligonier. I had the Ligonier tour. I met Chris Larson, a fine fellow, the rest of the team behind the scenes, and Burke introduced me as Mike Ebendroth from No Compromise Radio.
There you go. He probably listens. I mean, I've interviewed him, but I'm wondering if he listens. He secretly listens. Kind of like, you know, Presbycast and Scott Clarke, they secretly listen. They don't want to hear too much Baptist stuff, but once in a while.
All right, now for the serious part of the show. This is the part that you pay for. One day, we will all stand before God. You will give an account before God. There will be an accounting day. You might not like accounting now, and that day, accounting for your works, is going to be quite the day.
Did you love God? Did you love your neighbors, yourself, standing before a thrice holy God on that day? Do you want to stand before God by yourself, that is, alone, or would you like to stand before God with a mediator, some type of advocate, or go-between?
If you say, I'll stand before God alone, I really have pity for you because you don't really understand what you're saying, unless you're perfect and have perfectly obeyed God's laws. If you're sinless, fine.
If you said, I'd like a mediator, good, I'm glad you want a mediator. The next question would be, what kind of mediator would you want? Who would you pick? What kind of attributes would you want in the mediator you chose to stand before you and God?
Who would you look for? Would you pick someone like Mary? She seems kind, you know, the Virgin Mary, and she's the mom of Jesus, after all. It's hard for her to hear no from her son, right? Vice versa.
Would you pick the Pope? The Pope's in the news regarding hell, atheists, etc. Who knows what he believes? Would you pick a good trial lawyer? Maybe a lawyer like Alan Dershowitz? The mediator better be sinless, or that mediator is going to need a mediator.
So who would you pick? I don't think we'd pick the right person. Maybe you'd want to have Adam before he sinned, but Adam sinned. Here's the good news. God picked a mediator for you, in His mercy, in His love, in His kindness, because that's who God is.
He picked the right mediator. He picked a sinless mediator. He picked a mediator who was, by nature, son, a quality son. I'm so happy for that because I know I would have picked wrongly. The book of Hebrews talks about that mediator.
And to use the lyric from Martin Luther's hymn, we're not the right man on our side. The man of God's own choosing, let me write that down, man of Jesus, the priest, the mediator. That's really what the book of Hebrews is about, Christ the better priest, Christ the chosen priest.
It is a book of theological argumentation that Jesus is the object of your faith, must be the object of your faith, and no matter what kind of temptations and trials and sticky places you're in in life, don't abandon Jesus.
Jesus is God's choice for high priest. And here is a book that starts off and ends with the exaltation of Jesus. Don't fall back to your old religious system, specifically, of course, in this book, Judaism, but any religious system where it's not sola fide, faith in Christ, faith alone in Christ alone.
And the writer wants to encourage his readers, don't slip back, don't slide back into any Judaism because Jesus is supreme. And you can look at every human, you can look at every angel, you can look at anything in between if there were such a thing, and you would say to yourself, Jesus is God, he's the son, and he's the mediator, he's the priest.
And this should motivate you, this should prevent you from backsliding, this should tell you something about how great God is. I mean, people are starving for the greatness of God. I think it was in an old Jim Elliff book that I read years and years ago, he would talk about those babies you would see from third world countries on a television commercial, and those babies would have huge stomachs.
And he said, that's a picture of the evangelical church. Those children are starving, but their stomachs are, is distended the right word, I think it is, huge bellies, yet they're starving to death. And so many churches are like that.
Forget the flies on the mouth and the eyes and everything, but huge bloated bellies with thousands of people, programs galore, but they're really starving. And what are they starving for? I mean, they will hear 15 practical ways and four spiritual laws and three things God wants you to know and two ways of living.
I mean, there's just, there's so many things that they'll give, but really there's one high priest and they need to know about Jesus, the high priest. And for many people, it's hard. Hebrews will say, this is mature thinking.
This isn't milk, but if you have milk, you're just going to stay a baby the whole time. This high priest, he's great, and people are starving for the greatness of God, and they want to exchange it for the gruel of a man-centered how-to, self-help, self-therapy, being a better you, pragmatic, get me through Monday, everybody's working for the weekend, watered-down view of Jesus, the enabler, Jesus, the, I don't know, Kenny Loggins type of boyfriend, I'm not trying to slam Kenny Loggins, I guess it sounded that way, Jesus, the gentleman kind of wooing and knocking and waiting for man's vaunted free will to just let Jesus save them, an effeminate kind of Jesus, one who reacts and not initiates.
Well, the book of Hebrews, he, the writer of Hebrews, is going to show you, both the human writer, right, via the Holy Spirit himself, will show you the kind of Jesus that Paul meets on the Damascus Road, and Paul is undone, the Lord Jesus, King of kings, sovereign over everything.
You're going to see the kind of Jesus who's the prophet of all prophets in the New Testament and the book of Hebrews. He speaks, and he's better than these old prophets. Jesus, the exalted King, the exalted prophet, and the exalted priest, the priest that God picked for you, the proper view of Jesus, the biblical view of Jesus, the exalted view of Jesus, which will inspire your trust and your praise and your worship resting in Jesus.
Now, let's think about this big picture a little bit. Do you want a priest to be holy or defiled? Do you want a priest to be sinful or righteous? Do you want a priest to be ungodly or godly? I think we all know the answer to that, and if you'll turn your Bibles, if you think about it, the book of priests tells us that very thing.
What's the book of priests? Well, there's no such thing in English but the book of Levi, the book of Leviticus. Now when I say, turn your Bibles to the book of Leviticus, this chapter 8 on the Aaronic priesthood and then chapter 9 and chapter 10 are so great and so essential, so bedrock-like to form your mind properly about priests.
You're probably reacting by saying, oh, Leviticus, I usually listen to No Compromise Radio on 1 .5 speed. Now I'm going to have to really speed it up a little bit because if Mike ever says, oh, did you listen to that show?
Then I'm going to have to tell him no because it's Leviticus. The funniest thing of all, I've said so many things in the last 2 ,000 shows coming up finishing eight years on No Compromise Radio. I have no idea what I've said.
I don't even remember most of the shows. I remember a few shows. I remember the Scandal of Grace show. That was maybe my favorite all-time show. I mean, I don't know how it came across, but in terms of just the data, I remember, didn't we do a long series on pet peeves or something like that?
Something about children in the pulpits. Chickens, chickens in the pulpits. I think if you go to NoCompromiseRadio .com and type in the search engine chickens in pulpits, you'll find something. But anyway, you write me and say, well, Mike, when you said such and such, I think, well, either that was dumb or that was pretty good.
So the first part, I accept. The second part, praise the Lord. If you can be helped, wonderful. And if you think we critique people all the time, you have not been listening to Hebrews messages and you've not been listening to how to do family devotion messages or how to visit someone at the hospital messages or take your children to funerals message, and this is why.
No true Scotsman would do that. So Leviticus 8, 9, and 10 are really helpful to understand Jesus the priest, especially when you need a priest who's holy. The Aaronic priesthood is being established, and you say, well, what's the origin of the Aaronic priesthood?
Leviticus chapter 8. How the ordination goes about, how is the priesthood established, and then how are these men ordained? Let me just read some chapter 8. You can get kind of an idea and it will help you understand, really, it will help you understand the book of Hebrews.
Leviticus 8, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, take Aaron and his sons with him and the garments and the anointing oil and the bowl of the sin offering and the two rams and the basket of unleavened bread, and assemble all the congregation at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
And Moses did as the Lord commanded him, and the congregation was assembled at the entrance of the tent of meeting. All right. We are going to see the first high priest, going to be Aaron. And here's the crazy thing.
Didn't he do some bad stuff? What about the golden calf? And you already notice how gracious God is when you consider Paul a persecutor of the church and what then Paul did because of God and His grace.
Very amazing. Moses said to the congregation, this is the thing that the Lord has commanded to be done. And Moses brought Aaron and his sons and washed them with water. And he put the coat on him and tied the sash around his waist and clothed him with the robe and put the ephod on him and tied the skillfully woven band of ephod around him, binding it to him with a band.
And he placed the breast piece on him. And in the breast piece, he put the Urim and the Thummim. And he set the turban on his head and on the turban in front, he set the golden plate, the holy crown as the Lord commanded Moses.
God is so beautiful. God is so holy. God is so magnificent. You see a reflection of that in the dress of these priests. Then Moses took the anointing oil and anointed the tabernacle and all that was in it and consecrated them.
And he sprinkled some of it on the altar seven times and anointed the altar and all its utensils and the basin and its stand to consecrate them. And he poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron's head and anointed him to consecrate him.
And Moses brought Aaron's son and clothed them with coats and tied sashes around their waists and bound caps on them as the Lord commanded Moses. Then he brought the bowl of the sin offering. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the bowl of the sin offering.
And he killed it. And Moses took the blood with his finger, put it on the horns of the altar around it and purified the altar and poured out the blood at the base of the altar and consecrated it to make atonement for it.
And he took all the fat that was on the entrails and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with their fat and Moses burned them on the altar. But the bowl and its skin and its flesh and its dung, he burned up with fire outside the camp as the Lord had commanded Moses.
The priests are going to be purified. And he presented the ram of the burnt offering. And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram and he killed it. And Moses threw the blood against the sides of the altar and cut the ram into pieces.
And Moses burned the head and the pieces of the fat. He washed the entrails and the legs with water and Moses burned the whole ram on the altar. It was a burnt offering with a pleasing aroma, a food offering for the Lord as the Lord commanded Moses.
So you offer a ram as a burnt offering. And you realize this is a very solemn thing, right? The solemnity of this very prescribed ordination. Then he presented the other ram, the ram of ordination. They didn't do that when I got ordained.
And Aaron and his sons laid their hands on the head of the ram and he killed it. And Moses took some of the blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron's right ear. They didn't do that at my ordination either.
And on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot, then he presented Aaron's sons and Moses put some of the blood on the lobes of their right ears and on the thumb of their right hands, thumbs of their right hands, and on the big toes of their right feet.
And Moses threw the blood against the sides of the altar. Then he took the fat and the fat tail and all the fat that was in the entrails and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with their fat and the right thigh.
And out of the basket of unleavened bread that was before the Lord, he took one of the loaves of unleavened bread and one loaf of the bread with oil and one wafer and placed them on the pieces of fat and on the right thigh.
And he put all these in the hands of Aaron and in the hands of the son and waved them as a wave offering before the Lord. Then Moses took them from their hands and burned them on the altar with the burnt offering.
This was an ordination offering with a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord. And Moses took the breast and waved it for a wave offering before the Lord. It was Moses' portion of the ram of ordination as the Lord had commanded.
Here is total dedication, total purification for Moses, for the sons. Now the bad news is I haven't told you why this is all so important. We're going to have to do that next time on No Compromise Radio.
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. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.