Think (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. You can probably tell I�m a little under the weather today. Why do we call that? What do we call being sick under the weather?

I�m not sure what that means. Over the winter? I like to be over the winter. It was 61 here the other day. February 1st was the day, and that was kind of interesting. So this is probably May by the time you hear this.

That�s why when people say, �Oh, that show that you did the other day, thank you for that or, �What do you mean by such and such I have no idea because now it�s 600 or 700 shows later, and we tape them way in advance, throw in a few mickeys of a rerun, and we have no idea.

Actually, sometimes if I hear myself on the radio, I�ll listen, and then I�ll learn something because I�ve already forgotten what I�ve already taught you, down to taunting you. So today I�d like to talk about your mind.

The Christian Mind and the Need to Think

What about the Christian mind? Is there a Christian mind? Do Christians think? Do you think? In our society today, we are driven by emotion, and we are driven by feelings. If it feels good, do it. And so it is my premise that Christians need to think more.

And if you�re a thinking Christian out there today, I commend you. I applaud you. I am the recipient of many people at Bethlehem Bible Church who are thinkers, recipient. I am the pastor of the Thinkers Thinking Bible Church.

I want you to think Christianly. I want you to think biblically. I want you to think. Henry Blamers wrote a book, Blameers is probably the right way to say it, if you stop and think about how to pronounce it, The Christian Mind, How Should a Christian Think?

And his main thesis with Christian thinking is this, there�s no longer a Christian mind. Meditation, thinking, critical, abstract thinking is a thing of the past. As a matter of fact, most people don�t even read anymore.

As much as I like radio for obvious reasons, I enjoy listening to it and I think the Lord can bless and has blessed and will bless radio ministries. As much as I like radio, it�s easy to listen to a radio show, it�s hard to sit down and read a book.

As a matter of fact, if I have my iPad or iPhone with me when I�m reading, I think to myself, why am I checking this so much? I should just be sitting down, reading and thinking and engaging with the author.

And so today I�d like to talk to you about the Christian mind. I want you to do in a spiritual way what IBM�s founder Thomas Watson Sr. did since 1949, and that is he put up a little picture, a little placard of the word �think� on the walls of offices and plants at IBM.

�Think�. Maybe that�s why it was called the ThinkPad when one of the computers came out, the IBM ThinkPad. I don�t know. Maybe. I just thought about that. One man said, �Use your brains. It�s the little things in life that count.

Drumroll. We think less than we feel. As a matter of fact, you can even analyze yourself and here�s how you do the auto-analysis, the self-analysis. Do you say to people, �Well, what do you feel about such and such

But you really mean think? I think you probably do. And so if I say to someone, �I think this or I feel that I mean I think this or I feel that. To me, think and feel are not directly related. Now, we�ll learn today what does a Hebrew think of when he or she reads the word �heart.

Does that include some emotional aspects and intellectual aspects? But when you say to somebody, �Well, what do you feel about such and such If you ask that to me, I�ll say, �Well, I feel this way, but I think this way.

And our nomenclature, our verbiage, our Christian vocabulary has pretty much bombed out when it comes to the word �to think. We think about elections, presidential elections, with just little blurbs, TV deals, you know, Nixon on TV versus Kennedy, and we�ve come a long way between Stanton, I think it was, and Lincoln, no, Douglas and Lincoln, who would debate for hours about a topic.

Henry Ford said, �Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it. Speaking of quotes, a couple men who weren�t Christians but who were smart men, Ralph Waldo Emerson, what is the hardest task in the world?

To think. And so we are, if we�re not careful, easily moved to default mode, that is laziness, and we don�t think like we should. George Bernard Shaw, only 5 of the people think. Only 15 think they think.

The other 80 would rather die than think. Are you a thinker? I think you probably are. I feel that you are since you�re listening to No Compromise Radio. By the way, if you like the show, you should probably write in to WV &E and tell them we like it.

If you don�t like the show, write in to WV &E and tell them you don�t like it. I think that would be good. Most people that we hear from like the show. Some are cautious, some don�t think so, some feel so.

Anonymous said, �The probable reason some people get lost in thought is because it is unfamiliar territory to them. The radio advertisement, TV advertisement is a true statement. The mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Helen Bloom wrote a book called The Closing of the American Mind. And you throw in some hedonism and some postmodern relativism, it is very, very difficult to sit and think, sit and work through issues.

We live in a society where idle minds are very popular. We are very easily amused, as Neil Postman would say, amusing ourselves to death. Amuse. Amuse means to think, to consider, to ponder, to meditate.

And you put an A in front of it, an alpha privative, and it switches it around. So instead of to think, amuse, we don�t think, amuse. We do the opposite of think. We just emote. We just are idle. And so today we live in a society that doesn�t think and I�d like you to use your mind more.

The Shema, Hebrew Emphasis, and the Meaning of Heart

Today we�re talking about the Christian mind. Are you out of your mind? That�s an interesting phrase. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 4 and 5. This is called the Great Shema. �Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. So, in Hebrew language, to emphasize something, you could say, �Holy, holy, holy. Say one thing three times to emphasize God�s sheer and utter and alien transcendence.

God is holy, holy, holy. Well, you could also go to Proverbs 6 and say something like this, �There are six things God hates, yes, even seven. Or for you King James only folks, �Yea, even seven. And what does that do with the Hebrew language?

That says there are lots of important things, there are seven things, but the seventh thing is the most important. So, out of this list, it is not chronologically important, it is weighted at the bottom.

There are six things the Lord hates, yes, even seven, meaning the seventh thing, I think that particular case is slander or gossip or backbiting, dissension, factious, something like that. That is the worst thing.

And so that is a way to make Hebrew emphasis. As a matter of fact, I�m just curious to see what that is, and so since I have a Bible right here, we might as well look it up when we think of the way the Hebrews would put something together with language.

Alright, can I find it fast enough on No Compromise Radio? Can I find it fast enough? I don�t think I can, I�m looking, I�m looking, I�m looking, I�m looking, and I don�t see it. There it is! Verse 16, �There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him.

And the very last one is the one who sows discord among brothers. So, that�s what he really hates. That�s a way to emphasize something. And there�s another way to emphasize something in the Hebrew language.

For us, we just say bold, italics, underline, yellow highlighter. We have different ways to make something more emphatic. If you�re speaking, you can use your voice to make something more emphatic, but with the written language, you have to do something else.

And in this particular case, you can say three, you can give three synonyms. So, you could say sanctified, set apart, and holy. That would emphasize holiness, giving all sides of that. And so here, if you�d like to emphasize love the Lord with your whole body, then you say with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might.

So, remember those three, heart, and soul, and might. So, what does that have to do with the mind? Well, the Hebrew word for heart includes the mind. So, when we see heart, we just default to Western English and, you know, the heart and soul, spirit kind of things, or heart, soul, slash spirit.

We don�t think about mind when we say the word heart. We say things like he�s got a lot of head knowledge, but it doesn�t make it down to his heart. We say when you have something come out of your mouth, sometimes it doesn�t get down to your heart before, you know, from your brain to your heart, then to your mouth, and sometimes it�s just brain to mouth.

Now, I�m not against the idea that we should have knowledge that affects our lives before we talk it, and I�m not against those things, but here�s what I am against. I am against an English inaccurate view of the Hebrew word heart, a view that says heart doesn�t have anything to do with the mind.

I was taught in seminary that, or to say as it is, as Lewis Johns would say, a theological seminary. They taught me that the word heart includes the mind, so much so that you can think of a mission control center.

When you read the Hebrew word heart, you think of mission control center. I am not saying there are no emotions with the word heart, but I am saying it has everything to do with the way you think. That�s just the way the word heart in Hebrew was used.

Now, this verse, these verses, Deuteronomy 6, 4, and 5, are repeated in the New Testament, and what was made, what was implicit in the Old Testament, heart means mind, they would think that, but we don�t think that, and the Greeks didn�t think that, and so what was implicit in Deuteronomy 6 in the Hebrew language, Jesus makes explicit in Mark chapter 12.

Let me read you the passage. �And one of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that he had answered them well, asked, �What commandment is the foremost of all Jesus answered, �The foremost is� and here comes the Shema again, right from Deuteronomy 6, �Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord with all your� now remember back in Deuteronomy it was heart, soul, might, H-S-M, heart, soul, might, heart, soul, might.

Those were the things. I wonder what Jesus says here. �And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your� what do you think is next? �Mind, and with all your strength.

Oops, Jesus is misquoting the Old Testament. Oops, Jesus is adding to the Old Testament, and then he�s going to have the plagues that were after people who add to the Word of God in Revelation 22. Was that the case?

Well, thankfully, neither of those is the case. Jesus, the eternal God, knows exactly what he�s doing, and he is making what was implicit in the Hebrew culture and language �heart�, he is making that explicit in the Greek language of Koine Greek, which we have thanks to Alexander the Great around the Palestinian area, Israel area.

�With all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might� in Deuteronomy 6, 5, in the Hebrew language, and then in Greek, �with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. So now Jesus makes explicit what was implicit in the Old Testament.

Jesus isn�t adding to Scripture, he�s making sure we understand that Christianity is religion for your mind. I know there�s more to that, but it includes your mind. You are to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You are to use your mind to better worship Christ Jesus. The greatest thinker who ever was born on this continent of the United States, it was pre-United States, so it was still a British colony, but born here was Jonathan Edwards.

And so he was really a British citizen, but we claim him as an American. He probably had a British accent as my guess, but who knows, maybe he had a Boston accent. Jonathan Edwards, he was an intellectual.

He had a mind like few others. God granted him an IQ that was off the charts. Yet Edwards knew that it wasn�t the end. Being smart is not the end all. And so Edwards used his mind and he tried to tell other people to use his mind while he studied the Scriptures and studied the Lord God and meditated about him.

So his affections would increase, his affections. He wanted the mind to help him understand who God was and how to worship Jesus Christ better. And so today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, I want you to use your mind.

It is a terrible thing to waste because your mind should help you understand the greatness and the honor and the exaltation of Christ Jesus. I want your mind to help you see Christ in his fullness and understand the Word of God so that the fame of Christ Jesus might spread in your heart.

You might have an increased affection for Christ Jesus. So when I think of the Scriptures, I think of something that has to be driven by your mind. The Spirit of God will work through your mind to give you greater affections.

When you look at Scripture and even how it's laid out, you will see the pattern of mind and then exhortation. In other words, here's some education, so in light of that, here's what you should do. And so we could put it this way.

We could say, many of the New Testament epistles—Hebrews, Romans, Colossians, Ephesians—those kinds of books, they make it very simple. The first chapters are about doctrine, and then the latter chapters are about duty.

For instance, Ephesians chapter 1 through 3 is mainly doctrine. 4 through 6 is doctrine applied. I'm not saying application is not doctrinal and doctrine isn't applicational, but you'll see more imperatives in the second three chapters.

You have creed in Colossians 1 through 3, 5—1 and 2, basically—and then you have conduct in chapters 3 and 4, or to be technical, 3, 6, and following. You have the credenda, what you believe in Romans chapter 1 through 11—you'll have an imperative in 6, of course—and then 12 to 16, you'll have the agenda, credenda, agenda.

You will have, in Hebrews chapters 1 through 10a, you will have orthodoxy, and then 12—excuse me—10b through 11, 12, 13, you'll have orthopraxy. And so that's the way it goes. You need to use your mind.

When you open your Bible, you just don't have Ephesians 4, 5, and 6, Colossians 3 and 4, Hebrews 11, 12, 13. We have doctrine—right thinking about God, understanding theological concepts. So what we do stems from what we know.

Doing isn't the end all. You can have kids that have good manners, but they have bad motives, and they don't do it for any other reason, just besides they don't want to get a swat or something. We want you to be affected in your mind, so what bubbles forth is an action that is motivated by an attitude of, I am very thankful, gratitude, etc.

Chapter 11 of Romans ends with, Oh the depths of the riches both the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and unfathomable his ways. For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor?

Who has first given to him that it might be paid back to him again? For from him, through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen. So Romans ends that way with doctrine, and then it goes straight to thinking.

Now we're gonna have to do another show on this to make sure we get it down, but a proper view of theology leads to behavioral changes. First, a proper view of theology leads to praise, and that's what happens at the end of Romans chapter 11, this kind of Roman candle praise.

You can just hear some of the fireworks with the whistle and the report going off in all their glory. And then Paul comes to the mind. Before you submit to the government, in chapter 13, before you love other Christians in Romans chapter 12, before you exercise liberty in Romans 14 and 15, before you use your spiritual gifts, before you do anything, Paul is going to talk about your mind, doctrine.

It says in Romans chapter 12, verse 1 through 3, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your logical, or spiritual, worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your what? Mind, that by testing you may discern, think about what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober thinking or judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned.

How then shall we live? We should start living in light of Christ's righteousness. We have no righteousness, Romans chapter 1, 2, and 3a. We have been given the righteousness of Christ based on his life and death.

We have received that by faith alone. God begins to sanctify us. We're secure. He's sovereignly working in history regarding Jews and Gentiles. In light of all that, we ought to think. How then should we live?

The response for the Christian in light of salvation is not primarily or initially do, it's to think. So I have a question for you. In what way, shape, or form do you think about the Christian life? How do you think through issues?

Now, many of you probably do think, and I'm glad for that. I think our No Compromise Radio listeners are thinkers. They're bad givers, but they're good thinkers. Ah, just kidding. We did get an email from people, and they say, well, how do you give to No Compromise Radio ministry?

There's no link. What do you do? So I guess you have to figure it out. You have to do some research to give. We dare you to give at No Compromise Radio. So thinking is not a spectator sport. It's for every Christian.

If you're a Christian, you ought to be a good thinker. We know you're a thinker. You either think lazily, you don't think at all, you think wrongly, but you are to think, and that's exactly what Romans chapter 12 verses 1 through 3 talks about.

And so you, to get very simple, to get very basic, ought to be reading your Bibles. Now, radio shows are good, but if you listen all day and never read your Bible, then stop listening to No Compromise Radio and read your Bible.

Actually, if you have to pick a show to stop listening to, stop listening to the Seventh-Day Adventist show on Saturday with Bible Answers, whatever it's called, and then stop listening to the 430 show where they don't understand forgiveness and ought not to be considered a Christian show.

Stop listening to those shows first. Then if you need more, then you can go to No Compromise after that, but you need to read your Bibles. You can go to the Bible .is app, if you'd like, and then it can read it to you out loud.

I actually like to have it read to me out loud as I'm following along. So I have a cup of coffee in the morning, I have my regular Bible, I have my Greek Bible, and I have my Bible .is, and I kind of mix it up, and I usually read something about Christ first, something in the Gospels.

And you ought to be thinking by reading the Bible. Don't try to read quickly and read through. I've got a one-year reading program. I think those are fine unless you're reading without understanding.

You need to read with understanding, and you need to think and to slow down and think through the issues. One of the reasons why I like to read books about war and World War II and Easy Company and other kind of things like that.

It's entertaining for me, and it's just easy. I don't have to stop, think, rewind. I'm just kind of going along. But with the Bible, you've got to slow down. How does this apply to me? Do I have the right view of God?

Is there sin in my life? How can I work through this so I'm just not reading? This is just for Israel, and I can't learn any lessons about sexual immorality or idolatry or grumbling or something like that, a la 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

As we see, these things are written for our example, that we might not crave things that they craved. I've got to be engaged, but to be engaged you've got to be in the Word. So how do you start off your day?

Some days I have to get up super early and go drive someplace. I usually just plug that Bible app in the car and start listening, because I want my mind conformed not to what the world is selling, not to what the media wants me to buy, not the systems of the world and methodologies and theologies that would affect me and hedonism and materialism and all kinds of other isms.

I want to see the world from God's perspective. That's why I like to read Old Testament histories as well, like 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Chronicles. I like to see things, because these are historical accounts, yes, but they are written in theological fashion.

The narrator wants you to see history from God's perspective theologically, so I like to look at history in a theological way. No compromise today, we've talked about thinking. Do you think, and it should all start with you, reading the Bible?

How many minutes a day do you read the Bible? I want you to increase that. Ask God to give you an appetite for the Word so that you might better see Him for who He is and think through. Read slowly with comprehension.

Read over and over. Read with commentaries at your side. You ought to be readers of the Bible so that you can think and have your mind renewed. 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. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.