Creation Care Religion

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 I don't know what it is, but I think it's the blue skies and the green grass outside here in New England.

Real time, it is May 2nd, but in NOCO time, it's probably some

June, July, 2014. It is allergy season.

I guess I have allergies, so we just proceed, don't we? You can always catch us now on our updated website, nocompromiseradio .com.

The men have done a good job with that. Some new blood in the NOCO team, and the

Facebook sites are updated. The Twittering is Twittering, and the

NOCO 90 site is getting managed as well. So you can catch us on all those. I think you can go to TuneIn Radio as well.

You can always write into the radio station, WVNE, and say, more NOCO, go to an hour.

Actually, I wouldn't go to an hour. I've been asked that before. Should we go to one hour? And I guess if I got paid to do it,

I might consider it, but this is a non -paying job.

Oh, there's some nice fringe benefits. Barbara, her husband, sent me some

Pete's Coffee from California, and I get to meet some interesting people and some speaking engagements, and I almost called them gigs.

It's gotta get a couple gigs out of that. And so there are lots of fun things to go along with it, and I'm very pleased that people would listen and learn and be encouraged.

Anyway, I'm happy to do that, but sometimes it's just the nonstop, cheetah -like

NOCO chasing me because I've got to feed the machine. So if you've gotta feed the machine four days a week, essentially, for 24 and a half minutes, and you try to be biblical and provocative and that kind of stuff, then it's a little more difficult if it's an hour.

So when I host for Todd Friel at Wretched Radio, it's harder.

That's two hours. I don't know how he does it, but Todd is not a full -time pastorate, so he's got the

TV show and he's super busy guy. I'm not saying that, but he just has more time for radio than I do because that is, in a sense, his job.

So there we have it. Mike Ebenroth, glad you're listening. We are today doing a variety of things.

Here, I'm just looking outside at Bethlehem Bible Church, and the men outside are installing, it looks like a windmill, and I think that's a solar panel array because we are into going green at Bethlehem Bible Church, and we are into creation care, and we...

Actually, some of the creation people, creation care people, and listen, I'm all for don't pour paint down the drain, you know, don't ruin crops unnecessarily, don't pollute egregiously, but this stuff goes too far.

It becomes a religion for some, creation care, instead of subdue the creation and have dominion over it.

One going green group says that churches should use Helvetica font because it takes up less ink.

I mean, there is going to be a judgment day. There's going to be an earth day. I'll never forget when

I first moved out here to Massachusetts. That was the first earth day. I think it was 1996, 1997.

Maybe it wasn't the first. Maybe it was just the first one I realized because at Grace Community Church with John MacArthur, we didn't really celebrate earth day.

I didn't know as a pastor, I was forced to celebrate earth day. Actually, on that subject, one of my all time worst holidays, and you have to listen to me here.

Now, remember this is no compromise radio. One of my all time worst holidays is of course the made up holiday, as most holidays are, is

Mother's Day. Now, before you turn off the TV and the radio and switch over to wretched or something like that,

I don't mean I don't like mothers. I lost my mother about six years ago. See how I can do this kind of emotional appeal.

I love mothers. I love my grandmother. I had two German, well, one

German grandmother named Hedwig. How about that? They called her Erna. Hedwig Erna Clausen, I hope they wrote.

And then I had another one. Her name was Nona. So see, Erna and Nona. And I love those grandmothers.

And one was Lutheran, one was Roman Catholic. And those were dear, dear ladies in my life.

So I love mothers. I love grandmothers. I have three daughters, and so I can't wait for them to be mothers one day.

Get married, have kids. I'm probably a strict father, but I'll be a uber loose grandfather.

See the license of a grandfather. So I like mothers. And I, that's fine to say happy Mother's Day in a private sense.

And let's, you know, our kids, they make mom special stuff, French toast and deliver her stuff into the room.

And it's just total chaos, you know, when you buy gifts or something. Okay, write a little sweet love note.

I've been actually known to do that once in a while. Every 10 years. But let's just think now in the church.

This is the Lord's day. Sunday is the Lord's day. I think of Revelation chapter one,

John calls it the Lord's day when he was, when he received the vision. And so this is the Lord's day.

It's all about the Lord. Of course, every day is a day you can worship the risen savior, and you can admire his handiwork in creation and in new creation, how he saves people in providence and worship the risen king.

Of course you can. Every day in one sense is generally the Lord's day, but technically,

God calls his saints to gather together and sing his praises and to honor him and to hear his word and Lord's supper, baptisms, giving.

There's a variety of things that the local church does, but it is the Lord's day. Now the

Bible does address mothers. The Bible does address those issues. And, you know, if you're at a church for two years, you can pretty much cover the

Hannah deal and Proverbs 31. Actually it's a Proverbs 31 man is the text.

And the man is told, this is the kind of woman you look for, the Proverbs 31 woman, but really it should be entitled the

Proverbs 31 man, don't you think? That's how I preach it, the Proverbs 31 man. But it's the

Lord's day. It's not mother's day. Now some ladies are barren.

They cannot have children. The stigma still exists today for barren ladies, even though it's not one 100th of what it used to be in the

Old Testament, New Testament times. Some ladies are widows. Some ladies have lost their children.

Some ladies are single. Some ladies will never get married. And so to have a day where we rally around and I was gonna say worship mothers and to honor mothers,

I don't know, it just rubs me the wrong way. In the prayer that we have for the corporate prayer that day for Mother's Day, we acknowledge mothers, but we acknowledge all the other folks as well in terms of other ladies.

And so that one just kind of gets under my nerves because pastors are under intense pressure through media, through Hallmark and through their constituents, through their congregation to do this

Mother's Day deal. You would not believe the kind of stuff we receive in the church to buy these little

Mother's Day trinkets, to buy these things that really are suitable for those machines that they have in restaurants that have the claw that comes over and you put the dollar in and the claw comes over and picks up the object.

And of course drops it before it gives it to you and yields its produce at the proper time.

Mother's Day is just one of these holidays where this is the Lord's Day. And for Father's Day, it's the same thing.

This is the Lord's Day. Can we say if you're a father here, thank you for your ministry and leadership.

You can do all that. I understand that. I get that. But this is the Lord's Day.

So anyway, from creation care to Mother's Day, see how we do that in No Compromise Radio? Mike Abenroth, nocompromiseradio .com.

So we're not really putting up a windmill in the back. We're not really putting up a solar panel and we're not really using

Helvetica font. There is going to be an Earth Day. See, I went from Earth Day to Mother's Day because I don't like either one of them.

Where's the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of the creation.

That's what they're saying in 2 Peter 3. Nanny, nanny, nanny, same old, same old.

Things don't change, always the same. And then it says in 2

Peter 3 .5, Peter writes, for they deliberately overlooked this fact.

As we might say in our parlance, we accidentally forget.

They deliberately overlooked this fact that the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of the water and through the water by the word of God and that by means of these, the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.

So there was the universal flood. But by the same word, the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire.

There's not gonna be a flood of water next time. It's gonna be a flood of fire being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved. See, they overlooked these facts. They deliberately overlooked this, but we are not supposed to.

That with the Lord one day is 1 ,000 years and 1 ,000 years one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, any of you, but that all should reach repentance.

All the elect to reach repentance. That's the idea of the text. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, very onomatopoetic there, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

So there is going to be an earth day, and it will be not with water, but it will be with fire.

And so if you'd like to put up a windmill or a solar panel array to save some money or to harness the elements,

I'm not against that. But I am, and I'm not even against churches that would put up windmills or solar panel arrays, as long as it's in the shape of a cross.

Here at Bethlehem Bible Church, we have a building. I'm happy to have the building, but it's not really set up the way

I'd like it. I inherited the building, et cetera. And we have some air conditioner ducts in the ceiling of the sanctuary.

Now, when I first got here, we had no ceiling. We had a roof, but no ceiling. It looked pretty tacky, but you know what?

The church isn't the building. I understand that. Then it was super hot in the summer times here.

I would sweat. It was, I remember just going home. At the time, we were renting a little lake house, and I would go to the lake house, and I would change my,

I would take my shirt off and my suit jacket. But see, now that I'm emergent,

I just preach with my T -shirt. I would take my suit off, and then I would put a swimsuit on and go directly down to the beach and just do the nasty plunge because it was so hot in here.

And so then eventually we got the air conditioning system, and the guys who installed it installed the front few ducts in the shape of a cross.

So we do have a cross in the church building, a wooden cross someone made, and it's hung from the ceiling.

And I'm glad to have it. It's reminded many people that we determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

And I'm happy for the cross, believe me. But we get an extra cross too. So somehow if Heibel's, remember when

Heibel's was asked by Peter Jennings, I think in the mid -1990s, do you have a cross in the church? No, we feel, he said something to the effect like we feel that if you distill

Christianity down into one symbol, that would be kind of dangerous, I think. I think that's what he said,

I think. So anyway, we have it in the heating ducts here, the air conditioning ducts, the cross.

The cross with, remember those things that you look at in books?

It looked like it's just a bunch of hodgepodge stuff, just stuff all over. You can't really determine what it is.

It looks like modern art. And then if you stare through it and look through it, pretending to look 12 inches ahead of the other side, your eyes will determine some 3D image that comes up.

Those are called stereograms, by the way. And so it's a stereogram.

So one of the things though, I will have to say on No Compromise Radio, let's have a little pizza break here. Thanks, Barbara.

One of the things I will say that it is fairly, I don't know if I'm, this is just kind of rambling,

I guess. It's hard to preach to people who are the cell phone

Bible app people. Now, iPad isn't as bad, at least the larger ones, because it seems like it's more of a book.

It's in the book shape. It's a book size. They put it in a little book container, a carrying case.

But on the phones, there are people that just decide to do other things on their phones.

And I don't know what they're playing. What are the games that are all the rage now? Tsunami, Zombies, and Temple Run 2.

And I can't remember some of the other games that I play late at night. Oh man, people aren't gonna get

Carpal Tunnel anymore. They're gonna get some Carpal Thumbs is what they're gonna get. So anyway,

I'm glad you have your Bible, but there's something to be said for bringing a Bible. See, I'm older, 53, traditionalist, old timer, hair growing on my ears, out of my ears, on my nose, in my nose.

Aren't you glad you get to know all this inside information on No Compromise? See, when I'm sick, you just get the real me.

So what I don't like with creation care is when it becomes a religion, when it becomes a social, liberal, works righteousness gospel, and it becomes the main thing.

And so there's a reason why 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says this is of first importance. What is of first importance?

The gospel. The gospel is of first importance. See, we don't have our own righteousness, and we need

Christ's righteousness. We don't need to just get back to Adam, his original state of innocence.

That is, we don't just need our sins forgiven. That would just get us back to Adam. We need positive righteousness.

That's why Jesus lived on this earth, 2 Corinthians 5, and Romans 10, Matthew 3.

He lived the perfect life. So that is of first importance.

Christ's representative work, Christ's substitutionary work, God the Father's authenticating work of raising

Jesus from the dead, and then the sinner's response of repentance, and faith, and belief, and trust, and those kind of conversion words.

So if you say we should be nice to the environment, I don't mind that, but when you look at the

New Testament, you'll be shocked to see what the Bible says about creation itself, and how we as a church want to take care of it.

I mean, let the pagans take care of the earth. They need something to worship, and at least if they take care of water, and rivers, and dams, and this and that, then

I'll have clean drinking water. Who wants dirty drinking water? But creation care, and environmentalism, and going green, once that zooms into the church, especially through the people that are writing about it, you are going to have eventually a quasi -religion and Christless Christianity.

What's the difference between moralism, and deism, and social action, and rights for the needy, or creation care?

Michael Crichton delivered a speech back in 2003, and some of you know who

Michael Crichton is, and here's the speech, at least a portion of the speech.

Today, one of the most powerful religions. This is Michael Crichton, didn't he? I think our first Crichton thing

I ever saw was Westworld with Yul Brynner, and that was the precursor to Jurassic Park.

I think Crichton wrote Jurassic Park, didn't he? I was going to say he wrote Coma, but I think that's

Robin Cook. He wrote Comer. My friend's in a comer.

No code today is in a comer. So, karma, karma, chameleon.

What would that mean? Is that, that was just, I was speaking in tongues. Today, one of the most powerful religions in the

Western world is environmentalism. Isn't that fascinating from Crichton? Environmentalism, he goes on to say, seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.

Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional

Judeo -Christian beliefs and myths. There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature.

There's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge.

And as a result of our actions, there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners.

Isn't that interesting? See, I find that fascinating. That's why I'm talking about it. That's why I get paid to do this job. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die unless we seek salvation, which is now called, any guesses?

Some of you must know. Terry, do you know in Ohio? John, do you know in Idaho?

Ted, I don't know where you live in the South, Atlanta. Beth in Denton, Texas.

Trying to think who else writes regularly. Barbara in Maine. These are all the stalkers in my life.

Okay, we are all energy sinners, doomed to die unless we seek salvation, which is now called, sustainability.

Sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of environment, just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide -free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs imbibe.

So the Lord's Supper, the earth supper is organic food.

It's not nice to fool mother nature. I just was talking to the kids the other day and we were going through the passage in Matthew 6 where the

Lord taught the disciples to pray, the disciples' prayer, our Father who art in heaven. And we were just working through why our, it's not just my father, he is my father, but why our, why father?

And for the pagans, it was always mother, but here we have father. And of course, when you think of father, you should think of a

God who protects, a God who provides for, a God who cares for, a

God who loves. There's all kinds of images that pop in your mind when you think of father, but especially in light of the

Old Testament, New Testament corpus, you should not be thinking mother, earth, paganism, earth day worship, sustainability.

Michael Crichton hits the proverbial nail on the head. We are very tempted in churches to go for activism and social justice and with the same impulses that we like to go for those, the church can easily get caught up in adopting green social justice, environmental justice.

Cheryl Smith says this. She is an activism social justice movement for green environmental commentator.

What does this have to do with the church in America? Writes Cheryl. Even if the reader does not attend a

Christian church, he might at least think that such a place would generally embrace the Bible and Jesus Christ as its main source for instruction, guidance, and hope for the salvation of man.

One would not expect an evangelical house of worship to go to the world at large for its agenda.

One would expect that a hungry soul walking through the church doors for the first time might hear a point of view other than that which the secular world has already offered him.

In other words, one might hope to hear at least some reference to things beyond this material planet and all that it entails, something not limited by space, time, and matter, but instead something transcendent and supernatural.

Isn't that true? By the way, some of the stuff that I got was my friend Mark Gale accumulated for me and I appreciate

Mark's study and pulling these things out for me. I need more of that. I need to have somebody to do my work for me.

Will Willimon was the chaplain for Duke University for years, a

Methodist, and he has written some excellent books critiquing certain things. And he said, you know, it's a sad day when you go to a

Baptist church and you can't hear the Bible and you just hear socialistic, moralistic, therapeutic deism, to quote

Christian Smith, you just get pablum. I used to go to fundamentalist

Baptist churches, he said, and I know I would hear a fire and brimstone, sin, repentance, the judgment day kind of sermon, but now when

I go there, I don't get any of that. It's just all, to use my words, operified. So Cheryl Smith is right.

The church can get good theater elsewhere, good drama elsewhere, good music elsewhere, good fellowship elsewhere, good social constructs elsewhere, but there's nowhere else you can get

Christ crucified, the risen savior who's coming back, the king of the universe, who's going to judge the quick and the dead, to use the language of the

Nicene Creed. Preachers, churches need to preach.

Preachers need to preach. The Bible, the gospel, because there's nowhere else you can get it, and creation care, environmental evangelical networks aren't going to give us that.

Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio, and let's get back to the windmill installation and the solar panel array.

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.