Testimony or Tes ti PHONEY

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.

It's good to be back in the studio here in beautiful downtown Burbank. I guess that's a different kind of studio.

My name is Mike Abendroth and I am your host. We started the show back in August of 2009.

So if you'd like to pull up any of the old podcasts, every show, I think without exception, is still online.

It's still legal and moral to pull those shows up and to download them and copy them. Why don't you copy them without even giving me credit?

That'd be fine by me. I'll never forget Lorraine Bettner. He was a godly man, even though his name was

Lorraine, he was a man, kind of like a boy named Sue. And Lorraine Bettner's books, often published, would say in the front, like in the

Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, basically, I don't care if you give me credit or you don't give me credit.

I'm a man who has received much. I don't really have anything new to say. And so this is for the

Lord's glory and the church is good. So quote me if you want. Don't quote me if you don't want. I don't know what

I have stuck in my throat today. Probably I went to Dunkin' Donuts.

I usually don't do that. I prefer Pete's Coffee or maybe Starbucks if I have to, or some other local place.

But I had a Dunkin' Donuts coffee today. And I have some listeners out there who are concerned for my health. And I always talk about Diet Coke and Diet Mountain Dew.

I want that one particular listener who writes me and tells me how bad Diet Mountain Dew is. Today is day 23 for me.

23 days in a row, no aspartame, no Diet Cokes, no Diet Mountain Dews, no

Jell -O pudding, sugar -free with the aspartame. Nothing with aspartame. So how about that?

I think I'll go for a year, see how I feel. Maybe I'll have some diet right with Splenda. Who knows?

Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth. I'm glad you're listening. And we are No Compromise Radio. Our slogan is always biblical, always provocative, and always in that order.

I want you to think about the one who never compromised, Christ Jesus the Lord. And in light of that, today we're going to talk about testimonies, personal testimonies.

If someone were to ask you, would you please give your testimony? What would you do?

Would you freeze? Would you say yes? Would you say no? What if you're a man and like at Bethlehem Bible Church, every men's breakfast that we have,

I ask a couple of the men to give their personal testimonies. Now, would you say yes or would you say no?

By the way, if you ever get asked to minister, you should say yes. If you get asked to teach a

Greek class and you don't know English or Greek, well then maybe you'd have an excuse. But most of the time, people that ask you know you can do it if you pray to the

Lord that you say you believe in. And so if you get asked to do something, you should do it. What would you do if your elders or the leadership team at your church said upon membership class, thank you for filling out the form, we appreciate it.

And could you give me your personal testimony in one minute? Actually, we do that at Bethlehem Bible Church.

For all new members, they need to give their testimony in one minute. I stole that, speaking of stealing things from other people,

I stole that from Mark Dever and the elders at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. By the way, if you're in DC, that would be a good church to go to.

I think you can go to ninemarks .org. We actually have some people that looked up Nine Marks and we have a link to them and so they came to Bethlehem Bible Church.

What if you were required to give your testimony in front of the state, in front of the president?

Could you do it? Do you have a testimony? We have lots of questions regarding testimonies.

And so today I'd like to talk about why testimonies are important and how you should have a testimony, when they should be given and how regularly they should be given and in what format should they be given.

For instance, lots of churches have people give testimonies during a worship service. Do you think that's right?

I would say most of the time when people do that, I say to myself, well, the Bible does say preach, pray.

The Bible says, listen to the sermon, Lord's Supper, baptism, give, sing.

You know, there's lots of things that the Bible describes that goes on in the

Bible, but there are fewer things that the Bible prescribes. So when you go to your doctor and he gives you a prescription, he's prescribing you take these pills three times a day.

So what does the New Testament prescribe for the church? And that's why we have something called,

Presbyterians call it the regulative principle. That is the Bible regulates what we do in worship.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have Lutherans with Martin Luther, who would say, if the Bible doesn't say we can't in a worship service, then we won't.

And things aren't necessarily that simple, but just as I try to inform you generally, there's the regulative principle, and then there's the

Lutheran principle. And so I try to follow, to the best of my ability, the

New Testament, and if it says to do something, we should do it. So what about having people just get up and give personal testimonies?

Well, the good news is, for people that listen, often testimonies are encouraging, often they are

Christ -centered, often they are uplifting, and occasionally people just run their mouths and they talk about themselves all the time.

They talk about how bad they were, how many girls they were with, how many drugs they took, how many times they were in jail, and the list goes on and on, and it becomes a personal testimony about themselves.

And on this show, my purpose is I want you to get up, if you ever have to speak, in whatever format, and talk about yourself.

Could you tell me how God saved you, that you quickly say, you know what, it's not about me, it's not about myself.

They'd like to know more about me, that's a side benefit of testimonies. But I better make sure I talk about Jesus Christ.

Excuse me, here we go. See, I shouldn't have been to Dunkin' Donuts today. So, if you're asked to speak,

I want you to testify of the Lord's grace and goodness in your life. By the way, if you're not a

Christian, you don't have a testimony. We already know your testimony, and your testimony is Ephesians chapter two,

Romans chapter three. You are dead in trespasses and sins. You are a born child of wrath, just like the rest.

You have a father, his name is Satan. And you don't have much of a testimony, except you're enslaved to sin, and you have no way out.

An eternal perdition awaits you. And we know who you are, and we've met you on sports teams, we've seen you on TV, we've lived next door to you in our lives, and so we know who you are.

You have a different personality, and you have some of the providential grace of God, some of the common mercy of God, and you have wonderful things about you, and you can do things that are wonderful.

But you don't have a testimony about Jesus Christ and what he's done in your life.

And so that's what we're talking about, testifying to what Christ has done. So, for instance, in a worship service,

I do think there is a time where people could get up and say, here's my testimony, how God saved me.

And you know, at our church, we don't do it any other time except during baptism. So just like a

Grace Church in California with MacArthur, we will have our baptismal candidates prepare a testimony, they will read that testimony, and the congregation is then encouraged, and then we baptize them.

Now that testimony has been thought out well, it's been passed through the elders and okayed by elders, our elder representatives, and we know what that person's going to say because we don't want that person's testimony to turn into what we call a test -a -phony.

We don't want that. We don't want you to get up and testify by test -a -lying.

I always thought that was funny, test -a -lie or testify, test -a -phony, testimony. We don't want you to do that.

So at our church, there's no time for testimonies except for that baptism. We had one last Sunday, we had one two

Sundays ago, where the person will write out their testimony, and here's the big picture for thinking through your testimony.

If the ladies Bible study asks you, if the radio station asks you, I'm going to speak at a conference soon, at No Compromise Conference in Nebraska.

This will be taped, so I just got back, actually. I wonder if I had a good conference. And if you get asked to speak about your testimony, you must think through these issues, and you must say to yourself,

I, like in everything, I, in my life and in ministry, should think through how to make

Christ look great. Not that He needs a crutch, but your job is to say, look at how great He is.

To echo with the Father, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now Jesus isn't our beloved

Son, this is my beloved Savior in whom I'm well pleased as well because He does all things, as the

Scripture says, well, perfect life, perfect atonement, perfect resurrection, the eternal

Son of God. And so, when you get up and talk, if you listen to Nothing Else today on No Compromise Radio, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com

as well. If you learn nothing else, testimonies are supposed to speak well of Jesus Christ.

They're to speak well of Jesus Christ. And so, if you like to exaggerate, if you like to rehearse and revel in old sins, and be very specific on certain details that are shameful,

I don't want you to do that. I want you to walk through your testimony in such a way where people say, yes,

I can get a flavor of the person's life, and there'll be some details about their past life. I'll give you just a moment, and I'll tell you about exactly what we'll do.

But still, again, we're doing the overview. I can't believe how fast this show goes, by the way. I get many people who will write and say, my only problem with the show is it's only 24 minutes.

Well, that's true. The bad news is it's 24 minutes. The good news is it's 24 minutes. So, at least we kind of keep going steady pace.

But we're already 10 minutes into the show, thinking big picture on personal testimonies. One, if you ever get asked to give your testimony in any way, shape, or form, at the soup kitchen, at the local church, for testimony time, for men's breakfast, for ladies'

Bible study, tell us how God saved you. Don't say no. Don't you want the opportunity, this

God -given opportunity to say, Jesus Christ is great, and I was nothing, and the difference is praise.

That's what we're after. If you just think of your hand and hold it up to your chin, and that's how good you are, you're pretty good.

And then you take your other hand and bring it down to about the size of your head, where your head is.

The difference, the foot difference is, you know, the level of your praise. Man's pretty good.

God isn't that good. The gap to bridge between holy God and sinful man. God's not that holy. Man's not that sinful.

The gap in between isn't very much, and it doesn't elicit praise. But if you put your hand with some kind of eraser arms all the way down to the center of the earth, in the core of the earth, the journey to the center of the earth with your

Fantastic Four rubber band man guy, I don't know that guy's name, Stretch Man or something.

Stretch Armstrong, we used to have those games when we were a kid. Or like a G .I. Joe. And then take your other hand and elongate it up to the moon.

The difference there is, God's so great, I'm so horrible, and it will elicit praise to think that this great

God saved a person like me. And so, yes, you can talk about your sin in general.

Yes, you can talk about your past life without God in general. Yes, you can say a few personal pronouns, and maybe you're like Bo Jackson, and you can talk about, you know, third person or something.

But the focus is on Jesus Christ. That's why if you have to do a one minute testimony, if you're not ready to get to Jesus Christ quickly and speak of him in a quick paced manner, you're going to be talking about yourself and how you were, you know, in a hotel in the middle of Timbuk three, and you decided to pick up your

Gideon's Bible because you was about ready to kill yourself and you were about ready to go wander. Your wife is about ready to leave you.

Those things all may be true. And I'm not saying they are trite or trivial things at all. But if you have a minute, you better quickly say within 15 seconds,

I was born a sinner. I didn't know I was a sinner. My worst sin was I thought being moral and good and better than other people would earn me into heaven.

That was my biggest sin. Ignoring what God said about his standards of holiness and my need for a savior.

My biggest idol was myself. My heart made idols, and it basically made an idol in the likeness of me.

That's about as much as you need to get into because 15 seconds does not allow you a lot of time.

By the way, if you say, yeah, Mike, but Mike, 15 minutes is what

I'm given. Okay, well, we'll do the same thing. Now I've got three minutes for who you used to be, and now we can get into more of the gospel.

And so if you do the one minute, then you can extrapolate it out. If you have an hour to give, you have 10 minutes to give, two minutes to give it.

Let me give you the three components of the testimony. As we continue to talk about giving testimonies about how great the

Lord is. Matter of fact, I'm reading here from Mark chapter five, Jesus healed the man with demons.

In Jesus, in verse 19, the account reads, and he did not permit him, but said to him, go home to your friends and tell them how much the

Lord has done for you. Mark 5, 19, and how he has had mercy on you.

And what did the man who was demon possessed, who is now in his right mind do? And he went away and began to proclaim in the

Decapolis, 10 Gentile cities, how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

Your privilege, your job is to go talk about Jesus to all kinds of people. You might not be a preacher, but your great commission is to talk about Jesus in such a way they will say, this is marvelous in my eyes.

Jesus is wonderful. And so here are the three points for giving your testimony in a good kind of no -compromise style, but you've probably heard it a thousand times.

I learned this, it's like Lorraine Bentner, I don't have much new. I just Abendrothized the whole thing. Info at nocompromiseradio .com.

My name is Mike Abendroth. If you are listening to this, thank you. If you'd like to get this show on other stations, you can write us too, info at nocompromiseradio .com.

We're on one station now and then the podcast and Facebook and Twitter and all these other things, but I'm sure there are other markets that we could go into.

My problem is this, there aren't many good stations like WV &E who will be willing to play such a show.

You gotta have everything watered down. You can't say anything negative. You can't say anything bold. You can't say anything just biblical. Jesus couldn't even show up for a wedding without a controversy breaking out.

The Bible by nature is very controversial, from cover to cover. Machen said, if you don't wanna be controversial, you better just put your

Bible away. So these truths just divide because truth divides from error. You say,

I don't wanna be divisive. Well, put your Bible away because the Bible truth divides and separates from error.

So three points for testimony. Today is how to give a Christian testimony to the glory of God.

And you want to do that, and so there are three points. Point one, what your life used to be like before God saved you.

And so you can be very general in that and very non -specific. Again, I think it's a shame if you start saying all these things about all these girls or all these men or all these things.

I mean, I guess if you used to be a prostitute and you said, you know, I used to be a prostitute, that's all the details we need, general terms, where if you say adulterer, we get it, fornicator, we get it.

But I just think general terms are much better, dead and trespasses and sins, et cetera. So that's point one, and so you can work that up if you've got a minute.

That gives you about 20 seconds to talk about that. I think that's the wrong percentage -wise, but that's just for today's, you know, 33%, 33, 33.

Number one, what you were like before God saved you. And this basically talks about your need of salvation and how you were born depraved, how you had

Adam as a federal head, how you were foolish, how the fool has said in his heart, there's no

God. That's not a stupid person. That's not a foolish person who has the low IQ. That's an immoral man, an immoral woman who has to suppress, as Romans 1 says, the truth in unrighteousness.

And they say there's no God, why? Because as Nietzsche said, we all want to get rid of God because deep down we want to practice our immorality.

We don't want to have this holy God who's immutably holy, always holy, a little holy, fine, but always holy.

And so you have to be very, very careful when you give your testimony to minimize details, but maximize your need.

Make sure you tell people how much you needed to be forgiven, how sinful you were, how depraved you were, sinful, fallen, foolish.

And then the second part, after you move from who you used to be, how God saved you.

Now notice how God is the actor, God is the initiator, God causes salvation. And then you are the recipient.

Of course you believed, of course you repented, of course you followed, of course you read your Bible, of course you heard people preach to you the word.

But at the end of the day, we are monergists and we believe God alone works in salvation and we are passive in redemption, that we are passive in regeneration.

That is why Jesus says you must be born again. We realize that you can't bear yourself.

The metaphor of a baby being born, the baby doesn't bear herself or bear himself and pull himself out of the womb.

He is forced out, whether he wants to come or not. I'm sure he doesn't wanna come out because it's cold out there and it's sterile and it's gonna get spanked on the proverbial bottom and all these things are gonna happen, suctioning.

He doesn't like that. So how did God save you? And again, this magnifies

God's great salvation to the listeners. So you've got a need and now here comes the solution.

You know, God didn't have to provide the solution. God didn't have to provide a way out. God did not have to grant salvation to the fallen angels.

God was still just and holy and yet for us, he did. So this is how God saved me.

He brought this person into my life so he would give me the Bible. He brought this person into my life and she prayed for me.

He brought this person into my life and I heard this kind of preaching. He gave this book to me through this instrument, a person.

He had me marry this person who got saved and she began to pray for me and put tracks in my sandwich.

You know, whatever it is, you then talk about God is the great savior.

He's called a savior for a reason and you want to announce the good news in your testimony.

Your testimony needs to be evangelistic. And so if you talk about your great need and then you can say, and everyone here has that same need, let me tell you about the savior,

God the savior, who saves people like me and he saves people like you. We're using this as an evangelistic tool.

We're using it as a tool to promote the glory and majesty and honor of Christ Jesus. When do you get to have the opportunity to stand up and say,

Jesus is great? I had a massage this morning because my neck is killing me and all this other stuff and my masseuse said to me and asked me a question, so the receptionist, and I just said, just read the book of Mark and you'll say to yourself,

I've never met anybody like Jesus. Jesus is wonderful, he's awesome, he's just, he's kind.

He is amazing, he's marvelous. I've never met a person like this in my life and that was my way of saying

Jesus is great. So personal testimonies. One, what you were like before God saved you.

Two, how God saved you, the specifics. And if you don't know the exact time, you don't need to know the exact time.

In God's mind and in all actuality, there was a particular moment where you were an ain't and then

God made you a saint. You were unjustified, then you were justified. You were unregenerate, then you were regenerate.

Now you might not recognize that time. And in your view of conversion, man's experience of salvation, you might begin to see things and patterns and see your affections turn.

In God's eyes, there's an exact time. But if you don't recognize it, that's okay. And then thirdly, what you talk about is what your new life is like, your new appetites, your new, as I said earlier, using the

Edwards term, affections after you've been saved. What do you want to do with your life? How is it different? How has the

God of the universe who made the world with the word affected you? And there should be some kind of change.

And again, no perfection needed because your perfection is Christ Jesus. But as you live your practical life out, you say to yourself,

I have a desire to see other people know this Jesus, to have their sins forgiven, for them to be born again, for me to work for the glory of God, whether I'm at home working, when

I wake up at work, or whether I go to work. I have all these new affections. I used to hate Bible reading,

I love it. I used to hate going to church and worshiping, I now love it. I used to hate service and ministry, I now love it.

I used to hate people that proselytize, I now love them. I used to hate people at church, I now love them. And the list goes on and on and on.

So what I do is if I'm ever asked to give my testimony, I always go to Titus chapter three because Titus three pretty much gives me exactly what

I've talked about in this testimony hour. Titus chapter three, Paul writes to Titus, this pastor, and he says in verse three of chapter three,

Titus, for we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

That's that first part of the testimony. That's the first 20 seconds. Generalized, no shame except shame on our own selves.

We're not implicating other people. It's not, you know, look at how bad I was, but just in general, whether you're a moral person, whether you're a pastor's kid or you're a heroin addict, these things apply.

And now what was the next thing I talked about? How God saved. Here, Paul says, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our

Savior appeared, he saved us, active, he, us, passive.

Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.

See the sovereign distinguishing mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the

Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ, our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

And so Paul says, this is what's happened. This is the great Savior. So the first one is what you were like before.

Second one is how God saved you. And then what are your affections like after? What do you want to do now? What would you like to do in response to salvation, in response to this great

Savior? He says in verse eight, this saying is trustworthy and I want you to insist on these things so that those who have believed in God may be careful to devote themselves to good works.

There it is. These things are excellent and profitable for people. And so I'm devoted now to serve

God through works, through prayer, through ministry, through evangelism, through the nursery duty at church.

I am a completely new person. I am a new person in Christ Jesus. So if you have a testimony, if you're a

Christian, you have a testimony and it doesn't have to be wild. Michael Horton wrote a good article 25 years ago, 20 years ago, about what if your testimony is not exciting in the world's eyes.

If you're a moral person and you've never, you know, cheated on your taxes and you cut your neighbor's lawn, you still are a deep, deep sinner who needed a great

Savior. And you've got a great testimony. My name is Mike Abendroth. We're testifying today to the sovereign grace of God through the risen

Savior, who's a substituent atonement for us. God bless you. 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.