Abner Chou Interview

No Compromise Radio

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and you know our format here if you've listened for some time or just a short time.

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Mondays, I like to play a sermon that I've preached here at Bethlehem Bible Church. We're in Malachi now in chapter two.

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Tuesdays, I talk about church issues with Pastor Steve Cooley, my associate. Thursdays, I like to talk about some doctrine from a positive aspect, from a teaching aspect, that is to say, what are the implications of the literal, physical resurrection?

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And then on Fridays, we usually critique someone and see where they fall short and what does the text say about the truth.

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But Wednesdays, I like to interview authors, pastors, teachers, those who have been saved by the

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Lord's grace and then been given the ministry of equipping others and teaching them.

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And so today, since it's Wednesday, we welcome Dr. Abendroth Chow to No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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Abendroth, welcome to the show. It is a privilege to be with you. All right, so when

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I look at your bio, BA, Master's College and Seminary, MDiv, Master's College and Seminary, THM, Master's College and Seminary, why did you go to Fuller for your

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PhD? Hey, I went to the

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Master's Seminary for the PhD. I'm just kidding. Tell us a little bit about what you do at the

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Master's College. Yeah, it is an extreme joy to be at the college and to have worked with the college and the seminary.

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As my degrees show, I've been here for quite a while and while sometimes

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I've attempted to leave and try to get education from other places, there's just something that always pulls me back here and that is the

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Lord, and He is good. His plans are much better than mine. And my ministry at the college is that I get to spend quite a bit of time studying

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God's word and teaching it to students, not only Bible majors who desire to go into some form of vocational ministry, but also to the future lawyer, the future medical doctor, the future teacher, and all kinds of vocations that are represented in the majors of the college.

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I teach them Old Testament survey, Hebrew, different Bible books, including the book of Job or Deuteronomy or Ephesians or Acts or Luke or Second Timothy.

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And so my privilege is just to watch the Lord excite people about His word and raise up from kind of a grassroots movement, students who will not only lead the church's pastors, but lead the church's lay people and therefore raise the bar and the quality of the churches and the local assemblies across the

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United States and the world. And that's just a great privilege and a joy to do. And the dynamics at the Master's College make that worthwhile and make that effective.

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Well, Abner, what I love about the ministry the Lord has given you, although you know the details exegetically in the

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Old and New Testament, you have a new commentary coming out with the evangelical exegetical commentary series on lamentations.

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You obviously know the details, but you have a very contagious love and admiration for the

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Lord that I think translates into the students, not only the college students, but also after my son told me about your class discussing

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Job, I began to listen to some of your lectures on Job and I felt the same way.

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I was drawn in as well into this kind of black hole of you've got to come and see who

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God is in the book of Job and he's worthy of worship. And so I just am thankful for that.

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Could you give us maybe like a four or five minute overview of just what

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Job, the book of Job is teaching us about who God is? Because I'll tell you where the background came from,

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Abner. I got in the car after the Shepherd's Conference with my son for a six hour drive, turned on the radio to kind of have some background music.

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Oh, let's listen to, I don't know, Bob Marley or something. Dad, could we please turn off, this literally happened.

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We please turn off the radio. I have to tell you about what I've learned about the Lord in the book of Job through Dr.

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Chow's class. And so I couldn't believe it. And off we talk for six hours. I couldn't keep my son quiet and I loved every minute of it.

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So turn us onto the book of Job for a few minutes. Well, the book of Job, I think sometimes is misconstrued as just a book about suffering.

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And that's one of the first mistakes we make as Christians in reading the book of Job. And on one hand, it does have suffering.

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The first couple of chapters talk about suffering for sure. And the last couple of chapters deal with Job's pain and suffering as well.

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But even when I began to read the book of Job, what I soon realized and what anyone is soon gonna realize when they read this book, is that there are 30 some odd chapters in the middle of the book that no one really talks about.

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At best, we just say, well, Job's friends weren't very helpful. But here, the

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Bible and the inspired writer of Job pays great attention, immense detail into the dialogues that Job and his friends have.

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It must be really important. It actually must be the main point of the book. And when you start to look at the book from that vantage point, there is suffering, but we begin to learn that suffering is a window into asking greater questions, fundamental questions, questions about this world, and more importantly, questions about God.

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And the overarching purpose of the book of Job, I would argue, is summed up in one phrase,

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God is right. The word righteousness occurs very often in the book of Job. In fact, the word righteousness is one of the most frequently used words in the book, and one of the most frequently found occurrences of righteousness is in the book of Job out of the entire

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Bible. And so Job is highly concerned with God's rightness in a world gone wrong.

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And the way Job goes about demonstrating that God is always right, his purposes are always pristine, and amazing, is to have basically two court trials.

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One court case happens in heaven, where God summons Satan and instigates an evaluation of himself, so to speak, where he says,

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Satan, you think I'm wrong. You think that Job will break, but I'm here to tell you that you're wrong and that my purposes are always right.

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And we see that suffering in the book of Job is in the greater context of proving that God is right.

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And there's something to be learned from that. Simply put, our suffering sometimes has greater implications than we ever realize.

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It is part of God's vindication of himself. And so when we suffer, we can remember that God does have a greater purpose.

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Well, in any case, the heavenly court shows that God is right. His purposes are always true.

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His promises are always valid and real and never fail.

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But then the video camera, so to speak, shifts from heaven to earth. And now

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Job and his friends have to wonder, how is God right? The suffering is asking greater questions.

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What's God's purpose? Why is God doing what he's doing? Job's friends, I would argue, are not asking this for good reasons.

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They're worried that what happened to Job will happen to them, and so they want to figure God out. And they have a totally wrong paradigm in doing so.

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And Job's friends, while having a totally wrong paradigm, are not dumb people. I think sometimes we assume they're just so foolish.

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How could they not understand these things? They're brilliant. If you read their words from the Hebrew, they have word plays, they rhyme.

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It is an amazing kind of discourse that they have. But they're brilliant, yet brilliantly wrong.

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And it shows us that smartness, intelligence, doesn't guarantee that you're gonna be right. And it's an important lesson to learn about the nature of wisdom.

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Well, in any case, Job's friends, who embody certain viewpoints, certain disciplines,

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Bildad is a scientist, Eliphaz is a historian, and Zophar is a philosopher, theologian.

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They all try to figure God out from all these different disciplines, from all these different points of views, and they can't do it.

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Job keeps debunking all of their ideas. And Job's conclusion in all of this is, simply put, man cannot figure

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God out. And wisdom is hidden from man. It's outside of him. We don't have the resources to find it ourselves.

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It doesn't matter how productive we are. It doesn't matter how skilled we are. It doesn't matter what our accomplishments are.

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We can never figure God out. He's outside of us. And that's why we have to fear the

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Lord. That's what Job 28, verse 28 says. The fear of the Lord is wisdom. We think that Solomon said that first in the

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Book of Proverbs but actually Solomon's getting it from Job. Because Job reminds us, why do we have to fear the

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Lord? Because we think we know so much, but we don't know anything. And when we are afraid of God, when we have a holy terror of Him, we have totally submitted our lives to Him.

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When you are afraid of a lion, you don't go up to a lion and negotiate with it and say, hey,

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Mr. Lion, you move back and I'm gonna go here and you do this. You don't give commands. You react.

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And when someone's afraid of heights, the heights actually have control over that person.

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You can see people who are afraid of heights actually become paralyzed because they lose control over themselves and something else, the height of a mountain or whatnot, controls them.

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And when we fear God, we don't negotiate with God. And we don't have control anymore over our own lives.

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We hand all of that over to God. What He says, we listen and we don't negotiate. And Job said, that's the only way we're gonna ever figure this out because Job and his friends can never get into heaven.

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That's the only way that they would really know what is going on in this world is if they saw the decisions that God made in heaven.

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But Job and his friends soon realized, you can't know that. And Job, being one of the first books, if not the first book, and I would argue that it is, chronologically written in the scriptures, it's the perfect introduction to your

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Bible because it tells you why you need the Bible. We think in our modern culture that we've got everything figured out.

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And Job shows you when you suffer and when people start asking those big questions and we start to answer as believers sometimes,

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I don't know, I don't know. That shows you why you need your Bible. And Job begins to project how great

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God is in his plans. And Job has three wishes about if these were true, he knows that God would be right.

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His first wish is found in Job chapter seven, where he says, I wish that God would just forgive my sins.

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I wish that God would pass over them. And of course, there's an irony to that, isn't there? God does, in the end, pass over sin through the gospel.

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And then Job has a second wish and he says, oh, God is so far above me and he's so powerful.

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And for that very reason, how could I ever argue with him? I'll never win the case. Even if I was right, he would just out -argue me.

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And Job says, I wish I had a mediator, one who could lay his hand on God and on man.

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Well, you can't just lay your hand on God if you're nobody. You have to be equal to God. And so what

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Job is wishing for is someone who is equal to God and also man. At the same time, he wants a mediator.

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He wants the incarnation. And don't we know that that's actually what happens? We have forgiveness of sins and we have a mediator,

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Jesus Christ. And then later on in Job chapter 14, Job says, I wish for a resurrection.

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If God is so powerful, why can't he just allow me to overcome death and all the harms of this world?

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And we know that the gospel proclaims a resurrection. Here, Job says, if these three things are true,

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I know God is right. Even if I can't figure out all the things in life right now and all the details, but if these major pillars are true,

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I know everything can and will be resolved. And here's the irony, and it's a blessed irony.

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We know that that's all solved by the gospel. And so in that way, Job says, hey, you need to read your

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Bible. You need the Bible. God is doing much more than you could ever think or imagine, and the

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Bible actually shows that because the Bible unveils God's plan about executing and revealing the gospel.

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And so God is right. He has done everything right in heaven, and he has done everything right on earth.

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And he basically, at the very end, lambasts Job for overestimating himself and underestimating

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God. How can you think and demand God to give you an answer when you don't even have the ability to control an animal, like a

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Leviathan or a behemoth? How can you think that you can do better than God when you are that small?

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And how do we over or underestimate God so frequently when, as Elihu, right before God comes on scene, points out that we can't even interpret a thunderstorm.

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Elihu walks you through a thunderstorm and he says, hey, Job, when does a thunderstorm start? And we would think like Job, well, maybe when the rain starts to come down or when thunder and lightning commence.

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And Elihu says, you know, Job, when a thunderstorm starts in God's mind, it is with evaporation.

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And already we start to think, oh, wow, God's plans and God's planning is much more complex than us.

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He has a far broader scope of understanding how this world works than we do. When's the last time we ever checked the weather forecast for the desert to make sure it got sufficient water?

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Or rainstorms over the ocean to make sure that the level of the water stays correct in the ocean.

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We don't do that kind of stuff. You know, even on our apps, on our smartphones or whatever, we don't care,

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God does. And what God and Elihu both confront Job with is that God has a far greater understanding, knowledge, care, and concern for everything in the creation.

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And that is why God is right. Some things that Job will never understand on this side of creation.

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God has already accounted for. And all of this comes together at the very end of the book of Job. It's beautiful.

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What you find out at the very end is that Job dies and it's kind of anticlimactic in some regards, but it's actually the most beautiful ending of all because as Job wished, he wanted to meet his maker.

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He wanted to have a day in court where he could learn everything. And so when he dies, God gives him that wish and he finds out about the gospel and he finds out about the rest of Revelation and Scripture and he finds

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Jesus Christ, who is his mediator. And that's how the book ends. It ends pushing us toward the rest of Revelation found in God's holy word.

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And it amplifies that God is right. I want to go back to the master's college.

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My name's Mike. Oh, we'd love to have you come. Are you in to visit? See, I know. Well, now

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I hope our listeners understand a little bit of the enthusiasm that the Lord has given you and you want to teach the students at the master's college.

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I have in front of me, Abner, RateMyProfessors .com website with your name plugged in.

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And they rate professors on overall quality, five being the best, average grade, and then they have something called hotness and then they put portions of a hot pepper.

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And so I want you to know you are rated according to the RateMyProfessors .com, overall quality 5 .0,

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so that was good, average grade A plus, and then they gave you a hot red,

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I don't know if it's a ghost pepper, but you got a hot pepper on there. And so I'm thankful for the

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Lord's work in and through your life. Tell us a little bit about your strategy.

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You have new students come in. I would assume many are saved. Some maybe are just attending the master's college because their parents told them to.

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What's your strategy teaching young people the word and what's your favorite thing to teach them?

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You see the aha light go on as the Spirit of God ministers to them. What's your strategy and what's your favorite thing to teach them?

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Yeah, my strategy to teach them is to make sure they understand how exciting and profound and complex and engaging the

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Word of God is and how incredible God Himself is. I think when

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I was a young person, I still am pretty young, but when I was going through high school and middle school,

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I was only then beginning to learn what I should have learned as a young child, which is that God is amazing, that His Word is sophisticated, it is complex, it is mind -wrenching in the sense that it is so dense and profound that you can never wade through it with ease.

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You have to work hard to study it because there's so much there. I went through Awana and I learned those verses and I had so much information memorized, but I never understood it.

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And so my goal in a class is to unleash that to students, to help them to see that a lot of them, now thankfully, so many of them go to great and wonderful churches that are gonna build them up and have pastors who have faithful and sound and deep ministries, but a lot of them don't.

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And I want to reach out to them and show everyone in the class that the

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Bible is amazing. You should love this book more than any other piece of literature.

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And you should engage in this book deeply because it reflects an even greater God that you know, hopefully many of you know, because he's brought you into a saving relationship with himself.

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And I just want to be passionate about that. I want them to see the details of the text.

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I want them to see how the Bible's interconnected. That's one of my major thrusts. I think sometimes we are in danger of chopping up the

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Bible too much, and there is a need for absolute meticulous detail, but there's also a need to put all of those details together.

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And so I want to show them how the Bible's interconnected and show them how sophisticated thereby it is and how amazing that God is to have ordained and put together such a plan as this.

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He must be immensely wise. And I want to show them how all of that engages society today.

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And so kind of Old Testament survey, I want to confront them in kind of the first class that, hey, some of you have been reading your

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Bible really selfishly. And don't think just because you open your Bible that you're not sinning. You can open your

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Bible and read it so selfishly that you think everything's about you and nothing's about God, and you just worship yourself, and that's a new idolatry.

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And so you're just sinning while you read your Bible. And after you confront them with that, then you want to show them, and there's so much more.

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When you read your Bible like that, you actually cut out what would actually compel you to worship

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Jesus Christ and to worship God the Father and the Spirit. And so that's kind of my goal, is to show them amazing things from the

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Bible, things I don't think they have heard, but things that they technically should have seen when they read the scriptural text.

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Dr. Chow, when you're dealing with students and then you deal with the president as well, how have you seen

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John MacArthur deal with some of the college students? I know he loves the college students there. Any kind of behind -the -curtain scenes that you've seen as the president has dealt with students?

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Oh, yeah, some things. You just always know that Dr.

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MacArthur wouldn't want you to talk about. And so I know Dr. MacArthur has been very generous with students on many different levels, whether that be hospitality, financial, or whatnot.

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He does a lot that he doesn't want people to know, because he's just a humble servant of the

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Lord, but I get to see that, and it's an immense model to follow after his level of generosity and sacrifice.

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He's very approachable. As students come up to him, he remembers their name after one meeting. I think that's always remarkable.

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And he shepherds them. And when you see him interact with them, there's two levels.

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Sometimes they ask him a theological question, which is good, and he'll answer it with clarity. But then there's also a pastoral element of him helping them live it, helping them understand how to apply that in their church situation or in their home situation.

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And so I've seen him interact with students on an individual basis.

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And he is so insightful, because he can pierce through a circumstance or a situation to the heart of the issue.

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I just remember one time recently at Truth in Life, we were meeting with a bunch of students, and students asked the question of, what happens if somebody doesn't want to fellowship in your church?

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You know, they're just the introverted, or they're kind of distant, and he immediately cut in. He goes, that's the person you need to be most concerned about, because why are they moving away from the people of God?

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There must be a sin issue there, and they're couching sin, and they're distant from the

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Lord. Those are the people you need to watch out for. And I just thought that blend of absolute theological precision, coupled with pastoral insight and execution, which is so helpful,

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I was learning. And he just bestows that continually to the students. And sometimes

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I don't think the students realize how wise, in the full biblical sense of wisdom, which is truth lived out precisely in circumstance, he is in his statements to us.

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And so I've been immensely blessed, and it's a great joy to watch him give that insight and model that insight.

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Abner, I saw John at the Shepherds Conference this year, the Inerrancy Conference, and I just said to him,

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I mean, he was busy. There's lots of people around, and I just said, you know, hi, John. Thanks again for all your leadership at the

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Master's College. My son is learning so much. It's changing his life. I mean, it truly is a gift from the

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Lord, the education there. Abner, thank you again for what you do there. And then he looked at me and said, your son's name's

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Luke, right? I said, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's correct. You know, the other 20 ,000 people that you know by name as well.

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And so that just means a lot when the president interacts with the students.

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So I'm thankful for that. Tell us what you have. We've got about a minute to go. What do you have in the books?

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Are you working on other books? You should be writing a book on Job. What's around the corner for Abner? Yeah, I was actually planning to write a book on Job, and I have to put that on hold for a little bit because my major project right now is a commentary on the book of Deuteronomy.

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And I'm working on that for also the evangelical exegetical commentary series. Along with that,

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I have some speaking engagements to do, but I also have finished a book on the visions in the

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Bible, Isaiah's vision, Ezekiel's vision, Daniel and Paul's vision, as well as John's vision in Revelation. And what's also coming around the corner is a book on hermeneutics, a book that talks about how the prophets interpreted the

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Old Testament, how the apostles interpreted both the Old and New Testament, and how that helps us to have an anchor for how and why we interpret the

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Bible the way we do. And so hermeneutics, Deuteronomy, as well as perhaps a book of Job are all looming around the corner for me.

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Abner, thank you so much for your ministry, teaching my son and many other sons and daughters. Thanks for your time today on No Compromise Radio Ministry as well.

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People can go to the Master's College website or type in your name, C -H -O -U, and the book of Job, and they'll find a long lecture series that would be very edifying for you.

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Thanks again, Dr. Chau, I appreciate it. My privilege. Thank you for all that you do in your ministry.