Truth Liberates (Part 2)

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm your host.

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And my name originally was Abendroth, not without the stutter.

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Abendroth, from red rote, Abendroth, German. Abend, a guten

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Abend, afternoon, evening kind of thing, where it's the sun is going down and you see the red evening glow on the horizon.

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What a pretty name, what a K -love kind of name. Except it's Abendroth.

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And actually when I was in Germany, lots of people would say, are you Jewish? And they didn't say that after I tipped the waiter.

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Although the tipping system in Europe is a little different. It is not as good as here.

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By the way, I try to be a good tipper, especially after I heard Danny Aiken's message about Christians and tipping.

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Well, today's show is not about that, but I don't know, maybe it's not about that.

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Just talking, just trying to fill air time. We don't have any dead air time, dead space.

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Today on No Compromise Radio, we're gonna do part two about truth. Remember when Pilate with disdain said to Jesus, what is truth?

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Like, you're gonna tell me what truth is? I've been looking truth my whole life and can't find it.

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Probably more with disdain, what is truth? And for us, we need, for us

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Christians, we need truth. I just guzzled a bunch of V8 juice and it was too cold and it gave me a head rush.

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And then I had a quick sit down to do the radio show. I brought some juice today and then spilled a lot of it all over my briefcase.

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And so I had to go to the backup plan of V8 juice. I've been juicing a lot of ginger, ginger root.

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So if you put that in with tomatoes and carrots and celery, and cucumbers, and then a huge clump.

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I'm talking about about a dollar's worth. I just stuttered again. My mouth is cold, that's why.

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But a dollar's worth of ginger into about a 30 ounce jug of freshly blended juice.

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Man, that's good until it spills all over, but it still smells good. I watched that show, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead on Hulu and I had to start juicing.

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So juice for breakfast, juice for lunch, pig out for dinner. Today on No Compromise, what is truth?

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Let me give you some reasons why truth is important. We learned last week that truth is important because it liberates people from sin by showing them their need of the

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Savior. When you don't have the truth of the word, you always maximize your own righteousness and minimize the need for having someone else's righteousness, that is

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Christ Jesus's. And so when you're confronted by the word to see how bad your sin is,

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I met a guy the other day and he was trying to ask me questions and I started preaching the gospel to him.

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And his first question to me was, what's the difference between a Protestant and a Catholic? And I thought, well, that's a good question because he was

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Catholic and he knew I was Protestant. And then his second question to me was, does the

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Bible say premarital sex is a sin? Of course,

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I knew why he was asking the question. And I said, yes, it does say that.

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And then I read 1 Corinthians 6, 9 and following. And he, Paul, said early on, do not be deceived.

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You know, he wants them to know. And then he says, do not be deceived. Fornicators are those who are sexually immoral.

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Any sex outside of marriage, whether it's post -marital, extramarital, premarital, heterosexual, homosexual, these people will not inherit the kingdom of God.

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I said, why do you think it said, do not be deceived? And he looked at me, young man, and he said, because it's easy to be deceived.

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I said, that's exactly right because the world says it's fine. The world says you're not hurting anybody.

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The world says hook up, live it up. But God said, I made you, and this is the arena for sexual engagement.

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I told him, God is not the God of no when it comes to the Christian sex ethic. It's not no, it's enjoy yourself, have as much sex as you'd like in marriage.

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And so that was his second question. And so I was trying to apply the word of God so he would realize how bad things were and how he was in danger of hell since he was not born again.

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I didn't know if he was engaged in premarital sex or he was thinking about it, but he asked the question.

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So my guess is it was one of those two things. So I looked at him and then I said, and it was a friendly conversation.

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No one else was around. And I said, you're a dead man walking. You're a dead man walking.

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The God who created the sun and the moon and the stars created you and you've broken his laws.

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You've broken his laws in many ways. And I didn't ask him specifically about the sexual arena, but I did say, you look with a woman, you look with a woman outside, you look at a woman with lustful thoughts, it's committing adultery according to Jesus, your creator.

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And so see, once you begin to apply the standards of God's requirements and you see his holy, irrevocably holy law and person and character,

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I said, perfect people are the only ones that go to heaven because God's heaven is perfect and he's perfect.

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I said, are you perfect? I'd asked him a question earlier. Do you think you have to be perfect to get to heaven?

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Because it was easy for me to then say to Christ living the perfect life. And there was a piece of black paper there and a piece of white paper there.

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And I put the white paper on top of the black paper and explain Christ's righteousness, covering our sin.

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And then I took the black paper and put it on top of the white paper and how Christ is the white, innocent lamb is credited with our black, dirty sins.

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Even though he never sinned, he gets credited with them. And even though we never committed a righteous act in our life, we get credited with Christ's righteous acts.

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And then we know God confirms this great transaction, this great double imputation, this great double reckoning because Christ is raised from the dead.

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The father raises him, the son raises himself and the spirit of God raises the son. And so I said, in response to that, that good news is you have to repent and believe.

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You must believe, you must be born again. And so we had a good talk and I left him with my email,

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I left him with a promise to have a Bible to him, give him a

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Bible. And then I gave him that little ultimate questions booklet by John Blanchard.

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But it's important to use the truth of God, specific revelation, revealed truth from the

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Bible to show people their need of a savior. So that was number one.

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By the way, when I walked out of the place, I was very, very encouraged that the Lord allowed me, ordained that it would happen, that I could meet this young man and preach the gospel to him.

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And he would ask me such a question, what's the difference between Protestants and Catholics? And I said, what's the root word in Protestant?

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He said, protest. I said, that's right. I said, and so the Catholics were the church of the day.

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They were the dominant religion of the day. And there were men like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Knox and others who wanted to reform the church and who wanted the church to go back to the

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Bible. So Rome says, the Bible plus tradition, plus the church magisterium.

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And the reformer said, scripture alone. We're going back to the

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Bible, the Bible alone. The Roman Catholic Church said, Christ plus sacraments.

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And the reformer said, Christ alone, Christ alone.

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The Roman Catholic Church says grace via an interesting definition of grace and an application of grace, but essentially grace plus works.

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And the reformer said, grace alone. And so we went through faith alone versus faith plus other things.

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And then I didn't get to the God alone be the glory part, but that would have been an easy one as well. So we need truth.

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When you evangelize, you need truth. The second one for our show today that I talked about last time was that you need truth to help you grow, to help you be liberated from slow sanctification.

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Satan's lie of saying, you know what? Just stay a spiritual miss, not misgrant,

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I don't want that, not misfit, a midget maybe I could say, a spiritual, you know, you're not growing properly because you're not taking the word of God in.

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He can't stop people from getting saved. And so once he loses that battle,

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I'm sure he will do everything he can with deceitful workers, liars, and trying to cloak truth in lies.

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We talked about that at some time. Three, truth is important because it liberates people from the snares of worldliness.

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The truth will expose what real worldliness is and what fake fundamentalism would have you believe when it comes to worldliness.

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Number four, now we have new material. Number four, truth is essential because it liberates people from subjective worship.

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Truth helps you worship God properly. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out this little maxim, this little adage, this little truth claim, verity.

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God doesn't want you to worship from your heart. God doesn't want you to worship in a way that you think is right.

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Positively stated, God prescribes worship very specifically in his word.

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You're not left to just worship as you see fit, worship as you please, God gives specific worship.

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Now, when you read the book of Leviticus, many things should pop into your mind. God is holy, sacrifice for sin, blood atonement,

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Yom Kippur. There should be a lot of things that come into your mind and one of them should be, must be,

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God is precise when it comes to the worship he demands.

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Precision, you can read Leviticus chapter 10, in Nadab and Abihu, Aaron's sons. They just made things up on the fly.

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They just went with their gizzard. They just went with what they thought was right. Every man does what's right in his own eyes.

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God requires precise worship and it's no different in the New Testament. How'd you like it

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I didn't say different? It's no different in the New Testament. God is spirit,

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John 4 .24, and those who worship him must worship in, you know the answer, spirit and truth.

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To read MacArthur's footnote, consistent with the revealed scripture and centered on the word made flesh who ultimately revealed his father.

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We are to worship God if we want to worship him properly in spirit and truth, according to, in line with what

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God has said. It doesn't take very long for you to figure out, for instance, in a

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New Testament worship service, let's do what God says to do in the New Testament context.

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Let's preach, 2 Timothy chapter four. Let's read the Bible, 1

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Timothy chapter four. Let's sing songs, Ephesians five,

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Colossians four. Let's pray, 1 Corinthians 11. You can just go through the list.

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Let's give, let's have the Lord's supper. Let's have baptisms.

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There's a variety of things that the New Testament prescribes specifically for worship.

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And that's why when you have this whole thing where we're gonna do some liturgical dance,

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I almost called it Levitical dance. That would be interesting. Liturgical dance, and we're gonna do a variety of these other things.

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I don't care if it's an altar call or what it is. When you don't see the New Testament prescriptions for those things, maybe

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I could say New Testament precedent. I wouldn't like to say that, but I guess you could force me to. Then let's stick with what is prescribed.

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And maybe when we figure that out and do that with excellence, maybe we'll do something else. But that's not true either, because even if we worship excellently from the heart, according to the biblical revelation, let's just stick with that.

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This is how God wants to be worshiped. This is how God wants to be thought of.

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And it is in correlation with the truth. The chest is truth.

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It's not feelings. There's not an emotional element that drives it. Emotions come on the backside, on the flip side.

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They come as a caboose, not the engine. Well, to me, it wasn't really worshipful, that service over there at Bethlehem Bible Church.

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Well, there could be a lot of things going on. Maybe we weren't preaching from the Bible, but we've done that every single week for the last 14 years, by the grace of God.

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Maybe it was because you didn't like the beat of the songs, because there was no beat. Although I think we have a drum machine.

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I'm just kidding. We have some bongo drums, I think, for occasional Eric Johanson rhythm there.

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Maybe you didn't think the songs were peppy enough, and you wanted to have a coffee band house, rock and roll deal.

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I like rock and roll coffee bands. I just don't like them in church. Hmm, maybe to me is the wrong question.

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It didn't seem worshipful to me. Because the issue is, was it worshipful to God?

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You're asking the wrong question. It didn't seem worshipful to me. I didn't feel worshipful today.

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Oh, well, I want to help you with that. I want to help you prepare on Saturday night. I want you to help you prepare on Sunday morning.

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I want you to understand that worship is not music alone. What a farce that is.

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What a fib that is. Fibber McGee, number one, that the worship is just the music.

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The fast stuff, and the doxology, we don't call that worship. Worship is preaching. Worship is listening to preaching.

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Worship is giving. So maybe when you say, I didn't feel worshipful today, you are pretty chintzy with your money.

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Then you should feel not as worshipful. Oh, man.

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Feelings come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving. My warrant is the word of God, not else is worth believing.

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Martin Luther. Martin Luther. What sounds better? His real name, Luther or Luther?

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Matter of fact, when you're over there in that part of the country, and when I was in Belgium, people don't say the THs. It's another, it's

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Luther. So I'm not complaining and I'm not criticizing because they can speak

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English and I can't speak Belgium. Belgish. Dutch.

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Deutsch. So I'm laughing today. Oh, I just looked down at my recorder and my

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Marantz recorder and it said 1631 and I thought of Acts 1631. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.

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How about that? When you see numbers, immediately start thinking of Bible verses and that can get us in a lot of trouble. Numerology.

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On No Compromise Radio today, we want to experience God. We want to feel

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God. We want to enjoy his presence. Or don't we? Listen, the scriptures are more sure than experience.

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2 Peter 1 .19, and so we have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your heart.

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We test experience by truth. Of course we like experience. Of course we can have love and joy and peace.

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There's an experience that we have, but it always is related to truth, stemming from truth, and tested by truth.

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One man said in The Coming Evangelical Crisis, a Moody book, 1996, if we begin to accept as truth what has happened even to fellow believers, we have no basis for rejecting the truth claims of any other religious doctrine.

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That is so true. Number five, truth is essential because it liberates people from despair.

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It liberates people from despair. I mean, we can come up with a hundred different things. I just came up with some kind of off the top of my head.

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Shakespeare's Macbeth said life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.

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It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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Satan's lie is we live in a sad world and it's a drugged world and there's no real meaning because once God is evacuated from culture, from school, from the home, from the world system, then how can there be anything but despair, but sadness, but ecclesiastes?

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Everything's just fleeting. Why bother? Go to work and then what? The sea refuses no river.

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It just never, never ends. Did you get that Pete Townshend quote in there? I thought you probably did. For the

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Christian though, joy is not circumstance driven. It's not circumstance driven.

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It is the fruit of the spirit. Victor Frank said, clinics are crowded with people suffering from a new kind of neurosis, a sense of total and ultimate meaninglessness of life.

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And my comment to that is may it never be for a Christian. C .S. Lewis said, if I find myself in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

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Isn't that true? Spurgeon said, there's a crown there, talking about heaven, which nobody's head but yours can ever wear.

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There's a seat in which none but you yourself can sit. There's a harp that will be silent till your fingers strike the strings.

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There is a robe made for you which no one else can wear. Now here's the issue.

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Is there heaven on earth? Can you experience joy on earth?

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I think when we have the scriptures, that no matter what's going on, you can read 2 Corinthians 12,

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Paul having all kinds of issues, issues that most of us probably will never experience.

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Paul still was able to talk about the sufficiency of Christ Jesus. Matter of fact, I'm gonna just turn there right now because it is crucial that we get this in our society today.

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A society that is influenced by, a Christian society that's influenced by word, faith, health, wealth, name it and claim it, blab it and grab it.

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And we want to have prosperity and success and that means God is blessing us.

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Paul said three times, I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me.

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But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

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For the sake of Christ then I am content with weaknesses, insults, notice all the plurals, hardships, persecutions and calamities for when

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I am weak, then I am strong. We have the ability because of the word of God to have joy in spite of for us to live as Christ and to die as gain.

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We can live for Christ now and as we do, we have a joy, a transcendent joy. And we know the key to unlocking melancholy, depressed thinking and how we can think rightly and do rightly and then

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God rewards us with the fruit of that right thinking and the right doing and then we can have joy.

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Number six, truth is essential because it liberates people from silly decision making, silly decision making.

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And basically that's the whole God led me, God told me. Now, if you wanna look back in your life and see how

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God providentially led you, I can go for that, that's the right way. But you need to just start trusting

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God and make decisions. What does scripture say, what does wisdom say, what do you want to do and then do it, not presumptuously but trusting

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God. Trust Yahweh with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

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In all your ways acknowledge him and he'll make your path straight. You don't need to say, well, God told me this so you can feel secure about then making the decision.

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No, you just make the decision and then when you look back in time you can see God's providence written all over it.

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You run around trying to do some Gideon signs using scriptures, don't do that.

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You need to read some books on decision making like Gary Friesen, Decision Making and the Word of God.

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What's the Kevin DeYoung one on decisions, that's probably my favorite new book on decision making. What is it, would somebody tell me?

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See, if I had a producer here, a director, staff people, none of those people are here. The website people, where are the people when

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I need them? I have no idea. Truth liberates from going outside of his word for direct guidance.

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The Bible, in other words, is sufficient for discovering God's will for you, for living your life in a difficult age.

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The answer is yes, so dig into the word. Forget this whole mysticism.

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Friesen said, impressions are not a form of revelation. Impressions are not authoritative.

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Impressions are impressions. Jack Deer said, I almost said

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Jack Van Ampey. Revelation 12 .2, Jack Deer said, one of the most successful attacks has been to develop a doctrine that teaches

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God no longer speaks to us except through the written word. Ultimately, this doctrine is demonic. This guy, he was a

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DTS grad, even though Christian theologians have been used to perfect it. Putting out fleeces, forget that.

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Open doors, closed doors, don't trust them. God may be giving you an open door and saying, don't go through there.

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Well, he's not saying it. See, now I'm doing what I'm saying not to do. Well, that's probably enough for today.

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Today, No Compromise Radio, we want you to study the truth. What is truth? Pilate asked, you can open up your

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Bible from Genesis to Revelation and know the truth of God. God has kept it preserved throughout all these years, the mind of God.

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Study it today. You can get Bible .ia's app or just open up the Bible and begin to read. Nocompromiseradio .com.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.