Sifted Silver (the show that should not have been aired)

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.

Opening the Show and the Theme of Not Compromising

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I�ve got Pastor Steve�s headphones on. I just broke mine after 13 years. I think we�re going into our 14th year now on No Compromise Radio.

Boy, these things sound loud. Wow. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. If you want to ask Spencer something, info at nocompromiseradio .com. Even if you send it to info, most likely it�ll come to me unless you�re a stalker or you�re acting rude.

Then you�re going to get it. Can we block emails? How does that work anymore? I use iMail, and I think it�s hard to have to put up preferences and settings, and I don�t know. It�s just hard to do. Anyway, we�re glad to be on the radio, glad to talk about the Lord Jesus and how He never compromised.

I don�t know if today will fall flat or not, but we�re just going to give it a shot. I try to mix things up on No Compromise Radio ministry from Beza briefings to the message to who knows what. I mean, in front of me, I have the New England Primer.

That�s always a good show. The Assembly and Divines and Mr. Cotton�s Catechism. I have Revival Fire written by Charles Finney, sitting in front of me. I have some Spurgeon books, What Sinners Must Do to Be Saved.

All kinds of stuff. I have an Ordinary Means article written by Michael G. Brown. But today, I�ve got a little book called Sifted Silver, a Treasury of Quotes for Christians compiled by John Blanchard.

John Blanchard wrote the Ultimate Questions booklet. I need to reread that to see if I really like it or not. I used to love it, but I don�t know if I�m going to like it anymore. I want to see what he does, what he calls sinners to do.

Does he call them to believe, trust? Or does he rest, receive? Or does he call them to surrender, commit, yield, submit, desire, etc.? Different categories, right? One is Biblical, i .e., Reformed. The other is Armenian, i .e., Wesleyan.

Random Quotes on Patience, Faith, and Total Depravity

But I have Sifted Silver in front of me, and so sometimes I do this, I�ve done this probably five times. I open it up randomly, I read a quote, and then we talk about it. So it�s kind of spicy, right?

It�s different, it�s fast-moving, fast-paced, and sometimes they�re dumb quotes, sometimes they�re good. Here�s the first quote on No Compromise Radio today. �Where there is no patience, there is not even a spark of faith.

This is going to be a bad show. Okay, let�s pick another one. �I�d rather hobble into heaven than walk into hell D. Martin Lloyd-Jones. That�s true, that�s true. Open it up again. �Pain makes man think.

Yes, I know it�s true, but this is a bad show. This is the dumb show. Okay, I�ll open it up randomly. W. E. Best said, �The sinner, apart from grace, is unable to be willing and unwilling to be able.

All right, well, finally we�ve got a good one, right? What happened when Adam sinned? Well, lots have happened. Lots happened. Adam was the federal head, right? He was in the garden, on probation, covenant of works, do this and live, obey me, do this, don�t do that, et cetera.

I don�t know why I�m still laughing, I can�t believe I�m doing this. When he sinned, we say total depravity, and we�re linking it to the effects of the fall and Adam�s sin. Of course, most people think right away, �Is that as bad as you could be?

You�re totally depraved, utterly depraved. Of course, what we�re after is, it�s hard to have the W for the tulip instead of T for total, but it�s W, holy. The whole person, mind, body, spirit slash soul, everything, conscience, and will was affected.

The bondage of the will was the book Luther wrote in contrast to Erasmus�s freedom of the will. Of course, what�s freedom of the will? If you�re free to pick an ice cream flavor or not as an unbeliever, of course we believe in freedom.

Nature of choosing, yes, that�s true. The question really is with the will, boiled down and free will, does an unbeliever have enough freedom and ability to choose God on his own? That�s what we�re after.

And so, then you go, �Of course, because of the fall. That�s why God had to come and save, seek and save that which was lost, the Lord Jesus in Luke 19. Of course, if freedom of will is, �God�s going to make me believe Him unwillingly that�s not what we�re after.

What does God do? He changes, He makes alive, He quickens, He gives you a new nature, and that new nature instantaneously responds with, �I believe, I believe. That�s what happens. And so, unless there�s grace, so if you say at the end of the day, free will, why is one person in heaven and the other not?

I hope the answer�s not found in the person who�s in heaven, it�s the answer found in them. You have a good friend. I was telling my daughter this morning about a good friend I had, his name�s Scott, I think he�s still alive, I hope he�s still alive.

And Scott and I grew up together, Scott and I worked together, Scott and I rode motorcycles together, Scott and I, our parents were best friends, we had cabins up on the Missouri River together. What�s the difference between Scott and I?

Now maybe he�s saved now, I don�t know, I would love that, but let�s just say Scott still is not saved. Last time I saw him at my mother�s funeral, he was not a Christian. Well, what�s the difference between Scott and Mike?

I mean, same high school, same junior high, we worked together again, hung out together every summer, all summer together. What�s the difference? Is the difference in me? Something in me? Is it in my will?

My free will? I could say no or I could say yes. Well, the thing is, because of the fall, I always said no and I had to have somebody give me a new nature and then my new nature affecting my will would say, of course, I don�t believe.

And that�s why we need the power of the gospel. There�s no Adam, no minutia, no little smidgen of merit in ourselves, it has to be all of grace. And you read Romans chapter 9, and you think it�s true.

I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy, I have compassion on whom I have compassion. Sifted silver, blanchard quotes, here�s Jerry Bridges, I just opened it up randomly. �All too often we think we are standing on principle when in reality we may be only insisting on our opinion.

Okay, decent quote, and it makes me think of Romans 14 and 15, and when we�re around weaker brothers or sisters, what do we do with them? This is in the section of liberty and preferences and everything else.

And as Christians, especially new Christians, and maybe some of you are new Christians, they, and we when I was a new Christian, have a hard time distinguishing between preference and principle. Bridges is after principles found from the Bible, and then opinions or preferences that just come from our own minds.

And we all have backgrounds, and some of us come from self-righteous backgrounds, some from unrighteous backgrounds, obviously a mixture of the two, but heavy on one or lighter on the other. And you think, �Okay, I came from a sleazy lifestyle and you get saved, and then you kind of go overboard a little bit, and you think you�re standing on principle by saying, �I will not touch alcohol, I will not smoke a cigar, I will not go see a movie, I will not listen to secular music, I will not hand out trick-or-treat candy, I will� I mean, there�s a thousand �I will not do that anymore right?

And, of course, as time goes on, you realize, �Well, that could just be my opinion, and therefore I need to make sure I inform my opinion or inform my conscience based on Scripture. Scripture has to rule.

And if Scripture says something, fine, but my own conscience, I need to elevate that to Scripture, and that�s why I need to study Scripture. And that�s why you see new Christians fired up, excited, wanting to evangelize, and I want to encourage that.

But you also realize, in the local church, �Oh, there�s new Christians coming in all the time, some people getting saved and then becoming new Christians and you just have to be patient with them, like people were patient with you, like people were patient with me.

I am a man who has experienced the patience of many people, patiently listening to me preach for years when I�m just whacking people and scolding them and other things, patient when I was a new Christian and thought to myself, �You know what?

I think I know it all, and now everything is in color. I can see everything perfectly. I can see now what sin was, who the Savior is. And then you think you can see all these other things that takes time to learn, and therefore we have to be careful how we deal with new Christians, and we want to come alongside of them.

Lots of times when I�m around new Christians and they say something dumb, I don�t even correct them. I mean, in my mind I correct them, and I want to correct them, but I think, �You know what? You�ll learn.

Keep coming on Sundays. The Word of God will wash you. This means of grace, the preaching of the Word of God on the Lord�s Day, it will affect you. It will change you like no social media argument ever could.

You want to try to convince somebody of a different opinion about whatever it is, preferences, principles, legalistically acting, and I don�t mean in the ultimate sense adding law to Christ�s work, but legalism, �Don�t taste, don�t touch, that kind of thing.

Colossians 2, �Let them sit under the Word of God year after year. They are changed people. They will be changed. Twitter�s not going to change you, Facebook�s not going to change you, Insta�s not going to change you, no, but the preaching of God�s Word, and of course your own studies, that will help.

Of course I want you to study. Mike Abendroth, No Compromise Radio, a variety of just random quotes today. All right, what do we have next? I�m opening it up. Works, works, a man get to heaven by works, I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand.

Who said that? That�s a famous quote I�ve said regularly by someone who I used to think was all that, cats meow theologically, and now I just go, hmm, okay, the Lord used him. George Whitefield, works, works, a man get to heaven by works, I would as soon think of climbing to the moon on a rope of sand.

Now that is something. That is Benjamin Franklin wanting to say, yeah, I know I don�t believe what George Whitefield says, but George Whitefield believes what he says, and therefore I, Benjamin Franklin, want to go hear George Whitefield.

Of course Whitefield comes along, and everybody wants to hear him, and he�s out in the fields, churches don�t want him in his church, he�s buried right up here in New England in Newbury Port, in a church, under a pulpit, matter of fact, that�s what you did when you really loved the guy, right, your pastor�s okay, you don�t really like him, put him on the cemetery, he�s not too bad, you put him in the 10th row, pretty good, like first row underneath, really good, under the pulpit, that�s when you know you got a great pastor, when you bury him under the pulpit.

Where would I like to be buried, under the pulpit of Bethel Bible Church? I don�t, is West Boylston going to be my body�s eternal home? Of course not, but temporarily home? Who knows. Excuse me, sorry I didn�t hit the cough button.

Once in a while, with my lungs, because of COVID, I just do that, I�m not sick, I�m just, that�s just the way it goes, so sorry I couldn�t catch that in time. I do have a button here, a mute button, but couldn�t get it fast enough.

Whitefield, okay, the Arnold Delamore two-volume Whitefield biography, Banner of Truth, great stuff, great reading, doesn�t mean you have to believe all the theology of the Second Great Awakening or anything else like that, just super interesting, how many times Whitefield would come, what he would preach, etc., etc.

If I had to pick one verse out of all the Bible that would reinforce what Whitefield said, it would be Galatians 2 .16, �Yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. I mean, how many different times does he have to say it?

How many different ways does he have to say it? If you say to me ultimately, �You were saved by works. The first Adam was to work, and we need to work. Okay, I�m with you. The fall, though, affected us all, and we couldn�t work.

We couldn�t have the right kind of work with the right kind of motives, sinless and pure and proper intentions and righteous thinking, motivated by a self-sacrificial love always and forever, personally, perpetually, entirely, exactly.

We couldn�t do that. So we�re saved by the works of another, that�s true. So if you say works by works were saved, yes, the Lord Jesus�s works, because they�re perfect. But all the other works, I just think, �You know what, there�s no possible way.

And even with works of the law, thinking about works of the law in the Old Testament with ceremonies and ordinances and other things that we have to do to keep the law, no, that is not true. My name is Nike Abendroth.

Nike Abendroth. No compromise. No compromise. Radio. Thomas Fuller. �It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf. It�s madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf. Now one of the things I�ve been noticing in the landscape of evangelicalism is more and more people seem to be, maybe I�m just, I�m getting out more.

I don�t think I am. I think I�m on social media less, but there�s more wolfish talk. There�s more talk like a wolf. Now normally I think of wolves devouring the sheep, but there�s another kind of satanic strategy.

Remember, Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, and Satan takes God�s word and actually quotes it. He misquotes it. He partially quotes it. He says the quote comes from not a generous father, but from a despot who withholds good things.

There�s a lot of strategies, and Satan�s good at this. It�s called �wiles� in Ephesians 6. It�s called �methodists. He�s a first Methodist. He has these methods, and for us, we�re trying to live our life, and we begin to recognize the methods of Satan, but for Satan, he�s had a lot of people to practice on his methods, and so he�s fine-tuned with his methods of how to deceive people, how to tempt people, how to corrupt people, and how to do that with humans.

What I�ve seen now in evangelicalism, I don�t know anybody�s status before God. I don�t know if they�re really saved or not. How would I know? But the way people are talking these days at the big institutions, at the big �evil level so many of them, and you make the caveat, �Yeah, not all of them, okay but so many of them, they�re trying to move the playing field over to the left.

I don�t mean politically, although that�s true, right? You say, �Well, Big Eve, a gospel coalition, they�re trying to do everything they can in 2020, 2019, 2018, leading up to the election in 2020, to get people to say, �You know what?

They�d never say, �Vote for Joe Biden but they�re trying to do everything they can to get you to do that. It�s just this kind of subtle shift where they�re, �Oh, you know, let�s talk about not just the rights of people in the womb, but outside the womb, and this holistic thing, and just the way people talk.

It�s amazing to me. So forget the politics for a second. Theologically that�s happening too, where it�s just this wolfishness. I don�t know if people are wolves or not, but they�re at least deceived, and at least they are naive.

I don�t even think that, because at the top level, people know. It�s one thing for a person who�s newly Christian to be naive. It�s another thing to go, �You know what? You don�t get to be the top of places, and well-known, and on blogs, and published by these folks, when you don�t know, because you do know.

And this shift to, �Well, you know what? Sin is simply making good things ultimate. No, it�s not. Sin is unbelief, lawlessness, then manifest in, yes, idolatry. That�s true. Then you just start kind of moving the needle.

�Well, you know, hell. Yeah, I know the Bible talks about hell, but it�s kind of like C .S. Lewis. Hell�s locked from the inside, and you don�t want God, you�re not going to get God. And then they just ignore all the passages about Jesus saying people are thrown into hell, cast in, thrown in.

Like, �Well, you know, yeah, when it comes to homosexuality and other things, well, you know, I�m not really the judge of, like, who goes to heaven and who�s not. That�s above my pay grade. And yeah, there are a lot of other sins, and homosexuality, you know, every sin damns.

And just there�s this talk, there�s this shifting, there�s this movement over the years where you go, �Hmm, how are we going to be talking in five years and ten years Whether they�re wolves or not, it�s wolfish.

When I was growing up, I had a friend, and his dad called him �wolf. Except he was from Nebraska, so he said, �Wolf. Like, is that what a dog says? Is that what a wolf is? What�s a wolf? Why would you call your son Mark �wolf

I don�t know. Interesting. Well, back to the quote, �It�s madness for sheep to talk peace with the wolf. Will that have anything to do with what I just said? Not really, but I was just thinking about wolfish behavior in evangelicalism, that people are like, �You know what?

It�s not this instant devouring, but it�s questioning. It�s the skeptical thing. It�s the hermeneutics of humility and the hermeneutics of skepticism. And I think at the very end of the day, it�s a hermeneutic of, �I�d like to be accepted in the greater world.

And if you just, you know, if I tell you I�m a six-day creationist or something like that, you�re going to think I�m troglodytish and just weird. Anyway, my name�s Mike Cavencroft, No Compromise Radio.

The Bible, Christ, and the Problem of Wolfish Evangelicalism

What do we have here? Next, �A man who loves his wife will love her letters and her photographs because they speak to him of her. So if we love the Lord Jesus, we shall love the Bible because it speaks to us of him.

Who said that? John Scott, of all people. That�s pretty interesting, right? Do you worship the Bible? Do you love the Bible? Do you read the Bible? Well, one of the things we know for certain is the Bible speaks of the Lord Jesus.

Our Lord said that. You should be reading the Bible, the Old Testament too, as a Christian book. And you should say to yourself, �Of course, right But the whole time I�m reading the love letter, I�m thinking about her, right?

That�s exactly right. All right, we�re going to do a couple more and then the show is going to be over. �There is not a man who knows the hundredth part of his own sin. Whew! John Calvin. That�s true.

That�s true. That hurts, though, doesn�t it? That hurts. I don�t like that. All right. Mike Cavencroft, No Compromise Radio. Anonymous. �He who sings his own praise is usually off-key. And probably just a couple more.

Who knows? Hey, you get what you pay for. Oh, of course! Of course! I knew I was going to find this and I�d randomly just look down the page. A Richard Baxter quote, �Laziness breeds a love of amusement.

You ought not to be reading Richard Baxter unless you�re doing it in a critique mode. If you can�t get justification by faith right, if you can�t understand and teach sola fide, if you�re so influenced by crazy people who call themselves Christians and are licentious so you have to adjust sola fide to include some type of work, some type of forsaking, some type of extra law-keeping, some type of surrendering sins in order to come to Christ, and you�ve got a lot of sins that you have to be surrendering in order to even call yourself a Christian.

Because the evidence of Christianity with people like Baxter, he determines how much sanctification the Spirit of God has done in your life and you respond with holy living. He�s the arbiter. He�s the one that says, �How much?

How much do you have to desire God? Well, as much as a celebrity Christian tells you, you have to. And here we have Richard Baxter saying, �Laziness breeds a love of amusement. Okay, in and of itself, I mean, it�s just a quip, right?

Okay, you�re lazy and then you want to just be amused, right? Mused to think, put an alpha privative A in front of it, A, mused not to think. If you�re lazy, you don�t want to think. Okay, right. That�s what you want to do.

Amuse yourselves to death, right? Who wrote the book? New York University. How can I not remember that? COVID really has affected my mind. I�m sure age has too. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.

You have to read that book. It�s just one of the most compelling books that I�ve read in the last 30 years. Not top 10 worthy, but close. Okay, but the whole laziness thing, right? There is an issue that goes on in Christianity called justification by faith alone.

And there is sanctification. Did you know sanctification by faith? Did you know that�s true? Is sanctification by faith? To what degree is sanctification by faith? Do you believe God is conforming you to the image of Christ?

Can you see it? Well, yeah, some of the evidence isn�t approved, but can you see it actually happening? No. Do you believe that it�s true? Do you think He is doing that? I hope you say yes. That�s sanctification by faith.

I know what God is doing. I can take Him at His word. He is sanctifying me. Anyway, is God the Son praying for you? Can you see that? Well, of course He�s praying for you, and we believe it. That�s sanctification by faith.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.