Hot Cross Buns

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.

Wisdom Teeth, Medical Costs, and the Limits of What We Spend

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and it has been a couple weeks since we�ve done the NoCo Facebook Live simulcast, recording a show here in the beautiful studios of downtown Burbank.

Strike that. The West Boylston. It�s, I think, 50 today. Kind of gloomy out, but I heard it�s going to be 70 tomorrow, Kelvin. Maybe that�s the favorite temperature measuring device for Calvinists is Kelvin, right?

Kelvin, Calvinists, Fahrenheit, Centigrade, what�s that 9 5ths times something minus 32? I can never remember, so that�s why we have Google. You can write me, Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com, and you go to the website and search all kinds of things.

Let�s see what happened to me interestingly today. I took my daughter to go get her wisdom teeth cut out, and it�s kind of fascinating, isn�t it? You see the real people come out when they�re under sedation.

In other words, I won�t tell you which one of my kids was kind of rebellious, and I said to him, �That�s my only kid that�s a boy. I said, �Luke, you�d be an obnoxious drunk, right? Some people just get nice and friendly.

You kind of got testy. I had to tell you to get in the car. He kept telling me, �I can drive, Chad. I can drive. I can drive Yeah, I know you can drive right into the lake is what you could do, but my daughter went today, and she was compliant.

I went to the pharmacy to get the medicine and the pills and pain pills and mouthwash and all that stuff. My wife stayed in the car with her, and when I got back, I said, �How�s it going She said, �Boring.

So I�ve got some work done today. I at least have an iPad with me and my iPhone so I can get some work done, but I wanted to be there for my last kid for the wisdom teeth extraction. My doctor when I got my wisdom teeth out was called, his name was Dr. Vap, V-A-P.

When I moved to Worcester, my dentist was named Dr. Harm, H-A-R-M. He wisely called his dentistry Harm-less, Harmless Dentistry. Thinking about these kind of things, I mean, whatever it costs to get things done with a kid, for medical or family members, there�s no debtor�s prison, so we just get it done.

I remember my father was very tight with money, but when it comes to healthcare, he was very generous and liberal, and that�s the way it should be. If you have a dog and you ask yourself the question, �Is there a limit

Is there a set price that I wouldn�t go past to get my dog fixed? For most people, I mean, the people that I know, the sane people, there is a number. They�re not really sure what the number is, but let�s say the number is, is it 20 ,000?

Would you spend 20 ,000 to get your dog heart surgery, for instance, or cancer removed? Would you spend 5 ,000? Would it be a couple thousand? I guess it�s relative to how old the dog is, right? If the dog�s a year old, maybe you spend more money than if the dog is 14 years old.

There�s a limit, right? With children, there�s no limit. With animals, dogs, cats, whichever, you know, guinea pigs, there�s a limit. You pay anything for your child, and it made me think about salvation.

If there was a price to be paid to get your sins cleansed, what would you do to get that money to pay that? What would you pay to have access to God, that is, His kindness and His generosity, access to God with a mediator?

I�m not saying access to God with His judgment and wrath. As you know, on this radio show, I�ve said many times, and in the pulpit as well, all religions lead to God. They just lead to His judgment, right?

You have a, you know, it�s incoming. You�re going to go there sooner or later, right? It�s appointed for man once to die, and then judgment. And it was John Bunyan who said, it wasn�t Paul Bunyan and his ox babe, but it was John Bunyan who said, through his character Christian, of that verse in Hebrews, it�s appointed for man once to die, and then the judgment.

The once to die part, he said, I don�t want to do that, right? I don�t want to die. And then regarding the judgment, he said, and I can�t do that. I�m not willing to do the first, and I�m not able to do the second.

And that�s why on this show we talk a lot about the Lord Jesus, because He was willing to do the first, and He was able to do the second. He was willing to go die for other people. He didn�t deserve death.

And then He was able to assuage God�s wrath and to make satisfaction for all those who had put their faith in Christ Jesus. And today we want to talk about Hebrews and the great high priest. And because of his work, you don�t have to go to hell.

I think that�s pretty good news. You don�t have to go to hell. How much money would people pay? What would people do who are in hell now, awaiting the lake of fire? What would they do to try to get out?

How much would they pay? Is there a price? And of course, one moment there, they�re going to realize what a tragic mistake they�ve made in life when it comes to not having their sins forgiven. Hebrews has 13 chapters, and it�s not really a book that�s got a lot of how-tos, right?

You get to chapter 13, and it says things about being content with what you have, and don�t love money, and the marriage bed is undefiled, and look up to your leaders, and obey your leaders. There are things like that, of course.

But sprinkle throughout Hebrews with those warning passages. If you take the warning passages out in chapter 13, the whole thing for application is thinking rightly, not doing. And don�t you think, listeners?

Don�t you think, viewers, that that�s a big problem that we have? We want to do, and we don�t really want to think. Maybe it�s easier to do. Maybe we can gauge. We did that. We�re okay. We self-righteously check the box and click the okay on that.

But thinking, it all has to do with thinking. And for the writer of Hebrews, he wants you to think about priesthood, sanctuary, and sacrifice. Priesthood, sanctuary, and sacrifice. And what you can do is you can think of, like, you know, you got the PS, postscript.

Remember, sometimes you do the PSS? I don�t know if there�s a PSSS, but if you write me and tell me that there is, this show will have played, you know, months from now, so I won�t really remember that you said that.

Although maybe somebody can tell me on Facebook Live. PSSS, postscript, script? Or is it, shouldn�t it be PPS, post-postscript, right? After the afterscript. Regardless, see, I didn�t say regardless.

Regardless, priesthood, sanctuary, and sacrifice. Now, the Jews, they had a priesthood. It wasn�t that good. It had a built-in obsolescence factor. And the priesthood, the sanctuary, heavenly sanctuaries are better than earthly sanctuaries, are they not?

And the Jews had which? They had the earthly. And then the sacrifice. Repeated sacrifices, once-for-all sacrifice, which one�s better? And we know the answer to that. So, if you think about what the Jews were dealing with and what this writer is trying to get you to think through the lens of, and that is the high priest who has a better priesthood, Jesus is a better priest, a better sanctuary, heavenly sanctuary, and a better sacrifice, once-for-all.

Knowing that, why go back? Now, for our listeners and for our viewers today, maybe you didn�t come out of Judaism. Wherever you came out of, whatever you came out of, whenever you came out of, whichever you came out of, you�re going to say to yourself, at times, most likely, was that a good decision to make?

I mean, it�s cost me my family. It�s cost me my job. It�s cost me this side or the other. I like the smells. I like the bells. I like the incense. I like the Latin. I mean, whatever it might be. And you might be tempted to go back.

Life, contrary to the false teachers, to the word-faith people, life gets more difficult when you�re a Christian, right? We have, in terms of Satan already having us when we were in the world, now I think he�s after us.

It reminds me of that story with the kid riding on the wagon with a couple of others, buddies in the Wild West. And the boys were making fun of the Christian young man. And they said, you know, if Satan were to come now, would he go after you or would he go after us?

And the Christian boy responded quickly. He said, well, of course Satan would go after me because he�s already got you. And there�s a lot of truth to that. Christianity is difficult, right? You have to kind of, not kind of, but you have to count the cost before you follow Christ because you�ve got to weigh this out.

Of course, you get so much more than you have to give up, right? And you have forgiveness and you have reconciliation and you have the hope of eternal life and you have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

You have union with Christ. I mean, the list could go on and on and on and on, right? But there are things that happen to you. And that�s why 1 Peter 4, don�t be surprised when you enter into these trials.

James 1, count it all joy, my brethren. You�re going to receive more trials. So, you might be tempted to go back. And the great part about it is whether you come from a Judistic background, whether you come from any other kind of background, it behooves you not to go back when you�ve got such a great priest and such a great sanctuary and such a great sacrifice for you.

Why go back? What the writer wants you to do in the book of Hebrews is to keep believing, right? That�s why there�s not a lot of doing in this book. He wants you to keep believing. Now, if I wanted to be really corny, I�d say don�t stop believing.

But since I don�t like that band, I won�t say that very often. I did see Journey once. Van Halen opened for Journey, and Van Halen was new at the time. We loved them. And then Journey came on and we didn�t like them, so we left.

I think we left after a couple songs. The writer wants you to keep believing. Now, if you haven�t believed, he wants you to believe for the first time. But he wants you to keep believing. Now, let�s think about this for a second.

This is kind of my main point for the show today. Since God is perfect, I think our listeners would understand that He is. God requires, He requires perfection. That is why we need saviors, right? We need the Savior.

We�re not perfect and we can�t offer anything perfect. There are people that think you�re justified strictly by your faith. Now, if I say the just shall live by faith, that�s shorthand because faith has an object.

If you want to be justified sheerly by your faith, and I don�t mean faith and trusting in who Jesus is, then your faith better be perfect because God only accepts perfection, right? So, if you think you�re going to be justified like the Arminians would believe, that it�s your faith in and of itself that justifies, not faith in the perfect Savior who perfectly kept the law and who died for my law breaking and was raised from the dead.

If it�s just faith itself, what you have, then it�s got to be perfect. Listen to Horatius Bonar, B-O-N-A-R, and you�re going to really like what he says. And by the way, most of his stuff online, or there�s a lot of his stuff that you can just type in for free, Everlasting Righteousness is free and other things.

Very insightful. Yet only by perfection can we be saved. Okay, Matthew 5, 48, right? So far, so good. Either our own or another�s. That which is imperfect cannot justify, and an imperfect faith could not in any sense be a righteousness.

If it is to justify, it must be perfect. It must be like the lamb without blemish and without spot. An imperfect faith may connect us with the perfection of another, but it cannot of itself do aught for us, either in protecting us from wrath or securing the divine acquittal.

All faith here is imperfect, and our security is this, that it matters not how poor or weak our faith may be, if it touches the perfect one, all is well. Did you get that? That is great news. If you�ve got a weak faith, if you�ve got a faith that falters, if you�ve got a faith that fails sometimes and, I don�t know, doubts or says, �Lord, I have some unbelief.

Help my unbelief. Then, if you�re trusting in the object who�s perfect, the perfect sacrifice, the perfect priest, and the perfect sanctuary, then you�re fine. Isn�t that good? Your faith doesn�t have to be perfect.

The object of your faith, He, is perfect. Horatius goes on to say, �The slightest imperfection in our faith, if faith were our righteousness, would be fatal to every hope. But the imperfection of our faith, however great, if faith be but the approximation or contact between us and the fullness of the substitute, is no hindrance to our participation of His righteousness.

That is great, great news. An imperfect faith in a perfect high priest is saving. Hebrews 11, 6, �Without faith, it is impossible to please Him. Well, how much faith? How good is the faith? How righteous must the faith be?

How faultless must the faith be? How, I was going to try to say faltering. The faith that you have must not be faltering. If you�re going to get to heaven by your faith, something you have and you do, then it�s impossible because that has to be perfect.

And nothing we can do is perfect because of Adam�s sin, and then consequently our own sin nature. Without perfect faith, it�s impossible to please Him? No, that�s not what it says. Without faith. So, we have a weak faith.

And you can imagine these people here who received the letter of Hebrews. They�re suffering. They�re getting persecuted. They�re losing their homes. They�re breaking their pencils. How did that happen?

This Stadler pencil from Germany, I think it�s one of my favorite companies. It used to be, at least. This is not any good. �Without faith, it�s impossible to please Him. Anyway, that�s what we�re doing.

By the way, I just got in the mail the other day. Something that says, �To Reverend Abendroth. See that right there? �Dear Reverend. It was nice. This person�s name is Chris Lawson. I don�t know if that�s Chris female or Chris male.

Spiritual Research Network, and it�s got a bunch of quotes from the Jesus Calling series. Striking similarities between God Calling and Jesus Calling series. And most of the time, I get self-published things.

They�re pretty, I think the French would say, �garbage. But actually, there�s some good stuff in here, and I appreciate that. So, not everything that�s self-published is bad. So, today on No Compromise Radio, we�re talking about faith in the right object.

That is why, Christian, you can struggle, and you can have ups and downs, and still be trusting in the one who did not have any faults. Still does not have any faults. The perfect object of your faith.

That is what the reader must respond with. �Lord, I�m still trusting. �Lord, you�re still the perfect one. And that is the book of Hebrews. Now, in Hebrews chapter 9, he, the writer, has been showing all kinds of things back in the tabernacle that should make you think of this perfect priest in a perfect sanctuary, who�s given the perfect sacrifice.

P-S-S. So far, nobody�s told me here online what the P-S-S is. Post-script script? Post-sermon script? What about Easter? What about Easter�s coming up? What are you going to do for Easter? Uh, Easter lilies?

Do you guys have Easter lilies? Are there, do they represent anything? Remember one time I was preaching, and we had Easter lilies up in the front. We stopped doing Easter lilies up at the front because somebody was allergic to them and almost had some kind of seizure or something.

But there were some flowers up front, and I was preaching, and I get fairly animated when I preach. My pride is thinking, you know, how could anybody fall asleep when I�m preaching, because I really try to get into it.

Uh, you know what? If you slice them in half and toast them and put some butter on there, you are styling. Anyway, I could watch the bug slowly fly around, and then I could not stop it, and in the mouth it goes.

And, you know, I guess I was glad I rode the motorcycle when I was younger, because you get a lot of bugs in your mouth when you�re riding a motorcycle. And sometimes I�d think to myself, hmm, that one kind of tastes like celery.

I don�t think the Easter lily bug tasted like celery, but anyway, I could just see it coming. There�s nothing I could do to stop that. I try not to preach, you know, all the hallmark holidays, but certainly Resurrection Sunday isn�t a hallmark holiday.

So I�ll probably, I think right now I�m going to do every resurrection in the Bible, and there are not that many, especially if you think everything up into Jesus. Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this?

Are you ready for this? Everything up to Jesus is not really a resurrection. Now, sometimes they call them resuscitation, although I don�t really like that. These people were dead, and they came back to life.

But did they get a resurrected body? That�s the question. We�ll end up with Mark chapter 16 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15 for the first fruits of the resurrection. I wonder who made hot cross buns at the very beginning.

How did that all work out? And how did they get the name? H .C .B. Hot Cross Buns. Probably some churches in the area, they�ll do what, you know, they like to do regularly is no sermons, and then they just have plays and skits and stuff like that.

Somebody came to our church the other day, and they didn�t go to their church. They came here to worship with us because their church was having a skit instead of preaching. Maybe they could have a skit about preaching.

Maybe that would work out all right. How does that work out? Here�s my question. I hope these people aren�t listening. How many times do you, how many sermons get excised and then they have like plays?

We�re talking about Sunday morning, right? I don�t care if you have a play on a Friday night or Saturday night or whenever, but we�re not going to have preaching on the Lord�s Day. Yeah, I know it�s regulated by worship and all that stuff, and I know God commands it, but we�re going to have a skit because maybe that will preach.

How many times does that have to happen at your church before you look elsewhere? That�s probably a good question on No Compromise Radio. Anyway, Hebrews chapter 9, he�s talking about all these symbols, and these symbols remind him and the reader of what was to come, greater, right?

And so, if I look at the passage, where is the passage here? Hebrews 9, 1. We talk about tents, and you can think about the ultimate tent, right? And Jesus tabernacled among us, John chapter 1, verse 14.

You think of shadows and substance. You think of signs, and you�re there. He talks about lampstands, and Jesus says he�s the fire of the drama team, I know. Out of everything that Steve Lawson has said, Steve and I have spent some time together over the years, I think my favorite Steve Lawson quote is he likes to ask the question, what�s the difference between preaching and teaching?

And people him and ha, and him and ha, and her and him, what�s the difference? And then he says, in his Steve Lawson style, if you have to ask that question, you�ve never heard preaching. Isn�t that good?

That�s good. That�s worth it. Over here, I have a little life cycle. Let�s see if I can show it. See the life cycle? And I sit there on the life cycle and study and make phone calls and stuff like that.

One time Steve called me, I was on the life cycle, and I was trying not to breathe hard. He was actually asking me questions and advice that I knew something about. I was like, I can�t get off the bike.

I�m trying to burn calories here in the study. When you think of the lampstand, I�m the light of the world. When you think of the showbread of the presence, the presence of the showbread and God�s presence with the people, right?

Emmanuel. The curtain. And of course, when the curtain was ripped from top to bottom when Jesus died. What else is here? The manna. John chapter 6, I�m the bread of life. Aaron�s staff. Remember, out of those 12 staffs that were there, God had Aaron�s have the buds.

So that would mean Aaron was the high priest, God�s choice for high priest when these other rebels were coming along. Hebrews chapter 5 talks about God�s choice for high priest is the Lord Jesus. He, Jesus, didn�t make himself high priest.

You�ve got the tablets, the Ten Commandments in the Ark of the Covenant, and a man is supposed to keep those, and he doesn�t. But Jesus, of course, perfectly kept the law. All those things are going on.

And then the Ark of the Covenant with the mercy seat. I wanted to talk about that today, but I think it got off track when Mark was talking about hot cross buns. What comes to my mind is what do the Satanists do when they try to rip us off, right?

Hot pentagram buns. It just doesn�t seem to sound that good. That is awful. What do they do? That costs more icing, right? You�ve got to have more icing for that. Anyway, the Ark of the Covenant with the mercy seat.

You can begin to think of the Lord Jesus. Terry Fled says, �Hey, Joe. By the way, Terry, I did a show the other day in light of a letter that you sent me, and I don�t know when it�s going to play. Maybe it has, but you�re my definitely most second favorite Ohio listener.

And by the way, I�m going to be in Ohio coming up in May. I�m going to be in Beloit, Ohio. I don�t know where it is. Arlington, south of Cleveland, one hour. And we�re going to do a special series on hot cross buns.

Anyway, I�m going to stop this show now. I�m going to be back for your Facebook people. I�m going to be back in, as Chuck Woolery would say, two and two.

Announcer No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth 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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.