Stop Defending the Bible (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

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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.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

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I'm purposely not going to touch the microphone today. And of course, when we start on the regular show, once in a while on Fridays, we do the

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No Co -Private Gnostic Group Live on Facebook. I don't know about you, but I'm ready to celebrate for Thanksgiving.

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I just was talking to Luke for a few minutes. That's why I'm delayed. And we were talking about how people end up taking the law of God and turn it into law light.

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Right? You've got James chapter 1, Count it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

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Remember that verse? I heard one guy preach it and they said, this is a test of saving faith.

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This is somebody here locally and well, in the

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New England area, at least. And he said, well, if you ever fail to count it joy, maybe you're not a

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Christian. Okay.

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So did you see what I did there? Not with this, but did you see what I did there? If you don't live up to this command, you're not a

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Christian. That's an indicative. That's a statement. It's no longer law.

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It's no longer a command. It's no longer a Greek imperative present tense. It's a statement.

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We want to count it all joy, and we should be convicted when we don't count it all joy. We have every reason to count it all joy with the risen

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Savior who lived for us, died for our sins and was raised from the dead and has promised he's coming back for us.

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I have the hope of heaven, forgiveness, eternal life. But if you don't perfectly obey this, you might not be a

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Christian. Then who is? So you take law and you either turn it into a fact, don't call yourself a

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Christian, or essentially you turn it into law light. Law light would be, you know what,

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I pretty much do it, at least externally, so I'm okay.

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If you preach law without giving people any good news, any gospel, any grace from the

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Lord Jesus, grace incarnate, two things are going to happen, despair because people, some tell the truth about themselves, believe the truth about themselves, or the other would be self -righteousness.

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That's my tact, right? I just think, oh yeah, I in fact do that. Anyway, my name's

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Mike Cavendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry, and I don't know why we have these lights going on and off, but it's sure bugging me, sure bugging me.

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That's a better color that I have than this is like screaming white lights. We're talking about evangelism and how we as Christians all too often defend the

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Bible, or think we have to defend the Bible. We have to stand up for the

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Bible, stick up for the Bible, and we then scurry around and we buy

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Josh McDowell books, evidence that demands a verdict, and I've got to figure out all kinds of,

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I don't know, manuscript dating, Alexandrian texts, Byzantine texts, fragmentary hypothesis, is that right or wrong?

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What about J -E -P -Q? What am I going to do when somebody asks me about carbon dating?

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What am I going to do about young earth? What am I going to do about, well, I don't have my can handbook about answers in Genesis.

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What do I do? So I want to encourage you, Christian, it's okay.

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All you have to do is what the Bible says. And the first thing that we were talking about last time, which

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I'll expand upon now so that you don't defend the Bible, you proclaim it instead.

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Number one, I want you to give people what they don't want. They want carbon dating.

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They want, well, look at these differences of manuscripts in 1 John 5, verses 7 and 8.

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They want to tell you, well, Bart Ehrman said such and such. They want to say, I saw a CBS video on something about the

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Red Sea and it couldn't happen. They're going to tell you to do all these things, and they're going to demand these things from you.

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And by the way, I just don't want you to give those to them. Listen to what 1 Corinthians 1 says. Jews demand signs.

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Greeks seek wisdom. They demand things. They seek things. But we preach

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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and a folly to Gentiles. That's crazy.

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By the way, I need Ben here in my studio because these lights up here, they're not working.

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I've just turned charismatic. I've just turned charismatic. What would you do if you came into BBC and saw me doing this?

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I know people want carbon dating, and they want to see manuscript evidence, and they want to have some kind of factual proof.

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But Paul said, no, I'm going to give them the opposite. But we preach Christ crucified.

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Cut the lights. Okay. I'll cut off the light right now. Hold on. I just do what

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Ben tells me to do. Oh, Ben. See? That's why I need Ben. Now you can't even tell which one of those up there is actually the light.

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Okay. But I'm going to have to speed up the show because it's going to be dark out. It gets dark here at, what, 3 .30

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in the afternoon? Crazy. I know people want to have all these discussions because maybe they could say, well, you know what?

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What about polyester? What about homosexuality? What about Leviticus? What about this? What about that? And they've been taught a few things at secular colleges on what to say.

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But that's not what we do. We give them what they don't want. So the first thing I want to remind you is to give people what they don't want.

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And that is a Messiah crucified on a tree. Now, it'd be one thing if it says we preach Jesus crucified.

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Jesus is human name. Jesus was truly human. But when the text says we preach

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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, this is

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Christ the Messiah. This is the anointed one in the Old Testament. The king, the prophet, the priest, he's going to come and rescue us.

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And now we're under the thumb of Rome. Oh, finally, at last, the Messiah will rescue us.

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And now he's either naked or essentially naked up on a tree. Can't even save himself.

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I thought, this is what they're going to be thinking. I thought that Messiahs have no place on a tree.

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They're supposed to be sitting on a throne. I thought you put criminals up on crosses.

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I thought crosses were for shameful, cruel criminals who need to be expunged from society.

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I thought crosses were to put deplorable people there. Sorry, every time I say the word deplorable people, now

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I think of deplorables. Maybe some people think deplorables should be put up on crosses as well.

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Hardened incorrigibles, that's who we put up on crosses. And you mean to tell me that there's a Messiah? That's the centerpiece of your religion?

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That cross that you wear around your neck, that's what you're telling me? There's the Messiah on the cross?

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That's true. That's exactly what I'm telling you. And you know what's going through their mind. They can't even talk about a death penalty.

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Most people today have been so brainwashed to think several things in society, including no more death penalty.

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What if we got it wrong? What about this? What about that? And they don't have any clue about the unmitigated wrath of God on Jesus, the

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Messiah, for the people he came to save. And this was called capital punishment.

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This was an execution. And of course we think Pilate did it, we think the

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Jews did it, we think the Gentile soldiers did it, and we think we did it, but of course we know when it comes to the wrath of God assuaged, placated, exhausted by the

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Son, the Father extinguishing the wrath of God, that we deserved.

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He didn't deserve it. He didn't sin. He was blameless. He was undefiled. Everything about this cross, the more you think about it, and not some kind of ornament, the more you think about it, it's what

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Nietzsche said. This is the metaphysics of a hangman. From our perspective, this is stupid, foolish, weak.

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It doesn't make any sense at all. That's why when we begin to evangelize people, you're going to want to get probably into carbon dating, but you're not supposed to.

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You're supposed to talk about who Jesus is. I'm not saying you can't talk about the law in order to get them to their need for Jesus.

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That's not my point, but there's this Messiah that was crucified, and I know we're not supposed to talk about this in polite company.

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If you were back in those days and you were taking your children through a walk and you were going from Jerusalem to Bethany or Jerusalem to someplace or someplace to go throw your trash away, and you saw a bunch of crucified people, you'd say, hey, kids, don't look.

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You're going to have to trust your daddy. Don't look over there. You probably wouldn't even take them outside the city gates because you wouldn't want to see all these people speckled throughout

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Israel, outside of the Jerusalem walls, shamefully, embarrassingly crucified, because you would look at those people and you would go, they deserved it.

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The only reason you get this kind of death is you deserve it. Years ago, 1995,

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Bill Hybels, who was at Willow Creek, and of course, that's all exploded. Have you ever noticed, by the way, just a little side note here on No Compromise Radio.

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Celebrity Christianity, I think, is dead. Long live Celebrity Christianity.

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No. It couldn't have happened at a more opportune time. Lots of things are dead in society.

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Free speech, right to assemble, Thanksgiving dinners.

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But what's going on with Celebrity Christianity, and it doesn't take you very long to just walk through the celebrities that have just totally tanked with critical race theory, with personal scandals of sex, personal scandals of money, and the list goes on and on and on.

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Willow Creek is one of those cases in point, and of course, Christianity is not meant to have celebrities, right?

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You look at Paul, and you look at Apollos, and you look at Peter, and you look at those people and you're like, I think they're all pointing to somebody else instead.

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But in 1995, Bill Heibles was interviewed on television by Peter Jennings, remember

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Peter Jennings, and Jennings asked, you didn't think it was even important to have one cross in your sanctuary?

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Heibles, what do you think he'd say? What would you say? Is it important to have a cross in a sanctuary?

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Okay, there can be all kinds of arguments, and do you want Jesus on it, do you want him not on it? Is he resurrected, do you want to talk about a crucified messiah, do you use second commandment violations, we're renting a building so we can't put anything up,

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I mean, okay, fine. But what are the symbols of Christianity? And I know you raise your hand, you think paper, that is a

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Bible, water for baptism, grape juice, wine, and bread.

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You say, well, you know what, there's a cross in our church. And Peter Jennings asked the question,

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Heibles responded, quote, we're very serious about what Christ did on the cross, but to capture the essence of Christianity in a single symbol is a little dangerous, we feel.

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Dude, end quote. And of course, in a seeker -sensitive deal,

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I mean, think about it, just think about Passover for a second, all the blood, think about priests, all the blood, and when you've got blood and it's hot, and you've got flies, and you've got drainage systems, and you've got drainage system issues, and you've got white linen ephods on as priests, and knives that aren't sharpened by Ginsu, I mean, this is a bloody mess, right?

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The life is in the blood, the wages of sin is death, and the soul that sins will surely die.

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And it's either going to be you or a sacrifice, and in the Old Testament, we see sacrifices of goats and sacrifices of sheep, right?

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We see sacrificial animals in place of, instead of, in lieu of, and then now we have the

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Lord Jesus, the Passover lamb, behold the lamb of God, the precious blood that Jesus spills in a substitutionary way, dying on the cross, and of course,

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God raises him from the dead. I mean, it'd be one thing if you thought, well, you know what,

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Jesus died a martyr. I think most people would say, I commend that, hey, cheers, he died a martyr, we like martyrs' deaths, we think that's pretty good.

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But he didn't just die as a martyr, he didn't die as a martyr, period, paragraph, he died because we were sinful people, and the only way to have us reconcile to God, praise be to the

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Lord, is he had to go do this. It strikes against us because then we have to take the deep gulp and go, you know what,

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I deserve that. And it's true, the three people watching, myself and anybody else who watches this or listens to this, your sins,

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I'm going to include mine, our sins, were so grievous, not just somehow spitting in the face of a king, but so atrocious, so repugnant, so appalling were our sins, grotesque, everything about God is holy and our sins are unholy.

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God and his attributes and we do ungodly things, act unlike God, ungodly.

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We deserve to be punished, on a cross, naked, forever.

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You're like, how could a sin on earth, temporal sin, cause all that? Well, the answer is, it's the one we're sinning against, and his office and his character and his essence.

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I know it's hard to comprehend, but that's the answer, and it's a logical answer. If you kill me or you kill a government official, it's both image bearers, but it's the object that you killed, that's more valuable or highly esteemed or higher function.

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I mean, what's the difference, you kill a dog or you kill me? Well, you say, well, I'm an image bearer, therefore it's worse, right?

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We don't execute people at all anymore, but not for dogs, you're killing dogs,

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I mean, you make them not play NFL football for a few years. By the way, I don't commend what

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Vic did, obviously, but people pay their restitution and then they should be back in society with open arms, but you can murder 10 ,000 babies and be applauded, and you can kill some dogs, and again,

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I love dogs, but it's crazy. We take a cross and we sing the old rugged cross, and we have some sentimentalized, heartfelt attraction to the idea of the cross, because that's where our

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Savior redeemed us, right? That's the culmination of his lifelong obedience, where he's obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, but to understand that this is an execution, what if I were to say to you, people think that you believe you're right with God, right in God's eyes, because Jesus was thrown into a snake pit and then killed on your behalf.

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You deserve to go to a snake pit, but he got thrown in there instead. What if I were to tell you, you know what, your crimes are so bad against humanity that you should be executed by the form of Ling Chi, which is slow slicing, a lingering death, the death of a thousand cuts, but you know what,

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Jesus loves you so much, he went and he had a death of a thousand cuts in your place for you.

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I mean, it just sounds weird. South Africa, sometimes they necklace people, right?

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They put tires over the person and over their shoulders and light them on fire, and that gasoline infused tire lit causes all kinds of damage.

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For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son, and that son came, and you deserve to be necklaced, but Jesus had the necklace put on him and the gas and the torch went up and he turned into this melted bloody mess, that you deserve to do that, but he took that instead.

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They used to kill people back in Southeast Asia with elephants, and they could train elephants to execute people, and they could either prolong the execution, or they could make it instantly, and they could have the elephant put its foot on your head for the slow crush, excruciatingly painful, or they could just have the elephant quickly crush you.

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So, your sins are so bad that Jesus had to come and have his head crushed by an elephant, and if you just simply trust in Jesus because he had his head crushed by an elephant that you deserved, you get to go to heaven.

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Now, I want you to know, that sounds weird, sounds dumb, sounds blasphemous,

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I don't even really like to say it, but the point that I'm trying to make is simple. What's the difference between those weird forms of execution that only the human mind could come up with to try to figure out how to torture people and how to give them cement shoes and throw them in the

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Hudson River, or the guillotine, or any other thing, brazen bull, there's all kinds of ways to kill people.

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But here we have something that is in this category, at least of capital punishment, and in this category of revulsion and revolting against all proper sensitivities, and yes, tied into Deuteronomy chapter 21,

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I believe, about death, lifted up, being lifted up. The ground's not worthy for you to be on it because you're such a criminal.

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And so we go around and we tell people this very thing, and the more postmodern environment we live in, the weirder this all sounds.

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And you can just watch their minds, you know, if you said Jesus was a good teacher, okay, great, they like good teachers.

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Jesus was a moral example. He was a good teacher. He was a perfect moral example.

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He actually is the only person who lived the gospel, right? But if you say he was a sin bearer for sinners like you, then everything goes haywire.

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It's much easier to talk about carbon dating. It's much easier to talk about Michael Behe's Darwin's black box and irreducible minimums, and if your blood is any thicker, it doesn't pump through the heart.

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If it's any thinner, you cut and bleed out. How could evolution figure that all out? That's all true. That has nothing to do with talking about good news.

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In fact, you did deserve to be up on that cross forever, in eternity, suffering under the wrath of God.

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But there's a free offer of the gospel because God loves sinners. God justifies the ungodly.

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The Lord Jesus has a tender heart, a compassionate heart, and it is his nature to rescue.

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God loves to save sinners. The triune God, the Father loves, the Father sends the Son who loves, and then the

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Spirit of God who loves applies the work of the Son. Where is the wise man?

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First Corinthians 1 .20. Where's the scribe? Where's the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

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You give me every professional expert. That's who these people are in First Corinthians 1 .20.

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Give me all the experts, and let's line them up and let them watch. In the old days, you could probably still do it now.

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If somebody that you knew got murdered, you could sit in and watch the punishment. You could sit there and watch them get gassed or lethal injection or something, and there'd be reporters in there too, or there's death by firing squad, and you could watch, and the reporters would be there, and the doctors would be there, and everything's all this sterile environment and all this stuff.

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What if we had instead of reporters and family members who are wanting revenge on a cruel death, what if we just brought in the experts?

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We bring in the wise person, the scribe, and the debater. These are the people that are the wisest in the world.

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It's like you bring in the magicians, the magi kind of wise people. They're the ones that say, this is, they're kind of the philosophers.

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Here's how you look at life and death. They'll teach you that. Scribes, they knew the Bible, right?

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What do the Old Testament people say about this? Smart people when it comes to the Bible, and then what about the debater?

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What about the people that figure out every possible intellectual cognitive ploy to figure this whole thing out?

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What would they say? They don't watch the injection. They don't watch somebody be hung until the neck by dead, until they're dead.

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They watch the cross. What will they look for? What will they report?

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How will they analyze it? I'll tell you how they'll analyze it. This is stupid, and this is foolish, and it's not wise at all.

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We reject this. That person can't be the Messiah. And so Paul is saying, hey, where are these people?

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Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? That's the answer. So, I didn't get very far today on No Compromise Radio.

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I had kind of fun doing it, though. This is an interesting topic. So tell your friends, tell them to join the

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Gnostic NoCo group. You can always write me, Mike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. 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 6. 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.