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No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.
Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.
I was listening to S. Lewis Johnson this week and here's what he said. There was a lady on her deathbed, a dear old saint. Someone came up to her and they said, how you doing? And she said, I'm trusting in the justice of God.
Oh, you know, you might be a little delusional, all the pain medication and everything else. You mean the mercy of God, right? You mean the love of God? You mean the grace of God? No, I'm trusting in the justice of God.
Because if Jesus Christ paid for all my sins at Calvary, the just God would never require me to pay for sins in hell. That God could keep his justice. He doesn't just overlook sin. We'd hate judges who are real judges, earthly judges who overlook sin.
Where justice and mercy and holiness kiss, it's the cross. And if you say, I don't want that, give me everything else. Just give me the, you know, it's like when people say, I really like this. The Sermon on the Mount.
I don't like Paul's words, but I like Jesus's words. The Sermon on the Mount. I think you've never read the Sermon on the Mount. God's holy and just and requires sin to be paid for. So how can you look at the cross, the justice of God blazing forth for all to say, to see and then go, you know what?
Nah, 30 ,000 other Jews got crucified and he was just another man, a good man, a wise man, a good teacher, but he was a good man. This whole thing, God's angry. We can't even say it as Christians today.
We say things like this, well, you know, God really, you say to an unbeliever, God really hates your sin, but he loves you. Well, there could be some truth to that. The love of the creation, yes, God the creator loves, but the Bible says that what?
Wanting to extract it all that we might, we might want to extract it all, we might not like it. But Psalm 55 makes it clear. He hates wicked people. He hates their sin. What? Sin is some kind of orb that's, you know, right here.
This is me, but this is my sin. No, because the sin is interlocked into the fiber and nature of the person. The person is a sinner. There's not, well, I have sin, I have luggage and I have sin. No, you are sin and God hates sin.
So how can you look at the cross and say, nah, it's no big deal. Here's what happens at the cross. God treats his son like he hates him enough to execute him. And may I say it? Damn him. God, the father damns the son.
And it's not like Jesus is like, you know, in eternity past, you mean I really got to go do that? I don't know if I really want to go. No, the father says in love, go rescue this bride. The son said, I will gladly go and lay down my life to rescue the bride.
The spirit says, I will gladly help the son go lay down his life to rescue the bride. And then you look at the cross and you go, eh, stupid, no big deal. Christians are ignorant. They're exclusive. You know, all this evangelical right stuff, whatever people say about that, they've forgotten the wisdom of God found at the cross.
If you will not think to yourself that this is the pinnacle of God's attributes, all of them simultaneously, then you've proven that you're not wise. You don't have divine wisdom. When you can look at the pinnacle, the apex of Christianity and say, you know what?
You give me the strongest proof of Christianity, Jesus Christ, death, burial, resurrection, I can't be bothered. Just like, look back in verse eight, the rulers of the age, if they understood this, for if they had, they would have not crucified the Lord of glory.
They wouldn't have done it. This ignorance that they have, they didn't understand the divine plan. Oh, they weren't ignorant of killing an innocent man, but they were ignorant of this divine eternal decree of divine wisdom.
They didn't know about all that. You can ask Paul in his testimony in 1 Timothy chapter one, verses 12 and 13. There's this testimony of ignorance, not because he's not complicit, because he just didn't know the program.
He didn't understand. Peter, Acts chapter three, and now brethren, I know that through ignorance you did this as also did your rulers. I don't, I know you don't understand, Peter says, that God works out this plan through your ignorance, through your sin.
One man said it this way, their knee jerk reaction is to kill. And the rulers full well, knew full well what they were doing. They did not know, however, that they were playing into the hands of God and that their evil butchery would lead to their undoing and humanity's salvation.
If they would have known that, they wouldn't have done it. You see what Jesus is called here in verse eight, the Lord of what? Glory. You know, the father is said to have glory. You know, this is a title used of God, the epithet glory.
I thought God isn't supposed to give his glory to another. Remember God is not some kind of like a Baal God. Let's use an illustration for Baal, but let's use it here. Let's say Baal is a God here. There's the Baal of Lemonster.
There's the Baal of Auburn, excuse me, Auburn. There's the Baal of Leicester. And they're all quite happy to just have their little areas and they share their glory because they can't have it all because they're just the God of Fitchburg.
But there's a God of the universe who's the God over all and he will not share his glory with another. He didn't share glory. It's all his. He made it all and he stands over it all. So my question is this.
If the father will not share any of his glory, how is it that the son receives glory? How is it that he's called the Lord of glory? Because we are triune people here. The father, the son, and the spirit all worthy of glory.
There are times that the son submits and will not use his privilege of deity. But if you don't believe in the father being God and the son being God, then I ask you, how can God share his glory with the son, the Lord of glory?
What a great title. The Lord of glory. Is there any higher title for Jesus? The Lord of glory. In the Old Testament, God the Father is called the King of glory, Psalm 24. The God of glory, Psalm 29. Depicted in the New Testament as the God of glory, Acts 7 .2.
I love James chapter 2. Do not hold your faith in our Lord Jesus Christ with partiality. And then it calls Jesus the Lord of glory. Lots of ways to think, am I wise or am I not? If you don't believe in the substitutionary atonement of Christ Jesus and his resurrection, the Lord of glory, laying down his prerogative to exercise divine attributes, dying in the place of sinners, then you're not wise at all.
Number four. Number four. More to be said? We need to stay on target. The fourth reason you want to saturate yourself with the word of God is because, number four, in God's wisdom, you will see what you could never come up with on your own.
You will see you can't invent this. You will see things that humankind can't invent, realize, manufacture, or come up with. You're going to have to see that God gave it to you. Now, if I had a drum, I'd do a drum roll.
Here comes one of the most misinterpreted verses in all the Bible. It might be a good radio show. Misinterpreted Bible verses. Things have context. What's said of this verse is often used to talk about how great heaven's going to be.
Is heaven going to be great? No doubt about it. It even seems funny because sometimes in the Bible, we hear more about hell than we do heaven. It almost seems kind of backwards. Heaven is going to be great.
It's going to be great for lots of reasons, mainly because Jesus will be there, the incarnate Jesus with his wounds, the myriads of angels and other people swirling around singing his praises worthy of the lamb that was slain.
But this verse has absolutely nothing to do with heaven. If you apply it to heaven, the application is correct. But the intention of Paul, the intention of the Holy Spirit coming to this verse has nothing to do with heaven.
But verse 9, remember our context here, divine wisdom, it's relevant, it's eternal. The other stuff passes away. People show that they don't have it, they crucify Jesus, but as it is written, what no eye has seen, I think he's talking about wisdom in this chapter, don't you?
Nor ear heard, I think he's talking about wisdom. Nor the heart of man imagined, I think he's talking about wisdom. What God has prepared, I think he's talking about wisdom for those who love him. This isn't the wonders and the spectacular nature of heaven, this is the wisdom God has prepared for you believers.
And you can use all your senses to try to concoct divine wisdom and you'll never be able to do it. Think, I'm going to learn about predestination and the eternal decree by my smelling in my nose today.
I'm going to kind of sniff around and figure if I can figure out, no, you know what I'll do? I want to try to figure out justification by sight. Just kind of look. I'm going to try to think about propitiation, reconciliation, double imputation about kind of my feeling, tactile response.
I had to look up the five traditional senses, they are sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. I think I'm going to learn about the holy standard of the transcendent God by my taste buds. I did find out there are additional senses, according to the internet.
There is, no that wasn't a joke, nociception, that is the sense of pain, equilibrioception, the sense of balance. It almost sounds like a biblical word here, but it's not, proprioception, kinesthesia, joint motion, the sense of time, thermo perception, the temperature differences, and some even think the sense of direction, magnetoception.
Well I don't even know how to pronounce them, but I do know this, none of them will help. If you want to try to figure out the mind of God and you're going to use your senses, you can't do it. That's why when we fall into this language, well I feel God is this way, I feel my God is this way, well maybe your God is felt that way, but it's not this God.
I feel, sometimes people use feel for think, but when you really mean, I feel God should be this way. You can't get to know God by feelings, I think when you get to know him, your feelings are affected, we are not robots, we have love and joy and all kinds of those things, but those are responses to divine truth, not ways to apprehend divine truth, I just feel God is that way.
I'll tell you, if left to my feelings, I would be another John Stott and I would deny hell. I would say it's too bad, I can't get it, I have loved ones, I have people who are grandparents and a father and others who did not, to my knowledge, repent and bow their knee to Christ Jesus and I feel like there can't be a hell.
But my feelings don't determine what's true and what's not. That's the problem with our society today. The Bible says there's one way to salvation and unless you trust not in yourself but in Christ Jesus, you will burn forever with a body created by God especially for eternal burning to never be consumed forever.
And in one billion years, when you think, oh you know what, I only got a billion more to go, there won't be one more billion to go, there will be billions. Now who could come up with that, by the way, with your senses, because even for people like Hitler, if you could glimpse hell for just two seconds, you would not say Hitler deserves it, you'd say, I can't believe it's that bad, I can't determine what's right and wrong based on my, to use Cayce's term, gizzard.
I can't use my guts, my feelings, my perceptions. You want the wisdom of God? It's revealed by God through the apostles. You want to get wise? You have to study the word. And Paul does what he often does, he says, what's the text say?
It is written. Sometimes he quotes directly from the Old Testament, Septuagint. Sometimes he just loosely quotes. We think this is a looser quote, it's a freer quotation, probably from Isaiah 64 and 65.
Some people see a little bit of Isaiah 52 in there, maybe a little Psalm 31 in there. Some people think this is a quote that Jesus said on earth but wasn't written down. Sometimes he just loosely quotes, and I think that's what he did here.
What no eye has seen, the wisdom from God prepared for believers. Nor ear heard, the wisdom of God that used to be secret, but now we get to understand. Nor the heart of man imagine what God has prepared for those who love him.
The pride of man says, I will get to the bottom of this with empirical rationalization. I'm a scientist, and by the way, I'm going to determine if there's a God or not with my titration analysis and my beakers.
You can't do it. That shows not the inadequacy of God and his wisdom, that shows the pride of man that says, I can find you out and I will quantify you, and I will use my five senses to say this is how I describe you.
And God says in his word, you can't know me that way, here's the only way you can know me through the Old Testament of course, but now in the New through his inspired apostles. There is no search for truth outside of scripture that is admirable.
It's beyond nature. It's a different time zone. It's a different stratosphere. Paul is saying, Church of Corinth, you have to be glad that God told you who he is and what he does. He didn't have to. Your organs can't figure out who God is and his wisdom and how to get saved.
By the way, you can look at creation and say God is wise and powerful, but you can't look at creation and say, I'm such a sinner that the only way I can get saved is by a lamb slain in my place. You don't live your life and say, you know, I think the wages of sin is death and I think blood is the only way that I can have sins forgiven.
God cannot be weighed, calculated, or titrated. I don't know why I used titration in chemistry class in college, I always did titration analysis. It'd give you some white powder in a little thing and then you'd have to figure out what it was, down to I don't know how many significant figures.
It's like that cosmonaut, that Russian cosmonaut, remember when he went up to space, the first guy up to space there, I think he's named Titov, there's no evidence for God. I've been to space, there's no God there.
Well, the only way you're going to find God in space is if you open your Bible. Or as one man said, just go outside your space shuttle for about 10 minutes, you'll find God all right. It's a different dimension of sight and sound, of hearing.
You can't invent God, say, well, I think I'm going to try to find the God within me and I'll just take a bunch of peyote and go to a sweat tent. That's what I'll do. But friends, that's just as foolish as any other way to understand God outside the scriptures.
It's the exact same. I don't want this book. Show me someone who says they believe the Bible and then they begin to live a morally decrepit and corrupt life. I'll show you the first thing they do. They attack the Bible.
Because they don't want this divine wisdom to rule over them. Happens all the time in ministry. Somebody says they believe the word, they preach the word, they're under the word, and they go, you know what, but I like my sin better.
What do they have to attack? They have to attack the word so they can live. And for me and for you, I'm just glad his divine wisdom isn't here because he didn't have to tell us anything. It would be just of God to him, for him to say, you've fallen.
And by the way, you don't get any more special revelation. You get to know that I'm powerful and I'm wrathful and I'm wise because of creation and everything else. I'll see a judgment day because you're sinful.
But God has said, here's how I'm gracious, how I'm merciful, how I'm long suffering, how I'm humble, how I'm submissive. Here's Christ Jesus. Show me a church that's focused on divine wisdom incarnate Christ Jesus, and I'll show you a church that doesn't split apart, but they all come together.
Friends, I want you to read your Bible. And I want you to run from this silly notion that you can understand the infinite mind of God through the lens of your feelings. I didn't say you have to be emotionless.
If you read about hell and you are grieved and sorrowful, good. If you read about heaven and realize how you're so sinful that only through Jesus's death and burial and resurrection, you get to go to heaven and you're joyful, good.
But if you say, I'm going to determine my life and how to run it, who to marry, what job to go to, what church to leave, what church to go to, and everything else by mysticism, you aren't wise. Let me rescue you from a life of trouble.
Let me rescue you from the way of the transgressor is hard. Let me rescue you from having a life that's run by yourself. But you say it's God making the decisions for you. God led me. God told me, how are you going to disobey God?
Why don't you just say, I've examined the scripture, I've poured through the wisdom of God, asked God to give me wisdom, I've asked other people for wisdom, and now I'll make a decision. And I will make the decision, let's do this as a family.
And if you're the wife and you think it's a dumb idea, say, honey, with all due respect, it's a dumb idea, but if you're willing to go, I'm willing to go. And then your next option wife is this, duck.
That's it. You want to be a mystic? Then read current evangelicalism. You want to be a mystic? You read Beth Moore. She'll teach you how to be a good mystic and how to do exactly the opposite of everything I told you today.
You want to be wise? Devour the word of God and say, Lord, if you let me live long enough, I have a systematic way to look through the scriptures and I want you to give me a heart that desires the word of God.
And I want to be a maniac. I want to be a fanatic. I want to just look in the Bible and say, you are the wisest God. You are the best God. Give me wisdom. Sometimes I find Bibles here. It's Monday or Tuesday.
I come in and I find your Bible sitting in your chairs. Bad news is most people have 15 Bibles in their house now. I almost wish that wasn't the case because I love to go up to people and say, how'd your Bible study go this week?
They're like, oh, really good. I'm thinking your Bible's at church. You know, I probably should say now, how'd your Bible study go this week? Oh, really good. You know, by what translation you're reading these days and set you up.
By the way, if you are a person that has trouble reading, I think if you ask God, God, I have a hard time reading. Could you please help me understand the Bible? Do you think the spirit of God would be pleased to do that?
You think it'd be good if you said, well, the Lord is leading me to go take an English class. No, just say, I think I should go take an English class. I think I should go take an English class at Wachusett Valley or whatever they call it.
I don't know what it is to learn the Bible. As Luther would say, God first clothed himself with humanity, and now he clothes himself with Hebrew and Greek letters. We have English Bibles, and we can know everything we need to know about God.
If you want to be wise, if you want the church to grow, if you want unity in the church, unity in the family, it's all underneath divine wisdom that is eternal, relevant, decreed from God before all eternity.
We'll show you if you're wise or not, and it will tell you everything you know about the world. Life, death, marriage, everything else. One of the things I'm glad for in this church, I might as well just tell you, this church will do two things in the hearts of people here.
It will either motivate you to study the Bible. Ever seen anybody wake surf behind a boat, and it's just a little wave, and you don't even need a rope. It just kind of sucks you under. It sucks you under.
Sorry. It sucks you behind the boat. I guess you haven't seen it. But if you're a Christian here, here's what the desired response is. Everybody else is studying the Bible. Some people are memorizing their study in IBS.
God just help me just get sucked under with that wake, and help me just go along. That's the desired effect of all this, that you'll catch the vision of everyone else, and you'll be around other people who study more, and you'll just kind of fall right in.
Yeah, that's what I want to do. I want to be wise. But I know there are other people who realize that if they want to stay lazy when it comes to Bible study, they thought they were big shots at their old church, and they want to be big shots at this church.
But if the old church, they didn't read their Bible, and if the new church, they didn't read their Bible, this church will basically part the ways for you, and you won't be able to take it unless you're humble and say, today's a good day that I want to read the Bible.
The way you are wise, the only way you are wise, is through the Spirit of God ministering to you this truth. There's no other way.
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 bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.