The Lord, not the messenger (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff. 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. What then is Apollos?

Ministers as Instruments, Not the Source of Salvation

What then is Paul? Servants, now mark these two words in the ESV, through whom you believed. Those are the two key words. You might want to just underline them. Through whom? Not because of. If you got saved when I preached, you didn't get saved because of me, you got saved through me because I preached the Word of God.

If I have converted anyone here, God have mercy on your souls. You need to repent and trust Jesus alone because you're not saved. But there are preachers, evangelists, men, women, personal discipleship, and when they preach the Word, you believe because of them or you believe through them.

I believe through them. And you don't say, well, you know, the instrument is really important. No. The Savior is the important one. If you go have surgery, I don't think, and I've been in a lot of surgeries and I won't bore you with any more gory stories today, but the first time I saw that scalpel cut some skin open, I didn't know if I was going to faint or pass out or, you know, be intrigued.

And then they took the tumor out and sewed them all up and gave them some antibiotics and then they're walking back and forth. I didn't see anybody, especially the patients say, can I have a copy of that?

Can I get that scalpel? Can I just put it in the autoclave and sterilize it? And I just want to mount that scalpel up above my living room because my living room fireplace because I just want to, I just want to remember that scalpel.

It means a lot to me. I kind of have a soft spot for scalpels. I collect scalpels. No, hopefully you go and say, thank you. The surgeon hand saved me. It was, he used that as an instrument. That's exactly how God uses people as instruments.

Nobody gets saved because of preachers. You get saved through preachers. So why idolize the instrument? I saved no one here. By the way, this is going to shock you, I know. I did not invent the doctrine of unconditional election.

I didn't make up the doctrine that once God saves you, you can't be unsaved because it's all of grace. I didn't invent grace alone, through faith alone, to God's glory alone. I didn't write the Bible.

Spirit of God never talked to me with kind of butterfly wings, kisses on my face, and I wrote things down. I never concocted the virgin birth. I never made up that once Jesus had no body and eternity passed, Father, Son, and Spirit one God, and then God the Father says, nobody can see me and live, yet I'm going to send my Son.

He cloaks the Son with human form, and Jesus will forever have human form. And when you're in heaven, if you're born again, you will see Jesus with those five marks in his body, still in human form, the God-man.

I never made any of it up, and by the way, how could I? You don't get saved because of preachers, you get saved through them. Just like you're not saved in Ephesians because of your faith, you're saved what?

Through faith. I don't know if it's just hot in here or what, but we have more sleepers today than we normally have on a Sunday, summer day. So that either means a few things, but we won't go into those, so let's just take a deep breath.

Matter of fact, I'm just going to take this off, that'll give you a little break, and then you can kind of identify with me, yes, pastor's hot, I am too, it's hard to stay awake. I do not make my preaching successful.

Whatever success this preaching pulpit has here, no matter who's in it, we don't make it successful. Who does? Spirit of God. It's the Word of God, Spirit of God. I never made up substitutionary atonement.

Can you imagine the God-man who never sinned became sin on our behalf that we might become the righteousness of God in Him? Jesus, the just dying for the unjust that He might bring us to God. If I was making things up, I would make up things like this.

Be good, be better than your neighbor, it's nice to be nice, it's good to be good. That's the religion, and by the way, when people make things up, that's the religion they make up, because every false cult makes that up.

They don't say, if we're going to be saved, if our sinful selves will ever be saved, it'll be the mercy of God and by His compassion and grace only, because we can't make ourselves pleasing to God, because just like we learned today in John 8, we're slaves to sin.

So God have mercy upon me. But if I was making up a religion, I'd say, listen, when you're really little, just get a couple drops of water put on your head in the name of Jesus, and then go live like hell.

Throw God a bone on Sundays, maybe Easter, and you're good. Or I'd invent a religion that said, you know what, when you're older and you think you know enough of the creeds and the Bible, get dunked under the water.

Get dunked all the way under and come back up, and then when you live, live like you love yourself with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Forget your neighbor, but be nice to people. Give some money maybe to the United Way or some charities.

Don't murder. Don't rape. Don't rob. Be a good mom, be a good dad, good son, good churchgoer, good grandpa, good grandma, and just be good in society's view, and you're in. That's what I would invent, and that's what every false cult has invented, because the Bible alone says that Jesus' death made way for salvation.

If we could get to heaven by being good, God is a hateful, vengeful, sadistic God who would kill His Son on the cross and pour out His wrath on Jesus when we could be good enough with a little water on our heads or dunked under and have a few creeds memorized and show up on Sunday.

Why did Jesus do that? Why did the Father damn His Son? First Peter says, He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross that we might die to sin and live to righteousness, for by His wounds you were healed.

Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time for salvation with reference to sin to those who eagerly await Him. Plan of salvation? If I came up with it, I would be worthy of worship.

Yet I didn't come up with any of it. The cross. Who came up with the cross? Listen to what Arthur Pink said, At the cross all our iniquities were laid upon Christ and therefore did divine judgment fall upon Him.

There was no way of transferring sin without transferring its penalty. Both sin and its punishment were transferred to the Lord Jesus. On the cross, Christ was making propitiation solely towards God. To think that God was my enemy and then in great love, He sent His Son for me and for all those who would ever believe.

If I was making up a religion, I would say, When they sin, get them. The love of God, grace and truth in Christ Jesus. That's why when Paul preached, he said, I've got a one-strum message and that is Jesus the risen Savior.

God Assigns His Servants to His Churches

Number three, number three, how do we think about leadership in a church? If you're visiting, how do you think about leadership in your own church back home? So that we honor God with our thinking. One, focus on Jesus, not on the hired help to focus on Jesus because He is the one that saves and no one else.

Three, fascinatingly, focus on Jesus Christ who sovereignly places pastors into His, Jesus' local churches. Focus on Jesus Christ who sovereignly places pastors into His local churches. Look at verse five.

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed. And here's the part we want to focus on for this consideration. As the Lord assigned to each. I get asked this all the time, especially by people in California.

How did you get to New England? I get asked it all the time. How did you go to New England? Were you there before? Did you have some family there? Was your mom from New England? Why did you go to New?

That's what they're really asking more than how. They're going, why? Just like you say, why would you ever move to California? Fruits and nuts and those are the conservatives. You know what I say? I give them a long story, but I like to give the shorter story better.

Mike, you're a sinful, foul, unclean sinner. And for my own good pleasure, I've loved you, saved you, I've given you spiritual gifts, I've adopted you in my family, I've given you the Holy Spirit as a seal to the day of redemption.

And I, like Isaiah, said to the Lord, you want to send me somewhere? I'm going. If you've really been saved, you just say, I'll go wherever you want. I'll do anything. How did I get to New England? The Lord assigned me here.

I can make it very personal now. The Lord gave me to you. You said, and vice versa. That's true. I'm just the next in a long line of preachers. God said, Abendroth, I've saved you, I've redeemed you, I've reconciled you to me, and then now I want you to go.

Okay. You know, it's like when you're a kid, you say, all right, let's see, where would I like to go to be a missionary? Maybe Bali. Dear Lord, please, I'll go anywhere in the world, but please don't send me to Bali.

Because, you know, sometimes if you pray, just don't send me to Caracas, you know, you get sent there. So you kind of, you go, I'm going to trick God, I'm going to do the opposite kind of switch-o change-o thing on him.

I said, Lord, and came with me, supportive. I'll go wherever you want to go. I'm here to follow you and serve in ministry with you till death do us part. Only thing I said to the Lord was basically, I would prefer not to learn another language.

I'd like to preach in English. I don't know how many years I have left. And so if I spend four years on learning German, then, but I'll go, I'll go anywhere. God assigns people. So if God has assigned me to you, then why would you go, wow, that's a, the person assigned is really great.

If you think I do preach the word and you are glad that there's faithful exposition, Christ-centered inerrancy that we teach, then you should say, God, you assigned us blessing. You know, there's a man who was faithful back in New England during the 1700s and he died.

And Jonathan Edwards said, you know what? There's so many people in that church that don't want the word of God. God said, all right, you don't want my word. You don't want substitutionary atonement. You don't want little resurrection.

I will graduate my servant and I will take him home and I will judge you by giving you and assigning you a pastor after your own desires. If you're a visitor and you have a faithful pastor, you should be saying, God, hallelujah.

I've got somebody that actually stand up and pull the trigger and we'll preach the word in season and out of season and reprove people, rebuke people, exhort people with great patience and doctrine. For the time will come, you know the rest of the verse.

And here, do you see that in verse five, as the Lord assigned to each. So why would we rank them? Well, we have four elders and this is how I rank them. They're all assigned. God, I think I don't really like that ranking that you had.

Well, God could only given us John Piper at our church. It would have been better. The sovereign God of the universe picks his servants to go preach the word places. So Paul says, you want to follow me, Paul?

You want to follow Apollos? I'm more of a teacher. He's really eloquent. We're both assigned by God. You should be thinking about God and he's assigned these people here. So we should be unified. That's the big picture.

Christ Gives Gifts to His Church and Distributes Them Sovereignly

Turn to Ephesians chapter four. I don't know how much more time we have, but let's just go to Ephesians four. I want to talk about this just because it thrills me. I'm in awe of Jesus for doing this very thing.

And you say, well, there should be some things said about pastors and how they should pastor. We'll get to that soon enough. Ephesians chapter four. Now we're thinking about God assigning people to local churches, to ministries overseas 2 ,000 years ago, 1 ,500 years ago, this week.

And now look at this sovereign Jesus assigning people. And how did Jesus get people to send to churches sovereignly? This is the best. Ephesians four. But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

Jesus' hand-pictured gift is what the context will say. Just like 1 Corinthians chapter 12, according to the measure of Christ's gift. Sovereign distribution, his pleasure, his free will. If you don't have the gift of teaching, God purposely didn't give it to you.

If you do, it's all God's grace. And he's earned the right to do this. Look at verse eight. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. Now when I was growing up, I learned this.

There's some people, they die before the second coming. They go down into Abraham's bosom. They're kind of just down there. It's kind of a sphere. There's another sphere over here they could see. And then Jesus is going to eventually, or maybe he did with his first coming, maybe it's the second coming.

He goes down and goes to Abraham's bosom. He takes some captives, captives, and he lets them go and he lets the prisoners go out of Abraham's bosom and off they go. I don't know about you, but when somebody taught me that, I just kept looking in Ephesians four saying, I think that's a cool thought, but I can't see it.

I want to tell my friends. I want to tell my wife. This whole Abraham's bosom, captives, captive, and all this, and I know people just look at me and think, well, maybe you don't have the gift of teaching because I don't understand.

How many people here have ever heard that's letting people out of Abraham's bosom? Well, I'm glad a few of you, you're looking stone faced like, well, you haven't heard it. In a good way, most of you haven't heard it.

Here's the language. You can get the old message on this, but here's the language. The general in Rome, he goes out and he has multiple victories over multiple peoples and he takes tons of land and he comes back with the big what?

Triumph. The triumphant return, and so he's going to come and approach the senators and they'll vote. Is it a triumph or is he not? And what does he bring back with him? He brings animals. He brings slaves.

He brings other generals and he leads this big train of enemies into town and some he'll say, look, I'm really a nice guy. I'll let you go. Most, he says, I bring back the generals to show you Romans that I'm in charge and I will poke their eyes out and then kill them because I'm the general who's now had a triumph.

The train of people. So what's the figurative language? What's the, what's the way to think of this? Jesus by his life, death, burial, and resurrection goes out and he wins over enemies and he brings those enemies back and instead of slaying the enemies in the presence of all, he gives them new life, changes them, and then he gives them to his church to say, serve my church sovereignly, Christ Jesus.

Why would I say, do you know what? I'm going to run up and admire that servant, that slave, that captured general. No, we would never do that. He gave gifts to men. Who were the gifts he gave to men? Who were the gifts he gave to men?

Verse 11, and he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some evangelists, and some as pastor teachers. Okay. Back to first Corinthians, I'm going to do a portion of the next one and then we'll stop a portion of the next one because it's too good to pass up.

Could be the last sermon I ever preach, so I'm going for it. Fourth consideration, focus on Jesus who alone causes all church growth. All right, if you're kind of sleepy, then let me just wake you up.

If you have a book on church growth, how to make the church grow, then you need to burn that book, not even figuratively. How about really burn it? Get some kerosene out, get some kind of flaming, what's that gel stuff called that they have?

I think it's illegal. Don't get that. Church growth galore, how to get your church bigger. We're going to learn from this passage right here, God alone causes church growth and no one else ever. If this church grows, it only grows because of God, not me, Dave, Pradeep, Lewis, or anybody else who's ever been an elder.

God causes growth. If this church is growing not through biblical means, then I don't want to grow that way. This is so good. I saved so much money with all my church growth stuff. Well, Mike, how are you?

What do you do for a living? Oh, I'm a pastor. How big's your church? You know what I want to say? You know what my flesh says? My flesh says, bigger than yours. No. My flesh says, listen, I'm not downtown.

I'm not in a big city. You're in Los Angeles and you've got 2 ,000 people. You're in the south and you've got 5 ,000. Big deal. I'm in a little pipsqueak town in Massachusetts, some kind of just north of the armpit of New England, you know, some Worcester, Worcester, Worcester.

I mean, I'm at no one, everybody there, they don't care about Jesus, and I'm stuck here in some kind of suburb with a bunch of miscreants. And you ask me how big my church is. You know, the typical thing, pastor's conference, how big's your church?

You know, these guys are always the ones with small churches. And the guys with big churches are always sitting behind the tables, signing books, how to make your church grow. Because this is what the publishers do.

Let's see. He had 50 people. He's now got 10 ,000. He knows what he's doing. Let's go there. Just like they went to John MacArthur. ABC came to him and said, John, we want to come to a special on Sunday night.

And how'd you get the church to grow? How do you get 3 ,000 people on Sunday night to your church? On Sunday night? He said, well, we sing some hymns, we do some baptisms, and I preach for an hour. No.

There's a trick. What's the trick? You're not telling the trick. You know, it's not patented yet, so you don't want to tell us. Pastors can grow the church organizationally. They can get more money. They can get more people.

But God alone causes spiritual growth. Look at it. What a great agricultural discussion. I planted, verse 6 of 1 Corinthians 3, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything but only God who gives the growth.

I'm 50 years old now, and I think I'm supposed to start birdwatching and start to garden. I know it's good. Jesus was a birdwatcher. Gardening's good, but I'm just bad at both. So I looked up some websites on gardening, and I want to know how do you cause your garden to grow?

Anybody here know? How do you cause your garden to grow? And the answer is, you don't. You might put some water on there, the right kind of soil, some fertilizer. You might pull the weeds out. You might make sure it has the right amount of sun or not enough sun, but no one here causes the growth of the garden.

Not one person. So I'm giving up gardening. How does it actually grow? What's the effectual cause? And just like a local church, the effective causer is God. If this church has grown, I didn't cause it.

And it relates to evangelism. You say, I go down to Worcester and evangelize. I want to evangelize my kids. I want to evangelize my neighbors. From the initial growth to ongoing growth, it's all caused by God.

The activity of man stops. And by the way, if you look at the Greek tense, he who plants, arist. He who waters, arist. God gives and gives and gives imperfectly the growth. There's a planting in time.

There's a watering in time. But the gift, the growth from God is always his alone to give. So why think more highly of me than you ought? Should you be thankful? I think the answer is yes. Should you encourage one another and encourage the elders of time?

I think the answer is yes. Should you think too highly of us? I'm of Mike. I'm of Steve. I'm of Dave. I'm of Pradeep. I'm of MacArthur. I'm of Boyce. I'm of Piper. I'm of Ferguson. I'm of fill in your blank, your favorite preacher.

The answer is no, because it deflects from the glory of Christ Jesus. It's good to learn these things. It's great to say, you know what, Jesus should be the focus. So here's my assignment for you this week to have Christ as a focus.

I want you to read the Gospel of John. Read the Gospel of John, and I dare you not to be impressed with who Jesus is, even if you're an unbeliever. And you'll say, no one talks like that, no one acts like that, no one heals like that, no one preaches like that, no one dies like that, no one's been raised like that.

Why would I want to run around and say, our pastor's better than your pastor?

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.

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