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Preaching 1 Corinthians 05-17-10
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've searched the Bible, I've especially searched the pastoral epistles where the pastors are instructed on what to do and the Bible is quiet about altar call, altar calls. Turn with me if you would to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 11.
I believe the burden of proof for altar call proponents is on the altar call proponents. The Methodist Episcopalian Church began this idea, 1800s, camp meetings, Finney, the heretic Finney and his proponents also pushed this into the spotlight.
But what about 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 11? I don't do altar calls because number one, they're not commanded and number two, I don't need to do them because God saves through preaching. So we preach, so they believe.
Faith comes through hearing. Whitfield the Calvinist never did altar calls. Wesley the Arminian, he never did altar calls. It's not until heretic Finney comes along that altar calls were pushed up and we're going to talk more about this later but before I go farther, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verse 11, whether then it was I or they, and Paul almost just, you know, off the cuff says, I know it's not off the cuff because it's spirit inspired, so we preach and so you believe.
Do we really think that if I don't get people to come up to the front, they might leave the church and then God could never save them again? People say, don't let the people get out of the church without coming up to the front, without giving an invitation.
Friends, I don't invite you to come up to the front. I invite you to believe. I beckon you to believe in Christ. Why call you to the front when I can call you to the Savior? Come here and receive Christ is confusing at best.
Where's the biblical justification for that? People say, well, you don't do invitations. If you mean I don't call you up to the front, you're right, but I invite you, I beseech you, I command you, you have to look to Christ and live.
There's no other way to be saved. Venture on him wholly as one man says. Let no other trust intrude. None but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good. Second reason why I don't do altar calls is because it confuses an outward act with an inward new birth.
It confuses the outward act with the inward new birth. True or false? God commands men everywhere to repent. True. Acts 1730. If anybody ever says that about a Bible verse, you have to quick say true.
Coming forward and coming to Christ are two separate things. People who have not been changed on the inside can come forward. True or false? True. People who have not been changed on the inside can come to Christ.
True or false? The answer is false. I'm not going to confuse people with coming to the front with some inward new birth. What do we tell people? Repent. Believe. We don't tell them to come to the front.
What about this? Do you think this is biblical? If you really want to go to heaven when you die, then step out of your seat wherever you are. Come and let us know about your decision. Christ went all the way to the cross for you.
Won't you just walk a few steps for him? Poor God. He can't do anything until you kind of do the first step. Third reason why I don't do altar calls is because altar calls give a superficial view of sin, depravity, and conversion.
I'm going to ask people to do what only God can have them do, and that is to repent and to believe and to follow. So, total inability, total depravity, total sinfulness can still have a man get up and walk to the front of the aisle, but if you're totally depraved, you need to be saved on the inside.
It is him who wills? No. Him who runs? No, but of God who has mercy. Now I know what you're saying. Some of you, I already know. You're saying, I was saved by an altar call. I went up to the front and I got saved.
Or you're saying this, I have a pastor who I really respect. My old pastor, I really respected. He did that. Billy Graham, he does that. Here's what I'm trying to say. How were people saved before the 1800s when the altar call came up?
How? Preaching the gospel. Why doesn't God tell us to bring people up to the front? He doesn't. He tells us to call them to Christ. Unbelievers can walk up to the front. Finney said, we're not really after a change in their nature by creative power, but we want them to yield to the truth.
And how do we get them to yield to the truth? You come up to the front. I prefer Spurgeon. What the Arminian wants to do is to arouse man's activity, get them to the front. What we want to do is to kill it once and for all, to show him that he's lost and ruined and that all his activities are not now at all equal to the work of conversion.
He must look upward. They seek to make the man stand up. We seek to bring him down and make him feel that there he lies in the hand of God and all his business is to submit himself to God and to cry aloud, Lord, save our, we perish.
How many people have come up to the altar call to receive Christ when the real gospel wasn't even preached? You can preach the wrong gospel that doesn't include Lordship, repentance, belief, substitutionary atonement, literal resurrection, and still coerce and manipulate people to come up to the very front of the church.
And they're saved from number four. Altar calls put the focus on the preacher's commands, not divine commands. The divine commands are repent, trust, follow, believe. The preacher's commands are come up here, raise the hand, meet me in the back, comply with the preacher, sign the card.
And here's the big one. All those other were just fluff. I don't do altar calls because it gives people false assurance. It gives people false assurance. They may say coming to the front won't save you, but can you blame the person for equating the two coming up to the front saves?
I don't think you can blame the person. Come to Jesus right now. Let this be the moment of decision. Come as you are. He will receive you. And it encourages people. I've done what he says, therefore, I must be a Christian.
But it's not necessarily true. I believe what Ian Murray says is true. Many have responded to the measures of the altar call without being converted and are now in a far worse position for in coming forward.
They did what they were told to do without any result. With some justification, they could come to regard conversion as an illusion. And then they think to themselves, I'm better than the other people are.
I'm not changed, but I see through the disguise and the other people who have come, they can't see through the disguise. True or false, a momentary external and even emotional feeling of joy hearing the word preached does not imply conversion.
That's Luke chapter eight. Many receive the word with joy. And what do they do? They fall away, Whitfield said. There are so many stony ground here to receive the word with joy that I have determined to suspend my judgment till I know the tree by its fruits.
Converts that are born in excitement die when the excitement is over. Why is it that those who do altar calls now coolly and calmly say, well, probably only about five out of 50 people who come are really Christians?
Number six, the altar call deludes Christians in the church into inviting unbelievers to church instead of evangelizing them. We might as well push the envelope a little bit. So here goes. If you're an unbeliever here today, you're a welcome guest, but we're not going to do anything in this service for your sake directly.
You say, what do you mean by that? The church gets together as a body of Christ to worship their Lord. True. Unbelievers don't worship. Unbelievers blaspheme. You may sit in and you may sing and you may look and we're happier here and I hope you get saved by the preaching of the gospel.
But we gather as Christians because the New Testament says Christians gather to worship. This is not an evangelistic service. Say, well, pastor didn't give the call to salvation at the end of the service.
Well, because I'm preaching to the believers today, not the unbelievers. Oh, there may be times where I might say, if you don't know Christ, this is the gospel. That's fine to do. It costs me nothing.
But what do you do if you want your friends saved? Please come to church. And then when Mike gives the altar call, let's pray that they go. If that's how people are saved, then that's what you'll do. Otherwise, if you say, how are people saved?
They're saved by preaching the gospel to them. Friends never invite your unbelieving friends to this church. Never. Well, okay, let me change that. Never invite them until you preach the gospel to them face to face.
It's your duty to preach the gospel to them. It's my duty to feed the saints. Don't invite people to church so they'll come up to the front. I'm getting ahead of myself, but here's one of the big issues besides theological ignorance of salvation and a misunderstanding of the power of God.
I don't know if my sermons are going to do any work in your life or not. And God doesn't want me to know. I have to distrust in him that when I preach the Bible, he has a spirit and attends to the work of preaching.
That's all I need to know. How he does it, when he does it, what the numbers are, I don't need to know. So I think, I preached a sermon, I wonder if I did a good job today. All right, let's give the call.
A few came up. Great, I must have, I see some fruit. Nobody comes up for salvation. Well, if anybody here wants to become a member, you come on up. Well, there's nobody coming up. If anybody here wants to rededicate their lives, you come on up.
Nobody comes. Anybody here wants to get baptized, you come on up. Anybody wants to get rededicated, re-irrigated, re-consecrated, you come on up. And then if nobody comes, you feel like, you know, was that worth anything, did I preach at all, did anybody do anything?
I don't know what happens when I preach. And I think only eternity will reveal that. You don't know what happens when you evangelize people. Only eternity will reveal that. And isn't that okay? I don't need to know the numbers.
Was it a good sermon today? I mean, frankly, my best sermons are probably the bombs. The ones that I think are bombs, God has probably blessed the most. You don't invite people to church so I preach the gospel to them.
You invite people to church after you've already preached the gospel to them. Who knows, I might be preaching on giving that Sunday you invite them. There's no command in the Bible. Unregenerate people, unbelievers, you get yourself to church.
They're not breaking the Word of God by not going to church. They're breaking the Word of God by not worshiping, but the only way to worship is to please God by honoring the Son. Number seven, I don't do altar calls at this church.
When I say I, it's the royal I, the elders, because it replaces the significance of baptism. It's basically the third sacrament. It's the third ordinance. You've got Lord's Supper, baptism, and you've got altar calls.
People misuse altar calls by saying, well, you've got to confess Jesus before men. Matthew chapter 20, therefore, whoever confesses me before men, him I will also confess before my Father who is in heaven.
But whoever denies me before men, him I will also deny before my Father who is in heaven. So you better make a public declaration of faith and get on up there because if you deny him, he's going to deny you.
That's not for the altar call. That's for what? What identifies a Christian with the Lord and his church? Not the altar call, but baptism. Where's all this information about the altar call in the Bible?
I don't see it. Number eight, I don't do altar calls, we don't here at this church, because they distract people away from the pinnacle of a worship service, and that is when God speaks his word through a fallible preacher.
What's the pinnacle? Our singing to God, that's wonderful. Our giving to God, that's wonderful. The pinnacle of the worship service, by placement in the worship service, and by time devoted in the worship service, is the preaching of the word of God.
Not because I'm the preacher, but because it's God's word to his people. And when the altar call is the big thing, you can just imagine if you bring unbelievers to church, just, I wish he'd get the preaching done, and then he can give the call at the end, come use unbiblical terminology, accept Jesus in your life, and move on.
Number nine, I don't do altar calls, because I can't think of one person in church history whom I respect does them. Nobody that I respect does them. Wesley didn't do them, Whitfield didn't do them, Spurgeon didn't do them, William Carey didn't do them.
You didn't see William Carey go overseas. You didn't see Judson, Adam and Iram Judson, go overseas, and then preach the gospel, and then at the end of the service, call people up front. How powerful is the word of God?
And if the word of God convicts and regenerates, then we just preach it. You will never be able to toss out the invitation system until you're convinced that the word of God preached from the pulpit, or preached by you in an evangelistic encounter, can save people.
How will they believe without an altar call? No, how will they believe without a preacher? Romans chapter 10. Number 10, altar calls confuse the pastor with the mediator. Altar calls confuse the pastor with the mediator.
There's one God and one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus. There's one and only one, and he is not me. Praise the Lord for that. I'm glad for that. But if I say, come to the room, come to the counseling room, come to the anxious bench, come and talk to me, come and talk to a personal worker behind the scenes.
There's only one priest, and his name is Jesus. There are no other mediators, living or dead. You sinners sitting there where you are, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. You shall have eternal life. Do not stop till you pass an inquiry room.
Do not think it is essential to confer with me. Do not suppose that I have the keys of the kingdom of heaven, or that these godly men and women associated with me can tell you any other gospel than this.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. God has not appointed salvation, Spurgeon says, by inquiry rooms. Now, listen to this. For the most part, a wounded conscience, like a wounded stag, delights to be alone that it may bleed in secret.
I'd like to go to the inquiry room. I'm sure you would. But you must, where you sit now, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Spurgeon goes on to say, Go to your God at once, even now where you are. Cast yourself on Christ now, ere you stir an inch.
Friends, should we invite people to Christ? Should you tell them to repent and believe? The answer is, of course. But God's invitation to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ should not be equated with, you come up to the front of the church.
So you got to strike the iron while it's hot. If God makes the iron hot, it'll stay hot. It's like the guy that went to Lloyd-Jones. And he said at the door, you know, Why didn't you have me come to the front for the altar call?
And Lloyd-Jones says, Well, I called you to Christ. I didn't call you to the altar call. He meets him a couple of weeks later, and the guy's drunk. And he said, But if you only would have called me up, then I would have repented and I would have believed.
No. How can anyone be saved if you don't give an altar call? I think you should ask John Knox, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan. Do we preach the gospel? Yes, we ought to. Woe to us if we don't preach the gospel.
Yes. Did you know that when you study the Bible, you will not see the Bible focus its attention in evangelism on hardly anything except the person of Christ. Does the Bible say this is the nature of repentance?
This is how faith works. Here's how sovereignty and the responsibility kind of work together. Here, is it monergistic? Is it synergistic? Is it faith this way, that way? What is faith? Is it will? Is it emotions?
Is it a scent? There's all kinds of arguments that I think we can argue about. But when you see the preachers in the Bible, here's what they all say. Repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Which Jesus Christ?
The one that can make manna out of nothing. The one that raises himself from the dead. The one that fulfills the prophecies. The one that can read people's mind. Look to Christ. And when you see Christ, you'll know yourself.
And you'll realize when the person says, repent, I must repent. If you lay down when you're preaching the awfulness of sin, I'm not sure you'll have as many people come up to the front who will be willing to say, I am that awful person.
Friends, we don't need the altar call. I don't want to get people thinking, well, I went up and God saved me. And again, you say, but I got saved through the altar call. Friends, no, you didn't. You got saved because the guy who was doing the altar call, he might have still given the altar call, but he told you there's only one Savior and it's Jesus Christ.
You must believe on him. You didn't get saved because an altar call. You got saved in spite of an altar call. Why don't we do altar calls? We don't need to. They're not warranted. The great saints of old didn't do it.
Jesus didn't do him. John the Baptist didn't do him. Paul didn't do him. I don't need to manipulate you and make the cross void. Some kind of tear jerking stories and mood music and manipulating. And people can get converted during an altar call, but it's because the preacher was faithful to the text.
Say, why are you getting so riled up? All right. Here's riled up. People don't even get saved by praying the sinner's prayer. Dear God, I recognize I'm a sinner. I recognize I'm a sinner. I believe you're the only Savior.
I believe you're the only Savior. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I believe he was resurrected and he's coming back. I believe he's resurrected and coming back.
In Jesus' name, amen. In Jesus' name, amen. Now, if you pray that prayer with all your heart, welcome to the family. Friends, if you pray that prayer with all your heart and you meant it, you're already a Christian.
Because you don't pray that way, really meaning it without repentance and faith. It's the fruit of salvation. We don't say you're baptized and you're saved. We also don't say you make a decision and you're saved.
We say this, God saves and when he saves, you'll never be the same again. And you'll say, I used to love my sin. Now I love Jesus Christ and I will follow him to the ends of the earth and I will abandon my life for him.
People don't get saved by some kind of altar call method. They don't get saved by praying a sinner's prayer. I met a guy one time and he came to my house at four in the morning. I think I've told the story.
Four in the morning, knocking on the door, frantic. Guy was in my Bible study. I look out the door and I think, who comes to your door at four in the morning? Kim said, I'll get the gun. I'll have it ready.
I said, well, he's got shorts on and a t-shirt. I don't think he's got any guns on him. I think I'll be okay. But, you know, lock the door. I go outside. I thought, I can't let this guy in the house.
This guy's, you know, some kind of loon or something. I'm outside and he's like, I'm a sinner. I'm going straight to hell when I die. I said, I know. He said, I need help. I want to go to heaven. My mind's not right.
My mind's double-minded. I said, David, how many times have you prayed the sinner's prayer to rededicate, to pray, to ask Jesus in your heart? He said, I've done it hundreds of times. He said, did it ever work?
He's like, no, that's why I'm here. I said, the reason is because you don't control salvation. You don't have free will to control salvation. You don't start salvation. You don't cause salvation. There's one whose name is Jesus.
Jesus saves and no one else. He's the one in charge of salvation. So what do you think we ought to do? Let's ask Jesus to save you. Is that a good sinner's prayer? Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. That's a good sinner's prayer, but it doesn't obligate God to do anything.
God has no obligation to give grace. And I said, David, let me pray to this God for you that he would open your eyes. Sinner's prayers can be repeated over and over and over and over. But if you really mean what you say, you've been changed by God.
Well, the sad news to that story is I remember when I started to pray, I thought, I don't know if this guy, he's talking about suicide and everything else. And I always think if you're going to kill yourself, you might kill somebody else.
And here I am. And so I kept my eyes open when I was praying because I thought, you know, this guy's going to clock me on the head when I'm here trying to, you know, preach the gospel to him. There is nothing we can do to manipulate, coerce, cook, contort someone's salvation.
The only way people get saved is by a sovereign act of God. And when God freely said, I create the stars with a word, boom, by the new creation, he does the same thing. And he does it always and forever through one way.
And that is the preaching of the gospel. So let's just preach the gospel and let God deal with the results. Well, my joys in life is when people say, I didn't know what they were doing, inviting all those people up to front, up to the front, because that means you've just been sitting in a sound church for long enough to know that God is faithful to save people through the regenerated work of the spirit through the preached word.
And if you're not a Christian here today, you don't need the front of this. You don't need an inquiry room. You don't need to meet with the pastor. You need to get on your knees and beg for the mercy of God, because hell is sure for you.
There's only one savior, a beautiful savior, a wonderful savior who, for the love of God and for your own good, died on the cross for sinners and was raised from the dead. And you ought to say to yourself, I have no righteousness.
He's my only hope. There's a way to preach the gospel that voids it of its meaning. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to do that at all. God demands everything, not just what we preach, but how we preach.
With pastor Mike Avendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church, firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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