Dare to be John the Baptist?

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, Pastor Steve. It is my fault, I think, that you haven�t been on lately, so the ratings need to go back up. Thanks for being on.

Well, you know, anytime I look at the Arbitrons and just think, where�s No Compromise in this thing? And I have to turn to page three, I know it�s time for me to be back on the air. This part is true.

We are now on Spotify. Seriously. So, if you want to go to Spotify and pull up podcasts. My son Luke said, �Dad, you know, most young people get their podcast via Spotify or something like that, and so you should be on Spotify.

And Jonathan Newton and Spencer Canard got that all set up, so now I think there�s probably two shows on there.

They will always be on there from now on. So, we could be on somebody�s, like, mix thing, you know, they could mix in their Jeremy Camp and their.

Jeremy Camp, Steve Camp. Did you save any of your Steve Camp CDs? Nope. Got rid of all of them. Even one you were on, though. You were singing in the background of one of them.

Yeah, which I used to call the duet with of course, I later found out that they sort of overdubbed and basically almost removed us all from.

Well, it�s back in the old days where it was together for the gospel kind of thing, T4G, and then we would all sing in the background. What�s the guy�s name who led it?

Bob somebody Coughlin. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, we were down yeah, I actually met him down there in Florida, too, Bob Coughlin. He was having lunch, and I saw him. He was just sitting on a curb, and I go, �I can�t resist.

I have to go say hi to him, and so.

Well, I remember once I was at a Shepherd�s Conference, and I set up with the MacArthur family area there and some of the professors, and he sat right next to me with his daughter. I think he was easy to spot because 3 ,000 guys, one had his double hands up, and that was Bob.

Woo! I did talk to him a little bit about the whole Christ in Claire Ferguson�s book relating the Merrill Controversy, and he said he loved it.

Yeah. I mean, he was down there at the conference doing the music there, and so I don�t know.

Speaking of conferences, there�s the non-Shepherd�s Shepherd�s Conference, there�s Orlando�s Ligonier Conference next week, and then there�s G3, so I think I�m going to go to Orlando, and you�re going to go to Atlanta, and how�s that going to work out?

Well, I�m kind of excited. It�s the first time I�m speaking at a big conference. Oh! Yeah! Oh, he laughed a little too heartily, I think. That is funny.

Thank you so much. That is funny. Now, I don�t know if you listened to my show last week, Steve, but I did a little show on Mary Bateman, and I won�t redo the show, obviously, because they can go back and listen to it, but she was known as the Prophet Hen of Leeds, and so she had this particular egg-laying hen, and she, this hen, would lay an egg, and it was written on the side of the egg, �Christ is coming.

Hmm. And so this lady, Mary Bateman, she was pretty smart until it was discovered that she took an egg that had already been laid, used some acid on it, and then reinserted it into the hen�s oviduct.

Ugh! And that�s how she was famous, until she poisoned somebody and was hung by the neck until dead at York Prison, 1809. Hmm. I guess that�s where extreme charismaticism would get you. It�s never good.

You know, think about it just for a second. Signs and wonders, right? The Jews want signs, right? Feed the 5 ,000 or whatever. Okay, now what are you going to do, Jesus? And Greeks want wisdom. Okay, how does that all work?

Does this fit into signs or wisdom, the hen-laying prophet of Leeds?

Neither one. It sounds more like she was trying to fool Penn and Teller, you know, something like that.

Did you know I took Kim to a Penn and Teller show in Hollywood when we were dating? And I was trying to win over Kim, so we got like front row seats, I splurged on them, and then they pulled me up onto the stage for one of their props.

They chose well. I know. I was hoping it wasn�t the guillotine deal. So Pastor Steve, you are continuing to teach the class on Saturdays regarding Machen and the new Westminster Seminary Press book, but it�s not being recorded, right?

Well, it�s interesting that you say that because it turns out, I didn�t know this, but they recorded the first four, but I don�t think I�m going to put those on, but now that I know that they�re being recorded, I think we might record them and then just put them on the, but the first four, you know, because, you know, I�m like, �Oh, we�re not being recorded, so I�m just going to let it fly.

Now I�m like, �Well, maybe I�ll be a little more circumspect and, you know.

Well, there is something about addressing a group of people, knowing that it is recorded or not recorded. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I catch your drift. And then it�s also difficult when we preach, every word�s recorded, and then we have to go,.

�Uh-oh.

Which is fine, right? As long as, you know, as long as we understand that going in, which we do, so.

Have we ever had to edit a Sunday morning sermon by you or by me before we put it online to make sure it was not heretical or something? Well, I remember one you did. No. Steve has got the chuckle fest going on today.

Just left Chuck E. Cheese. I�m not so sure about that. Did Chuck E. Cheese go under with the COVID restrictions?

You know what? This is going to shock you, but I don�t, I don�t know. Well, you�re the one with grandkids, not me. Yeah, but I mean, I go to Chuck E. Cheese if I�m being held at gunpoint. I mean, we�ll find something else to do.

Hey, well, with Haley getting married soon, maybe one day sooner than later, I�ll be a grandparent. You�re going to love it. So my future son-in-law, Marty, he is in a Calvary Chapel, and I started feeding him books like Trusting God by Bridges and Attributes of God by Pink.

He read Fear of Knowing, Fear of God or something by Bridges. Fear of the Silent Planet. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So he started reading those, and then Haley turned him on to the Ligonier website, and so he began listening to R .C. Sproul.

And then the other day I said to him, �Marty, you know, what are you reading Because we usually talk every couple weeks, and he said, �I�m reading a George Smeaton book on the Doctrine of the Atonement.

And I thought, that�s good. Son-in-laws should be reading stuff like that.

He said, �I�m reading a book about infant baptism.

Well, that�d be better than New Age stuff, right? Yes. All right. So, Steve, today on the show, in light of your sermon last week, a fill-in sermon that you preached in Lowell, Massachusetts, I want to talk a little bit about how not to preach from the Gospels, how to to preach from the Gospels.

Is it ever appropriate when we�re talking about Jesus to give some exhortations to the congregation and what they should do? You know, Jesus does this. You should do that, too. Or should it be more just look at who Jesus is?

Just kind of generally speaking. So, let�s start off maybe by explaining the situation this last Sunday and where you were preaching it and why, and then why you chose what you chose to preach. Let�s do that.

Preaching John 10:40-42 as a Model for Gospel Exposition

Well, I chose to preach at the end of John 10, verses 40 to 42, where Jesus goes, He�s just, it�s an odd passage, and I explain this to the congregation, it�s an odd passage because my initial thought was, I�m going to skip this passage, because it ends, you end with Jesus escaping the Jews when they�re trying to kill Him.

Oh, so when you were preaching through it here at Bethlehem Bible Church, it seemed like almost a skippable section. Yes.

Yeah, because I just looked at it and I thought, this is not, there�s no major point here. There�s no, you know, big theological point. There�s no preachable moment, you know, and so I�ll just, I can read the text here.

�He went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing at first and there he remained. And many came to him and they said, John did no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.

And many believed in him there. That is to say, they believed in Jesus. So, if we look up just above that, verse 39 says,. �And again they sought to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands. Well, that�s right after he says, I and the Father are one, and they try to, they�re going to stone him, and he talks about stoning him, and then they�re going to, they try to arrest him and he escapes, right?

So that�s, and I thought, okay, now if I attach 40 to 42 to that sermon, it�s going to be completely anticlimactic, right? You can�t go from, how did he escape, you know, and all these kinds of things too.

And then he went out there and he was just hanging out where John used to, you know, and then the next section starts with the, it�s the whole section where Mary and Martha are sent a messenger and they want to talk about, or Lazarus is sick and everything, and Lazarus dies, right?

And so it�s the whole Lazarus narrative, and I�m going, I don�t want to put those, you know, these verses on the front of that either, because I thought it�s not connected.

So what do you do? And by the way, when I look at my ESV study Bible, and I appreciate so much the ESV study Bible, the notes for John 10, 40, 41, and 42 is John 40 across the Jordan Sea note on 128. That�s it.

That�s all you�ve got. It�s not, you know, at first glance, you just go, there isn�t a whole lot here. And I just, you know, as I contemplated it, I even thought, you know, like I said before, I even thought, well, maybe I�ll just skip, nobody will probably even notice, although yeah, maybe one or two people would notice.

Robert Muta would notice. Yeah, he would notice. But I thought, man, you know what? We talk sometimes about, you know, don�t you dare to be a Daniel preaching and, you know, because they�re all flawed men.

Anybody you talk about other than Jesus is flawed. And I said, but if we think about the life of John the Baptist, what did he do? Everything he did was he confronted sin. He called people to repentance.

He told them to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He constantly pointed to Christ. We could say essentially from the womb to the tomb, that was what he did, right? I mean, literally from the womb to the tomb.

From the womb to the platter. Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, while he�s in his mother, Elizabeth�s womb, he leaps for joy because he�s filled with the Holy Spirit and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. All these things are so true.

And I go, so what if I say, here�s the life, well, and here was my outline, location. You know, basically it was the other Bethany. There�s Bethany close to Jerusalem, then there�s a Bethany out across the Jordan.

So he�s in this place. He goes out there. Why? Because he�s, they�re not going to go out there and mess with him because he�s away from the crowds. The Pharisees, the temple leaders, the Sanhedrin are not concerned with him out there.

That�s not a problem for them. So he, and it�s not time for him to go to the cross yet. So he�s just out there ministering to these people. So that�s the location. The next L in my outline was life. So I go through the whole life, basically, of John the Baptist, including, you know, the death, where he�s put to death because he�s, you know, because...

Standing up for biblical marriage. Yeah. He�s doing that. And so then, you know, what�s his legacy? Well, his legacy is these people, or in part, his legacy is these people. Because what do they say? They say, John did no sign.

In other words, John did no miracles. But what does that imply? It necessarily implies that Jesus did miracles in their, that they saw him do things. Otherwise, why would they even say, John did no sign?

If Jesus wasn�t doing signs either, it wouldn�t occur to them to say, John didn�t do any signs. But it�s interesting. He said, but everything that John said about this man, about Jesus, everything he said about this man was true.

And many believed here. So what�s his legacy? His legacy is he goes out and he preaches to people. Maybe he doesn�t see them all come to faith in Christ, but they do, right? And I just thought, how profound that is for us who have unsafe family, unsafe friends, you know, people that we come in contact with and we think, well, you know what, all I had time to do was just give them the gospel.

Sometimes that�s enough, right? Because we don�t know what�s going to, what is going to transpire years down the road or, or, you know, even months or whatever. What did Paul say? You know, I planted, right?

Other people are watered. Watered. Yeah. And so and so gets the harvest. And, and here�s the point. It doesn�t really matter. Right? I just reading an email from somebody at our church the other day where someone in their family may have come to faith in Christ.

Now, is she going to, you know, get her Bible out and, you know, put a little another tick mark in there? No, you know, she�s just thankful to the Lord that somebody in her family got saved and understanding it�s the power of the gospel.

It�s the power of the word. It�s the power of preaching Christ in him crucified, which gets us back to what�s our point when we�re preaching a gospel? We ultimately always want to point people to Christ.

Now, did I encourage people? Yes, I did. Because here�s what I said. We want to vigorously and without prejudice, preach the gospel to people because that�s how God saves people, right? And what are we doing?

We�re pointing to Christ and that�s what John the Baptist did. So if we�re going to emulate any person, John the Baptist is good to emulate because what did Jesus say? He said of all the people ever born, of all the men ever born, John the Baptist was the greatest one.

So I think, well, that�s pretty good. If Jesus says, you know, out of everybody, out of every mere mortal, John the Baptist was number one.

That�s not bad. Well, Steve, when you were talking before the show and even now, why I wanted to talk about this subject is fresh in your mind, that�s true, but in addition, we so often on this radio show, and you hear other people say the same thing, don�t preach Bible characters, right?

Don�t say, �Dare to be a Daniel. Don�t, you know, the one character you preach is the Lord Jesus, right? And he�s the one. And Paul says that in Colossians 128 and 1 Corinthians 2 too. But I think if there was anyone that we would say, �Dare to be a Daniel it would be �Dare to be John the Baptist because his M .O. was, �I must decrease, Jesus must increase.

So I think that�s going to have to be our new exception. John the Baptist preaching is good. Be like John the Baptist. And if your head winds up on a platter?

I was a little too much like John the Baptist.

Well, that�s a specific thing. Now the general thing is this. I see people going to the Gospels and they, I don�t know, they want to get to behavior right away. How does this make us change our behavior?

But let�s first talk, Steve, about believing and behaving, and doctrine and duty, and it�s believing then becoming, if you will. I think all too often pastors, evangelical pastors, they focus on the second.

Instead of let me just show you who Jesus is so you have a right object of your faith and by the way, he will do perfect things because he�s the God-man. So that�s the ground of your faith. He�s the object of your faith.

And then now here�s the law that says live this law out by the power of the Holy Spirit because Jesus not only saves, he sanctifies, but why is there the focus so much on activity at the expense of the belief?

Why do you think that is?

Well, in general, I�d say it comes down to this. Well, that�s all interesting, pastor, but what am I supposed to do, right? What am I supposed to do with that? I need a checklist. It�s Monday morning.

What do I do? Thanks for those stories, but you know, that had no impact on me. I listened to you talk about Jesus and I thought, oh yeah, that Jesus, he was amazing and I�m super glad he died for me, but now what?

I was talking Sunday.

You weren�t there because you were preaching up in Lowell. We want something new, right? Give us something new. You know, I already know about Jesus. Now tell me what to do because if I can�t have something new, I need something to do.

To make it right. Well, there�s a nice little Seussism. Are you my mother? If I can�t have something new, I need something to do.

Uh-huh. Well, I just listen to people preach. And what about these preachers that simply extol the person of Jesus Christ, gospel incarnate, as it were, as he were, and if we look at Jesus long enough, don�t we become like the one or the thing that we worship?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And you know what it also does, and you know this, you�ve said this many times. As our focus on Christ increases, what happens to our problems? You know, what happens to our concerns?

What happens to our political worries? You know, our financial worries, our relationship worries, they don�t go away, but suddenly they seem kind of minimal, which is good because when you�re focusing on Christ, you�re focusing on the eternal, something that will not change, right?

He will not change. Your problems are going to go away, whatever they are, right? If you�ve got health problems or whatever, and you say, �What do you mean Well, sooner or later, you�re going to die, right?

Whether it�s five years, 15 years, 25 years, 45 years, whatever it is, and by the way, I don�t want to live 45 more years. But whatever the issue is, all of our temporal problems, and the root word there is the same as temporary, right?

These are worldly problems. These are problems that are like blades of grass. They�re like the rush of wind. It�s going to pass. But what is eternal is Christ Jesus.

Mike Ebendroth with Steve Cooley today, No Compromise Radio, now also on Spotify, by the way. I think, Steve, about Habakkuk 2, Galatians 3, Hebrews 10, and Romans 1, that just shall live by faith. And of course, that�s shorthand for the righteous people that are declared righteous or declared just, they live, their life is living in light of the risen Savior, faith in Jesus, right?

We say by faith, but what we�re saying is by faith in Jesus, right? Because faith doesn�t save anyone, technically, full stop. It is Jesus that saves. We receive His benefits through faith, that�s true, but it�s not selfific or, sorry, it�s not meritorious.

So, where is all this when people are preaching in the Gospel of John, for instance, that just shall live by faith? I�m going to remind you today that this is who Jesus is. I know you want to do a lot of stuff, but instead of doing today, it�s just like John 11, do you want to be busy, or do you want to sit at the feet of Jesus?

That�s an interesting segue from 10 to 11, that very thing.

And I think instead of, and I think what happens to a lot of preachers when they go through Gospels, is they wind up looking for places where they can tell people to do something rather than, where they can just point out the excellencies of Christ and the really amazing things that happen.

I mean, when I�m watching somebody talk about Lazarus, and instead of talking about, you know, the God-man, deity, you know, in human form, commanding Lazarus to come out of the tomb, instead I hear something like, He enabled Lazarus to respond.

I�m like, no, that�s not really what Jesus did. Jesus wasn�t like, okay, now I�ve removed the barriers that would have stopped Lazarus from responding to my call, so I�m going to appeal to Lazarus. Lazarus was dead.

It took God to make him undead and to bring him out of the tomb by his will, his command.

I�m looking at Galatians chapter 2, and if I ask you, the listening audience, true or false, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in me, and the life I now live in the flesh, I live by the law of God, who�no, I live by faith in the Son of God.

He says earlier in verse 19, I died to the law. Of course, the law guides us, norms us as Christians, that�s true, but that�s what it does.

The law is in our Savior. But here�s what�s kind of sneaky, because today you�ll hear sermons that talk about grace, but they talk about grace and then give you new rules, right? And they�re usually made up by the pastor.

Yeah. Well, let me, you know, let me give you some takeaways, and as soon as they say that, nine times out of ten, what does that mean? The takeaways are new rules, right? I�ve talked about the grace of Jesus Christ, I�ve talked about forgiveness of sins, I�ve talked about his life, death, and resurrection.

Now, let me tell you what you need to do in response.

I did some takeaways on Sunday.

But did you say, if you�re not doing these things, you�re in sin?

Yeah, well, what I didn�t do is confuse the first use of the law and the third, right? That these are things that Christians do. Good reminders from Peter, and I think I even said, this isn�t the main point, but here�s some good reminders we see in the text.

Which is fine, because I did the same thing on Sunday, right? Oh, phew. Well, I mean, good reminders. Listen, and here was one of my reminders. There�s hope. There�s hope for all your unsafe loved ones, as long as they�re, you know, alive.

Okay, Steve, something popped in my mind. Do you think people love the Sermon on the Mount? Not just because it�s from the words of Jesus, and it�s a great sermon, obviously, but there�s a lot of law in that, right?

We have grace incarnate in, you know, chapters 2 and 3 and 4 and all that, and later in 8, 9, and 10, all the power of God and the centurion and the leper and walking on water and all these other things.

But they�re like, well, at least he�s telling me something to do. That�s why I love the Sermon on the Mount.

That�s why the liberals loved it. Oh, I was going to say, you know, who really loves it is unbelievers, because they love to, like, skewer Christians with rules that they pull out of the Sermon on the Mount.

It�s not grace. It�s a bunch of things for you to do, you know?

I�ve told the story before. I�m talking to Sinclair Ferguson in Scotland when he was the pastor at St. George�s Tron in Glasgow, and I said, I�m having a hard time, Dr. Ferguson, coming up with application points to do things in my sermons from the Gospel of Jesus according to Mark.

Could you help me? And then Ferguson looked at me and said, is there anything wrong with showing people the glories of Christ every week?

Well, I mean, if you approach a gospel like I�m in the Gospel of John, obviously, if I approach it from, well, I don�t want it to sound like last week, right? I�m going to have a real problem. And it�s not going to be exactly the same message week after week after week, because there are different, you know, I mean, different historical data, different places, and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But ultimately, the message is the same. Why? Because John�s point was, Jesus Christ is God. I want you to believe in Him that you may have eternal life. That was his point.

Yeah. The object of your sermon, the object of our faith, how do I say it? The subject of your sermon is the object of your faith. So next week, it�s going to be about Jesus again? Yes. Deal with it. Oh, I�m glad Steve said that in such a no-compromise way.

You can email Steve, TheTuesdayGuy, at NoCompromiseRadio. You can email me, HighHolyFatherMike, at NoCompromiseRadio .com. That�s always nice.

It�s hard to spell, but it�s nice. We should never get tired of preaching or hearing about the Lord Jesus.

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.