Christ Like Love

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 Wretched Radio. My name is Todd Friel. Sir, if you can see my hands, I can't really do a good Friel unless I could use my hands, but you can't see my hands since we don't have a video in here.

I'm so glad you can't see me because basically right now you would see my workout outfit and my unshaven face and, what's that? Unshorn face? Anyway, this is not Wretched Radio, but this is Mike Abendroth for No Compromise Radio Ministry.

We're glad you tuned in. If I had two hours a day like Friel, I could ramble on, but since I only have 24 minutes every day, I've got to jam this in. I've got to compact truth. This is compressed truth.

Think of No Compromise Radio as a zip drive, and you just click here to extract. It just extracts it all the way out. The theological truths extracted like a zip drive. How about that? Does that sound good to you?

Well, today in No Compromise Radio Ministry, we're gonna do a couple of different things, but before we start, Andy Olson over at Echo Zoe Radio interviewed me on Sola Scriptura, and if you'd like to listen to that, just go to Echo Zoe, and you will be over there.

And so E-C-H-O-Z-O-E .com, I believe. I think that's I Have Life in Greek. I think so. And just type Andy Olson, or Mike Abendroth and Andy Olson. That should pull it right up, and then you can actually see a picture of me about eight years ago when I had him here.

So there's an interview, Sola Scriptura, and I was quite happy to do it. I don't know, I think, let's see. Phil Johnson did Sola Fide, and then I, and James White did Sola Gratia, and so I got Sola Scriptura.

So they gave me the hardest one. How does that work? I want Sola Fide. I know Johnson is an expert, but I want the easy ones to do. I go for the least common denominator route. Come on, the lowest common denominator.

You can also pick up my book, The Sovereignty and Supremacy of King Jesus, a day one production. You can pick that up on the website, nocompromisedradio .com, $10 including shipping. Just click on that thing and off you go.

If you're listening and you really can't afford the book, you say, I'd like to read it. I will read it. I'll memorize it, parse it, and Xerox it, and you'd like a copy of that and can't afford it. You write me anyway at info at nocompromisedradio .com, and we'll see what we can do.

Other than that, you can go to Amazon, or you can go to CBD, or you can go to wherever to find a copy of the book. I think you'll be encouraged, though. Jesus Christ is king, and if you can get that he's king, you can understand him to a greater degree.

That is a greater biblical degree. Thank you to Kirby Myers and the men in Indianapolis. I was there over the weekend to do a man camp. Yes, that's right, man camp. We all got a free copy of Wild at Heart, and we took off our shirts and ran around and jumped in the ice cold river over there in Indianapolis, Indianapolis River.

I'm sure there's no such thing. Boy, that city is cult fever. I think the Super Bowl's coming this season there, and it is cult fever, except I don't think the fevers hit the cults because Peyton's out, so I think they're dust.

But Kirby, faithful man of God, preaching the word in Indianapolis. It's encouraging to see the Bible church there and the men who didn't want any of the nonsense about Wild at Heart and Eldridge. They wanted to know the truth about the God of the universe, God as king.

So that was an excellent time. Today on No Compromise Radio Ministry, let's talk a little bit about name changes. Now, there's a theological point to this name change, but there are many people who love to change their names.

And you know what? I'm just looking at this information right now about name changing, except name changes, I think that, you know what that needs? Name changes needs a host. It needs Tuesday guy. Where is Tuesday guy?

Where is Steve when I need him? I actually need Steve right now for this, and I think I'm just going to have to bag the name change thing and we'll do something else. When I talked to you a while ago about Pat Robertson, I gave him a Cooks and Barneys award.

Cooks and Barneys are people in surfing lingo who mess up the waves for the good surfers, for the expert surfers, for the surfers that know what to do. And so I'm no great surfer. I think my son's a great surfer.

My wife's a great surfer, but Cooks and Barneys is a new award on No Compromise Radio that we give to people who are theologically naive, ignorant, heretical. It's just a name. Because Cooks is kind of, you know, he's a theological cook.

I say many times off air, that's a loon. That guy's a loon. That lady's a loon theologically. And so we have a new award called the Cooks and Barneys award. I first inaugurated such award at wretchedradio .com.

But I gave the award to Pat Robertson when he sinfully and selfishly and sadly told his listeners on CBN or whatever it's called, that if your wife has Alzheimer's and basically you need to have a warm lady next to you, she, the earlier wife, is dead already with Alzheimer's and you're free to divorce and remarry.

And I just said, you know, it should not surprise us because he's so kooky on so many other things in terms of end times. What I didn't get to last time for the Pat Robertson issue is a positive side.

And there is a positive side to this. And here's the positive side. You can contrast what Pat Robertson said with what another Robertson said, Robertson McQuilkin. And Robertson McQuilkin was a man, a faithful man, I think he's still alive, who had a wife and she got Alzheimer's, but unlike Robertson's comments, Robertson McQuilkin, unlike Pat Robertson's comments, Robertson McQuilkin stood by his vows.

He made the promises before God and he said it was his pleasure and his privilege to serve his wife. And he wasn't going looking for some hot kind of a woman because he was lonely. And if you have a wife that needs special care, then we are to die to ourselves and love our wives.

I'll talk more about that in a minute. He was the president of Columbia Bible College and he needed to resign so he could take care of his wife, Muriel, full time. And he gave the snippet on YouTube that we played on Wretched that Muriel wasn't very happy unless he was around.

So he wanted to be around and that he didn't want to dishonor the Lord and how the Lord thinks of the church. And that is to say, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. And here's what Robertson McQuilkin said.

I never think about what if. I don't think what if is in God's vocabulary. So I don't even think about what I might be doing instead of changing her diaper or what I might be doing instead of spending two hours feeding her.

It's the grace of God, I'm sure. But that's quite a contrast from Pat Robertson. Rainey and whatever, who's, which guy's Rainey? What's his name again? He's got that national show. Good old, what's his name?

Dennis Ramey. Not Dennis Ramey, Dennis Rainey. I have Ken Ramey as a friend of mine. This is Dennis Ramey. And Rainey asked a follow-up question. Do you ever think about what you may have given up to care for her?

Here's what the real Robertson said. I don't feel like I've given anything up. Our life is not the way we plotted our planet. All along, I've just accepted whatever assignment the Lord gave me. This was his assignment.

I know I'm not supposed to have that kind of reaction, but you asked me and I have to be honest. I've never went to a support group. Stop there. Isn't that interesting? The sovereignty of God. God's sovereignty rules over all.

God does whatever he pleases. Psalm 103, Psalm 115, that he causes all things to work together for our good to those, what? Called according to his purpose. When you think of the sovereignty of God, the sovereignty of God is really the comfort for the Christian.

That's why when people say, I don't really want theology, I don't want all that Calvinism, I don't want reform stuff, I don't want sovereignty of God, is basically what they're saying. I feel sorry for you because the world is so bad.

Sin is so horrible. The fall is so corrupting. Our own hearts are so bad. The world is broken. We are going to have tragedy. We are going to have heartache. And then what do you lean upon? To whom do you lean?

And that is the sovereign God of the universe, the king. The king, can you imagine? Current kings, they're not omnipotent. So there's only so far they can, to some degree they can do things. They can't yield almighty power because they are limited in their power and they're not smart enough to know what's going on in the entire world.

We have an all-wise God, though, and we have an all-powerful God, an all-sovereign God, and that's why he's called King of Kings and Lord of Lords in 1 Timothy 1, verse 17, speaking of Christ Jesus.

And so, isn't that interesting? How do you get by when you have to quit your job and take care of your basically invalid wife? And he answers, the sovereignty of God. And then he says he never went to a support group.

Isn't that fascinating? I think the only support group that he's ever been to is the local church. We support each other. We are a hospital full of sick people, sinfully sick people, and we support and love and do one another's and care for one another, encourage one another, support one another.

You don't need to go to some AA group or some other thing. We'll talk about that another time. Here's what Robertson McQuilkin said. I had enough of my own burdens without taking on everybody else's. Sometimes I have accepted an invitation to speak at one of these.

A lot of angry people. They're angry at God for letting this happen. Why me? They're angry at the one they care for, and they feel guilty about it because they can't explain why they're angry at them.

I say in acceptance, there's peace. Wow, that's exactly right. That is husbands love your wives, Ephesians 5, like Christ love the church. If we can push it a little bit without being irreverent or blasphemous, but certainly being no compromise, which is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

Think about what we offer the Lord. If we are the bride of Christ, there are other metaphors for Christians, the body, the temple. If you think about the bride, we are the bride that has Alzheimer's. We are the bride that needs to have our mouths wiped, other areas of our body wiped, diapers put on, drool taken care of.

We need someone who will love us and to be patient to us. We, like an Alzheimer's patient, don't really have much to offer the husband or the groom. Here we have a man, Robertson McQuilkin, shouting to the world, shouting to Pat Robertson, shame on Pat Robertson.

This is how much Christ loved the church. And Christ loved the church so much that he laid his life down for her. And he loved her, the church, when she was not healthy, not good, not holy, but she was unholy.

She was helpless. If you think of Romans chapter five, how does God love? Well, you could ask yourself the question, to what degree does God love? God doesn't love us because of who we are. That's a fallacy.

That's a fable. God loves us in spite of who we are. And if you look at Romans chapter five, you see four distinguishing characteristics of people, enemies, helpless, ungodly, and sinners. God loved us in spite of the fact that we couldn't help ourselves get any better.

You know, God does not help those who help themselves because we're helpless. We are unable to assist ourselves while we're dead in trespasses and sins. We are sinners. We're characterized by sin. We just miss the mark, miss the mark, miss the mark, then miss the mark, miss the mark.

We can't hit the mark. And so he loves us anyway. We are enemies. We're in rebellion to God. We have him as our enemy, and he has us as our enemy. And here, God's holiness and our sin clash, yet he still loves us.

And then what's the other one? The other one was ungodly. We are unlike God in every way, shape, and form. We aren't holy. We aren't kind. We aren't merciful. We aren't patient. We aren't long-suffering.

We're the opposite, and yet God still loves us. I mean, I picked my wife because she was pretty and she was cute and she was beautiful. Well, that's all true. That's what I first noticed, I have to tell you the truth.

But then I saw that she was the exact same on the inside. She was beautiful on the inside. I got married when I was an unbeliever, so it's not really fair. But even if believers choose spouses, believers will say something like, I'll ask them in premarital counseling, tell me four reasons you picked your wife to be.

And they'll say she's pretty, she's godly, she's Calvinistic, and she's good with kids. You know, that kind of thing. And so we pick in our society because of. Even if you come from an arranged family type atmosphere from the East in India or some other place, your parents pick the spouse for you because of, because they have a good family, because it's a Christian family, because the dad is friends with the other dad and he knows what that daughter has been taught.

It's because of. So in either system of marriage, love marriages or arranged marriages, we pick because of. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's actually a good thing to do. Pick a young lady, son, who is godly.

And certainly it's fine to be attracted to her. I think you should be. Why marry someone who you don't find attractive? But I'm talking about external and internal, not particularly in that order. And so God loves us in spite of us, not because of us, because there's nothing in us to love.

We are enemies, ungodly, helpless, and sinners. And so what is there in us to love? A spark of divine being, some little good, something in us that's lovable. God, you can tell how much he loves us because how he laid down his life.

He can tell how much, how valuable we are because he laid down his life for people who have such value. See, that just comes across the wrong way. You're looking at things improperly, wrong side up. And so here's what we do.

You can measure the love of God for how he loves sinners, enemies, ungodly, helpless people. That shows the height and depth and breadth and the love that God has for us in Christ Jesus. That's what shows us how great God is, not how great we are.

And so when Robertson McQuilkin begins to love his wife with self-sacrificial love, with agape love, what's important for the one that's receiving the love? That's basically what agape love is. Agape love is, I want what's best for you and what's best for the bride of Christ, what's best for sinners, enemies, and ungodly and helpless people.

To be sent to hell, to be ostracized into a God-filled eternity in the eternal lake of fire. No love of God, no goodness of God, just the justice of God and the holiness of God and the wrath of God unmixed.

Well, God loves us in spite of us, not because of us. And so Robertson McQuilkin is a man who says, my marriage preaches the gospel. And so if you're listening today, did you know your marriage preaches the gospel?

If you're married, it's preaching. Preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach, preach. And if you're a husband, it's preaching. How does God love the church? How does Christ love the church? And if you're a woman, you're preaching.

How does the church respond to the groom? That is, husbands love, wives submit. And so today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking a little bit about Pat Robertson's foible, his faux pas, and we're talking about Robertson McQuilkin as an excellent illustration of a man loving his wife.

Now here's what Johnny Erickson Tata said about Pat Robertson. Of course, Johnny was young in her teens and jumped into a lake, I believe, dove into a lake and was paralyzed from the neck down. And she has a husband.

I can't remember Mr. Tata's first name, but that doesn't matter. Listen to what she says. Any marriage has its challenges, but at a serious disability, they can at times seem overwhelming. This is why God instituted marriage as a lifelong commitment.

Heaven knows it requires vows, solemn and serious, to weather a couple through the demands of disability. I was dismayed when this week Pat Robertson said to a nationwide audience that Alzheimer's disease is a kind of death that makes divorce justifiable.

When a Christian leader, that's the only thing I disagree with Johnny on that, Johnny, is that he's not really a Christian leader. She should have put parentheses around their quotation marks. When a Christian leader views marriage as a sliding scale, what does this say to the millions of couples who must deal daily with a catastrophic injury or illness?

At the Johnny and Friends Institutional Disability Center, we encounter thousands of couples who despite living with serious disabling conditions, showcase the grace of God in their weakness every day.

There you go. That's exactly right. Marriage is designed to be a picture of God's sacrificial love for us. Alzheimer's disease is never an accident in a marriage. It falls under the purview of God's sovereignty.

In the case of someone with Alzheimer's, this means God's unconditional and sacrificial love has an opportunity to be even more gloriously displayed in a life together, exclamation point. Johnnyandfriends .org.

I say preach that because that's exactly what happens. It preaches. It preaches Christ loving the church. It preaches the atonement. It preaches that the doctrine of the atonement is found in marriage.

That is to say, we think about marriage in lots of ways. Well, we've got to do how-tos and you've got to buy your wife this and you've got to make your husband lunch and you have to do all these things.

I don't care about to-do lists. But when you think of marriage, I don't want you to think of to-do lists. I don't want you to think necessarily of romance. I don't want you to necessarily think of procreation.

I want you to think of Christ loving the church. God uses, John Gerstner said, marriage as an excellent illustration of the union between Christ and the church. More than that, it suggests that God created the marriage institution, especially to be an illustration of the Christian mystery.

In other words, we do not first have marriage and then its adaptation as an illustration of the mystical union between Christ and believers. In other words, marriage is thought up first, I believe, in the covenant of redemption where the father, son, and spirit decide to go redeem the bride.

And so the father chooses the bride, it's arranged marriage. The son goes and purchases the bride and then the spirit applies salvation that Christ achieved and God planned in actual time. And so when you wanna think of marriages, I want you to think of not five easy happy steps to marriages that you find in Reader's Digest, but I want you to think of the atonement.

And you think of the atonement and then you'll begin to say, we need to love our wives in an excellent way, in a way that would show forth and exhibit and demonstrate Christ's love. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, and that she would be holy and blameless.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies, unless they have Alzheimer's. He who loves his own wife loves himself, unless you get divorced for Alzheimer's. For no one ever hated his own flesh, except for Alzheimer's, but nourishes and cherishes it, except for Alzheimer's, just as Christ also does the church because we are members of his body.

So the key here is love, used in this section about six different times. Love, what's best for the other person, laying down my life, giving for the other. I think of 1 Corinthians 7, later in the chapter, about pleasing your spouse.

There's nothing wrong with that. You're not at the expense of disobeying the Lord, but the key to the ministry of a family, husband and wife, is your model is Christ Jesus. Well, on No Compromise Radio Ministry today, we're talking a little bit about Pat Robertson and Robertson McQuilkin.

That's what we're talking about. And we're saying this, we're saying that marriages preach the gospel. And I don't know what Pat Robertson was thinking. I think he took some kind of, I think maybe he took a loopy pill that day.

Maybe that's what he, maybe that's a new segment on No Compromise Radio. It's the loopy pill segment. Oh, by the way, I was so happy to be in Indianapolis because they spoke like I remember people spoke when I grew up in the Midwest.

And somebody said something, I think they said hankering. They had a hankering for something. Nobody said something like they do in the South where they said I'm hungry, but they did say hankering. And I think quite a few heck of us, heck of us.

I think that's just one word, heck of us, but it's got a lot of syllables. I don't let my kids say heck and I don't really let them say, you know, dang and darn. Unless you're darning your socks, you can say it, but otherwise if you say dang, I don't really like dang.

What's there's, I think there's a Forrest Gump, Sergeant Dang, if your last name's Dang, you can say it. Oh, a heck of a Sergeant Dang. Oh man. Anyway, you can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

I'd love to get your emails. And people have said to me, I met someone at the Retro Radio Conference. He said, I've emailed you two times and you haven't responded to either email. It's about mental illness and such and such.

Friend, you got the wrong address because I've responded to everybody or having one of the writers respond. Info at BB, sorry, info at nocompromiseradio .com. If you write to that and I receive it, I will make sure you get a response.

And so you can check out our websites, some old podcasts, go to Wretched Radio for some old podcasts too. And just did a couple of shows for them recently. And you can tune in on Facebook, on iTunes, on WVNE, nocompromiseradio .com.

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 six. 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.