Josh Niemi Interview

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, a ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. I have probably recorded, I don�t know, two or three shows in the last month because I had knee surgery exactly 28 days ago. I�ve got two more weeks on crutches, and I kind of feel normal for the first time.

So I don�t know if that�ll make good radio. Maybe abnormal would make better. As you know, we try to interview people on the show regularly because I love to see what the Lord does through different people, different personality types, different ages, etc.

And so today I have Josh Nemi online. Welcome Josh to No Compromise Radio.

Well, hello, Pastor Mike, thanks for having me.

Okay, the check�s in the mail, baby. Josh, tell us, how do you spell Nemi?

N as in Nancy, I-E, M as in Mary, I.

Okay, what kind of ethnic background is that? Is that okay to ask on the show?

Sure, no, that�s fine. It�s a Finnish background. I�m a hodgepodge, so I�m mostly half Finnish and then half Jamaican.

Oh, really? Okay, how did that all work out in the providence of God? Yeah, that�s my parents, yep. Yep. So is your dad Jamaican and your mother Finnish or vice versa? Correct, yep. Okay, and where did they meet?

They met in college in Michigan. That�s where I grew up. I grew up in central Michigan. I actually grew up with my mom and my stepdad, but my parents, they did meet in college.

All right. Well, tell us, Josh, how you and I know each other. I think that�d be an interesting story for the listeners to hear.

Yeah, I�ve been listening to No Compromise Radio for, I don�t know, five years, maybe more. I think I came across your ministry through Todd Freel through Wretched Radio when you subbed in. That�s the best I can remember, and I know a lot of people have heard about you through that ministry, too.

I just was really encouraged by the things that you were teaching as I was working my way through scripture and trying to learn and grow, and this was back in my mid-twenties. I was just impressed and thankful for the way that you spoke the truth straightforward.

No compromise. I mean, that�s exactly what I�ve always wanted. I just want to know the truth. I don�t care what it costs me. I don�t care what it means, what implications it has on my life. I just want to know the truth.

And so you were the guy that was teaching me about tithing and C .F. Lewis and female pastors and, I mean, just everything, you know. So I just soaked it up, and then we finally got to meet face-to-face.

We had some email correspondence back and forth. I remember going through your First Corinthians preaching series, and as I was writing a study guide for that to disciple other men, that was a big help for me.

And then we finally met face-to-face at ShepCon 2017.

That�s right. It�s so fun, Josh, to just see through social media how we can meet people, and I know lots of folks when they go to large conferences. They�ve never met face-to-face, but they know each other online from correspondence, emails, you know, Twitter or whatever.

And so it�s just kind of fun to meet after all that, isn�t it? Yeah.

It�s like a family get-together. You�re meeting people that you feel like you know them very well, but you�ve never actually spoken face-to-face. But, you know, you have so much in common, and you love the Lord, and you hold virtually all the same convictions, and ShepCon definitely felt like that for me, you know, meeting people that you already know.

Yeah, good. I just had a question pop in my mind. Who�s Todd Friel? Who�s he? Mr. Todd Friel. Mr. Mr. Mr. Friel. I have some old Todd Friel notes here in terms of what the notice was, the music, then the break, and rejoin, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think I�m just going to tear that up online now, since I�m never asked to do that again. So that�s like Nancy Pelosi move right there. I just ripped the Constitution in half. If you don�t like it, shred it.

There you go. Yep. So, Josh, you�re an engineer by day, but I wanted to have you on today for several reasons. One is I want to promote some of your books, because I actually have endorsed one of your books.

Tell us about your engineering job, and then why do you want to write? I guess, you know, most people think, well, you�re a seminary professor or a pastor and you write books. Tell me during the day what you do, and then why do you write books like Greater Than Aaron, which is about Leviticus 16 and Christ�s limited atonement, and then even expository parenting?

Great question. Yeah. So by day, I�m a control systems engineer here in central Illinois. The engineering firm that I work for, we provide service primarily in the water and wastewater industry. So we�re designing water treatment facilities.

We�re designing sewer plants. We do a little bit of transportation, road construction, that kind of thing. Let me interrupt you just for a second.

Do you know I know what a fecal sludge is?

Very good. Very good. I mean, maybe you even know more about the process than me. Most people are more aware of it than they realize, but they just flush and walk away. Yeah, there you go. Okay, sorry to interrupt you.

No problem. So my role, I�m an automation or electrical design engineer. So there�s all kinds of radio systems and control systems and automation that go into these plants that allow them to operate on their own and dose chemicals and monitor tower and tank levels on their own.

And so I�m part of the division that designs those systems. Excellent. Of course, that has nothing to do with ministry, you know. But as a believer, as a Christian, you know, outside of work, that�s really the rest of my life is pouring into, you know, my wife and my kids and my local church and evangelism and things like that.

Not to say, obviously, that engineering isn�t for the Lord, too, but in terms of ministry, why I wrote these books, it really kind of goes back to my testimony in that I started with the book, Expository Parenting, that I wrote.

And in my mid -20s, after learning so much through expositors like MacArthur and Steve Lawson and yourself, I realized that I had a lot of things in place for my family. Like we had a house. I had a good job that took care of the bills.

I had a 401k set up for retirement. I had a life insurance policy for myself and my wife. But I had nothing in terms of a spiritual legacy. And more than that, just looking at modern Christianity, modern evangelicalism, and realizing that I had learned so much.

I mean, I just soaked up so much of the Word when I first began to understand expository preaching and tracking some of these guys online and studying for myself. But I realized, if I were to die tomorrow, that's all going to go with me.

And so I wanted a way to essentially disciple my family past the grave, if you will. And so I wrote Expository Parenting, which is a book that describes my parenting philosophy based on 2 Timothy in the Bible.

Obviously, I wrote that first and foremost for the Lord, but secondarily for my wife so that, again, if I were to die, she would know my philosophy and all the things that I've learned in terms of how to teach verse by verse and Christ-centered and all these things.

And then she could pick up the pieces in my absence and say, you know, what am I going to do with these kids now that He's gone?

So... Josh, I think that's very insightful, and I appreciate that. I had a similar thought. So I was a pastor, and I thought, you know what, I'd like to write this book about, the first one I wrote was about Jesus and His preaching.

And I thought, well, you know what, if the church could benefit from it, that I pastor, that would be great. And then if it goes beyond that, fine. And so, similarly, it sounds like for you, I want to write this book for my wife and children and then grandchildren one day to leave a legacy, and if the Lord expands it past my family, then wonderful.

And if He doesn't, that's okay because I've discharged my duties that I thought I was supposed to do.

Yeah, that's exactly right, and that's really the parallel that expository parenting is based on, in that you look at the way Paul instructs Timothy to lead a congregation, and then you apply that to the next step, and how a parent, and primarily a father, is to lead his family, because the overlaps are similar.

I mean, you see that a pastor is commanded to do the work of an evangelist, and a parent obviously wants to reach his kids for the Lord. You see in Ephesians 4 that pastors are there to equip the saints, and as a parent you want to equip your kids for all of life, you know, once they leave your home.

And then obviously in 1 Timothy, in order to even be qualified to be a pastor, you have to demonstrate that you have the ability to lead a flock at home. And so exactly like you said there, for me it was a matter of wanting to leave that legacy for them, and not necessarily having any plans for that to blossom into a ministry, but it has.

It's kind of launched an expository parenting ministry with an associated website, and I'm posting things, but yeah, that's just the way that the Lord's kind of directed it.

Wonderful. Josh Nemi today on No Compromise Radio. Josh, if they want to go to the website, or get in touch with you, how do they do one or the other?

Yeah, the website is expositoryparenting .org. You can also go .com, that's fine too, but expository parenting. You can find us on Facebook, you can email me, josh at expositoryparenting .org. I'm on Twitter every now and then, but for the most part Twitter has become a dumpster fire, so.

Come on, I post things on Twitter all the time, I just refuse to fight with people. You either read my post or move on kind of thing.

Right, right. You like to match and then walk away, yeah. It's so true.

Josh, tell me a little bit about what you wish you would have put in the book. I'm not knocking the book, but I know in my parenting, I think, you know what, I've learned some things as time has gone by, or there's a particular book I wrote, and I should have added this, that, or the other, that wisdom and time and maturity and hard knocks have given me some insight to.

Anything you wish you would have put in the book that's not in the book, or you would have said something differently?

How does that all work? Yeah, yeah, and you know, that's a good point that you bring up, I'll touch on really quick, is that obviously writing a parenting book when you're in your mid-twenties is risky business.

Let's get that out front. The one thing that I'll say that I think sets this book apart from virtually every other parenting book that I've read is that there are no personal anecdotes in this. And kind of what I base that off of, or what I learned that from, is John MacArthur talking about his preaching, and he says, don't make yourself the hero of your own stories.

You know, you're not up there to preach yourself, you're there to preach Christ. And so expository parenting is based strictly on the book of 2 Timothy. Obviously, there's application and illustrations, but there's nothing about my family and the way we do things, because we're not the standard, we're not perfect, I'm not the hero.

With that said, I think if I could add one element to the book, I think I would talk a little bit about discipline, because that's obviously such a huge part of parenting. It's difficult to draw a direct comparison between the church and the family when it comes to discipline, even though church discipline is a huge part of, or a critical part of what defines a biblical church.

But the book was more focused on how to teach the Bible, how to deliver the full counsel of God to your kids, why you would do that, what factors you need to consider in that. And maybe I think if I could go back and add something, it'd be along the lines of discipline.

Also some encouragement to parents that are in exceedingly difficult situations. Maybe it's a child that has autism or special needs. Just give them some encouragement to say, hey, look, you're not here to develop a theologian necessarily if they just don't have that mental capability.

Just be faithful in teaching them at their level, even if it has to be a storybook, Bible, whatever it is, just teach them about God, and God will bless your efforts.

Great, wonderful. I have written half a book on parenting, but I thought I'd better become a little older before I finish the rest.

And you know what? The only thing that really motivated me to do it was, like I said, if I were to die tomorrow, I wanted to leave them something, and I figured, hey, let's package it and let's make it nice.

Well, unlike you, Josh, my book is full of anecdotes that are personal because I thought, you know what? How can I write a book on parenting when I'm not an expert on parenting? But I am an expert on how to make mistakes.

So the working title was Common Parenting Mistakes, and how can I write on it? Because I'm an expert on how to do it. That's another good angle. Everybody's got an angle. Everybody's got an angle. Do you teach the Bible, besides to your family, anywhere else?

In the past, I've discipled men. A lot of that, some of it's been in person. Some of it's also been over the Internet, like Skype and other ways to video connect. I've taught through probably half a dozen or so books, verse-by-verse, in the New Testament.

My primary ministry, of course, though, is to my family, so teaching them verse-by-verse. We're working our way through the Old Testament. My oldest son, he's 10 now, and we just kind of look back and calculate.

We're about 50 through the entire Bible, so pretty excited. It's encouraging to him to look back and see how far we've come.

That's a wonderful legacy that you can leave your kids.

Absolutely, and you know, the thing is, again, drawing the comparison between a pastor and a parent, when Paul spoke to the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, he said, I didn't shrink back from declaring to you the full counsel of God, until I'm innocent of the blood of all men.

That's the kind of no-regret parenting philosophy that I operate by. I've even told my oldest son this. I said, look, when you turn 18 or whenever you leave our home, I'm going to deliver the full counsel of God by that time, and then when you're off and running, I'm going to look at you and say, listen, this is your life as an adult now.

I'm innocent. I have no regrets. I've given you the entire Bible, and now it's up to you to run with that, in a sense.

Yeah, I just was thinking about the Proverbs, Josh, in Proverbs 1 .8, Hear, my son, Proverbs 2 .1, my son, Proverbs 3 .1, my son, Proverbs 4 .1, Hear, O sons, Proverbs 5, my son, Proverbs 6, my son, Proverbs 7, my son.

I think there's kind of a pattern there, don't you?

Exactly, exactly. Sitting down and just delivering the full counsel of God, because again, if we have that promise for pastors with their congregation, that the word of God fully equips us for every good work, and we want to equip our kids for every good work as they go on into adulthood, for all of life and godliness, then as they say, what's good for the goose is good for the yander.

And so we need to just follow that pattern. That's where the title comes from in the ministry, that just as every preacher should be committed to expository preaching, so too should every parent be committed to expository parenting.

Josh, I know you like to focus on the gospel and good news and God's mercy and grace. Let's talk a little bit about a parent maybe who's listening today, and maybe they got saved late in their parenting years, their kids are older now, or maybe they were saved, but they just got distracted and they were sinfully preoccupied with work or something else.

What do you tell a parent who, as a Christian mom and dad, they've blown it for the most part in terms of teaching their kid the Bible, but their kids are still at the house, they're 14, 15 years old.

Any hope for them?

Definitely hope for them. A couple things I would say. First thing, it has to start with, like you said, if it's sinful negligence, it has to start with repentance. And going to your kids and saying, look, I blew it, I didn't have my priorities, maybe I was out on the golf course or I was sitting in front of the TV or whatever it was.

But just being honest with them, especially if you're going to make this radical shift all of a sudden, and now you're going to say, okay, kids, let's sit down every other day for a half an hour and we're going to do Bible time.

That's a big change in family life if you haven't already established that. So you have to explain the gravity of the situation to your kids through repentance. That humility in going to them and saying, I've blown it, that will go a long way.

And then, like I said, making such a radical shift. The other thing I would say is get involved in a biblical church that is teaching the Bible verse by verse, if they aren't already. Because as I point out in the book, the pastor is actually a partner with you in this.

A lot of people may be excited about teaching the entire Bible, but they see it as a daunting task or they feel like I don't have the time for that. And that's where the pastor comes in and he supplements what you're teaching by also teaching your kids books of the Bible, which relieves you of having to deliver those books to them.

You can partner together. You're teaching them, let's say, in the Old Testament. Sunday mornings you take them to church and the pastor's teaching them through the New Testament. All that works together, and so it's not a burden only on you.

In addition to that, the pastor is going to equip you to teach better the Scriptures to your kids so that you're not going to make the kind of mistakes that we see so often in modern evangelical preaching.

But that's part of that Ephesians 4 paradigm. And then the other thing is, obviously, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. And I want to make that absolutely clear, that this isn't some kind of a salvation issue, that if you haven't been teaching your kids as you want to, which I don't think any of us would say, yeah, we're right there, exactly where we want to be, that somehow you're outside the faith.

Pray for your kids. God will bring people into their lives that will also assist you, whether it's family, whether it's friends, whether it's pastors. And then, of course, Lord willing, they have the rest of their lives to learn.

It's not as if, okay, you teach your kids the Bible by the time they leave home, and now they never need to pick it up again.

Right. Well, no, I think that's excellent. And I think even though I regularly taught my children the Bible, there are lots of things that I look back and think, oh, I wish I would have done this or I could have done that.

And I have these regrets and just kind of the sting. The kids are all out of the house. But overall, I think, you know, the Lord has blessed my feeble efforts, and I want to be at least consistent. And I don't think the kids would say, oh, that Saturday night we missed Bible time.

They'd say overall, you know, on my deathbed, they'll probably gather around and say, for the most part, you know, we remember Dad opened up the Bible and sitting around the dinner table and telling us who the Lord was.

And, of course, I want to echo what you said about repentance. The Lord loves repentance. And so today's a good day to start, right? If you've blown it as a parent and you sit down and we don't have to go a half hour to start.

We'll sit down for five minutes, talk about who God is, read some Bible verses, and let's establish a good pattern today. Josh, tell me a little bit about what it looks like when you're sitting down at the table.

I tried to just go kind of chapter by chapter through books of the Bible, talk about sin and then the Savior, ask the kids questions with some review, maybe put some M &Ms out for special rewards if they got the questions right.

And I tried to make it fun. Is there anything to be said for trying to make Bible time enjoyable for the kids? Because I think we live in a world where many would say, well, it's the Bible. It's exciting anyway.

And so you don't need any kind of, you know, don't try to prop it up by being enthusiastic. What's your take on that?

Yeah, I mean, you're right. The Bible is exciting. And that's why I think it should be reflected by the parents. And that's something really I've learned from you even, is that I remember you describing the way that you taught your kids, and you're talking about, you know, King David slobbering all over himself.

That's right. And, you know, I've done the same kind of thing. I remember one time when I was teaching through Exodus, and God talking about how he smashed the Egyptians. And we went outside. I grabbed an empty pickle jar, and my son was standing right there.

And I picked it up, and I just launched it at the concrete patio. And this glass shard went all over the place. And that's just been one of those things that he'll never forget, you know, but just a great visual.

You mean he'll never forget the illustration, or picking the shards of glass out of his bare feet?

Probably. He probably won't forget either one. But no, I mean, so, you know, when I teach at home, that's exactly what we do. I pick up the Bible. I say, it's Bible time. We shout, you know. You know, we hug the Bible, say, I love the Bible.

It's another thing that I learned from you early on, and giving the Bible kisses and showing affection. And then we dig in. Now, what might be a little bit different in our family than others might assume or have thought is that I split up Bible time between my older son and my two younger kids.

And I do that because my older son's in a full-text Bible, and like I said, we're literally 50 of the entire Bible now. My younger two are still working through a storybook Bible. So rather than trying to, you know, dumb down, in a sense, Scripture for the older, or speak so far above the younger that they're not really getting much out of it, I split those up.

And we also do catechism, typically split up between the older and the younger two. Then we all come together for singing hymns. We go through different theology books. There's a great resource called Theology that we go through, and that's kind of like a systematic theology book for kids.

But we definitely make it exciting. We goof around, you know, when we're singing hymns, and I'm off key, and I'm, you know, my voice is cracking or whatever. And my kids are laughing at me, whatever. We just have a lot of great memories.

We make sure that it's a good memory. It's not like this strict disciplinarian type thing.

Wonderful. Well, Josh, I'm thankful that there are young men who want to teach their children the Bible. And I hope our listeners today, I think they implicitly get this, but I want to make it explicit.

Here's what I want to make explicit. You can have a full-time job and still sit down with your kids around the dinner table and teach them the Bible. I think too many listeners think, well, pastors can do that, theologians, other people.

But I just work all day, and then I come home. I can't figure out what to do for Bible time, et cetera. So I think you are a good example of a young man who wants to teach the children the Bible, and you'll sit down and do it even though you've got a full-time job, and your full-time job is not ministry.

If people want to order the books, Expository Parenting, Josh's book, you can go to Amazon and pick it up. It's $14 .95. And also, I just had endorsed his newer book, I don't know, probably a couple years ago now, Greater Than Aaron, The Supremacy of Christ's Limited Atonement.

And he's walking through the great passage there, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, Leviticus 16. So Josh, thank you so much for being on No Compromise Radio today. You probably had to take a lunch break to do it as you're an engineer.

You probably have to get back to waste management systems now, right?

That's right. Living the dream.

So it's josh at expositoryparenting .org, and you go to Amazon and pick up his books. I think you'd be encouraged. Maybe you've got a question about parenting. I know it's Josh's desire to serve you in any way he can.

Josh, thanks again for listening to NOCO. I'm glad we got to meet face-to-face, and thanks for being our guest today.

Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. 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 bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.