Sin and the Substitute (Part 2)

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. I will try not to yawn or drink coffee during the show.

That's what I'm gonna try to do. I can't guarantee you, I guarantee. We used to say that,

I guarantee. I guarantee. I think that was, was that Orville Redenbacher? I don't know.

So you'd have Orville Redenbacher, his son, who

I believe took over the family business. He used to go to Grace Church, my home church, back in Los Angeles, and I would see him in the back trying to think of some funny popcorn joke.

When we grow up, when we grow up, when we grew up, we always made popcorn the old fashioned way.

Put some oil, cover the pan, put a couple kernels in, put the lid on, when it pops, then you put the rest on, shake it up, nice and greasy, greasy.

That's how we used to make it. And now it's just all prefab. I wonder the chemicals in that stuff. You know, people say popcorn at the movie theater is bad, or the oil there is bad.

What's wrong with the popcorn, fake butter, rancid stuff? What's wrong with that? Well, today on No Compromise Radio, we're continuing to talk about sin, forgiveness, and substitution.

I mean, what else is there to talk about? We need a Savior from sin. We need forgiveness.

We need a substitute. We don't need primarily a Savior to suffer with us, to share with us.

We need a Savior to die for us. And certainly afterwards, there is a closeness, there is an intercessory role that the

Spirit of God you know, play, there's a role that He plays in our need to have a companion, the closeness of God when we suffer.

I understand that, but at the top of the list, you don't need, and we'll see it from Scripture today, hopefully on the show, it's only 24 and a half minutes, though, that we need a substitute more than we need someone to share our experiences of, you know, bad sufferings in the world.

Well, today on No Compromise Radio, I already said that, didn't I? Boy, I need, and my wife slipped and fell and hurt her back, landed on a rock, and I've been doing double duty, putting together sermons, doing the radio show, taxi cab driver, boy, it was a lot easier.

You know what was the easiest to have kids? When the kids were so little, you just put them in the middle of the bed and they can't roll over or roll off.

That was an easy day. Those were easy. The extent of what I had to do besides changing the baby and burping the baby and feeding the baby was driving down to the store and getting some

Desitin. That's about all I needed to do. And now, although it's nice that I don't have to buy diapers,

Desitin, car seats, there are other complications. Mr.

Sangster said on his deathbed, and he could not talk hardly or walk, and he wrote this little note to his daughter.

It was Easter. It's terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout, he is ridden.

Aye yai yai, where am I? He is risen. But, he said, see right there, you want to know what that pause was?

That pause was, I was just going to tape over it. I was going to tape over the show and think, you know what, that is lame.

I'm so tired, I can't even read, my eyes are sore, my eyes are tired, but I'm not going to do it.

We're just going to power through. This is live. Let's just pretend this is live radio. So, here we go.

It's terrible to wake up on Easter morning and have no voice with which to shout, he is risen. But, it would be still more terrible to have a voice and not want to shout.

That is so true. We have a savior, Jesus Christ, the God -man, the son of David, according to the flesh.

And, he is worthy of our admiration, of our exaltation, of our praise.

We have a savior who came specifically to save his people from their sin.

And, speaking of sin, we're trying to hammer home this idea that, in fact, we are sinners. Because, the more you see sin in light of its biblical definition, its biblical descriptions, then you will more praise the savior for what he's done by saving you from your sins, by forgiving you from those sins, by taking on the punishment that you were due for those sins.

Jesus, the sinless substitute. So, today on No Compromise Radio, we're still trying to hammer the fact that we are really sinful.

And, if you're listening today, you probably say, yes, you know, there's sin. And, you don't have to look very far to see the effects of sin.

But, with sin, it becomes crazier when you say to yourself, not abstractly,

I believe in the concept of sin, but personally, can you say personally that you are a sinner?

I don't mean the white lie kind of sinner. Have you ever told a lie? Therefore, you're a sinner. But, this sin of rebellion against a holy

God, a sin of split allegiance when it comes to God, a sin of not loving

Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, with the sin of not loving your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

And, the list could go on. We have fallen short of God and His standards.

We are the ones who need the Savior to come and save us from our sins.

I was looking outside. There's a guy walking up to the church. He's gonna ring the doorbell, and I'm not gonna wanna answer. Can't stop the show now, can you?

Hosea is an interesting book for lots of reasons. It talks about God's magnanimous love, but it also talks about sin, and it does it with pictures that are very, very vivid.

The Hebrew language is different than the Greek language, but the Hebrew language is very picturesque.

It shows who God is and who we are with language that is just really intense.

And so, let me give you a few words that Hosea used to describe the sin of Israel, and you'll easily be able to identify.

And so, as Hosea was chastening Israel for their sin, what sins did he chasten them for?

And many of them, let's face it, fallen human nature is generally the same, universally the same.

And so, if you just go to chapter seven, we're gonna spend some time now. Hosea seven, seeing some

Hebrew pictures of sin that were condemned by Hosea in Israel, yet they'll be matching up to our life pretty simply, pretty amazingly.

The first one is half -baked devotion. Hosea seven, again, magnifying our understanding of sin so we will have a magnification in our minds about Christ the

Savior. Ephraim, this is Hosea seven, eight. Ephraim mixes himself with the peoples.

Ephraim is a cake not turned, a unturned cake.

That's interesting. They're an unturned, non -turned cake, half -baked, not fit for eating.

What happens if you take a cake in these days and don't flip it over?

Well, one side is doughy, not cooked, and the other side is char broiled, crispy.

And here we are seeing this inconsistency. We're seeing, according to Garrett, imagery to say that Ephraim's side was turned toward the nations, was badly burnt, while the other side, the unpalatably weak commitment to Yahweh was underdone.

Burnt to a crisp regarding the nations and undone, underdone, weak, doughy commitment to God.

Half -baked commitment to God. Listen to what the commentator Stewart said. As a result,

Israel became a flat loaf, not turned over. According to the usual explanation, the bread loaves pressed onto the hot oven walls or laid among the coals needed turning after a time.

If left unturned, they would be half -baked, crusty or burnt on one side, yet still doughy on the other.

Similarly, Ephraim was rigid and crusty toward Yahweh, but its soft underbelly was exposed to the nations.

Like an unturned loaf, it lacked both the strength and consistency to survive.

So if you want half -baked, the dough side representing a soft, compliant when it comes to the other nations, or if you want it soft towards worship of God, if you want the crispy side, burnt hardness towards God, or that towards the nations, either one, this is not a good thing.

You don't want to be half -baked if you're a piece of cake, piece of bread, probably like a pita -shaped deal, a peter shape, and they are chastened by the prophet, they meaning

Ephraim, another word for Israel. They're like a cake not turned. It's just half -baked.

So you just think just generally, half -baked devotion to God. Now, Israel was certainly that.

They weren't giving exclusive worship to God, and it was just a lackadaisical come see, come saw devotion.

George Adam Smith said, how better to describe a half -fed people, a half -cultured society, a half -lived religion, a half -hearted polity than by a half -baked scone.

So you can hear the Irish in the man, the half -baked scone, half -baked loaf of bread. Doesn't that sound like us?

Devoted with a little devotion, but just halfway, half -hearted devotion to God.

Now, have you ever been that way in your life, ever? Well, certainly, and therefore you stand condemned as a sinner.

If you break one law, you're held accountable for all the law. And so we need a savior from that.

We need a savior from half -hearted devotion to God. Certainly, Jesus Christ died for our sins of half -baked worship.

And he also lived in our place when it comes to that because he wholeheartedly, to use the terminology here in Hosea 7, with a complete well done, with a wonderful allegiance and wholehearted devotion to his

Father. We see that lived out whether it was when he was 12, when he was baptized, when he was inaugurated into ministry, when he was tempted by Satan, when he was calling the disciples, when he was praying, when he was in the garden of Gethsemane, when he was on the cross, when he was raised from the dead, when he was on the

Emmaus Road. That's an amazing road too. Jesus is a great savior from half -hearted worship.

Secondly, go down to verse 9 in Hosea 7, looking at pictures of sin in Hosea, unconscious of our corruption.

Maybe I should have a coffee. Boy, this is hard. It's hard to talk for a living, isn't it?

Strangers, Hosea 7, 9, devour his strength and he knows it not. Gray hairs are sprinkled upon him and he knows it not.

Not knowing your own corruption, not knowing your own decay. When you get older and begin to decay, you start having gray hair.

And then there are people who don't know they have gray hair. Who wouldn't know that? Now, initially, you've got one or two, you pluck them out.

Back in my day growing up, people put on something called Grecian formula. I don't think it had anything to do with people from Greece.

Although, speaking of Greece, right now I could go for a cappuccino Fredo, anif, a cappuccino

Fredo with no sugar. Boy, that would be good. It's about 19 ,000 shots of espresso and some whipped up other stuff.

A year ago, almost today, I was in Greece having those, I think every day. Every day, those things are so good.

Gray hairs are sprinkled upon him and he knows it not. That was Israel. They don't even know they're corrupt.

They don't even know they're decaying. They don't know they're decomposing. Unconscious of that.

S .O .S. Johnson said, what Hosea is speaking about, you see, are the signs of decadence that are not known, but everyone else knows it.

That is true for us as well. Especially as we think about ourselves as unbelievers. We thought we were, especially when we were younger, healthy, wealthy, wise.

We had the world by the tail. We weren't weak in our own eyes.

We weren't needy. We were on the uptake. We were on the upswing. But when a

Christian would look at us, when God would look at us, he would see us as an unbeliever, as someone who has spiritual gray hair and doesn't even know it.

It'd be pretty dumb to go to a mirror and say, you know what, I don't even know I have gray hair, and there it is. Just oblivious, oblivious to gray hair.

But for us as unbelievers, until God began to work and to draw and to convict and to reveal himself and sin through scripture, we were unconscious of our own corruption.

We didn't even know how bad we were. We were bad to the bone. And yet we see that Jesus Christ died for those sins.

He died for the sins of our corruption and our spiritual inability and our spiritual deadness. And he could do that because there was no decay in him.

There was no spiritual decay. No spiritual corruption, no spiritual decadence.

He was holy and without blame, a perfect sacrifice. Well, there's another picture in Hosea chapter seven, and this is the picture of finding security outside the

Lord. Putting your trust not in the Lord, but as Jeremiah would talk about, putting your, and to put the alliteration from Alistair Begg on it, placing your faith in bronze bucks are, what's the other one?

Brawn bucks are something. Wisdom, would that be?

Brains. There you go. I knew, I knew it. I knew. Let not a wise man trust in his brawn and his brains and in his britches.

This is a long show. This is gonna be the worst of. It was interesting.

We have Wesley Blackstone here at the church. And for a lot of Sunday nights, I would be tired just like this and misspeak.

And I'd say, edit that from the tape. And so he was back in the sound room at the day. And then at the end of the year,

I think the last one I received, so maybe I'm getting better, who knows. At the end of 2001, he presented to me a 90 minute cassette where I had said every time, when

I had said every time, edit that from the tape, he left it in this particular tape and handed it to me as a gift.

That was a gift of love, wasn't it? You fired. So finding security outside the

Lord. It says in Hosea chapter seven, verse 11. So we're looking at pictures,

Hebrew pictures of sin in Hosea seven to show that we like Israel need a savior.

Ephraim is like a dove. A dove, silly and without sense. Calling to Egypt, going to Syria. You can just hear that language.

Seeking security in money, seeking security and stability in psychiatrists.

Seeking security and seeking the necessities of spiritual life outside the word of God.

Not noticing the sufficiency of the word. Like a silly dove, fickle, fleeting, running around, hither, thither, around and around, oscillating to Egypt, then oscillating back to Assyria.

No, we don't commend that. Do you trust in your 401ks and your money?

Contacts, doctors, portfolios, your own goodness, your own religion. See, we too needed a savior to save us from that.

And like Israel, we too were flitting around like a silly dove.

Yet certainly Jesus would not be typified by a silly dove, would he?

He always trusted in the Father. He entrusted himself to the Father's care. And therefore in light of Christ dying for sins like that, of not trusting the

Father, and since he has been a great savior, we can entrust our souls to a faithful creator to do what is right,

Peter says. I think that's right. So No Compromise Radio Ministry, we're looking at pictures of sin in Hosea to make sure we realize that we need a savior.

And if you're a Christian, hallelujah, what a savior. The last, let's do two more.

Not looking upward. It says in Hosea 7, 16, they return but not upward.

They repent but not unto God and away from their own sins. This is similar to the other one, but it deals with human solutions and maybe being sorry for things but not being repentant, trying to find cures for life in yourself, in someone else.

How'd you like that suppressed, Jan? Roland Hill said one of his regrets was, he couldn't take repentance to heaven with him because there's nothing more enjoyable than having repented.

Now that's cool. So number five, missing the target,

Hosea 7, 16. They return but not upward. The verse goes on to say, they are like a treacherous bow,

B -O -W, like an archery bow. Their princes shall fall by the sword because of the insolence of their tongue.

They shall be their derision in the land. This shall be their derision in the land of Egypt. Ever take a bow that's warped and try to shoot something?

Ever hit something straight with a crooked stick? A bow that's bent just misfires.

I actually had a bow that was bent. We used to shoot spawning fish in the

Missouri River south of the Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, South Dakota, home of Lyle Alzado.

And we would get our canoes and we had a kayak as well, paddle upstream a little bit in the mighty mow and then drift downward.

And then when we saw the schools of fish, we would have a bow and then it was hooked to, we'd hook a

Zebco 808 to it and then tie some fishing line to our fishing arrows and shoot some of these fish.

We tried to get the catfish but there was mainly carp spawning, but it was fun to try to shoot and you could see what you were after. And lots of times with fish, you can't see what you're after.

So as time would go on and you would lay that thing down in the boat, down in the canoe, it would get wet.

And I remember trying to restring it for the next season and that thing was crooked and there was nothing

I could do to straighten that thing out. And if you have a crooked bow, you shoot crookedly. That's the point.

And here, Israel, Ephraim, they missed the mark because they were crooked.

They were not straight. One of the definitions of sin is to miss the mark. Well, that's almost the end.

The result of what you did, you missed the mark. But here, the cause is you. You've got the wrong bow because you are the bow.

You can't get it undone. You can't straighten yourself out. Who can make the crooked straight?

So it was true for Ephraim, but it's also true for us. Because of Adam's fall, because of Adam as our federal representative,

God declares Adam's sin, his first sin, to our account. And then as a consequence, there is natural corruption that flows from Adam and his first sin that is imputed to our account.

We are fallen and we are crooked and we need a straightening that cannot happen outside the

Lord. And so we need a savior because we missed the mark because we are ourselves crooked.

Aren't those interesting? The Bible goes out of its way, not just with pictures of sin, but even definitions of sin.

I think there are six Hebrew words for sin and six Greek words for sin. And so we fall short.

We transgress. We trespass. We pervert and have iniquity.

We rebel. There are a lot of pictures to make sure we see just how bad sin is.

And any sin against an infinite God requires infinite punishment. People say, well,

I just sinned one time on earth and how can God send me to hell forever? Temporal sins deserving eternal punishment.

Well, A, this isn't your universe. B, you're a creature. C, you're a fallen finite creature.

What am I up to? D, C, D, you are gonna tell

God what's right. But if you want the real answer, a sin against a policeman is a worse sin than a sin against a regular person.

Policeman's got his badge on and he's pulling someone over and shot. That is bad if you're to be shot as a citizen.

But for instance, if a president, I've just read the book about Garfield's assassination.

To shoot a president is much more criminal in our eyes as a society, and rightfully so, than shooting a common man or a common woman.

They are both image bearers, that's true, but because of their position. Now imagine the position of creator, holy creator, holy sovereign creator.

And there, if it's an infinite sin because it's against an infinite person and therefore requires infinite punishment.

That's why God has infinite punishment for sin. So today, if you've recognized you're a sinner, why don't you take

God at his word that you are a sinner and then take God at his word that he's provided payment, he's provided propitiation, he's provided atonement and satisfaction for his anger against sin.

And then turn in repentance, looking towards the risen savior as your only hope, your only substitute.

Do that today. 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.