Truths I Wish Someone Would Have Told Me (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.

Ministry Dependence on the Holy Spirit Rather Than Money

Mike Abendroth here, No Compromise Radio Ministry. I thought we would just waste today, might as well just waste the time, and I'll just talk about myself for a while, then I'll beg for money for a while, and then I'll promote the Oprah Book Club for a while, and then we'll have an altar call.

How about that? Oh, we're really hurting for funds here at No Compromise Radio Ministry, and please, if you'd like to see more people get saved, you know, there are some people who aren't gonna get saved unless you send in your money to nocompromiseradio .com.

Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye. I don't wanna always launch off on this, but if God is going to want your ministry on the air, or even if he wants your church to exist, then he will bless that church with money, with people, and everything else, and so we don't have to run around and try to create something when we can trust in the Lord.

If the Holy Spirit left your church, if the Holy Spirit left this radio ministry, if the Holy Spirit left the ministry of WVNE 760, would everything continue just as it is going on right now? We hope not.

We hope everything would fall apart. We would hope that it's the Spirit of God who illumines, who sustains, who undergirds the ministry. Without the Holy Spirit, without him, we have no ministry, and so it has nothing to do with watts, our airwaves, our downloads, our podcasts.

It has nothing to do with money. It has to do with the Spirit of God, and so if you hear me beg for money, then you need to change the channel. The only time I beg for money is when I'm basically trying to tell you, through sarcasm, I don't think people should waste their time begging for money.

False Assurance, Religion, and Saving Faith

So you say, Mike, you've talked now for a minute and a half. Get moving. All right, part two today on what people, what I wish people would have told me. Truths about the Bible, about Christ, about heaven, hell, religion, and everything in between, I wish somebody would have told me.

I wish somebody would have told me, we learned last week, that there's a religion, excuse me, there's a faith that doesn't save. That's what I'm trying to say. There's a faith that doesn't save. The second thing we were talking about, and I really didn't get into it very much, was religion cannot take away sins.

I used to believe that if you believe the right things, you were good, golden, set, successful spiritually, and everything was good to go, and then carry on with your life, but you've got that little fire insurance at the end called hell insurance, and you were okay.

I also thought that religion could save me, and therefore I was baptized, and I was catechized, and I was confirmed, and I was affirmed, and I was fooled. I was fooled. What you do cannot save you. It can't make you right with God.

It has to be what God has done through Christ Jesus, and then it has to be applied to your life by the Spirit of God through the non-meritorious instrument called faith. And so when people say that you're baptized, and then you're set with some kind of a religious system, religiosity, do something religious, it does not take away sin, it adds to sin.

It blinds, it inoculates, as I said last week. Actually, I just said it a few minutes ago, but this is taped, so it's one week later. Page 321 of the Catholic Catechism. By baptism, we're talking about the water baptism, for infants, all sins are forgiven.

Original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin. Catholic Catechism 321. The Libreria Editrice, Vaticana, 1994 edition. It can't take away sins, because it was never meant by God to take away sins.

Baptism is a confirmation of what you believe, and it is an external symbolism of what you believe. Do you know, religionists are very good when it comes to morality and being a legalist, that is, trying to obey the law for salvation.

For instance, the Plymouth Brethren, they have some kind of pretty much an ironclad, straitjacket-like system of conforming to their unwritten code of obedience. Some you will find in the Bible, and some you will not.

I think they have the tightest non-denominational denomination that you'll ever find. Part of religion that can trick you is the religion called Easy Believism, where you just pray the prayer, typical kind of Baptist and Bible church.

They have their little system. You walk down the aisle in response to some kind of message from the pastor, and say a short prayer, shake the pastor's hand, and you're pretty much assured that you're saved.

It is not your job to assure people of salvation. That is the Spirit of God's ministry, prerogative, privilege, and that ministry of the Spirit is through the Word of God. If someone comes to you and says, I don't think I'm a Christian, don't ever say to them, oh, yes, you are, I know you are.

You should say to them, well, maybe you're not. If their conscience is pricking them, if their conscience is troubled, then don't squelch the conscience by saying, oh, yeah, you're saved. When you don't know, you have no idea.

You can't see their hearts. It's like in seminary when I was told, if people come into your office and study and say, you know, I'm the worst husband that's ever lived, don't say, no, you're not. Say, well, you may in fact be the worst husband who's ever lived, and even if you are, and I'll take your word for it, there's still hope for you.

There's forgiveness for you, and you do not need to remain the worst husband who's ever lived because there is something that can be offered to you, and that is mercy, grace, forgiveness, restoration, repentance.

Sometimes I think religiosity can be seen in experientialists where they experience something, and you say, well, you know, I'm not really too keen on following some of the words of Christ. Some of the things he says are pretty hard, but I have had a point of contact with some charismatic guru on TV, and he's had the gift of healing and the power to anoint me with the spirit of God, and he said if I just gave $100 donation to the mighty work of his faith on the air, I'm part of the system, and I realize it's true because I felt some kind of warm, tingly feeling, and I began to speak in gibberish.

But what I would say to you is that has nothing to do with saving faith. You can be religious from moralism to experientialism to being subjective. That does not save. Religion cannot remove sins. Jesus says in John 3 .16, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit, capital S, is spirits.

Now, I've been to Pittsburgh not too many times, but when I'm in Pittsburgh, I usually think of steel, steel factories, the Pittsburgh Steelers, whether that was Terry Hanratty or Franco Harris or Jack Lambert, some of the football players, American football back in the Pittsburgh Steelers' heyday.

And one thing I know about those steel factories is they don't make cotton. They don't make some kind of fleece. They don't make silk. What they make is, drum roll please, steel. And what is born of the flesh is flesh, and sinful flesh bears children, that is activity, that is work, of sin.

Righteousness cannot be manufactured in a sinful factory. You can't say, well, you know, I've got a sinful factory. It's my heart, it's my soul, it's my mind, it's my will. And therefore, out of my sinful factory, I produce and I manufacture righteous things, holy things, godly things.

No, the Ethiopian cannot change his skin. The leopard cannot change his spots. Jeremiah 13 .23 says, then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil? No, you can't. If you do evil, it's because your heart's evil.

If you do good, it's because your heart's good. And when Jesus says you must be born again, he does not mean some kind of New Year's resolution, some kind of amendment, some kind of I'll try harder, but he says your whole nature needs to be renewed.

You need to be new on the inside, a new nature. And if you don't have a new nature, you'll continue to make widgets that are unrighteous, and you'll make them unrighteously. For see, there's no one who understands.

There's none who seeks after God. All have turned aside together. They have become useless. There's none who does good. There's not even one. Show me a sinner and I'll show you a sin factory. So what do we need?

More religiosity? More doing things? No, that's not going to get us to heaven. Man is too sinful. Ecclesiastes 7 .20. Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who continually does good and who never sins.

But that is the requirement for heaven. Jesus said, for I say to you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, Matthew 5 .20, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Find the most religious people you know, and you need more religion than they do. And you need perfect religion. And so don't look to religion to save you. Religion cannot save you. You can't somehow get to the Saturn, to the planet Saturn, by climbing a ladder made of cotton candy.

It's just not going to work. Oh, I think I'll hold my breath and then touch the deepest bottom of the ocean by just holding my breath. It's impossible. Going to church, using religious lingo, doing certain things, memorizing certain things.

I even went to Mexico as a missionary when I was a kid and told people they need to believe in Jesus. You can work at the soup kitchen all you want, but you're not fine until you have the righteousness found in Christ Jesus.

Paul said in Philippians, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

And so when it comes to salvation, perfection, you cannot get to heaven by being good because you can never be good enough. So why get involved with a system that just says, do good, be good, be better, do more?

You can't do that. So if you're driving around on bicycles with little suits on in teams of two or door to door with a bunch of other people, handing out some kind of magazine that's funny shaped and says a watchtower society, you cannot do enough good to get to heaven because you're warped on the inside, you're torqued on the inside.

You've got a bad will, a sinful will. And you need to turn from that kind of sin, the sin that says, God, it's not just faith in Christ Jesus, what He did, His life, looking to Him, believing in the promise that the only work is Christ's work and we have to believe.

We don't really want to think we're that dead and trespasses in our sins. We don't want to think that you make us alive together with Him, that you do all the forgiveness. We've got to add our part. See, that's the insidiousness of sin.

It wants to add. So until you're sick of yourself and sick of following after your own self, then you have a problem. Luke 9, Jesus our Lord says, for whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it.

Christ the Ultimatum and the Exclusivity of Salvation

And you'll lose your life, you'll lose all the things that your life supposedly contributed to your salvation. Number three, the third thing I wish someone would have told me is that Jesus Christ gives an ultimatum, that Jesus Christ is the ultimatum.

Sin has to be dealt with and every sin will be punished. Every sin you commit and have committed and will commit will either be punished by you forever in hell for eternity or Jesus Christ will have to pay for those sins.

He will have to pay for those sins. And by looking away from self and looking to God by faith, you can have those sins forgiven, but Jesus will have paid for them as the Father's wrath, His holy wrath, not deserved by the Son, but punished by the Father in place of other people as a substitute, as a vicar in our place, on our behalf, in our stead, receives the full punishment due the wages of those sin.

And so this is not some kind of, if it fits in, fine. If you've got time, fine. If you've got enough time after the soccer practice, that might be good to fit it in. Jesus gives the ultimatum. This is not some kind of wimpy Jesus, girly Jesus, sissy Jesus, a sand-kicked-in-the-face Jesus.

This is the maker. He is the creator, the maker of the universe. And he says to Nicodemus, and it's just like he's saying it to you, you must be born again because if you're not, you can't even see the kingdom of God.

I did not think Jesus was an ultimatum giver when I was growing up. I thought he was like a grandpa. I thought, you know, grandma and grandpa get mad at you and then they just, you know, kind of kiss and make up and it's all little, you know, sunny boys, okay.

I remember my grandmother would always point to the yardstick. You'd get the yardsticks down at the hardware store and they were a yard long, interestingly. And she would say, Mike, my grandfather was a drunk and he didn't care what I did.

One day he let me paint the table, the kitchen table, when grandma was working. So he stayed at home and drank and let me paint while my mother worked at Mutual of Omaha. And then grandma would come home and I'm painting the kitchen table.

She'd let me, he'd let me do anything. And she'd say, Mike, if you continue that, I'm going to take this stick, this hardware stick, this yardstick, and I'm gonna give you a hot bottom. That's what I'm gonna give you.

We didn't have hot pockets in those days, hot pockets, but we had hot bottoms from our grandmother. And she never spanked me. She always threatened. She always cajoled. She always made mention to the fact that that yellow yardstick was gonna go on my bottom, but she never did it.

And so one day she threatened me. I walked over, broke the yardstick over my knee and handed it to grandma. And she still didn't spank me. I thought God was like grandma. I thought God was like grandpa.

Kind of just, you know, nice. He's kind of, you know, neutral a little bit. And I had no idea that Jesus gave an ultimatum and that Jesus was exclusively God. There was no other savior. All other gods are false.

See, other gods, they share their glory. You've got Baal of certain locality, Baal of another locality, and they kind of have to share their glory. Or if there's a bunch of different gods, you get some glory over here on this mountain, I get some glory over here in the seas, I get some glory from the sun, and they share the glory.

But God of the universe, Jesus Christ, will not share his glory. I would defame his name because there's no other gods. They're all demon-possessed sticks, pieces of wood, concepts and ideologies. And so I needed to know the exclusivity of Christ.

I wish someone would have told me that there's one God and God demands all. And therefore, with your whole being, you need to follow Christ Jesus, that he was, in fact, the way, definite article, no other way.

The truth, no other truth, no truth incarnate but Christ Jesus, and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me. And you know, whether it's the Mormon Jesus or the Catholic Jesus or any other kind of Jesus, people need to know John 3 .13, and no one has ascended from heaven, but he who descended from heaven, even the Son of Man.

Well, let me tell you what John MacArthur says of this verse. This verse contradicts other religious systems' claims to special revelation from God. Jesus insisted that no one has ascended to heaven in such a way as to return and talk about heavenly things.

Only he had permanent abode in heaven prior to his incarnation, and therefore, only he has the true knowledge regarding heavenly wisdom, end quote, John MacArthur. So Jesus is the only one. Everybody else who says they went to heaven for 90 minutes, 90 seconds, 90 eons.

I got some tablets from some kind of person. I learned from some kind of Delphi's oracle. I was reading about that the other day in Greece. I've heard from God, I've been to heaven. Nobody except God, the Son, has gone there to heaven, ascended to heaven to receive this kind of revelation and come back to the earth to tell us about divine things and divine matters.

And so there's no salvation to anyone else. Jesus gives the ultimatum, ultimatum. He's been in heaven and he's come down to tell us these are the requirements. Tozer knew this fact when he preached. If God is a lone God, Jesus is alone the Savior, then that's what we need to preach.

And so Tozer knew that no other way. It's not Jesus plus. It's not some kind of being a Hindu and being a Christian at the same time. It's Jesus alone. Jesus said, do not marvel at it. I said to you, you must be born again.

He now changes it to second person plural. Not just Nicodemus, but to everybody else, including you. If you say you're a Christian today and you're not born again, you're not a Christian. Tozer, we who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish goodwill between Christ and the world.

We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports, our modern entertainment. We are not diplomats, but prophets. And our message is not a compromise, but an ultimatum.

I wish somebody would have given me that information that Jesus is the ultimatum. Jesus requires true repentance. He gives the ultimatum. Me or hell. Jesus and faith in him and no one else are no eternal bliss.

People don't like that. People think that's unkind. In this kind of wimpy, sentimentalized kind of day and age, people hate that. I mean, this same kind of mentality, and this is going to be a little deviation, but after all, it's my show, and Pastor Steve is not here to somehow interject anything.

You know, let's go to church on Mother's Day to learn about mothers with some kind of sentimental kind of love sermon, a watered down, feel good deal for mothers. I love mothers. I wish my mother was still on earth.

The Lord gave me a great mother, saved her, and I had a great relationship with my mom to the day she died. But do you know what? It's not Mother's Day, it's the Lord's Day. And I'm not going to let Hallmark Holiday say, you know what, let's have a message for mothers every single Sunday.

If you want to preach from 1 Samuel 2 about Hannah or Proverbs 31, or what do the Bible say about mothers and how we should be thankful, there's a way to go about doing it. But this whole thing, I'm going to go to church and some other person, thing, group, entity, organization, or commission is going to trump the Lord Jesus Christ.

No, it is the Lord's Day. And even in our worship, He's given us the ultimatum. We are to worship Him on that day. Set aside the one day for worship of the Lord. So if you're listening today and you are mad at what I say, I'm actually glad you're mad.

I think mad is better than dull, lethargical, lackadaisical, and neutral. I'd rather have people mad at me than just apathetic and carefree. If you're happy, well, I'm glad for that. But if you're mad, I just would like to be proven from the scriptures where I'm wrong, and I'll be glad to say all I was wrong.

What I'm after here at the show is for you to think biblically, for you to use your mind. There's so many people who don't even use their mind when it comes to Christianity because they go around as big feeling orbs, feeling everything, somehow making decisions in their life based on feelings alone.

I don't want you to do that. I want you to think. I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your emotions, by the renewing of your experiences, by the renewing of your, what's the text say, Romans 12 to? Mind. Your mind is a terrible thing to waste, and Satan would love to have you waste your mind.

The text goes on to say in Romans 12 to, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. So, my name's Mike Abendroth. If you'd like to email me or talk to me via email, it's info at nocompromiseradio .com.

We get lots of visitors to the church, Bethlehem Bible Church, bbcchurch .org, all one deal together, bbcchurch .org, if you'd like to come and worship with us here in West Boylston, just north of Worcester.

We have people driving from incredible distances, 55 miles, 105 miles, 30 miles. And so if you want to come and visit, we'd love to have you. But if you have a good Bible teaching church, then only visit us if we've got something going on that's not on a Sunday morning, because we want you to get plugged in and stay faithful to serve your local church there where you are, and bloom where you are planted.

But if you'd like to email me, No Compromise Radio, info at nocompromiseradio .com, and we will see you. I didn't think we'd take three parts, but part three next week.

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.