The Theology of Glory or the Cross?

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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

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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.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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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

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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth and it's the

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Eve of Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Eve. Lots of people traveling, stuck, and I'm sitting here in the

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No Compromise studios, which actually is my study at church. People say, that's it?

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At least Phil Johnson said, those are good microphones. So anyway,

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I'm sitting here very, very thankful for what the Lord has done through No Compromise Radio ministry.

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I didn't really know what would happen when we first started, but to think we would fill in for Todd Friel regularly, we would be on Worldview Weekend, churches call and ask for either

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Pastor Steve or myself to go speak at No Compromise conferences. By the way, if you want us to come to a conference that you're holding, if the honorarium is upfront and the travel arrangements are there and I get to travel with my travel companions and you can have no authorized use of my

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DVD materials and eight by 11 portraits that I signed at the place, and you can fill that in.

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Just kidding. Why do people do that, by the way? What is it? I mean, if you want to say, all right,

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I don't wanna travel because I'm away from my family. And so let me just put a number out there that's so high, who would actually do it?

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Nobody do it. And if anybody's dumb enough to do it, I guess I'll go and cash the check. So you say $5 ,000, it'll cost you to bring me.

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I mean, come on. Isn't this ministry? If people are in,

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I don't know, Yugoslavia and they have no money, should you go there and minister?

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The gospel. Now, as a church, when we have people in for a conference,

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I think it's proper and right to pay for their flight. Sometimes we say, could we pay for your wife's flight?

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What a joy that is. Cornerstone, Orlando just paid for my wife and I to fly down for a conference.

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It was like one of the nicest things anybody could do for me is to also fly my wife down. Now, I could have just flown her down and spent some of the honorarium to bring her, but for a church to do that, it made me really think that they wanted to honor the

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Lord and be kind to me, that's all. And they, cause they know what it's like to be in pastoral ministry.

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Anyway, for these churches to go through this entire list, and you've already heard me before, talk about people,

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Christian celebrities, who have these big forms to fill out. I guess it's okay if you're willing to pay the five grand, then

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I'd do it. But still, even that's wrong. People just say, I'm too busy,

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I don't go and speak. I mean, you say, Mike, it's easy for you to say, cause you don't get many people to ask you to speak.

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Well, that could be true. But anyway, I've had more people ask me to speak than honestly

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I've ever deserved in my life. And that's why if I go there, I want to speak well of who Jesus is and what he's done in the scriptures and how he continues to build his church.

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Well, anyway, today on No Compromise Radio, I was reading something by Stephen E.

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King. I guess if you're a Christian man and your name's Stephen King, and you're at solapublishing .org,

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you probably put your middle initial in. So Stephen E.

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King has a great handout. It's an eight and a half by 11 handout, and it's called

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The Theology of Glory versus The Theology of the

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Cross. Two perspectives of so -called Christianity that the church has fluctuated in between as you read theologians and you see the emphasis in different denominations or on TV or in print.

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So what do we do? Are we people who are after the theology of glory or the theology of the cross?

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Which one comes first? What do we want? He says here, bear in mind, theology is not faith itself, but how we understand and talk about our faith.

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It's quite possible for a person to have true faith and still have a very poor and misinformed theology.

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So the first thing we'll do on No Compromise Radio today is just walk through this, theology of the cross or theology of glory.

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And I will use Stephen E. King's terms because I think it's simple and there's a handout here. And so you don't have to call me up and interview me and ask about footnotes and Peter Jones and that stuff because this is credit given to whom credit is due.

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Now he didn't come up with these categories and he did not invent this lingo, but he's got it on this chart and it just makes it very nice and it's a comparison.

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There's two columns, theology of glory or heavenly reward, faith is the means to obtain material success and the other theology of the cross, trusting discipleship, faith is joining

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Christ in his suffering. So then it has four breakdown sessions, perspective on existence, defining quote, evangelism goal, and then key themes or phrases.

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So theology of glory, theology of the cross, which one to which one do you subscribe?

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Perspective on existence, theology of glory, being a Christian will make your life better in a material worldly sense, whether it may be in this world or the next.

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So Joe Osteen, Norman Vincent Peale, I don't know who's the crazy guy in the litter jet now that's flying all around and is in the news, his father would be freaking out.

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Is his father still alive? Ed Young Jr. Theology of the cross on the other hand, perspective on existence, being a

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Christian is being faithful to Christ regardless of the cost, therefore it will not necessarily make your life better in a worldly sense or in the world.

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If I was gonna change Stephen E. King's lingo, I've said lingo now three times in this show, his parlance, his verbiage, his nomenclature.

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I like nomenclature, that's a cool word. I don't think I learned that in Nebraska, maybe I did. Maybe I don't give

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Nebraska enough credit. Put things in a wash machine, et cetera.

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So anyway, your life may or may not get better on this earth. Your best life might not be now.

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Well, it better not be or you're going to hell, right? As MacArthur would say. So theology of glory or theology of the cross.

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The defining quote for the theology of glory, God helps those who help themselves. Of course, that's not found in the

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Bible. The defining quote in the theology of the cross, take up your cross and follow me, Mark 8 .34.

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The goal, our strategy for evangelism in the theology of glory, to win souls by convincing people to buy the message of Christianity.

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Model the salesperson approach. And when I read

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Douglas Webster's book, Selling Jesus, it's probably 15 years old now, maybe 20. Jesus, the marketer,

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Jesus, the pragmatist, Jesus, the one who gives consumers what they want. He's critiquing that,

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Douglas Wilson is, excuse me, Douglas Webster. And I believe it's

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Douglas Webster who says the way you think about church should not be retail.

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It should be farming. It should be an agrarian concept where the farmer plants the seed and then has to trust that God makes it grow.

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Oh, he can water and he can tend and he can fertilize, but it's gonna have to be

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God who gives the growth. That's the model for the church, is agricultural model, a farming model, a pastoral model versus product, place, price, promotion, four

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Ps of marketing, consumerism, retail -driven. In my day, the customer was always right when

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I was growing up. And if you were dissatisfied as a customer, somebody gave you the lip or the look as a retail representative, you could say,

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I wanna talk to your manager, meaning I'm going to get them to scold you. I should not be treated this way.

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And you and I disagree about something, but the customer is always right. For years as a sales rep,

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I started off for Duracell batteries in 1983. Then I went to Bard, EMS, Electro Medical Systems, selling cottery units.

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And then I worked for Mallinckrodt. I worked for Baxter. I worked for Allegiance Healthcare Systems.

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I don't even know what they are anymore. The customer was pretty much always right, even though I've thinking myself, well,

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I don't think they're right, but I'm gonna treat them like they are. Now you go to retail stores, you go to wholesale outlets.

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And if something goes on, you're like, I'd like to talk to your manager. Yeah, big deal. We don't care.

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I could care less about you and what you think. The customer isn't always right. These days in local retail and business shops, the customer isn't right.

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But in the churches, that's the only place a customer is right these days. And we treat people like customers and what they want, we'll give them.

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What would you like in a church? All right, let's put that together. I absolutely have zero respect, maybe sub -zero respect for anyone who says, let's go around the neighborhood.

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By the way, pick a rich neighborhood too, that'll help you. Pick a rich neighborhood, walk around, talk to people about what they like in church and then craft such a church.

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Who does that? I can call that Plato churches, silly putty churches. Maybe that's what it should be called.

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That's the name for the show, silly putty churches. How do we win people to buy this message of Christianity?

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And sometimes, and this was prominent at Bethlehem Baptist Church when I got here 14 years ago.

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Okay, we're successful. We're high on the corporate ladder. And if you come to Christ, you can still be cool.

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You can still be successful. You can still have it all. See, don't attractive, rich, influential, powerful people, aren't they good advertisements for the gospel?

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I mean, if you're gonna advertise the gospel, I mean, come on, wouldn't that be a good way to do it?

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Boasting in wisdom, boasting in brains, boasting in brawn.

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Wouldn't that be the way to sell the gospel? That's the way to sell the gospel. Well, that's the theology of glory.

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That's the bad theology. Because the way you sell the gospel isn't to sell the gospel at all.

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It is to proclaim the gospel, and the symbol for the gospel is the cross, the death penalty.

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And so the theology of the cross, it's evangelistic goal or strategy in this wonderful little thing put together by Stephen E.

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King. To make disciples by proclaiming the gospel, through which

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God changes lives. The model is the news announcer approach. So the newsman or the newslady announces things.

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I don't know if I'd use the news announcer approach. I'd probably say the herald, but the news announcer is a herald to some degree.

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It's watered down now. It's more conversational in our society versus heralding, but we get the idea.

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They have news to announce. They themselves aren't the news. Hi, my name's

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Mike Ebendroth, Channel 3 CBS. Late night news. I am the news. Well, sometimes these announcers make the news, but they're not the news.

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Even when Walter Cronkite announces the death of JFK, Kennedy was the news, his death.

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Cronkite announced that. Now later we think, okay. But anyway, the herald who runs from the front line of battle in the war, and he runs from the front line to the general who's back a little bit.

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And he says, we're winning. We're winning. It's a boy, says the father as he calls his mother on the phone.

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It's a boy. It's a girl. Ronald Reagan wins the election. Landslide victory.

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The war is over. These are all announcements versus selling.

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Now there's something in me that wants to sell. I was a sales rep for a long, long time. And I think about my

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IBM selling classes and I understand product, place, price, promotion.

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I understand IBM selling, summarize the situation, state the idea, explain how it works, reinforce key benefits, close.

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Those are the five steps I was taught, actually not very far from here in Danbury, Connecticut in IBM selling techniques, 1983.

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Probably about February. I'd never been to New England. Flew into JFK and the first thing

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I wanted to do was have the cabbie take me to the Dakota Hotel. And you know why.

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So the theology of the cross, its evangelism goal or strategy is news announcer. And while I'm at it, remember, our goal in evangelism is not salvation.

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Now that is a very high priority and we want it to happen. And God regularly saves people through the preaching of the gospel.

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As we preach the sovereign Holy Spirit, he does what he wills with the word.

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Two people can hear the exact same message. One gets saved and the other doesn't. What's the difference? The difference is ultimately the

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Holy Spirit's ministry. So when you evangelize, you evangelize for the glory of God and for his name.

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And that's why you don't have to cut the corners of sin. If you're a sales rep, yeah, you better cut those. Maybe relabel those things as dysfunctions, illnesses, syndromes.

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But if you want to honor God, then you need to talk about the heinousness of sin and the only one who could ever save from such horrible consequences.

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And that is the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, today, my name's Mike Ebendroth and it's always been that.

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Although in heaven, I'll get a new name. Theology of Glory versus Theology of the Cross. Got a little sheet here by Stephen E.

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King. Key themes are phrases to look for in the theology of the glory, or glory.

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If you do this for God, God will do this for you. Because that goes right in line with the defining quote,

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God helps those who help themselves. And so you let God do things. I mean, if there's one kind of sentence that I hope to never hear again in my life is

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I'm gonna let God do this. Really? I guess you're higher than God, more powerful than God, have more authority than God, more sovereign than God.

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I think I'll let God do that. That's as ludicrous as Acts 19.

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Read Acts 19 and you'll get a good little laugh. Giving a seed gift so it will return to you.

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See, this is all I do something for God. When you think of propitiation and wrath assuaging and pagan gods and goddesses, people always had to assuage the wrath of the pagan god slash goddesses.

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And so they knew the gods were angry with them. It was a bad year for crops, lots of miscarriages that their wives had, fertility, whether it's corn, wheat, flour, olives, our children, something's wrong.

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There's a plague, there's famine, there's lots of war. And so we need to assuage the wrath of the gods.

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The gods have done this to us and we need to appease them, appeal to them through sacrifice.

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Isn't it fascinating? That's all the theology of glory because the theology of the cross is

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God has to assuage his own wrath as the son drinks the cup of the wrath of God Almighty.

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Well, continuing with the themes for theology of glory, climbing up to heaven on the road to glory, climbing, climbing

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Jacob's ladder. How can you get Jacob's ladder and then turn it into a kid's song about the theology of glory?

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That sounds like something Michael Horton would talk about. What else? Your eternal reward to come, getting into paradise.

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Those are phrases that should ring your bell to notify your mind.

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This is theology of glory. This is the cart before the horse. It is the cross, then the crown.

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Get it, got it, good, as my kids would say. Crown, not first, crown after.

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Just think of Christ's life. Sufferings, then glory. Cross, then crown.

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Death, then exaltation. If you wanna think about it biblically, if I just were going to read some verses from the

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Bible, and I am, to put this in perspective and which one comes first and how the Lord perceives this,

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Paul says, as you know, in Philippians, have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in the

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Messiah Jesus, who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of the bondservant and being made in the likeness of men, being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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For this reason also, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, so that the name of Jesus every knee will bow of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father, obedient to the point of death on a cross, then exalted by God.

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It is cross, then crown. It is cross, then glory.

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Glory, yes, wonderfully, amazingly, for me to live as Christ and die as Gain and it's an amazing thing that there is going to be glory for the

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Christian. Key themes and phrases to look for in the theology of the cross.

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This is what God has done for you. Isn't that nice? Being good stewards of God's gifts, walking the valley of the shadow of death,

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God's free gift of grace, trusting in God.

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God. So Stephen E. King has a nice little summary, the theology of glory versus the theology of the cross.

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And my point today is that you'd be familiar with the vernacular and that you could sniff this out so you could see it.

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When I travel from Europe and fly back or from the Middle East or Greece or someplace,

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I guess Greece is Europe, I fly in to Logan. I go through security and there's the

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European section. No, there's the non -US citizen section and then there's a US citizen section.

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And I go through and he, you know, you do the eye scan, you put your finger there and he says, welcome home.

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I don't like it when they don't say welcome home. If you're an American, you should just say welcome home and smile, but this is Boston after all.

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And then you go downstairs, you get your bags and while you're getting your bags, they have beagles. They all look the same, but, because beagles look the same, but they're different,

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I'm sure. And the beagles sniff all around. And I remember one time my kids, I think maybe flying from Germany or flying from Israel were flying home and they brought some fruit.

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And so the beagles had sniffed out the illegal contraband in my children's backpacks, in their

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Pokemon backpacks. Just kidding. Anyway, they found it and said, you can't have that. So they threw it away.

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I want you to sniff this out. Best life now stuff, it's easy.

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But sometimes in the seeker sensitive churches, in the church growth churches, in the emergent churches, in the journeys, in the verves, in the merges, in the collides, in the catastrophes, in the, did

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I mention gatherings? I hate it when people say

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I'm in relationship. Why do people say that? And by the way, what's going on with Facebook?

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What do people put on Facebook and why? It never ceases to amaze me. My wife and I are always, we don't know whether to laugh or cry at what people post on Facebook.

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Anyway, theology of the cross, theology of glory. And so if you just think of Philippians chapter two,

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I think that will help you as you walk through this. Which one appeals to the flesh? That's not the only test because the test is scripture.

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But this test, which one appeals to the flesh, it's so easy. Isn't it easy then to figure it out?

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You don't need to be told any of this stuff. You don't need revelation from God to come up with a theology of glory.

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The theology of glory makes manifest itself very simply in our flesh energized by Satan.

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It's super simple. This is what we do on our own. This is our default. And we need to have a reboot in our minds.

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We need to think properly so we can think about the theology of the cross. And the only way you'll do it is if your mind is full of scripture, inscripturated thinking.

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That's what you need, to just read the Bible regularly and consistently. That's why

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I often and regularly say, you should solve your problem this way. People have a decision to make.

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Well, how do I solve the problem? Well, how do I make the decision? You need to read 1 and 2 Kings.

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That's my standard MO. Why don't you read 1 and 2 Kings? They look at me like, what? 1 and 2

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Kings, what does that have to do with anything? Has to do with God showing us history from a theological perspective, from a

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God -centered perspective. This is the way the world is to be seen through the lens of God.

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History is true, of course, and it details history, but it's written from God's perspective.

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And so you need to get out of yourself, away from yourself to stop thinking about yourself and to think then properly so you can make a decision.

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So you think about yourself. You don't think about yourself at all for two huge books.

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You're thinking about how God deals with people and His faithfulness, His steadfast love, what He does, who a king is, what a king can do, can't do.

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And I think that will help you. Well, my name is Mike Ehmendroth, Theology of Glory versus Theology of the Cross, stephenekingsolopublishing .org.

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And it is, you can publish it for congregational use or for the radio, whether that's

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Wretched Radio or any place else. Well, again, my name is Mike Ehmendroth. You can write me at info at nocompromiseradio .com,

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or we'll see you on the YouTube channel, noco90 .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ehmendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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.

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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.