Evangelical White Lies (Living the Gospel)

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.

Reformation Travel Promotion and New Book Announcement

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and it is Fred, a new show. It�s a new show today. Don�t forget Living Passages is a company that�s going to help my gender and myself take a bunch of people to Germany and Switzerland for the 500th year anniversary of Martin Luther.

Reformation 2017, that�s next year, May 20th through 30th, and I have some cards, by the way, little postcards, if you�d like to have some more information. Depart May 20th, May 21st, Berlin-Wittenberg, May 22nd, Wittenberg, off to Leipzig, Erfurt, Wurttemberg Castle, Buchenwald, Nuremberg, Neuenstein Castle, Bern, Lake Geneva, Zurich, return home.

We�d love to have you go with us, and you can write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com, or you can just go to the website, nocompromiseradio .com. Well, book six just came out. My sixth book came out, The Number of Man.

Evangelical White Lies and the Nature of Truth

The book is called Evangelical White Lies, and you know what white lies are. They�re kind of minor fibs, little boo-boos, howies, things that aren�t really that big a deal now. Are they? Well, as we know, truth matters, and we want to be truthful.

God is truth, and we are to be truthful people, and we are going to go through this book. There�s 12 chapters, and I�m going to do a show for each chapter, and then you can have I�m not going to read it, so this isn�t the audio version, but this is the noco version, because sales are down.

Actually, you can get this on Amazon�s CreateSpace I use this time. It�s almost print on demand, or you can get it on Amazon Kindle, or you can get it if you want to order things that go bump in the church, and Sexual Fidelity and Evangelical White Lies with shipping.

I think it�s online for the package deal for $29. It�s a good stocking stuffer, don�t you think? Evangelical White Lies. Mike Gendron said, �In these last days of widespread deception, there�s an urgent need for discernment to identify and reprove the subtle lies that compromise the infallible word of God.

Mike, I think he means me, �presents a dozen of the most circulated white lies within the Christian church, along with the correct interpretation and a clarion call for repentance. And by the way, this book, this noco media book, it has Tuesday Guy.

Tuesday Guy wrote the foreword. I�m pretty happy about that. Pretty happy. Now, Steve�s a big shot. �Dedicated to John MacArthur, my father in the faith. May the Lord grant many more men like him to his church, who are lions in the pulpit and kind outside of it.

Introduction and premise. We�re just skipping that. Overall, I�d like to remind you that white lies, they omit the rough edges. Maybe they make you avoid uncomfortable facts. You want to keep the stress at a distance.

And maybe the evangelicals hide behind we�ve always taught it like that. What we want to do today is to look at chapter number one. Now, even if you�ve read this, I don�t know, maybe you�ve memorized chapter one.

I think it will still stimulate you, always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. That�s what we�re looking for on No Compromise Radio. Like I said, you can write us or I think last year I did the slogan where the only thing we�d like you to do is tell your friends or enemies to listen to the show and especially the ones that are rich.

I�m bound to meet a millionaire one day who loves No Compromise Radio. I�m bound to, just the odds. This thing has gone around the world. This is year seven, by the way. This show inaugurates, I think, actually, truth be told, show number seven.

No? Year number seven. It�d be hard enough just to do seven years, seven shows, but seven years, boy, that�s amazing. I said to somebody the other day, this show, and I just recorded here in my study at Bethlehem Bible Church.

When I get a spare moment thinking about something, I often, by the way, use this as my practice for my sermons. I�ll sit down and talk about a bunch of things that I know I�m going to preach on the following, that coming Sunday, and this is my practice sounding board.

How does that feel? Well, I have to double things up. I have a job. I have a real job. Year seven, daily radio, and it has taken me literally around the world. I�ve gone places. People have listened to the show and invited me to go speak someplace around the world.

That�s amazing. Maybe you should try it. If I could do it, anybody can do it. Wow. Evangelical lies, evangelical white lies, chapter one. White lie number one, you can live the gospel. Evangelical, many times from the pulpit at Bethlehem Bible Church, in the pulpit at Bethlehem Bible Church.

See how prepositions are important? If you say you�re saved because of your faith, then that�s heresy. If I say you�re saved through faith, by faith, the non-meritorious instrument of faith, you would be fine.

See? See how that works? You can live the gospel as something that�s very popular. Maybe I should have said the subtitle should be �Friendship Evangelism. Both of those are white lies. Now, it seems like we�ve heard them so often, they sound like the truth.

Now, let�s talk a little bit about the gospel and then, should it be lived? Should it be proclaimed? Should it be, as my son would say, mimed? What should it be? When you hear good news, and that�s what gospel means in the original language, if we move out of the realm of spiritual things, it could be war is over, victory for the allies, Reagan elected in a landslide.

Maybe that would be the political version of this. If you�re in a hospital, labor and delivery, you shout out, �It�s a boy! It�s a girl These are declarations. These are announcements. These are the publication of good news.

Nothing has to be done. You�re not telling anybody to do anything. Go in the war. Make sure it�s a boy. Reagan, you better get elected. No, these are declarations of facts, objective declarations. Maybe we could talk a little bit about law and gospel as time would permit, but there�s not much time permitting.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, �For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 and 4. Everything in the Bible is important. Every jot and tittle is important. Yet Paul writes there�s something of first importance, something that�s of major importance, and that is the gospel.

If you think to yourself, even the way the gospel is described in the Bible as being communicated, that gives you a little hint. Earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul said, �Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you that you received in which you stand.

But in Greek, it�s �of the gospel I gospeled to you. The way you say the good news is important because it should match up. You say something that�s really good news in a somber way, in a stale way, in a fake manner.

No, you wouldn�t want to do that. You would want to make sure you would match those things up. We say to ourselves, �All right, I�m going to live a life that�s so commendable that other people will watch me and then ask me, then I�ll tell them the gospel.

We call this �living the gospel. We call this �friendship evangelism. Of course, if �friendship evangelism� means you become friendly to unbelievers and then preach the gospel to them, I think that�s fine.

There�s nothing wrong with that. Now, of course, you don�t have to do that. You can be disobedient. I was thinking you could be preaching the gospel to them and then befriend them. You could do all kinds of things, but remember, the gospel is to be gospel.

It�s not to be lived. That would be a category error to say that you live the gospel. The gospel is historical. The gospel is theological. A real man, the God-man, Jesus Christ, lived, died, was raised from the dead as a sin-bearer for all the sins of all the people who would ever believe.

If you had a camera, you could have taken a picture of the death of Christ. If you had a video camera, you could go into the area where they laid his body, the tomb, and then it would I don�t know how it left, but whatever you could see with your eye, it would be on the video camera.

You proclaim the gospel. You don�t live it. I want you to live a good life. I want you to live an honorable life. I want you to be a good neighbor, but that�s not preaching the gospel. See how this is almost kind of an easy way out?

Which one�s easier? We�ll try to be a good neighbor yeah, I slip up once in a while or go talk to the person. Now, if you go talk to the person, you�re probably going to say to yourself, �I should have been a better neighbor.

I am going to be a good neighbor, and I�ll be a better neighbor in the future. Those things circulate into your mind and stem from the idea that we need to preach the gospel and who wants to be a hypocrite.

But even the most godly person who ever lived righteousness incarnate, if you will he didn�t say, �Live the gospel. He said, �Preach the gospel. He didn�t say, �Just watch my life. There are many areas in which we can look at Jesus as an example and say, �We should mimic that.

Right? WWJD. As much as we trash that idea, there are times for instance, 1 Peter 2 Jesus was a great example of suffering, and that�s how we should suffer. That�s how Peter talks about it. But at the center, at the hub, at the something else in the center, not on the periphery, is Jesus Christ, substitutionary, penalty, atonement.

And that is his, of course, more than historical, but that�s a theological fact. But it is, in fact, historical. The gospel comes from the Old English word �godspell which means �good news. There�s a good message.

You have, especially in the background with the Greek word, a bunch of military inferences. The general sends a runner to the front of the battle for a report. The runner returns hastily, and you hope he�s got good news.

�Good news, triumphant indicative is what Machen called it, �statements of fact. Michael Horton said, �Instead of reporting the news, we have become the news. In fact, today we often hear Christians speak of living the gospel and being the gospel as if we do as if anything we do and are can be considered a supplement to God�s victory in Christ.

A couple of books that you should read, you should read Christless Christianity and Gospel-Driven Life by Michael Horton and J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, and Declarations of Good News.

These protect God�s gospel from any inroads of law or to-do. We tell people about, not ourselves, about the Lord Jesus Christ. Problem is, we�re sinful. As Luther said, we�re curved in on ourselves. I thought it fascinating.

I was reading a book, I don�t know how long ago, but it was quoting the Dutch theologian Herman Ritterbos. He was talking about when we talk of Jesus, do we talk about him objectively, who Jesus is and what he did, or subjectively, how we received him, how Jesus has changed our life?

Ritterbos, quote, �While in Calvin and Luther, all the emphasis fell on the redemptive event that took place with Christ�s death and resurrection, later, under the influence of pietism, mysticism, and moralism, the emphasis shifted to the individual appropriation of the salvation given in Christ and to its mystical and moral effect in the life of the believer.

Did you get that? Accordingly, �In the history of the interpretation of the epistles of Paul, the center of gravity shifted more and more from the forensic to the pneumatic and ethical aspects of his preaching, and there arose an entirely different conception of the structures that lay at the foundation of Paul�s preaching.

Did you hear that? Very fascinating. If I were to ask you, what�s the good news? I wonder if you�d be tempted to talk about a cross with blood, dust, a specific time in Israel with a specific God-man, or you would be tempted to talk about, �You used to be a drunk and now you�re a saint, by the grace of God.

That is a good question. This is a historical fact. Jesus lived, he died, he was buried, and he was raised. By the way, 1 Corinthians 15 says, �He appeared to others. If you could find the bones of Jesus, Christianity�s false, Christianity�s a joke.

Christianity must include a Jesus who was, and by the way, is, because he�s still alive, a historical figure. Buddhism would make it if we found Buddha was never a person, correct? Yes. Paul declared the public and historical nature of Jesus to Festus in Acts 26, 26, �For the king knows about these things, and to him I speak boldly, for I am persuaded that none of these things has escaped his notice, for this has not been done in a corner.

It hasn�t been done in a corner. That�s exactly right. Good news. Something happened. There was a real occasion, and Christ died, as Machen said, that�s history. Christ died for our sins. That is doctrine, and without those ideas, there�s no Christianity, said Machen.

When you look at the gospel, it is good news to be proclaimed, because how could you live out substantial atonement? How could you live out vicarious substitution? How could you live out God�s wrath being assuaged by Jesus as Jesus dies on the cross receiving the punishment that sinners deserved?

I don�t know. Maybe you can act out resurrection from the dead somehow, but this is an abstract thought. Think about it. With your eyes, you can see natural revelation. That�s enough to damn you, but there�s nothing, sorry, even not in the stars, Bollinger and D. James Kennedy should have known better.

The stars can�t even tell you. It has to be told to you specifically. I didn�t put it in the book, but I could have. Maybe I should have. I wrote this book three years ago. What do you want? It just sat as a little Word document, and I thought it�s about time to get it out there.

Not that the world needs it, but it�s a Word document. Let�s make it into a book. By the way, those are fun things to do. A lot of work, ISBN numbers, how to get a cover. Stephen did a great job on the cover, by the way.

Editing, Roger and Jill, great job editing. Layout, John did a great layout. The list goes on. How big the spine has to be, and what about fonts, and what about shipping, and what about create space files, and all this.

But then you have an idea, and then it�s delivered to your house. It�s tangible. I like it. It�s fun. How can you act out with friendship evangelism? First Peter 2 .24, �He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

By his wounds you have been healed. You can�t do that. There�s nothing you can act out or live in such a way that people would go, �Oh, yeah, penalty substitution. I think I�m going to sing Philip Bliss�s song, �In my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood, hallelujah.

What a savior. You just don�t do that. It has to be proclaimed. And similarly with friendship evangelism, might I remind you that friendship evangelism in our day tends to focus, and I know there are exceptions, but they prove the rule, focus more on friendship than evangelism.

Because I contend, this is counterintuitive, but I contend it�s harder to preach the gospel to friends and family than it is to people you don�t know. So why become people�s friends and make it harder to evangelize?

Might as well just get it right out of the way, then befriend them after. I think maybe that�d be a better way to go about it. I can go into a hospital, ICU room, regular hospital room, and rest home.

Go preach the gospel to people. My grandpa�s going to die. Come preach the gospel to him, would you please, pastor? And I go. Off I go. Preach. Don�t think anything of it. But when it comes to my own grandpa, I mean, I�ve got to have my wife take grandma down to the cafeteria so grandma doesn�t have a conniption fit.

Then she realizes my grandma does what I�m doing, and then she comes up and has said conniption fit. It�s a lot easier to preach the gospel to people you don�t know. And Christian, can I give you more good news?

The good news is Jesus died on the cross as a sin-bearing substitute and was raised from the dead. All those who place their faith in him have eternal life and forgiveness of sins. That�s really great news.

It�s also really great news that even though my witness isn�t perfect, my lifestyle isn�t the best. Maybe Mormons are more moral. Maybe the Hindus in your yard keep their yard more polished and trimmed up and nice.

But the gospel is what saves. So even when I slip and stumble and fall and fall short of living up to the testimony of being a Christian, that doesn�t stop anything because the gospel is powerful and God, like a conquering charioteer, always gets his man or he always gets his woman.

The sovereign grace of God planned this great gospel, and it is a great gospel. Spurgeon wrote, �When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin, but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think I could ever have rebelled against one who loved me so and sought my good.

We are to preach the gospel to our friends, our enemies, our relatives, but we can�t do that by our lives. That�s a category error. Preaching and living are different. You must proclaim the gospel. Jesus is the only one who could live the perfect life, and you�re not Jesus.

So tell people about Jesus, both as active and passive obedience. Jesus is the one who we tell other people about. And as I say in the book, I even make sure you try to understand what�s the difference between imperative and intuitive.