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Problems That Cannot Be Solved (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. My name is Mike Abendroth and it is in real time, what time, December 22nd today, 2017, and the year is ending quite a year. I think I mentioned on the show before that last year around this time, I sat my family down that was my wife and four children, and I think just my son at the time was out of town and came back home for the holidays and had to read Psalm 103, or I did read Psalm 103, and tell them that I have cancer, but it�s not the kind that will kill me any time soon, and cried and talked and prayed, and then six months ago, I had the procedure done, brachytherapy.
They put seeds in the prostate to kill the cancer, and that�s a good procedure to have done because there are fewer side effects to that, and if you catch the cancer soon enough, then that�s an option.
If it�s already outside of the prostate, then you can�t really use that procedure as well. It�s not as effective. And this year, my family�s in town, a couple kids from California are back, and we get to sit down, and we�re going to read Psalm 103, and this time, a cry with tears of joy since last, or two weeks ago, MRI, or a week and a half ago, MRI showed no cancer, so we wait another 18 months, have a biopsy, hopefully the biopsy�s negative, and then we move on.
Back on the bicycle. I usually try to ride the bicycle a certain amount of miles per year, and this year, it was one half of what I wanted to ride. But there were many months I could not ride because we were in Europe, and other months I couldn�t ride because you can�t sit on a bicycle saddle when you�ve got brachytherapy seeds.
I remember when I first had the procedure done, they said, �Oh, wait about 10 days, you can swim and I don�t like to get in the pool and swim a short distance. I mean, maybe a mile I would swim is the shortest distance.
I usually don�t swim over two miles, but if I�m going to get in the pool and drive all the way to the pool and get wet and jump in and have that kind of cold feeling to start, you might as well just keep going, burn some calories.
And I remember I swam about 22 laps, which isn�t even a mile. 36 laps would be a mile at most pools, and I was exhausted, and I think that�s the main thing today people ask me how I�m doing, is I�m just tired, and I normally don�t take naps every day, but if I could now, if there�s an opportunity, I take a nap every day.
Even at the church, I�ll put my feet up on the desk and try to take a little five-minute nap just to kind of reset everything. Crazy, but thank you for praying. Thank you for your encouragement. And lastly, I want to make sure I keep the offer open, that if you have prostate cancer or you have a high PSA, you�ve had biopsies and you have Gleason 6, 7, 8, et cetera, and you want someone to talk to, email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com, and I will call you on the phone, or you can call me.
I�ll give you my number, and we�ll try to talk through it. I�m not a doctor, but I used to sell prostate biopsy guns that would detect cancer and have been in the operating room quite a bit, and now I�ve had the experience of researching all the different types of treatment and having treatment and working through all those issues of faith and trust and walking by faith and not by sight, and I would want to help you.
And even if you know someone that has cancer, that maybe I could help as well. It�s kind of the in-club now that I�m a part of. I didn�t ask to be, but certainly the Lord knew what He was doing. R .C. Sproul, of course, has died, and people are giving their tributes to R .C.
I heard about R .C. Sproul back in the early �90s. I was a brand-new Christian, and it was interesting to me what comes to my mind when I think about how the Lord used R .C. in my life. The holiness of God was very instrumental in how I thought about God as someone who was different and who was above and who was not just eminent, that is to say close, that He is transcendent, other.
I mean, when you think of the word holiness, you should not just think of purity, although that�s true, but He is different. And, of course, they�re related because since God is so pure, He is so different.
And so I thought about holiness. I also thought about someone who talks about predestination in an asymmetrical way, right? So if you have election and reprobation, are they exactly equal? And theologically, maybe, logically, if you have one, you have the other.
But does Scripture, and even in the Confessions, talking about passing over. I think it�s the London Baptist that has �passing over� language, since a lot of the language in Scripture is like that. Not all of it, of course.
Romans 9, Proverbs 16, 4, 1 Peter 2, 8, I�m trying to remember the other one, Jude 4 sometimes is called into that category, but I don�t think that would be a good translation. Anyway, talking about asymmetrical predestination, so I remember R .C. for that.
I remember R .C. when, I think if my memory serves me correctly, he was going to preach at Grace Church for John MacArthur, MacArthur and the seminary, and the church sent a seminary student to go pick up R .C., R .C.�s luggage was late and everything, and so they just had to leave it there, you know, because they didn�t have it, it had to be sent up to the hotel.
So R .C. gets to the church almost late because of this flight delay and issues like that, and says to John MacArthur, �What do you want me to preach on today John said, �The holiness of God. R .C. said, �Great.
And started to walk away and came back Columbo-like and said, �Do you have a Bible And that was amazing. MacArthur, I believe, said after that sermon, that was the best sermon I�ve ever heard on the holiness of God.
He didn�t have notes, you know, R .C. did not have notes, and somebody else�s Bible. And I think that�s the sermon that people ask R .C., �How long did that take you to prepare And I think he said, �Ten hours in a lifetime, or two hours in a lifetime, something like that.
And that encouraged me because you have this accumulated knowledge and data that you just keep gaining as you study the Scriptures and preach. There are some passages now that take me a long time to still work through, but not as long as it used to.
When I first started preaching, if you would give me 60 hours to prepare, I would use that 60. If you gave me 30, I would use 30. 20, I would use a 20. Whatever I could use. And when you first start preaching, you�re not having to preach every Sunday so you have a little bit more time in between and just never stopping.
Now I have to stop because it�s Sunday morning, and I usually don�t make any tweaks on Sunday morning. Maybe an intro or something like that I�ll think of. I usually don�t have great intros prepared until maybe Saturday night or Sunday, which I think is the right way to do it because if you have an intro prepared and then you want to find a sermon to match it, that would be the wrong way to go about it.
But if it�s the other way around, then the intros just come naturally instead of out of bible .org illustrations or illustration books that should be burnt. What else do I think of when I think of R .C. Sproul?
I think of someone who was funny and direct. I think of someone who wanted to share the platform with other Bible teachers. I think that was important. I also think of R .C. when it comes to his wife, Vesta, and how he cared for her and how she cared for him.
What else? What else am I thinking about? There�s one other story that I want to bring up, but I�m trying to remember. I thought about it until I went on the rabbit trail of preaching, and so I can�t quite remember it right now.
But anyway, Ligonier Ministries I think will go on. I think with Stephen Nichols there and Sinclair Ferguson and Steve Lawson and others, they�ve built that foundation with Bible teaching. If you want good, reformed Bible teaching, you can go to Ligonier.
You can find, of course, his old messages. This is not what I was thinking about, but it just popped in my mind. I appreciated his children�s books. We just listened to him narrate The Prince�s Poison Cup online.
You can get that, and that was very effective and done very well. You can get the sense of that substitutory atonement and how God loved sinners. So a great legacy, R .C. Sproul. In 2000, I believe, it was James Boyce, the last man who was very popular in evangelicalism who was known for standing for the Reformed faith and standing against all enemies of the gospel.
How does the kingdom of God carry on with a man like James Montgomery Boyce leaving? He was, in one sense, the man that really held all that together with Cure and Ace and everything else. God just has other people.
He's the one that builds the church, and nothing will stop it, not even the gates of death. Now R .C.'s gone to be with the Lord, and so now what will happen? It'll just be the next round and the next round and the next round.
Of course, we will be sad because we love these people, but God uses, as 1 Corinthians 1 talks about, people who are very insignificant. And even the greatest of men, and R .C. was a great man compared to everyone else, compared to the Lord, just a creature, not the Creator.
Well, we're talking here on No Compromise Radio about problems that can't be solved, and we're talking about the book of Hebrews and how it talks about Jesus Christ and preaches Christ Jesus and extols Jesus, the Great One.
What we looked at last time was the problem of human sin. How can God be just and the justifier? And the answer is found, as it's Christmastime, in the Lord Jesus Christ. Truly God, truly man. I think I used to say fully God, fully man, 100 God, 100 man most of the time, but then I remember watching that video of R .C. Sproul correct MacArthur and said, you know, it's truly God and truly man is the best way to say it, and he gave his reasons.
Then MacArthur afterwards said, that's what I meant to say. It was neat to see their friendship. Here we have a dispensationalist MacArthur and Presbyterian R .C. Sproul, and they were friends. I'm thankful for that.
I'm not really a dispensationalist, but I'm still Baptistic, and so it's nice to have my Presbyterian friends. I know they don't think I'm truly Reformed, but that's okay. They're not truly Christians.
Just kidding. RDRR. No, good illustration of men who differ on certain things, but there's a lot more we can agree on. That's why I pretty much live in the Presbyterian world, at least theologically. Because while they might have some kooky things, the kookiness is not the same as the Darby kookiness.
All right. How do we solve the problem? Well, we can't solve the problem, and we had talked about some math problems that can't be solved and the three-cup problem and those things. It says in Hebrews 4, verse 2, for good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
So the writer, I almost said Paul, it could be Paul, but I doubt it. The writer is saying this, in chapter 3 and 4 especially, where Israel had the promises of God, good news, the promise of God, for the promised land.
They did not believe God, and therefore it issued in disobedience, and they died in the land. They did not enter the promised land. Right? It's Oshwin, Caleb, and the young ones did, but most of the others were slain in the wilderness.
Now there's a different set, there's different good news that he's talking about now, and that good news is forgiveness, reconciliation, justification, regeneration, redemption, propitiation, all the wonderful things that Christ has done for us, accomplished in His life as representative, death as substitute, confirmed by the resurrection.
That's good news. There's the good news that's proclaimed now to people. That's not just land news and entering into Canaan news. This is spiritual news and news that is even more important. But just because this good news comes out, it doesn't mean it has any effect if you don't believe it.
You have to believe it. So here we have the Exodus generation and the church comparisons, even the SV study Bible comparisons between the Exodus generation and the church continue. They hear good news.
The news is from God. The news is a promise. And they, back in the day, in the wilderness, needed to respond with faith. That's the key, with belief, trust, confidence. They needed to rest in the promises of God.
And they didn't. Why? Because they didn't believe God, and they believed themselves, self-righteousness, unrighteousness, et cetera. But they needed to have that good news received by knowledge, assent, and trust, to use the language of the Reformation when it comes to saving faith.
They didn't respond in faith. And if you people that this writer is writing to who are getting persecuted go back to Judaism now that Jesus has come, this isn't responding in faith. You're just as doomed, right?
But you're doomed, not just temporally, but eternally. Good news came to us just as to them. And the good news, when you think about it, if you had to summarize good news in the New Testament, the Bible, while it's not about characters and morality and ethical discussions and a manual of life, it's not about that primarily.
That's what we looked at last time. It's primarily about the good news that God saves sinners. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, this is 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried and He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.
We need God's revelation to understand this. When you think of how culture attacks Christianity and how the gospel of Jesus Christ is attacked, you can see the attacks come through liberalism. And even back in the 20s, 1923, J. Gresham Machen talks about people who are anti-doctrinal.
Their attack is, we don't want doctrine. And here we have doctrine. Christ, the Messiah, dies for our sins. That's substitutionary atonement. This is the Messiah. This is the doctrine of hermartiology, where we are sinful people and we fall short and we need a Savior.
This is died for, that the wages of sin is death. We need to have a Savior who can die and then be raised from the dead, buried, raised on the third day. Far from being anti-doctrinal, good news is doctrinal.
Good news is, I'm writing this down, good news is supernatural. Liberalism says, let's dumb down everything. Jesus is a really good teacher. He's a good moral example of the faith, but He's not supernatural.
Well, how are you raised from the dead unless there's a supernatural act? And is it good news if you stay in the ground? There's no good news there. That would mean Jesus either A, had sins, and sin are sins, and God the Father would have to judge Him for that, or something happened and Jesus had no sins, but He didn't have enough righteousness to bestow that on all those who would believe, and the payment made for sinners, God didn't accept.
Both of those are really bad options. And when you look at this passage, good news has a high view of God and it has a low view of man, quite opposite of liberalism today, quite opposite of many people today.
Here you say, well, how do I know things? How is this good news? Well, it's according to the Scriptures. You see that twice here in 1 Corinthians 15. According to the Scriptures, according to the Scriptures.
How are people validating themselves today? According to their experience, according to their experience. According to popular belief, according to polls. Here it's good news because God has to do all the saving.
Christ died for our sins. There's nothing we could do. That's why He said, Jesus said in Matthew 11 that we looked at several, you know, shows ago, come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you, what, rest.
The gospel good news that Hebrews talks about, that the Bible talks about is Jesus, His life, His death, His resurrection, His ascension, and His return. That is good news purchased by Jesus Christ. How am I reconciled to a holy God?
By the work of Jesus Christ, the sinless one. That's why Walter Elwell's Evangelical Dictionary of Theology says, the gospel is the joyous proclamation of God's redemptive activity in Christ Jesus on behalf of man enslaved by sin.
The gospel is good news. This good news preached, and there's something about this good news that makes the writers in the New Testament want to describe it in a lot of different ways, all with exaltation, with a variety of descriptions, with modifiers to tell you just what's being stressed.
The gospel of God, it's God's gospel, Mark 1 and Romans 15. It's the gospel of Jesus Christ, the God-man, Mark 1 and 1 Corinthians 9. It's the gospel of His Son, Romans 1 -9. It's the gospel of the grace of God, Acts 20 -24.
The gospel of the kingdom, Matthew 4, Matthew 9, Matthew 24. The gospel of peace, Ephesians 6. The everlasting gospel could be translated the eternal gospel, Revelation 14. And the gospel of the glory of Christ, 2 Corinthians 4.
The gospel is such good news, you see all these different modifiers so you understand what's going on and what the triune God planned and executed, accomplished, done versus do. He did it all. Everywhere you look in the Bible, you see the redemptive plan of God.
You see it in the Old Testament, and you see it in the New Testament. And Jesus takes on human flesh. Fascinatingly, before He revealed Himself in time, before that Christmas day, the Son had received the call, had received the command from God the Father to go rescue the elect, to die and to rise, be raised from the dead.
John 10 -18, I have authority to lay it down, I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I receive from my Father. When did Jesus receive the authority? Well, He's always had authority, receives it from the Father as we think about the triune God via the incarnation.
But this commandment I receive from the Father in eternity past, that is fascinating. At the end of His life, Jesus says in John 17, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.
When did you give Him the work, Father? In eternity past. The sending planned in eternity past. The sending happened in real time 2 ,000 years ago. That's why we celebrate today. Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.
When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. And this took place, all this took place, to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife. He knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called His name Jesus. God saving sinners. How does God forgive?
That's probably a good question to be asked. Did He just let sin go? Did He just not think about it? When we say, please forgive me, do we have to go kill an animal? We just say, yes, we will. But there's a difference with God, an important difference.
God does not say, oh, it's no big deal, let bygones be bygones. He does not say like in creation, let men be forgiven, let there be light, let there be forgiveness, because God is just and holy and He has righteous, unchangeable standards.
And He is so holy that Isaiah says, I've seen the Lord of hosts, woe is me. He is too pure to prove evil, Habakkuk 1 says. And you can know how much God hates sin by the cross. God the Father made no exception for Jesus, the sin bearer.
Arthur Pink said, and it was because the Savior was bearing our sins that the thrice holy God would not look on Him, turned His face from Him, forsook Him. The Lord made to meet on Christ the iniquities of us all, and our sins being on Him as our substitute, the divine wrath against our offenses must be spent upon our sin bearing.
For as you know, the wages of sin is death. Every sin must be dealt with, Romans 6 .23, the wages of sin is death. Now when Hebrews talks about good news, there's already been a bunch of good news in the book of Hebrews.
4 .2, it says good news, but there's been good news that we're going to talk about next time. Well, these 24 and a half minutes go on very quickly. The 24 and a half minutes goes by quickly, especially when I talk at 1 .5 speed.
I'm going to do a show so fast one day that those of you that listen to the show at 1 .5 speed will not be able to do it. Well, you'd be able to, but you won't be able to understand it. Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio, info at nocompromiseradio .com.
You can go to the Facebook, maybe you want to write up a review on iTunes, Facebook. There's Twitter, at NoCoRadio, and we're encouraged by those that are listening, tell your friends, tell your enemies, and we will see you next time.
Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio. With Pastor Mike Ebendroth. It's a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.