Refuting Self-Righteousness

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth. I'm glad you're watching. I'm glad you're listening.

Our slogan used to be always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And I think that's still probably true.

I would probably add something about being Christ -centered. And since Jesus is the one that never compromised, hence the title of the show,

No Compromise Radio. And Jesus didn't compromise. That should probably lead us and give us the desire for no compromise in our life as well.

Well, today we're rolling out a new format for the show. No Compromise Radio Variety Show.

I don't know what to call it yet, but we're gonna have segments. And so I've done this in the past and we're gonna roll it out again.

And each show now, at least for this experimental stage, we'll see how many people say no or yes or whatever segments.

And so instead of one topic for 30 minutes, a kind of a variety show type of deal.

So we'll talk about in the next four shows, prayer, I'll give an award out called the

Kooks and Barney's Award. You'll have to stay tuned to see what that is. Book recommendation, a message moment from the message paraphrase.

Are you a Roman Catholic or Protestant? Ask you about that. And then the main teaching section.

So six sections per show, variety show style. And if you don't like one section, just wait a few minutes and we'll get into the next section.

So that's the good part. It'll be fast moving and maybe graphics. Who knows what Mario's got up his sleeve.

Section number one, the prayer section. I wanna talk about prayer and how important prayer is, specifically the

Lord's prayer. The Lord's prayer is found in Matthew chapter six and in Luke chapter 11.

And the Luke chapter 11 section, you probably know about it. The disciples of John were taught by John the

Baptist, Jesus was off praying in Luke 11, and his disciples wanted Jesus to teach them about prayer.

And Jesus said, when you pray, say, Father, and then it says, saying who are in heaven, although that's true, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation.

So I wanna talk a little bit about that prayer because prayer is so vital.

Prayer is so important. Martin Lloyd -Jones said that prayer is the highest activity of the human soul before all else it pales into insignificance.

Augustine, Luther, they both thought that the Lord's prayer is the greatest prayer in all the

Bible that we would pray. At the top of the list certainly is John 17, the Lord's prayer himself, the high priestly prayer.

But this Christian prayer, this church prayer is the loftiest and the most exalted in many theologians opinion.

And so we wanna make sure that we understand a little bit about this in this brief segment on prayer.

The first thing I'd like to say about this prayer is Jesus never prayed it. He told us to pray it, but he never prayed it because Jesus would never have to say, forgive me father for I have sinned.

Not once, he would always say something like this. Instead, John chapter eight, I always do what's pleasing to the father.

And while Jesus didn't pray for forgiveness, he certainly prayed. Mark chapter one, for instance, really early in the morning, it's a long day.

And Jesus goes on a protracted prayer session, a long prayer session, communing with the father.

Another thing about this prayer that's so wonderful that makes it easy is the structure is simple. Two petitions that go for God's glory, work towards God's glory, the end of God's glory, that's hallowed be your name and your kingdom come.

And then three petitions for us, that is our daily sustenance, bread, forgiving our sins, and then also protection from evil and temptation and sinning in the future.

So God's glory, our good, kind of an easy way to think about prayer. We pray for God's glory, then we pray for our good.

And that makes it very simple. Another thing about this prayer that I like, as we kind of wrap up this first little segment in this variety show, should it be called a show?

Shows are like dramatic or something. That's why we don't call the platform in the church where we're elevated to preach and to sing.

We don't call it a stage. I'm not performing. This is a platform. I just, I'm elevated, not because I'm great.

It's because I want you to see me and I want to see you. That's all it is. Simple as that. I have many more things that just went through my mind, but I'm not gonna say them.

The interesting thing about this prayer as well is it's comprehensive. You already know that it's a template.

Here's a format. You can pray this prayer, but in Matthew, Jesus says, when you pray, pray like this.

Here's a manner, here's a style. And so one writer said, our father, it shows the father -child relationship.

Hallowed be thy name, deity worshiper. Thy kingdom come, sovereign subject.

Give us this day our daily bread, benefactor, beneficiary. Forgive us our sins, savior, sinner.

Lead us not into temptation, guide and pilgrim. Pray in this way.

It is simple. It is short. It is directed to God's glory first, and then to our good. And it really is comprehensive.

And lastly, this prayer is interesting by what it doesn't say. Jesus doesn't say pray five times a day.

Face this direction. Close your eyes when you pray. Open your hands when you pray.

Use incense. Say, get some beads out.

It doesn't say any of that. It just talks about going to your father to pray. So segment number one on No Compromise radio show, a little bit about prayer designed for you to pray.

To pray to your heavenly father that his name might be hallowed, his kingdom might come, that we would have all our daily necessities met, whether that's food or clothing.

Our sins are forgiven. We forgive other people and we're protected in the future. Segment number two.

Maybe this is my favorite one. It's called Kooks and Barneys. It's an award.

I'm giving out an award. I don't have an actual award to give out, but if I did, I'm gonna give an award out for somebody doing something that isn't theologically correct.

It could be some kind of dumb theology. Can I say stupid theology?

A stupido? Something that's wrong. And so Kooks and Barneys, those are the terms that would be used of surfers.

And a kook would come out and he wouldn't know what to do. She wouldn't know what to do. And she would burn people, cut people off, wouldn't understand anything about it.

And so you don't wanna be a kook on a surfboard and you don't wanna be a theological kook either.

And so the award today that I'm giving, I probably gave this award to him many years ago as well, but I'm giving it to Rick Warren today.

People still need to know about Rick Warren. I used to be on a local radio station here and I was replaced by Rick Warren.

So it's not like I'm mad at him or anything like that. He's got the cash to be on. I didn't have the cash.

But Rick Warren had this idea years ago. I mean, he's

New York Times bestseller, number one bestselling book. I think it surpassed even Pilgrim's Progress. Next to the

Bible is the bestselling book of all time, The Purpose Driven Life. He had a challenge, a churchwide challenge.

And so my award goes to him and it was called Be the Message. Be the

Message. And essentially it's you're the gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, maybe people don't read

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So they would read you and you could be the gospel. I mean, I could be the gospel.

You know, Rick could be the gospel. The problem is the gospel is to be heralded. The gospel is to be proclaimed.

The gospel is good news about Jesus and not good news about us. It's good news for us for certain, but we can't live the gospel.

That is a wrong category. That's wrong language. You proclaim the gospel, you live in light of the gospel.

Paul said you adorn the gospel, but you're not the gospel. I mean, if you look at my life long enough, sadly, you'll see things you don't like.

You'll see things that aren't good news. And the person who said proclaim the good news is the only person we can look at and say his life is perfectly, entirely, precisely good news.

And so anytime you hear something like this, be the message, live the gospel, you just say, that is wrong.

You don't do that. That puts such a burden on people. Here's what I like, even though I'm sinful and frail and weak and I don't do everything well and there are other people like that in the church, the gospel is powerful and they can go through a person like me or you and save other people.

What if you had to be perfect in order to have any of your loved ones saved? What if you had to be perfect if you had to have your children saved because they'd look at you?

No, no, the wonderful thing is while we want to be holy and live lives commensurate with our calling to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, you don't have to be perfect to proclaim the perfect one.

Actually, Jesus knew that because the great commission in Matthew chapter 28 tells you from the words of the

Lord Jesus himself who has all authority in heaven and earth to go out and preach.

This be the message thing that was by Pastor Cary and Chris Shook who's tied into kind of this philosophy.

They said this, what would happen if we talked about God less and walked with God more? Well, less people would get saved from the human perspective.

Be the message reminds us that Christianity was meant to be a faith of action, not a faith of words.

Yet often we sacrifice doing something for the sake of talking about it. Should we do good works?

Yes. Faith without works is dead. Yes. But there are categories for things and we need to preach the gospel.

Faith comes by hearing and hearing a message about Christ. Read Romans chapter 10 and we need to proclaim the truth.

The Kooks and Barney's award today goes to anyone who thinks you live the gospel or you think friendship evangelism means we just become friends with people and never confront people in their sin law and then give them the good news gospel.

So when you think about it, make sure you proclaim the gospel and then in light of that, live a holy life.

All right. Well, that's two segments. I can't believe we've got two segments done and who knows what's going on with time.

Next segment is what we call, and it's a fancy title I know, book recommendations. I just wanna give you a book recommendation

I've done this over the years. I just looked over at the place, right? I record a lot of the shows over there. Books that have shaped me.

Actually, maybe the subtitle, what's in my sock drawer? What's in my sock drawer?

And so for years, I would keep my favorite books in the sock drawer because I didn't wanna put them over with all the other books.

They had a special place. And the special place in my house was the sock drawer. It's basically because there's no room.

I have a library here and a library at home and there's books everywhere, jammed in places, including the sock drawer. So this book was in my sock drawer for years and years and years, maybe 15 years before I moved the sock drawer books somewhere else, but it was called,

The Attributes of God by A .W. Pink. Now, there are a few things in it that these days,

I might not think are exactly right as I've learned and I'm growing in theology.

But I wanna say that if you read it today, I think you'd be helped. I think it's one of those books that, by the way, it's online for free.

You just type it in, you could read it for free. You could buy a published copy if you'd like. The Attributes of God.

Thinking about God. I mean, if you wanna talk about attributes that are essential and relative, relational, all these things like that, maybe this isn't the book.

But if you wanna talk about quotes from Puritans, things from the Bible about God's holiness, about God's love,

His discriminating love, about God's justice. It has a chapter in there about the foreknowledge of God and how it's not in scripture, meaning

He foreknows that you're gonna believe. He foreknows you and then you'll believe. He doesn't learn anything.

It's not post -destination. This is a great book. Attributes of God. I want to say about 19 chapters.

And so you just read one chapter a day for a month. And now you get 11 days off. So you don't have to have your inner fundamentalist, legalist come through and just read it.

And it makes you think about God. And you just think to yourself, there's no

God like this. You can even make up a God so great because you'll read verses from the

Bible that Pink puts in there. And you'll just be blown away. You'll be in awe. I mean, we use words like awesome to talk about sunsets.

This is really an awesome God that we believe in, serve who's created us.

And I think Pink does a good job, two or three pages per attribute. And it will encourage you.

So I wanna recommend A .W. Pink, Attributes of God. It was actually, I kept it in my

Bible for a long time just because it was so important for me to read and ponder.

So that's a book recommendation for this episode. A .W. Pink, The Attributes of God.

Have you read it? Next segment, the message moment. If I had any sense,

I'd pay Mario to put in the drifters, this magic moment, but have it to say this message moment and just bluntly put it in there like bad editing just to make it funny.

The message paraphrase. This segment is essentially to make fun of the message to make sure you use a

Bible that has a better translation. There's all kinds of translation theories as close as we can, word for word, kind of a dynamic equivalence, phrase for phrase, paraphrases.

And I wanna move you from the paraphrases like the message to something else. And I don't care if you do one of these two.

I don't care if it's the CSB, the ESV, the NASB. At home, I read the

NAS 95. I preach from the ESV just because that's what we have here at church. But Psalm 32 in the message sounds like this, count yourself lucky, how happy you must be.

You get a fresh start, your slates wiped clean. Count yourself lucky. God holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from him.

Maybe that should go in the Kooks and Barney's award and the message gets that. I mean, sometimes the message is okay, but I don't want paraphrases.

I don't wanna hear count yourself lucky. Here at this church gathering, we don't even have a pot providence.

I mean, pot luck, excuse me. We have a pot providence or a pot blessing. Lucky, okay, if you wanna use the word chance like Jesus did in Luke 10 by chance, just from a human perspective.

But there's no such thing as luck. No such thing as fortune. No such thing as kismet. No such thing as whatever.

Count yourself lucky. No, no, here's the new American standard. How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

Mario, aren't you glad all your transgressions are forgiven? Your sins covered. That's much better than saying,

Mario, your slates wiped clean and you're so lucky. What a lucky dog you are. And then that Psalm, Psalm 32.

I mean, think of David's sins against God, against Bathsheba, against Uriah, against Israel and all those sins and he was forgiven.

Confronted by Nathan, you are the man. David sought forgiveness and how blessed is the man to whom the

Lord does not impute iniquity. And David said, thank you. So much so that the spirit of God has

Paul use that verse in Romans chapter four. And Augustine said every night before he went to bed, he would read those verses on his headboard from Psalm 32.

And they didn't say, even in the Vulgate, how lucky are you?

So the message moment for the day is avoid Psalm 32. All right, what's up next?

We've got to keep these things moving. The hordes of YouTube followers and listeners, all 292 of you.

Next segment, are you a Roman Catholic or a Protestant? What? You say, what do you mean? Of course we're

Protestant. That's why we listen. Otherwise, Roman Catholics don't like no compromise radio. Well, that could be true, but there's blurring of the lines these days.

It seems like many people kind of functionally or theoretically believe in some

Roman Catholic doctrine. And so I'm gonna quote some things and then you have to decide which one's true.

And they're pretty close. One's Protestant, one's Roman Catholic. One protests the

Catholics. Unlike who's the new Pope? The guy that should have the

Cooks and Barneys Award next time, the Chicago Pope. And he was talking about just coming together.

And it's crazy to just watch what the Pope does, but that's a different story.

Are you really a Protestant? So I'm gonna give you two quotes. You tell me which one's true.

Quote number one, God gives man right standing with himself by mercifully accounting him innocent and virtuous.

I'll repeat it again. God gives man right standing with himself by mercifully accounting himself innocent and virtuous.

Sins forgiven, righteousness. Other one,

God gives a man right standing with himself. So that's the same as the earlier one. By actually making him into an innocent and virtuous person.

So one is accounting, one is making. Which one's true?

Does God make man stand before him by mercifully accounting him innocent and righteous or by making him innocent and righteous?

Which one? Are you Roman Catholic or Protestant? Well, the first one is the right one.

It's accounting, it's imputation. It's a declaration. It's 2

Corinthians 5 .21. It's not an inner transformation in the category of standing because that's the category of justification.

In the category of justification, it's we get Christ's righteousness by imputation, crediting,

He gets our sin by crediting, by accounting, by imputation, by reckoning.

That's the language of justification. Once we move into the category of sanctification, fine, transformation, conforming, making.

Don't have any problem with that. We use language of imputation. They use language in the category of justification with transformation, with infusing, with actually making him virtuous, making people innocent.

And so you wanna be very, very careful that you keep justification and sanctification categories clearly seen as different.

One certainly leads to the next. If you're justified, you will be sanctified. But God declares you as righteous because of the

Lord Jesus. What does the scripture say, Romans 4? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due. And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

And so if you wanna be a Protestant thinking about the Bible properly, you think about accounting righteous, reckoning righteous, not transforming righteous in the category of standing before God's judgment seat that is in the category of justification.

All right, now off to the main topic. We have seven minutes for the main topic. And that main topic today is self -righteousness.

Self -righteousness. A thinking that we can come up with our own goodness, our own doing right, our own righteousness.

And the thing about self -righteousness, you might ask yourself the question, what's worse?

Unrighteousness or self -righteousness? Well, both are sins, that's true.

Jesus came and died for self -righteous and unrighteous. And lots of times unrighteous people can be self -righteous.

And self -righteous people can be unrighteous. But the thing about unrighteous and self -righteous, the self -righteous person, the unbeliever, he doesn't think, she doesn't think they even need to be saved because they're good.

And by the way, if my neighbors aren't going to become Christians, I want them to be self -righteous. I want them to be

Mormons. I want them to be moral. I want them to be good citizens. I'd rather have them be

Roman Catholic than Muslim Brotherhood and all that other stuff.

But if you think about self -righteousness, no wonder Martin Luther said,

I have to preach against it all the time because it seems like it's not just the default for unbelievers, it's often a default for believers.

So in this battle of righteousnesses, unrighteous doing things that aren't right, self -righteousness thinking that in and of ourselves, we can do right things.

The backdrop is the Lord's righteousness, the Lord doing right things, the

Lord keeping the law. That is when I say the Lord, Jesus, the incarnate one, the second person of the

Trinity who assumes human nature. As John says, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory.

Jesus is not keeping the law for himself. He is righteous.

He has inherent righteousness, but he's keeping the law for other people, those that he came to save.

And when Jesus shows up, often it is to blister self -righteous people.

My mom used to say that. I don't know if your mom would ever say that, Mario. My mom would say, you need a blistering.

Like, don't call DSS anytime soon. I need a blistering. Once in a while, she would slap me so hard on my thigh.

I'd like to have a red handprint on my thigh. Mom was the spanker in our house, not dad.

Because probably dad knew at 6 '4", 240, if he spanked us, we would be dead. A ruler asked

Jesus, Luke 18, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus said to him, why do you call me good?

No one is good except God alone. You're talking to God. You know the commandments.

Do not commit adultery. Do not murder. Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother. And he said, all these things

I have kept from my youth. I obey these things. And by the way, if you think you're obeying all those things, there's no need to seek for a savior.

You're a self -savior. You're an auto -savior. You're saving yourself because you're keeping the law.

Gee, what a good boy am I. So when Jesus talks to people, when we talk to people, you've probably heard on radio shows before something called law gospel.

You give the law to people as unbelievers to show them their sin. So they seek a savior.

By the grace of God, they're looking for a savior because they realize they're sinful. But if you don't think you've broken the law because you have kept it by yourself self -righteously, it just voids your sense of a need for the savior.

You might say, well, I'm an unbeliever and I sin a little bit, but it's not that much.

Somehow thinking your righteous deeds outweigh your sin. Spurgeon said, the greatest enemy to human souls is the self -righteous spirit, which makes men look to themselves for salvation.

And so what I want to say in this segment of the show is we need to make sure as Christians, this is kind of back to the

Kooks and Barney's thing, that we're not the message. We need to proclaim the good news of the gospel to unbelievers.

The message is about someone else. It's not about us. He uses us as like a conduit, like a PVC pipe or something.

But we don't just preach the gospel to unbelievers. We preach the law to unbelievers to show them that they need a savior.

People have an inflated view of themselves. Before I was saved, I did.

I mean, that still hangs over today. And we think we're better than what we are. No need for Jesus, I can do it.

I mean, think about your friends, your neighbors, the people that are out there. I mean, this is why religion is so damning.

This is why this like inoculation of Roman Catholicism, inoculation of any other religion, you've got just enough to make you think you're okay.

And even if you don't think you have 100 % self -righteousness, you're like, well, I've got 20 % or the church could give me 80%.

One man said, many have passed the gross, the rocks of gross sins who have suffered shipwreck upon the sands of self -righteousness.

And I just think about my grandmother and I think about my grandfather. Moral, decent, kind, good neighbors pay their taxes.

We went and had a buffet one time because that's what grandparents do. They take you to like the golden corral or whatever.

We got in the car and grandma said to grandpa, Henry, did you pay the bill? He said, I forgot. I gotta go right back in there and pay.

And all of a sudden you think you're somehow good because you're comparing yourself to other people. You're comparing yourself to yourself.

You're comparing yourself to the crazy people on Jerry Springer or some kind of wild show. But the comparison is always like in Isaiah 6, before the thrice holy

God. And then your self -righteousness fades. Isaiah, probably the most holy man on the earth is before the

Lord who's on the throne, majestic, the angels, seraphim, blushing as it were before the holiness of God.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God almighty. And they are chanting the whole earth is full of his glory.

May your glory be seen. And Isaiah says, woe is me, I'm undone. And so self -righteousness is cured essentially by seeing

God as holy. And you see God as holy because when the law is pressed, because the law

Romans 7, 1 Timothy 1 is holy, righteous, and good. The law reflects the nature of God because it's coming from God.

And you see how different God is and how holy, how pure, how sinless. And to think, you know what?

To be in God's presence, you can't have any sin. You can't have any sin. And so when it comes to self -righteousness, let's make sure as Christians, we repent of it.

We need Jesus's righteousness. John Bunyan said, my righteousness has been in heaven for 1700 years.

And for unbelievers, let's make sure we proclaim God's law so they see that they need a righteousness from outside of themselves, what

Jesus has earned. Well, my name is Mike Abendroth. New format today, variety show format.

Jay Leno, David Letterman, Johnny Carson. Johnny Carson was from Nebraska, there you go. You can write me, mike at nocompromisedradio .com.