Tozer and Feminism

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.

Introduction and Reading from A.W. Tozer on the Self-Sufficiency of God

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is, as you know, Mike Abendroth, Mike Abendroth, as we say in our home. Abendroth is probably the Americanized version, but my great-grandfather was cutting down a tree, and the tree fell on him and killed him.

The side of the family that had some issues with my side of the family did not put some of their names in the obituary, and there were some issues regarding the funeral and such, and so my side of the family said, from this day forth, we are no longer Abendroths, we are Abendroths.

So does Mike Abendroth. So I hate to be on the right side of the family feud, but what are you going to do? Let me read you something from the Knowledge of the Holy, A .W. Tozer. I like Attributes of God book better by A .W. Pink, but this is one of the first books that I ever read called the Knowledge of the Holy, A .W. Tozer, Christian Missionary and Alliance Speaker.

And this book, when did I read it first, I don't know, probably 1990, and I'd like to read a little section about the self-sufficiency of God. Almighty God, just because He is almighty, needs no support.

The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one. Yet if we look at the popular conception of God, that is precisely what we see. 20th century Christianity has put God on charity.

So lofty is our own opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easily, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist.

That we do exist is altogether of God's free determination, not by our desert nor by divine necessity. Probably the hardest thought of all for our natural egotism to entertain is that God does not need our help.

We commonly represent Him as a busy, eager, somewhat frustrated Father, hurrying around seeking help to carry out His benevolent plan to bring peace and salvation to the world. But as said the Lady Julian, I saw truly that God doeth all thing, be it never so little.

The God who worketh all things surely needs no help and no helpers. Too many missionary appeals are based upon this fancied frustration of Almighty God. An effective speaker can easily excite pity in his hearers, not only for the heathen but for the God who has tried so hard and so long to save them, and has failed for one of support.

I fear that thousands of younger persons enter Christian service from no higher motive than to help deliver God from the embarrassing situation His love has gotten him into and His limited abilities seem unable to get Him out of.

Add to this a certain degree of commendable idealism and a fair amount of compassion for the underprivileged, and you have the true drive behind much Christian activity today. Again, God needs no defenders.

He is the eternally undefended. To communicate with us in an idiom we can understand, God in the Scriptures makes full use of military terms. But surely it was never intended that we should think of the throne of the Majesty on high as being under siege.

With Michael and his host are some other heavenly beings defending it from stormy overthrow. So to think is to misunderstand everything the Bible would tell us about God. Neither Judaism nor Christianity could approve such puerile notions.

A God who must be defended is one who can help us only while someone is helping Him. We may count upon Him only if He wins in the cosmic seesaw battle between right and wrong. Such a God could not command the respect of intelligent men.

He could only excite their pity. To be right we must think worthily of God. It is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ignoble concepts of deity and let Him be the God in our minds that He is in the universe.

The Christian religion has to do with God and man, but its focal point is God, not man. Man's only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image. In himself he is nothing. The psalmist and prophets of the scriptures refer in a sad scorn to weak man whose breath is in his nostrils, who grows up like the grass in the morning, only to be cut down and wither before the setting of the sun.

That God exists for himself and man for the glory of God is the emphatic teaching of the Bible. The high honor of God is first in heaven as it must be in earth. From all this we may begin to understand why the holy scriptures have so much to say about the vital place of faith and why they brand unbelief as deadly sin.

Among all things created, not one dare trust it himself. God alone trusts in himself. All other beings must trust in him. Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust not in the living God but in dying men.

The unbeliever denies the self-sufficiency of God and usurps attributes that are not his. This dual sin dishonors God and ultimately destroys the soul of man.". A .W. Tozer, Self-Sufficiency of God, pages 34 and 35.

You need to get that book, The Knowledge of the Holy, by A .W. Tozer. Tozer's point should be well-heeded, that God is not existing to give us pleasure. God is not existing to make our lives complete.

God is not trying to give us our best life now, as MacArthur says with our best life now. If that were true, what Joel Osteen says, our best life is now, that means we're going to hell because our best life won't be later.

God exists for his own glory, that he might enjoy himself and glorify himself forever. And I'm very, very happy that he has condescended, that he, according to his free will and good pleasure, has decided to stoop low to be God with us.

God is not only awfully transcendent, as Machen would say, he's not only way above us and holy and lifted up, but by his will, he has decided to be close to us. God with us, Emmanuel, Christ Jesus, the center point of that, the centerpiece of that, God being close to men.

So God can be our substitute and our representative. So today on No Compromise Radio, I wanted to read that to make sure you understand that the world needs to revolve around God, that your life needs to revolve around God.

Your focus should not be on your family, your focus should be your family worshiping and serving God. If your focus is just on your family or on your job or on money or on success or on pleasure or on vacations, all things that are good in and of themselves, but when they come between you and God or they're placed over God, then they become idolatrous.

So when we think about things scripturally and we see how God is the Alpha and the Omega, the God who was and the God who is and the God who is to come, can you just imagine those concepts? They are mind-blowing, they are mind-expanding.

Spurgeon would say when he was 20 years old, the best thing you can do is think about these great things about God, think about God in this way, and it will expand your mind and the greater your view of God is in your own mind, the lesser you will be in your own mind and that's going to be better off for you.

You can always write us at info at nocompromisedradio .com. We're glad to get your emails. I'd say nine out of ten are positive. One out of ten, I just got one that said my talking about some of the songs the other day with Steve, Tuesday guy.

They didn't stoop so low to say Tuesday guy, but the way we talked and laughed about some of the songs was sickening. So you can write if you'd like. If I'm out here talking about things the way I do, I should take the hits or take the advice or take the emails that people give.

So at least they gave their email and their full name and their phone number. So if you'd like to call them, their number is BR549. I got another, oh, you know what I'd like to talk about, bostonherald .com, Welfare Abuse Runs Deep, an article by John Zeremba and Chris Cassidy, April 11, 2012, that happens to be today, but this is a recorded show taped, a convicted drug dealer who cops said wanted to use cash from his taxpayer funded EBT card.

EBT card is for groceries, you know, food stamp kind of thing. It's the new face of welfare abuse, according to tough minded lawmakers who are pushing the reform resistant Patrick administration for a crackdown.

This man who was locked up on drug dealing charges, again, says when he was overheard using his phone call to ask the person on the other end of the line to get my EBT card and go to the ATM and get the money to bail me out, get me out of here tonight, according to a Boston police report.

Now see this kind of stuff with Obamacare, with welfare, with people who are in the country illegally and yet they get tax money. If left to myself and not thinking properly, this drives me crazy. I'm an image bearer and I want justice and I don't want people to take advantage of the system, but if you've got a right view of the sovereignty of God, it takes the edge off of this stuff.

God will make all wrongs right. He will judge every person. We don't believe in universal redemption on No Compromise Radio because the scriptures patently do not teach it. But there is a universal judgment and our works will be judged as Christians, Bema Seat judgment, and unbelievers' sins will be judged at the Great White Throne judgment.

So when there are inequities in life, especially in politics and government and socially, you can go crazy if you want. A good way to go crazy and to be very baffled and flabbergasted and discombobulated mentally, emotionally, and then even spiritually, just listen to a lot of right-wing talk radio and listen to a lot of Fox News.

Then you can get really bugged and read a lot of things online. And then if there's going to be a president who is Republican, then listen to a lot of NBC, listen to a lot of Matt Lauer, read Slate and Politico.

I mean, it applies to both sides. But once you start getting involved at a deeper level, I think your frustration level and your angst level is going to be increased. Now some of you maybe like to follow politics.

Maybe some of you are in politics. Christians can certainly do that. Maybe some of you say, I like to be informed. You can do whatever you want. It's a free country. But I don't listen to talk radio, except no-compromise radio.

I'm talking about political talk radio because I have other things to do. I don't pray enough, so when I get in the car, I don't try to listen to a lot of other things. I do once in a while, but I try to say, all right, this is a good time I can just spend with the Lord praying.

If you like to cut down on your angst, then my suggestions are very biblical suggestions. Don't listen and don't get as much input regarding all these inequities and all these problems because politics by nature are people who compromise to get a platform, and we on no-compromise radio don't like compromise as much.

Women, the Resurrection, and the Debate over Church Roles

Speaking of which, Tom Clark sent me an email. Well, the gospel agrees, women molded the roots of Easter, role in ministry debated. So here we have in our local paper here, the Worcester Telegram and Gazette staff, Bronislaus B. Cush wrote an article, Bronislaus B. Cush, role in ministry debated.

So, here's the thing, Easter Sunday, front page, newspaper, and you say, I thought you told me not to do that anymore. Well, I don't care if you already read the newspaper or not. You can if you want.

I guess there's coupons or something, Wizard of It or something. S. Louis Johnson used to read BC, so I can't say it's all bad, can I? But somebody sent this to me, so I don't get the newspaper because I'm concerned for the environment.

While his male disciples secluded themselves in coward and fear in the wake of his resurrection, the female companions of Jesus Christ, ignoring possible arrest and detention, bravely journeyed to his resting place on Easter morning to pay him homage and to anoint his body with burial perfumes and spices.

Actually, so far, so good. Though some details differ, I don't know if they differ in the sense, I mean, we believe in the synoptic Gospels and put them all together and you'll get the truth, all four canonical Gospels agree that it was Jesus' female followers who found his tomb empty and that they were the first to be told by an angel or some other heavenly messenger that their spiritual leader had indeed risen from the dead as he had promised.

Okay, far as that goes, a few little minor things I might change. Some other heavenly messenger. So far, so good. For years, the issue of women learning first about the resurrection has fueled the arguments by many biblical scholars that, what do you think they're going to say?

Now, I agree that men and women in Christ are equal. You'd be stupid not to. Galatians 3 .28, in Christ, soteriologically, salvifically, we are both in Christ. And whether you're Jew or Gentile, slave or free, man or woman, we are equal in Christ.

We are equal image bearers. We are equal fallen image bearers. We equally have Adam's sin credited to our account. If we are Christians, we equally have Christ's imputed righteousness. We equally have Christ as mediator.

There was a lot of patriarchalism going on during the New Testament, and then to think that Paul, at the end of the book of Romans, Romans 16, I want to say out of the eight people that he—out of the 26 that he commends, eight are women, and talk about Phoebe and talk about Priscilla.

And there are many women in the New Testament that did admirable jobs, just like in the New Testament churches today. The church would fall apart without women serving and using their gifts. Women are given the privileges that men are given, full and free.

They are able to be baptized. They are able to use their spiritual gifts. They've been given spiritual gifts. They have access to Christ, the Father, through the mediator. But there are different roles.

I'm not a woman. My wife is not a man. And we have different roles at home. We have different roles in the church. And you know where this is going to go. Fueled many arguments by biblical scholars that females played a much more prominent role in early Christianity than they are credited with, and that they were very influential in developing the framework for future Christian churches.

So, so far so good, so far so good, so far so bad. They're going to just try to go straight into that. The talk has spilled over from the political arena and into religion, forcing many denominations to revisit long-simmering questions about how gender plays into church leadership and authority.

Now, it's only simmering because the denominations that have the simmering questions will not accept that the Bible is the Word of God. Once you accept it as the Word of God, men moved by the Spirit of God, 2 Peter chapter 1, these authors moved by the Spirit of God so that they would write everything that God wanted them to write.

Once you accept God's Word as final and authoritative, sufficient, inerrant, infallible, written by God, you know what it says. And what it says is that men and women are equal in Christ Jesus, but there are different roles.

So, you have men as elders, you have the men who then preach, you have men as deacons, and the list can go on. But people don't like that. People freak out about it. And you can just hear people, well, the Bible is written by men, and once you start doing that, see, there you go.

So you have to attack the authority of Scripture, the veracity of Scripture, the inspiration of Scripture, that it's no longer God-breathed. And so there's a simmering question. Once you have a question, once these denominations like the Episcopalians and the Anglicans and the Methodists and the Lutherans, once they ask the question, we're not really sure what the Bible teaches.

Maybe we should look at it again. What does the Bible really say about men's and women's roles? What's going on here? The second you ask the question, it's over. And the second you allow women to preach and to be equal in role with no functional subordination, ontologically by nature equal, yet functionally subordinate, just like in the Trinity, 1 Corinthians 11, verse 3, where the Spirit of God through Paul writes and says that even though the son is equal to the father ontologically, by nature, by essence, the son is subordinate in function to the father, and therefore women should not freak out about that if they are equal to their husbands, yet subordinate in role or function.

And so then it says here in this article, for example, Pope Benedict XVI, in an address made on Holy Thursday, sternly chastened a group of European priests who were openly advocating the priestly ordination of women.

See, I knew I'd agree with the guy eventually. The Gospels clearly show that Jesus reached out to women, said W. Gary Hayward, who teaches religion at Clark's University College. I'm surprised he didn't call me.

He also teaches at Anna Maria College in Paxton. Some Christian churches, however, are still trying to figure out what roles women should play. And you know why they're trying to still figure it out? It's because they will not accept the authority of the Scriptures.

They will not. Younger women, older women, older men, younger men, can't you just read Titus and find out what your roles are? Absolutely. Can't you read 1 Timothy and find out what the roles are? Absolutely.

What are the pastoral epistles? So how do we know how to work in church and function and be organized? 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus. Meanwhile, Mark places Mary Magdalene, Salome, and Mary the mother of James at the scene while Matthew reports that there's another Mary, etc.

What's important in all the accounts is that women were the first to be at the tomb and they were told to spread the good news, says Carolyn Johnson Hodge, an associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross.

That's striking. Well, if you're trying to figure out how to get around 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, then you use this as leverage. Women were first at the tomb, therefore women should be the same as men functionally.

There should be no subordination. And so it's tomb rites, it's tomb raiders, and it's Laura Croft. It's called Laura Croft theology. And so whoever's to the tomb first, then they get to do things. And since men and women didn't do that, only women did, then why are we holding them off and somehow degradating them?

Degradating them. But given the circumstances of the danger, it showed how devoted and how committed these women were to Jesus, said Mr. Hayward, who taught also at Gordon-Conwell. I commend the women for going there.

I think it's great. There's nothing...I commend them, but that does not mean then we interpret 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus in light of Laura Croft tomb raiders. That's not what we're going to do. He said that the gospels show that it was radical of Jesus to include women in the circle.

It was radical. You can look at John chapter 4 and the woman of the well and a rabbi talking to women and the Messiah talking to a woman. That is radical. But in his circle, I don't know if I would say in his circle, in his circle would be the 12.

The 12 apostles were in his circle. They were all men. They were all chosen by Jesus. He could have chosen anybody he wanted, but he chose the 12. Given the patriarchal nature of contemporary Roman, Greek, and Judaic societies.

Again, I think women were suppressed and Jesus and Paul liberated them to be exactly who they should be underneath God's Word. He noted that the church in Philippi was formed as a result of a women's prayer group.

Amen, but that doesn't mean our functional roles are the same. Paul instructs women on how to minister in the book of Corinthians. Well, actually in 1 Corinthians it tells people what not to do, how not to do it, what their problems were so they can do it properly.

For the most part, it's natural for early Christianity to be inclusive, she explained. Everybody was poor and it really didn't matter if you were different. See this whole different thing? Whether you were a man or a woman, you got up in the morning and went to work.

Early Christians were truly anti-establishment types. That's Ms. Hodge there, Ms. Ragoon. That's not true. Christians weren't anti-establishment and Peter wanted to try to make that clear in 1 Peter chapter 2.

She added gender wasn't important because Christians wanted to shed their identities and desires and become celibate, to become closer to God. Say what? I think they're reading the wrong history. Scholars read, said people read too much into Jesus' appointment of men as first disciples given how society was shaped at the time.

It would have been more difficult for a woman just to get up and leave a family situation. So that's why they didn't. The reason why there were no women apostles is because they couldn't just get up and leave a family situation.

Tell that to James and John as they talked to their father as they had to just leave the next line there. My name is Mike Abendorf, No Compromise Radio Ministry. You submit to God's Word, it's super simple.

You go to 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus and you say we are ontologically equal and we are functionally different. That's all. That makes it easy. Nobody's better. Nobody's worse. We are both image bearers saved by Jesus Christ and He calls the shot.

Closing Information and Station Disclaimer

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendorf is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 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.

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