End of the World 2012 (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. Mike Abendroth, I don't know if we have told you, I think maybe we have, we have signed up for another year with WV &E, and so you can either rejoice or you can write Manny an email, I guess, manny at wvne .net or whatever his email is.

We are back on through August of next year here in Central Massachusetts on your AM dial, and we will be attempting to fill the radio airwaves, including nocompromiseradio .com with Bible topics that are provoking, because remember, our theme here is always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And I do want to talk about issues that have pointy edges, issues that are not smooth and rounded. When I was in class as a junior high student, we had some kind of, I wish I remember the name of it. I should, I'm just too tired to think about it today.

Some class, shop class where we would do wood shop and we also had metal shop. I actually have some of the things I made when I was a kid. And in wood shop, we'd have these block planes. And if you had a pointy corner, you could just round those out and sandpaper them up a little bit so it was smooth.

That sound you hear in the background, by the way, it's rain, it is pouring rain. Not today where you are probably, but it is pouring. I'm looking outside, I go, I can hear it. I need a soundproof booth here.

I need a cone of silence to put over here and our $3 million studios at No Compromised Radio. Translation, my studios are two microphones, a mixing board, a recorder, and a caller deal in my office, in my study at Bethlehem Bible Church.

That's what we have there. So if you've ever won a tour, we give tours for large donations. Oh, well, at Bethlehem Bible Church, we have a conference, November 5th and 6th, Rick Phillips. Rick Phillips is a wonderful preacher and a man who stands up for the word of God, trained under James Boyce at 10th Presbyterian for many years, now a senior pastor.

Friday night, November 5th, he's going to talk about biblical masculinity. He's written a new book called The Masculine Mandate. That is Friday night, two sessions, men only. And then Saturday, it's open to everyone, talking about issues in local evangelicalism.

Attacks on the cross, session one, attacks on six-day creation, number two, and attacks on how men and women relate in the local church, that is complementarianism. In other words, there are gender differences, and we need to embrace those.

Doesn't that sound politically correct? Let's embrace those. It's embracing. Please embrace. Please look to the person sitting to your left and say, embrace. So we'd love to have you at the conference.

Living in Light of the End of the World

Go to Bethlehem Bible Church website, bbcchurch .org, for more information. Last week, we began to talk about the response that you should have as a Christian to this 2012 craziness. It's kind of had a little lull, but it'll come back again.

The world's going to end. How should you, the Christian, respond? How should you live? What should you do? How do you act? And quite counterintuitively, you, number one, should have a sober mind. The end of all things is at hand, 1 Peter 4, 7.

Have sober judgment. And number two, have sober spirit for the purpose of prayer. Those are the two that we've looked at so far. Remember, all eschatology, that is the study of the end times, should make you be motivated to live a holy life.

The indicative, Jesus is coming back, should be followed with and responded to with the imperative of you should be holy. Therefore, be holy. In light of all this, the second coming of Christ, you should live a holy life.

And that's exactly what Peter is saying to the church as the people who are scattered because of all the persecution in 1 Peter, the epistle of 1 Peter. So what does he say? What's the next thing? This is kind of interesting.

I wouldn't come up with these things. If somebody wrote you a letter and said, the world's ending soon, how should we live? You might say, get up on top of the roof and make some smoke signals, buy a bunch of generators and gas, and buy yourself extra ammo.

Go get some freeze-dried space food, some, remember space food sticks? Those were interesting. They didn't taste that good, but they were interesting. Get some tang, build a bunker, all these kind of things.

But Peter says, the world's going to end, so think correctly, think soberly. Number three, he says in verse eight, keep fervent in your love for one another. But isn't that, that just seems anticlimactic, doesn't it?

It's the end of the world as we know it. How do we live? Jesus is going to come back, not as a baby in a little manger this time, but with Revelation 19, fierceness and ferocity. How do we live as Christians?

Well, you love one another, 1 Peter 4, 8. In the light of it, all things are at hand, the end of all things are at hand, above all. Here's the primacy of agape love. And he's not saying that, you know, he's not somehow ranking love over prayer or something like that.

This is just emphatically stating above all, keep fervent in your love for one another because love covers a multitude of sins. Jesus is coming back, is that how you live? How about, is that how you treat your husband?

Is that how you treat your wife? Is that how you treat your kids? Well, if you don't, do you really believe Jesus is coming back soon? Because who would want to be found in the state of doing the opposite when Christ is returning?

Being harsh, hypercritical, complaining, exasperating. No, you'd want to be fervent in your love for one another. And when you look at the word fervent, it means to be strained out, stretched out. If you've ever dropped something behind the couch and you lean over and you are trying to reach it and it's just within your finger's reach and your fingers, you kind of wiggle them back and forth as if that somehow stretches them to be longer and you're straining over and your armpit is up against the flat edge of the couch and it's hurting the muscles underneath and you think, I'm getting to be old, I need one of those things they sell to old people that grab hold, it's an extension of your hand that you squeeze it and then at the end of this long thing, it squeezes that too so you can pick up things and change light bulbs and do those kind of things.

That's what the word here is. When it comes to your love for one another, it should be stretched out to the max. It should be with intensity, exerting your power with earnestness. This is similar to loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, right?

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Has nothing to do with sentiment. It doesn't have anything to do with they deserve it. It has to do with you want what's best for them and just like Jesus, he gave sacrificially, loved sacrificially, it's the end of the world and you should do the same.

Jesus said in John 13, by this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Christian's unselfish love for other people should be your watchword as you realize the end of the world is coming.

Now, why should you stretch out like that? What's the purpose? Well, it gives us a purpose here because love covers a multitude of sins. That sounds like it's right from Proverbs 10, doesn't it? Love covers all transgressions.

Love keeps on covering, present tense. It doesn't atone for sins. That's not what we're saying. That's not what Peter is saying, but it covers them. It doesn't condone or overlook. It just recognizes that you just recognize you're sinful too and so therefore you cover sin because it's a glory to cover sins and it's a godly thing to do.

It's a godly thing to forgive sins. It's necessary because your loved ones stumble in many ways. You stumble in many ways and so you say, to yourself about sins and sins in my brother and sister, this is an important work.

This is important because I don't know all about those things. I don't know about them and what they've gone through and their temptations and I want to make sure that since Jesus has forgiven my sins, that I forgive other people.

Number four, the end of the world is coming. Jesus is going to return. Eschatology should be ethical. It should change the way we live knowing this truth. What should you do? Well, this is going to be the exact opposite thing of get your guns because if anybody's going to come and take your food, you're going to mow them down.

It's the opposite. That's not how we work. That's not how we work. What are the duties that you have? Be sober judgment, be sober of spirit, stretch out in your love for one another and show hospitality.

Verse nine, 1 Peter 4, 9. We are No Compromise Radio and we're addressing this question today. Jesus is coming back soon. How do you live? And the answer is not get a place in Montana. Well, if you live in Montana, good.

I don't know if we have any listeners in Montana. I just got an email from a listener in Minnesota. Is that close? Well, I know my geography and it's closer than Michigan but still Montana is a little farther over.

And so I think we've got to go from Minnesota and North Dakota's in between if my memory serves me properly. I think it was an amazing race I was watching and there was a lady on there. She didn't seem that bright.

And the host, whatever the guy's name is, said, what country were you in? And she said, London. London. So fourthly, be hospitable. Isn't that different than hoard? Be a hoarder. Protect your stuff. Don't share with anybody.

Be hospitable, 1 Peter 4, 9. Hey, the end of all things is at hand. Be hospitable to one another without complaint. That's a distinctive mark of being a Christian is showing hospitality. Mortimer Arias said, hospitality is becoming an almost forgotten Christian virtue in our style of life today, particularly in big cities with their rampant crime on the streets, their locked in apartments and all their affluent urban devices which attempt to create privacy in our homes and our lives.

You ought to be hospitable knowing that Jesus is coming back. Now, technically hospitality means to love strangers, to love strangers. And so if you open your home often to people that are your friends and you say your wife is hospitable, I wanna be hospitable.

Okay, I like that. But it should also include people that you don't know. How are you gonna work that out? I think you're probably gonna be hooked up with a local church to do that. I think of Dear Abby column that went like this.

I am presently completing a second year of a three-year survey of the hospitality or lack of it in churches. To date, out of the 195 churches I have visited, I was spoken to in only one by someone other than an official greeter and that was to ask me to move my feet.

Wow. Maybe they were in the other denominations. Maybe that was in Methodist churches and Episcopalians. That would never be in a Bible teaching church, would it? That wouldn't be in a Baptist church or a PCA Presbyterian church, would it?

We need to hear this from the scriptures. We ought to be hospitable. The word hospice means shelter. That's what it means. Hospice means shelter. And so you can almost think that you give them shelter and food and again, you say I like to entertain guests that I know, my friends and family.

That's different than true hospitality. This is the person you don't know. This is love of strangers. Now, I think it was more important back in the Old Testament, New Testament days in this regard. There were no hotels.

Well, the hotels that were around were basically brothels and were not safe with all the marauders staying there and other things. And so Christians needed to open their homes up, especially to other Christians who were passing through because they needed safety.

But today as well, if we don't know people, we still ought to show love to them because they've been made in the image and likeness of God. And if they profess Christ, if Jesus died for them, shouldn't we be kind to them?

And do you notice what Peter says? Do it without complaining or murmuring. That's hard to do. That is hard to do. And it was harder back then. Christians who were persecuted, kicked out of their homes, kicked out of their synagogues.

Some martyred and now they're on the run and they need a place to stay. But it's good application for us as well. Romans 12 speaks of the same thing, contributing to the needs of the saints. Practicing or pursuing or striving for hospitality.

Striving for hospitality. And this isn't just for ladies. Men, if you're listening to No Compromise Radio today, Jesus is coming back. One of the things you're supposed to do is not build a bunka, it is to be hospitable.

That is so odd. I'd never write that. That's one of the reasons I love the scriptures is because it doesn't come from a sinfully natural point of view, does it? There's nothing sinful about the scriptures.

These are inspired by God. But these scriptures, particularly God, he thinks in ways that I don't think and he knows what we need. And if Jesus is coming back soon, the eminent return of Christ is at hand.

Then what do you do? You've got to think correctly. You've got to have the sober spirit. You need to be a forgiver and you need to be hospitable. You need to be hospitable even as a man. Do you know for elders, they're to be above reproach, 1 Timothy 3, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable.

What's the next one? Hospitable. And in Titus 1, it's the same thing. For elders, how do they act? Not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of sordid gain, but hospitable. This isn't just for ladies.

Yes, it is for ladies. 1 Timothy 5 talks about godly widows. What do godly widows do? What have godly widows done? Let a widow be put on the list only if she is not less than 60 years old, having been the wife of one man, having a reputation for good works.

And if she has brought up children, if she has shown hospitality to strangers, if she has washed the saints' feet, if she has assisted those in distress, and if she has devoted herself to every good work.

So, hospitality is high on the list, whether they're traveling ministers that need to be treated well in 3 John 8, or whether they are other people in the church. If you get an email from the church leadership, we need to put this family from out of town up, you should be jumping at the opportunity to show hospitality to strangers.

For as Hebrew says in chapter 13, by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. Number five, Jesus is coming back. Ethical eschatology. Knowing that the Lord will return soon, let's not be found in a state of idleness.

Let's not be found in a state of complaining, in a state of rebelliousness. If we are Christians, then we should respond with a desire to obey the Lord. Not to get him to love us, because he loves us, and in light of that, let's respond this way.

That is, be employed. You know, some days you just can't talk, can you? Use your spiritual gifts, that's what I'm after. Why would I say it any other way? Serve with the gifts that God has sovereignly given you.

First Peter 4 .10, as each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If you're a Christian, you got a spiritual gift at salvation.

You might've got more than one, but you got at least one. First Corinthians 12 says you got that in a sovereign way. You didn't earn it, you didn't get it, you didn't jumpstart it with tongues. What you got at salvation was what you got, and you won't get any other spiritual gifts.

One time given at salvation. And you were given those things, not for yourself, not for your own private prayer language, not for self-esteem. You were given those gifts to serve other people. And you want to be a good steward of that grace of God, the grace of God that gives not just salvation, but gives spiritual gifts.

And it's a wonderful grace. It's manifold grace. It's a plethora of grace. And so you want to serve other people. Jesus is coming back, the world is going to end. How do you live? Serve other people with your spiritual gifts.

Now there are two broad categories of spiritual gifts that we have that are still existent today. And those are speaking and serving gifts. Signed gifts have pointed to what we have now in scripture. We don't need those any longer.

There are no purpose to signed gifts. But we do need people to speak the truth, and we do need people to serve. And so therefore, 1 Peter 4, 11, two broad categories of speaking and serving. Whoever speaks, let him speak, as it were, the utterances of God.

If you're a preacher, if you're a teacher, then you better preach the word, in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and doctrine. And then it says, let him do so as by the strength which God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

So you're a speaker, preach the word. If you're a server, serve with the strength that God supplies. And then it says, to whom belongs the glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. God is going to provide strength.

The Greek word is to supply a chorus. It's lavish provision, according to the expositors' commentary. Why do we do this? Why is there a doxology there? Well, because we want to speak and serve so God might be praised, that Jesus Christ may be glorified.

The shortness of time remaining should motivate you to live and serve the body of Christ Jesus on earth while you can. I think it was Jonathan Gershner who said, be spiritual capitalists. Be spiritual capitalists.

He said, there's one thing you can do on earth. Well, there's several, but a particular thing you can't do in heaven that you can do on earth. One thing would be sin, I'm sure. But another thing that you're not able to do in heaven, but you can do on earth, and that is gain more rewards.

And if we are motivated by rewards in 1 Corinthians 3 -4 and 2 Corinthians 5 -10, then we should be motivated to please the Lord all the way and get the most rewards to honor Him. And if you want to do that, then that is going to give the Lord glory and honor and praise.

That's the end of the world kind of thing. Let's do what we can do on earth that we can't do in heaven, and that is work for more rewards. It's the end of the world as we know it, and you ought not to be surprised at trials.

Suffering for the Glory of God

So that's the last one, number six. Suffer for the glory of God. Suffer for the glory of God. Don't be surprised that all these weird things are happening. Oh, that's so surprising. That never dawned on me that would happen, especially when it comes to Christian trials.

You know, I never thought they'd redefine marriage. I never thought they'd have government funding for abortion. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing as though some strange thing were happening to you.

Don't be surprised. Don't be amazed. Stop thinking it's some alien type of deal. Override your feelings. And for them, it was a real fiery trial. For us, it's probably just metaphorical kind of trial.

This is something we should rejoice in. If you're suffering because you're an idiot and persecuted because of stupidity's sake, then don't be happy about that. Be repentant. Be hopeful that God forgives such a thing.

But it says to the degree that you share the sufferings of Christ, keep on rejoicing so that also at the revelation of His glory, you may rejoice with exaltation. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you're blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rest upon you.

By no means let any of you suffer as a murderer or thief or evildoer or a troublesome meddler. If anyone, though, suffers as a Christian, let him not feel ashamed, but in that name, let him glorify God.

Christian listener today on No Compromise Radio Ministry. If you believe the text, you must then say, Jesus is coming back soon. And there are many things that I should do. I should evangelize, right?

Shouldn't you evangelize in light of that? Shouldn't you make your mind filled with the word of God so you can understand His brilliance when He comes? I mean, there's other things, but for Peter especially, and for today on No Compromise Radio, Jesus is coming back soon.

That should force me to think properly and soberly. And that should force me to be a forgiver of other people. Jesus is coming back the great forgiver. I'd like to forgive like that. Should force me to say, I ought to be in prayer.

I ought to be hospitable to people. I ought to use my spiritual gifts. And I ought to suffer well, knowing the purpose, knowing why I suffer, knowing, according to 1 Peter 4, verse 19, let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right.

These people were suffering unto death, many of them. And He said, you can trust God. You can trust the creator to do the right thing. And can't you? Of course you can. So if you're all into charts and graphs, and end times charts and graphs, and you've got to figure all this out, and you read the newspaper and try to figure out every little detail, and where's America in the prophecy in Ezekiel, and those kinds of things.

What about 2012? What about Gene Dixon? What about Nostradamus? What about this prognosticator? You ought to stop wasting your time doing that and spend your time and energy and desires and motivation by living an excellent Christian life in light of the cross.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth 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 six. 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.