On the Street!

No Compromise Radio

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:01

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

00:07

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

00:16

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.'"

00:23

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

00:30

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

00:40

King. We're here to take your calls as well. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

00:48

My name is Mike Abendroth, and it's another Tuesday, so that means we have our special, no longer guest host, but he's still special in his own way.

00:56

I wanna make sure his self -esteem is at an all -time peak, and that is Mr. Pastor Sheriff Steve Kuler.

01:02

Thank you so much. We call these Two for Tuesdays. Yes, we just taped an earlier show, and now we're going to tape this one, but you wouldn't know that, and I don't know if you care that we did that.

01:11

We are talking today with people out on the streets of Worcester, Webster, that is,

01:18

Massachusetts, a town just south of Worcester, and so we've kind of stolen this idea from the Whitehorse Inn.

01:24

They did it a long time ago, 20 years ago. They'd go to the Christian Bible conferences and talk to Christians, expecting more

01:31

Christian -like answers from those people compared to the regular public, and so we sent our crack team down to Webster for the

01:39

Barlow Girl concert, fairly big -name billing concert, Barlow Girl, and another really

01:46

Christian -named band called Superchick. I would probably change that name if I was them. See, I thought it was

01:51

Superchic or something. I'm not really in the know. Yeah, I wasn't in the know either, and so Bob Andrzejczyk, one of our deacons here at Bethlehem Bible Church, interviewed some of the people with their full authority, and they were asked a variety of questions.

02:05

Now, last time we looked at what is doctrine, and most people couldn't answer that simple question whose answer should be something truthful about God, something truthful about His world, something truthful about His creation, and so today we're gonna do the same thing, but just to show you we are equal opportunity employers, we're gonna play a good clip,

02:26

Steve. Actually, we're not equal opportunity employers, so if you're out there and you're a non -believer, please don't reply, thanks.

02:31

Yeah, that's right, so we're gonna play one that's gonna very much encourage you. Good theater.

02:37

All right, is he preaching expositionally? Do you know what that means? Yes, I do, yep, he's taking the scriptures and verse by verse and explaining what they mean.

02:45

Awesome, that makes it a lot easier to remember, doesn't it? I think so. Yeah, okay, I can tell you when I passed your preach a month ago, three weeks ago, because he just goes right through.

02:51

We're going through First Corinthians. Can you believe that?

02:57

He asked a lady, do you know an exposition? A young woman, I'm gonna say yes. Yes, super chick, maybe, he even asked.

03:04

I doubt that. Oh, by the way, Haley, my daughter, gave the

03:09

Barlow Girl group the Wayne Grudem Systematic Theology book so they could study it because they needed some help with some of their theology.

03:18

Very nice. And the super chick guitarist, I believe, saw that on stage and picked it up and showed the audience.

03:26

So how about that? Yeah, that was impressive. So Steve, there's at least someone out there going to the concert that knows about exposition.

03:35

Yeah, and you know, it's typically when people call out for a church or when they call a church, what

03:41

I would like them to ask and what I encourage people, they say, hey, I'm looking for a Bible teaching church in Missoula, Montana, can you help me?

03:49

And I say, well, here's what you need to do, go to this site, that site, and when you contact these churches, you want to ask them what book of the

03:55

Bible the pastor's teaching through. And they say, well, why would he do that? And...

04:03

Purpose -driven life in the morning and a wild and hard at night. The 67th and 68th books of the

04:11

Bible, respectively. What's the opposite of expose? Well, the opposite of the word expose is to impose.

04:18

And so would you rather have your pastor expose the text for God and expose God's intent as he writes it as the main author, or would you like some imposition?

04:28

That reminds me of vanilla ice. Ice, ice, baby, for some exegesis. No, eisegesis.

04:33

Eisegesis, well, how about this? How about if, well, at our church, we practice impositional preaching. Verse by verse.

04:41

All right, here, let's hear from Anna. Hey, what's your name? Okay, my name is Anna. All right, and where are you from? New Jersey.

04:47

All right, and do you consider yourself a Christian? Yeah, of course. Do you attend church regularly? Yes. What did your pastor preach about last

04:54

Sunday? Last Sunday. Okay, I can pass you to my friend, she knows.

05:01

I'm not speaking English. Usted tiene que saber, está bien, okay? Usted...

05:08

Well, so much for the Spanish, or maybe that was Portuguese, I'm not sure. But if you preach verse by verse,

05:14

Steve, like when we were at MacArthur's Church, and we were members there, and regular attenders, it wasn't that hard to figure out what

05:21

John preached the week before, and the week before that, and the week before that, because we were sitting underneath the ministry, hearing the full counsel of God, hearing chapter by chapter, verse by verse, but ask the person a question, what did your pastor preach last week?

05:33

If they can't answer it, that person is either ignorant, they're an unbeliever, they don't pay attention, but more likely, they are not receiving exposition, they're receiving an unhealthy dose of topical, felt -need teachings.

05:48

Yeah, well, you know, now that I've been in the ministry a little while, there are a couple of aspects, just a little while though, there are just a couple things of expositional preaching.

05:58

A, it is a help to the preacher, because he doesn't have to think of what list he's going to invent next to preach, but it's also a challenge, because not every passage of Scripture is

06:12

God -breathed, it's inspired, but every passage of Scripture is not as easy to preach, let me tell you that, and so it takes work, week after week after week, to produce a sermon as you do every week, and it's not always simple to do.

06:29

I remember MacArthur said, men, when you leave Master's Seminary and go accept the call to pastor your first church, for the first three months, preach the best sermons you're capable of preaching.

06:42

Study extra hours, study harder than you normally would, and then you set the standard, you set the bar, and the congregation won't let you back off and lazy out, even though you might be tempted to do it.

06:55

That's good advice from a senior pastor. Oh yeah, just, you know, cinch the belt around your waist so tight, and then, you know, keep it there, because it's gonna get uncomfortable.

07:06

You're gonna have to work and work and work. Well, what I like to do, Steve, is I say to myself, I wonder who might visit this week, if MacArthur visits this week, or maybe someone else who's up here on vacation.

07:18

He's not close to MacArthur in terms of stature, but Ken Ramey one day showed up, and Ken is a Master's Seminary graduate and a fine preacher, used to be on staff, and he just showed up, and I was glad that I had a biblical message that Sunday, because I didn't wanna, you know, dog it.

07:33

Well, how much more if the Lord is present in the Church than MacArthur, Ken Ramey, or anyone else?

07:38

And so, let's prepare some meat and potatoes for the Lord's people. That's right. I mean, even if you preach, in your own mind, what was the worst sermon you've ever preached, if it was faithful to the text, and you know that you did your best, and you know that God would be like, you've well done, good and faithful servant, that's all that matters.

07:59

And ultimately, God uses his word. He uses his word, and he uses, sometimes, some special cuts to keep us going.

08:08

That's right. Well, let's turn in our Bibles this morning. Oh, St. Clair Ferguson comes in to the eighth chapter of Paul's Letters to the

08:16

Romans. Now, when we talk about exposition, we're talking about exposing the mind of God, verse by verse, and I think it's best done, not always, but best done, with sequential preaching.

08:28

I thought you were gonna say a Scottish accent. Oh, I would love to do that, too. Chapter seven, chapter eight, and here we just heard

08:34

St. Clair Ferguson. He starts off with exposition of Romans eight. They just left seven, and now they go to eight.

08:39

And so, if your pastor doesn't preach verse by verse, we're not saying leave your church, but we are saying you should pray for exposition.

08:47

You should ask your pastor, could we study through the book of James? Could we study through Matthew? Could we study through Ezekiel?

08:55

Did you know that there are 50 imperatives in the book of James? I don't know if you knew that or not. I think there are 52 in 104 verses.

09:01

52, there you go. I knew it was 50 -something and 100 -something. All right, how about this?

09:07

I heard it a time or two. All right, so you're Bethany, and Bethany, just a few quick questions. Would you consider yourself a Christian?

09:13

Yes, I am. All right, so Bethany's a Christian, and you go to church regularly? You have a church you call home?

09:19

Yeah, for social security, I would prefer not to give it up, though.

09:25

No, no, definitely. It doesn't teach respect, is it a mosque? What did your pastor preach last Sunday? I do not believe

09:32

I was actually there, because my mom was tired and my dad was sick. The last time you were in church, the last time you were in church,

09:42

Bethany, what did your pastor preach? Last time, I actually can't remember.

09:49

And then they'll laugh about it. Oh, I can't remember. What we're saying, friends, in No Compromise Radio Ministry, preach exposition if you're a pastor, if you're a

09:57

Bible study leader. Or how about this, Steve? If you teach your children the Bible, what's wrong with going verse by verse by verse?

10:05

Grab the book of Exodus, read chapter one to all your kids, ages two through 20, talk about who

10:11

God is, how he deals with sinful man, talk about the promises of God, talk about Christ as the ultimate fulfillment of the law, whatever you want to do, and then the next night, recap

10:21

Exodus one, read Exodus two, and then repeat. It's kind of like Moeller at the

10:26

Shepherd's Conference years ago, and he said, you know, here's what expository preaching is. It's like on the back of a shampoo bottle, right?

10:33

You wet hair, you put on shampoo, you rinse, yeah, lather, rinse, and repeat.

10:41

And so you go there, you read the scriptures, you explain the scriptures, you exhort from the scriptures, and then the next

10:47

Sunday and the next Sunday night, you repeat it. What else would you do? And I mean, if the goal of going to church is to worship

10:58

God, how much more worshipful could you be to make it God -centered, to make it centered around his word, rather than, well, gee, we're not going to waste your time, and we're going to make you a better person, and we're going to improve your life with our life -saving tips.

11:14

Reminds me of the chronology of magazine titles. You have time, then life, then people, then us, then self.

11:28

And so the culture knows how to sell magazines, and you sell a magazine by appealing to the people.

11:34

And so you get people in your pews by selling them, by entertaining the people, and you just treat them as a consumer.

11:42

That is so wrong. That is so irreverent. That is so blasphemous.

11:47

But sadly, at least temporally, it works. Well, I mean, and you're driving exactly at the right point, because so many people think that they go to church for themselves.

11:57

It's all about me. It's all what I get out of church, not what

12:02

I put into it. Steve, if I hear one more sermon about how I just need to get by for another week, my life is so horrible,

12:09

I just need a shot in the arm to get me by, I'm going to have to... It's like an old country song, help me make it through the week, right?

12:17

It is, and the other day I was studying Psalm 27, and I thought, you know, we're having a storm, and I kind of like to preach

12:23

Psalm 27. We're going to go into battle, into military battle. What do you tell the people before they go embark to go get

12:31

Al -Qaeda out of these holes in Afghanistan? You teach them Psalm 27. But I almost didn't want to do it, because it's, well, how to navigate through life when things are difficult.

12:41

But so many people say that, I was almost tempted not to do it. I mean, I would have done it in the biblical fashion, of course, but just how to get through another week, my life's so horrible.

12:52

What has to happen is pastors need to preach and teach who we are and what we deserve, and then all that we receive is called not gravy, not ice on the top of the cake, icing, it's called grace.

13:06

And when you see what you've been given in grace, and then you know what you've earned and you've merited, then you praise

13:13

God, even if you can't get out of bed, even if you are dying of cancer. Can I just tell you a little secret just between me and you,

13:21

Mike? Just between us girls? Yeah, most people spend the majority of their week, and this is just my opinion and maybe a little bit of my experience, they spend it mostly focused on themselves.

13:31

And so on Sunday morning, if the pastor gets up there and just reinforces what they've been doing all week, what a waste of time.

13:38

He needs to get up there and point them to the triune God, he needs to point them to the finished work of Christ. That's what our focus should be every single day.

13:46

And on Sunday, especially, we need to get shaken, we need to get waken, we need to get taken out of our doldrums of the everyday rudimentary routine of life and pointed toward the cross.

13:59

Reach it. I think I was. I like that, that was a little bit of Southern Baptist alliteration there. I was really liking that.

14:05

Show me a church that just watered these things down, and you will show me a church where it's very, very difficult to find one person who you could say that person is totally abandoned for the gospel and for Jesus Christ himself.

14:21

Aren't we to be abandoned? What would your friends say? What would your neighbors say? How about your pastors and elders?

14:26

When they think of you, do they think to themselves, that person is abandoned?

14:31

They are a freak. They are full bore. They are sold out. Whatever kind of vernacular you want to use.

14:37

That person is abandoned for the sake of Jesus Christ. His old life is dead, and now he's not facing that way anymore.

14:45

He's following the cross, and he has his face set to Christ Jesus and following him. Show me a church like that, and it won't come from little ditties and a rockin' coffee praise team.

14:57

Well, to just go along with that, I was thinking, you know what? Instead of abandoned to God, most

15:04

Christians coming to church feeling abandoned by God. It's the woe is me, woe is me, woe is me.

15:10

Can I get a free cup of coffee, a donut, and a little pat on the back before I go out into this miserable, cold world again?

15:18

That's all they want. And so what we do at Bethlehem Bible Church, we do the opposite. We like to be counterintuitive, and so people say,

15:25

I really want nice parking lots. Well, we just give you a bad parking lot. It's extremely bad. We want really good coffee, and we want

15:32

Starbucks. We just do like watered down Folgers. We want some kind of Krispy Kreme donuts, and some brie, and some cheese, and some

15:39

Buffalo mozzarella. We give you like weak, old Dunkin' Donuts. No, they are fresh.

15:45

You know what? We dare people to come to this church. I confess, you know, because I have no willpower when it comes to maple -frosted

15:53

Dunkin' Donuts, and I did have one on Sunday because there were extra ones laying around, and I did,

15:58

I caved in. Were they good? Oh, outstanding. I can heartily recommend, not hardly, but heartily recommend our

16:07

Dunkin' Donuts. Does the passage in 2 Timothy have anything to do with weight and with donuts?

16:14

Captivate weak women weighed down? Would that be exegesis or eisegesis?

16:20

I think you are imposing upon the text. All right, let's hear another one. Here's a great question to ask people.

16:27

Are you a Christian, and what did your pastor preach last week? Would you like to be interviewed for the radio?

16:32

What's your name? Danielle. Where are you from, Danielle? Are you a

16:38

Christian? Yes, I am. All right, and do you attend church regularly? Yep, every

16:44

Sunday. All right, what did your pastor preach about this past Sunday? This Sunday we had, it wasn't our pastors, another guy that came in,

16:54

Dane Burke. What did he have to say? He was talking about how we should forgive, and I forget the rest.

17:04

Well, at least she had something biblical. I thought she was gonna say, I can't tell you for security purposes I live in New Jersey. Well, forgiveness, that would be good, but I would imagine that she would have known better if she would have said, oh, we're in the gospel of John, and I just can't believe who

17:23

Jesus is. I've learned about a Jesus I've never learned about in my whole life, and that's the Jesus of John 6.

17:29

People were following Jesus, wanting more food, and they wanted to have a king, but that king, they wanted to just force to make food, and we'll get him out morning, noon, and night, and then

17:39

Jesus tells them what the real gospel is and lays on them the demands of discipleship, and then they don't follow him anymore.

17:48

If you go through that verse by verse, you'll never forget it as long as you live. Well, as the father of two young women who are now not so young,

17:55

I mean, they're married and everything, I feel like I have to defend her a little bit because they did have a guest preacher that week, so if she doesn't remember exactly what passage, maybe the guy did preach through a passage, so that's possible.

18:09

Well, that's true, and by the way, we just have these things lined up on my computer, and it just says Danielle Church, it says

18:16

Kyle Church, Manny Church. Those are probably good names for churches these days. Sure, why not?

18:21

How about Fred's Church? Yeah, yeah. I'm Fred, I have a church. I don't really know what's on here, I just know it's usually not good.

18:27

Ha ha ha ha ha. Would you like to be interviewed for the radio? Oh, sure. NoCompromisedRadio .com, what's your text?

18:37

Kyle. Kyle, how are you doing? Where are you from? I got his last name, too. I'm from Connecticut. Security. Hi, Kyle, are you a Christian? Yes, I am.

18:43

I can't tell you. Do you go to church regularly? Security. Yes, I do. All right, what did your pastor preach this past Sunday?

18:50

Um, I don't quite remember that much of it. Well, it sounds like he was fairly young.

18:57

Yeah, very young. And that one person who said, I couldn't get to church because my mom and dad were sick, maybe they needed a ride.

19:02

No, no, no, one was sick and the other one was tired. Oh, tired. Sick and tired. Sick and tired, being sick and tired. Ha ha ha ha.

19:09

By the way, if you go to a church and you can't get to that church, I suggest you call the pastor. Don't call him

19:14

Saturday night, but call him Thursday night and say, I can't get a ride to church. Do you think you could figure out something to help me?

19:20

Or maybe call the deacon board. I know there are people that would love to give people a ride. Remember the old bus days and drive around the neighborhood and throw the people under the bus?

19:27

I mean, in the bus. Absolutely. In fact, there are churches still around like that that gather people around and gather them up by the bus and then bring them in.

19:37

That's a better way than doing home church. I am so tired of people saying, well, I won't go to church today.

19:42

And by the way, my pastor can't preach like John Piper anyway. So I'll just watch Piper live and then we'll sing a few songs and I'll go find some cornbread and dip it in some grape juice and we'll have our own little communion service and good to go.

19:56

We don't even have to leave the house or shovel. Well, you know what? If you homeschool and home church, then you really never even have to leave.

20:01

Maybe you can have your food delivered to your house and never have to leave the house at all. People do that with that red pea, pea green, whatever that stop and shop thing is to home delivery.

20:09

Oh yeah, the pea pod thing. Pea pod, yeah, yeah. All right, well, we're still pea podding around.

20:15

What's your name? Manny. Manny, where are you from? From Oxbridge. All right,

20:20

Manny, are you a Christian? He didn't sound sure about that. All right, do you go to church regularly? Yes, I do. All right, what did your pastor preach this past Sunday?

20:27

This past Sunday, he talked about faith and following God and trusting in God all the time. I mean, that's been the main message in the last couple of weeks.

20:34

Hallelujah. That's good. That's good, either Manny's smart. Sounds like doctrine. It sounds like doctrine.

20:44

How about 2 Timothy 2? This is for the pastor, for the elder, for the leader. Remind them of these things and solemnly charge them in the presence of God.

20:53

Not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

21:08

And Steve, I've never forgotten it as I've studied that passage. Who is the shamer and who is the ashamed?

21:13

That is God shaming pastors who haven't studied and it is shame on them for not feeding the sheep.

21:21

I'll never forget, you know, coming out here, this was years ago, just on a vacation, kind of a trial run and being out in the park and having some woman come across the street from the

21:30

Congregational Church. And she says, oh, you just give me an idea what to preach tomorrow morning. You know,

21:36

I'm like, how does that work? I mean, first of all, that she's a lady, you know, pastoring, which would be a violation of 1

21:43

Timothy 2. But secondly, you know, just deciding on late Saturday night, oh, I think I'll know what

21:48

I'll talk about, what I'll share tomorrow. Sermons .com, number one downloaded timeframe for sermons from the website,

21:57

Saturday night. And unless you're a Spurgeon who can dismiss people from his home at 7 p .m.

22:04

and you have to study for the rest of the night to prepare your message. And by the way, he did that because he preached so many times throughout the week anyway.

22:11

Unless you're a Spurgeon, we suggest you start studying right away. I usually start studying for Sunday morning,

22:17

Sunday night after I get home. In a casual fashion, but I just, it's in my mind. I start working on my sermon right then and there.

22:25

We are not supposed to entertain the goats. That's quite easy. We have the Tweeter Center for that.

22:30

We have Showcase Cinema. We have the Wang Theater. We are to feed God's sheep. And remember to Peter, Jesus said, as Jesus kindly and compassionately allows

22:41

Peter, the thrice denier, to now thricely affirm, I love you,

22:47

Lord, if you love me, what? Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. That's what we want. We want churches to feed

22:53

God's sheep. And if you're not a pastor who feeds sheep, then today's a good day to start.

22:59

You can do it today. Yesterday was a good day to start. I mean, tomorrow. Oh, they had a cancel service. Just get it done.

23:05

I would imagine that churches, in New England here, we had quite a bit of snow and many churches canceled. Do you think it'd be fair to say that expository preaching churches cancel less?

23:16

Well, I know one that does. Let's just say this, that if you're not someone in the habit of expository preaching,

23:25

I think the question for you would be, who's your target audience? Is your target audience

23:30

God, or is it people who don't want to waste their time, people who want to be entertained or what have you?

23:41

If you're pleasing the Lord with your messages, then everyone else is kind of a secondary issue.

23:49

Quorum Deo, as R .C. Sproul would say, Latin for? In the face of God. In the face of God. If you're a pastor, why don't you do this?

23:56

Steve, let's try to do this this week. What did the pastor preach on last Sunday? Okay. And we can ask that question, and you can ask your people that as well, if you're listening.

24:05

Ask your people, do you remember what I preached last Sunday? What was the topic? And if you're going verse by verse, they'll probably say, oh yeah, that was 1

24:13

Corinthians 1. Or they will say, well, I don't really remember. What if they say, well, it was this sixth in your 17 ways of being a better neighbor, because I know today's number seven.

24:25

Well, I guess they've got a good memory, but they've got bad theology, I think. That's the time when we can remember,

24:31

Steve, when we went to Saddleback, and they would have a Celine Dion song, and how to clean out your garage and be a good witness.

24:38

We don't want that. It was great music, though. Rock and roll. Yeah. I don't know what it looked like, because it was hard to look up and see some of the scantily clad women, but that's not the topic for the day.

24:49

This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name's Steve. And I'm Mike, or something else.

24:54

God bless you. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

25:02

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.

25:12

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.

25:19

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

25:27

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