Potential Dangers of Verse-by-Verse Exposition

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 Ebendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Verse-by-Verse Exposition and the Risk of Isolating the Gospel

My name is Mike Eben-broth. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. My name's Ebendroth, but I'm prepping today for a colonoscopy tomorrow, so I'm only allowed to have Jell-O and broth, so I haven't had any Jell-O today, but I've had a bunch of chicken broth.

It's said best if used by June 2021, but we gave it a shot anyway. I put in some pepper flakes, and so now it's Eben-broth. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. This has nothing to do with anything except I was reading it the other night.

Had some friends over. They mentioned something about the message Bible, and I always go to Psalm 1 to make sure people realize how bad it is. I think there's been an update, but the old message was Psalm 1, how well God must like you.

You don't hang out at Sin Saloon. You don't slink along Dead End Road. You don't go to Smart Mouth College. You think, could anything be any worse? Yes, because in this Messianic Psalm, maybe you think every Psalm's Messianic, but certainly then you would think Psalm 2 is Messianic, and even if you don't think every Psalm's Messianic, you do think this Psalm's Messianic, and it's just awful.

It's not a translation. It's peyote. Let me tell you what God said next. He said, you're my son. Today's your birthday. Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I mean, what is going on here with this?

It's your birthday? Today is your birthday? Today I have begotten you? Is that like birthday? Is this like the, you know, subordination people that Jesus is, you know, eternally subordinate? It's your birthday?

Today is your birthday? Psalm 2. Today's your birthday. What do you want? Name it. Nations as a present, constituents as a prize. You can command them all to dance for you or throw them out with tomorrow's trash.

That's what Psalm 2, according to Eugene, message Eugene Peterson. I think Eugene's last name is message now. Oh, brother, please. That's as kooky as this outlines of Catholic teaching by Reverend John Keating, little bookmark I have here, How to Pray the Rosary.

I mean, the sign of the cross in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen, fine. The Apostles' Creed, fine. Our Father, fine. And then Hail Mary, not too good. I did not know, by the way, there's a little foldout here with the rosary with all the numbers and the beads.

I did not know about the joyful mysteries, the sorrowful mysteries, and the glorious mysteries. I did not know Mondays and Thursdays, joyful mysteries, Tuesdays and Fridays, sorrowful mysteries. And Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, glorious mysteries.

I knew about the sign of the cross and the Apostles' Creed, the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys, the glory be to the Fathers, but I did not know number five. It's the fifth bead up. So you got the cross is number one.

You make the sign of the cross. The second bead is Our Father. The next three beads, you have to say three Hail Marys. Shouldn't there be something else? I'd be like, doesn't the Father get three things and Mary only gets one?

Sign of the cross, Apostles' Creed. That's the cross. That's at the end of the rainbow deal there. Our Father, three Hail Marys, so there's three beads. There's a space in between the three beads and the fifth bead, the fifth section.

So that space, you say glory to the Father. Then the fifth bead, you announce the first mystery, then say Our Father. So the first mystery, if it's a Monday or a Thursday, you say the first mystery, the Annunciation.

I guess that's how you say it, I don't know. If it happened to be a Tuesday or Wednesday, be sorrowful mystery would be the agony in the cross. And then you go from there, now the necklace part, and then we get to six, you have say 10 Hail Marys.

So there's 10 beads, then the space for the Gloria Patria, then the eighth bead, announce the second mystery. And off you go, around you go. I never thought about it before, but Mary, I guess since it's the Rosary, she gets a lot more love.

It does say on the back here, concluding prayers, aren't you glad you're saved out of this? Say Abendroth, what's your point? Aren't you glad, dear Christian, you're saved out of this? Hail Holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this veil of tears. Turn then, most gracious Advocate, calling Mary, capital A, Advocate. Thine eyes have mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Oh clement, oh pious, oh sweet Virgin Mary. Queen of the most holy Rosary, pray for us that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Ah! That's bad, that's worse than the message, is it not? Wow, that's crazy.

Oh, the joys of YouTube on my phone. I don't know how to hook it up. That's not that sophisticated. Then it says, let us pray, oh God, who's only begotten Son. Well, at least they got the only begotten part right, unlike the ESV in John 3 .16, John 3 .18.

John 1 .14, John 1 .18, and 1 John 4. By his life, death, and resurrection has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life. Grant, we beseech thee, that mediating upon these mysteries of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin, we may imitate what they contain, obtain what they promise to the same Christ our Lord.

Amen. Ooh, those are prayers fitting for conclusion, although they're not an essential part of the Holy Rosary. I just don't get it. I mean, I do get it, and I understand how Satan blinds, and futility of the mind, and all that.

But you've got this Jesus, by his life, death, resurrection, purchased for us the rewards of life, and all of a sudden, then you just mess it all up, because it all goes through the advocate, the Virgin Mary.

I don't get it. You can say that you believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, and you can deal with all that, and all of a sudden, it's like, oh.

By the way, in their version of the Apostles' Creed, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, if they put the capital C there. The communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, resurrection, body, and the life everlasting.

Operational Gospel vs. Theoretical Gospel

Hello. My name's Mike Abendorf. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. I have often and regularly talked about operational gospels and theoretical gospels at a local church, and I really think that shows up in, well, everybody's got the theoretical gospel, because it's in their statement of faith, even if it's pared down to 10 simple statements, even if it's written by the pastor and the elders.

Both the 10 statements and the written by the pastor and elders are both awful ideas, but they would have the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus. They would have born of the Virgin Mary, et cetera. The Daughter's Eve.

But is it really in the life of the church? Is it just for Easter and Christmas when unbelievers come? Is it just for outreach conferences and, you know, concerts and stuff like that? Or is it operational?

And operational is going to mean that Jesus Christ isn't just for justification, although he is for that, but also in sanctification. Christ for pardon, Christ for, dear listeners, you know that Jesus Christ is not just for justification.

Christ for power, Christ for us, justification Christ in us, God sanctifying work. Well, I talk about that regularly, and I've got another quote here from Graham Goldsworthy in his book, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture.

And the little section here is called the Relationship of the Gospel to Christian Living. And if you want somebody else to say what I've been trying to communicate for the last several years, at least, it's this.

Graham Goldsworthy, quote, one of the dynamics of preaching involves the selection of a limited amount of text that can be reasonably dealt with in the short time available for any one sermon. Okay, so I'm kind of hard pressed these days because I'm doing half a chapter in the book of Ephesians.

And it's really too much, but I'm giving a little overview because we have so many visitors, et cetera. But the point is you have to pick a passage. You can't say every week, I'm gonna preach the whole Bible.

I'm gonna preach all of Job. Oh, you could do a jet tour or something like that. But in general, we understand there's a limited amount of time. So we have to take a shorter passage. The Bible's a big book.

Preachers with a taste for expository preaching will often have recourse to series of sermons in which the longer text is divided up into manageable portions. Okay, no big deal. We understand that, even if it's chapter by chapter, right?

Calvary Chapel kind of thing. Preaching through a New Testament epistle is frequently done on this basis, even if not every single part of the text is engaged. Right, you might skip over something or you talk about other sections a little bit more.

I think I did that this last week in Ephesians chapter four, one to 16. I talked more about verses one through eight than I did nine through 16, just for time's sake. Preaching through a New Testament epistles often frequently done on this basis, even if not every single part of the text is engaged.

The individual parts become separated into the distinct sermons, and the separation is magnified by the fact that a whole week elapses between each one of them. Okay, see where he's going here? You've got to chop things up, right?

And then you've got distinct sermons, and then you've got time in between. It's not like you say, well, I'm gonna talk about who we are in Christ and then later today, we're gonna talk about the response of holy living, doctrine, and then duty, but it's next week.

Or I've been in the section of Ephesians one to three for 40 weeks, and then now we'll get into doctrine the next 20 weeks, and there's all this time in between. Not just 60 different sermons, but one week in between them all.

The potential danger, Goldsworthy says, of this method, you think, danger? I've been taught to do this. I paid money to learn how to do this. But there's a potential danger. What might that be? Dear NOCO listeners, is for the isolation of texts about Christian living from those texts that explicitly expound the nature of the gospel.

Thus, in preaching from Ephesians, hey, how do you know I was in Ephesians? For example, the bulk of the ethical matters arise in the last three chapters of the book, while the first three chapters have dealt mainly with the theological issues that underpin Christian living.

And Goldsworthy is smart. He knows that there is a command. In chapter two, right, remember you were Gentile. He understands that there are indicatives in Ephesians five when you're told with a command, love your wives, as Christ loved the church, right?

It's not perfectly, but just generally we see, okay, here's who we are in Christ's first three chapters, and then walk in a manner worthy of your calling, Ephesians four, one, et cetera. The logic is obvious when the epistle is read as a whole, but can be obscured by a lengthy process of fragmentation.

That is to say, in my own words, if you read all of Ephesians at one sitting, which you could do and you should do, especially for pastors in Ephesians, and then you get, oh yes, blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

He chose me, the son died for me, the spirit sealed me. We respond with a great prayer. Then we were reminded that we were dead in sins, and then we were made alive because of the kindness of God and his mercy and his love and his grace.

And this is a show for, an eternal show for a demonstration of God's grace and even spirits get to see that. We understand that there's peace between Jew and Gentile now not just peace between individuals and God, but now even peace between Jews and Gentiles.

Paul was sent for that purpose, and then now therefore. You would get that if you just read it straight through. But week by week, there's a week in between, fragmentation, Goldsworthy. One of the gains of biblical theology in preaching, not theology that's biblical, but seeing the theme, the swath, how God, the author, the divine author is unfolding things as we don't just pick up different doctrines, but we're seeing the sweep of redemption and where we are at and how things lead to one place to another.

It helps us to appreciate the inner structure of the apostolic testimony and its relationship to Christian living. See, he's not going to let you unhinge one from the other. And these days, the big problem is we just tell people what to do because they think that's what a sermon is.

And it's just a moralistic, pietistic, just do. It's just law. Once again, dear listeners, we are not against the law here. I know some dispensationalists that don't think the 10 commandments are for today.

That's technically antinomianism. And I know there's different grades of it, but that's how it first started where you didn't think the law is for today. Of course, my dispensational friends would say, we're not antinomians.

We have the law. And when it's given the law in the epistles, the New Testament, we're under that law. Okay, I get it. But don't call me an antinomian when I am for the law. It's just from the hand of Christ.

And it is to guide. It is not to condemn. It is to direct. It is not to accuse unto damnation or anything like that. In Pauline theological terms, we are concerned with the relationship of sanctification to justification.

There it is. That's what we're concerned about. What kind of sanctification occurs outside the person and work of the Lord Jesus? So if you talk about Jesus for, let's just say 60 sermons in Ephesians.

My friend said he just preached Ephesians 59 sermons. Okay, perfect. Well, what do we do with the first 30 and then 29? Let's say that's the breakdown. Chapters one, two, and three, 30 sermons. Chapters four, five, and six, 29 sermons.

If you're not careful, and I'm sure almost everybody ties things in because of the therefore in chapter four, verse one. But if you're not careful, you could end up teaching Ephesians 4, 25 to 32 and say, here are these imperatives.

It's a replacement. And you stop doing one thing and do another. And you Christians, you shouldn't lie, but you should tell the truth. You should be angry, but don't let the sun go down on your anger.

Don't make it sinful anger. I'm trying to think where the third one is. Don't steal work. What's the next one? No unedifying, no corrupt word out of your mouth, but for edification, you should speak. What's the fifth one?

Don't be bitter, wrathful, angry, clamor, slander, but be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving as you've been forgiven in Christ Jesus. Something like that. Don't hold me to it. That's by memory, but I think it's pretty close.

Okay, those are all things that are said. Yes, that's true, but we can't just give it baldly. We need to tie it in. And here's what I ended up doing all too often. I knew that, but the tie-in was kind of the same.

The review was always the same because it's easier to preach law than it is gospel. That's just the way it is. And then to figure out, well, how am I gonna review it this time in a way that's new and different, yet still faithful to the text, et cetera, it makes it hard.

Goldsworthy, in broader biblical theological terms, we are concerned with the relationship of law to grace. If eternal life is not the reward for meritorious living, but the gift of grace, which it is the gift of grace, not the reward for meritorious living, then all ethical imperatives are given as implications of the gospel and should be clearly seen as such.

So as the pastor, when he's going through books, small piece by small piece, nothing wrong with that. I think as I've gotten older, I think I'm gonna take bigger sections instead of smaller sections. Be that as it may, ethical imperatives, commands, law for the Christians are implications of the gospel.

They're not technically the gospel, strictly speaking, the gospel is about the Lord Jesus done what he did for us. And of course, the triune implications, the father sending, the spirit assisting and applying.

Okay, I get that. You have to be so careful when you talk on the radio, don't you? Can you pass me the broth? Haven broth. Oh, coffee too without creamer. I get that kind of fair life. I think it's lactose free.

How can milk be lactose free? I mean, if it's fake milk, okay, fine. But if it's real milk, how can it be lactose free? It's not like the definition of lactose. I know it's not technically, but so don't write me, don't email me.

I've never had a lactate yet, but who knows, maybe I'll have to. Implications of the gospel. It says here with Goldsworthy, wrapping up preaching of the whole Bible as Christian scripture, page 59. The alternative is to preach law and to leave the impression that the essence of Christianity is what we do rather than what God has done.

Ouch. Now I think this happens. I mean, again, I see it myself so that it's easy for me to see in others. I try not to do that anymore. I make it a determination not to do it. I'm determined to preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified, right?

1 Corinthians 2 2, Colossians 1 28, Him we proclaim. When it even comes to sanctification or end times or hell or Proverbs or something, it's just, we need to make sure we are preaching Christ. And after all, the whole Bible is about Him.

You have to believe that to some degree or another, Luke 24 and John 5. Is Christianity at its essence due? Now you say, well, yes, because it's what Jesus did. Okay, cheater. But that's not how it's preached.

And I say to myself regularly, I don't want people to think that's the essence of Christianity. And most Christians do. Most Christians do. They wanna have their list. Give me seven things to do this week.

Half of them aren't even from the Bible. So now you're not only disobeying the law found in the Bible, but now the extra laws that the pastor has given you. You think, well, I'm sincere about it. At least that will count.

I .e. Rome. Unbelievers come into church and they're like, well, I wonder what I'll hear today. Probably behavior modification, moralism, something to do. That's what they think because that's what, you just click on a YouTube sermon, that's what you're gonna get most of the time.

Goes where the legalism easily creeps in, even when we think we have avoided it. The preacher may well understand the relationship of law and grace, which I don't think a lot do, law gospel. But the structure of the sermon program may undermine it in the thinking of many in the congregation.

Dear pastor and dear congregants who need to pray for their pastor, just keep this in your mind. Make sure you're understanding. I mean, I go to Ephesians four this week and I'm gonna do my very, very best in the midst of a bunch of commands in 25 through 32 that I just listed earlier.

That I'm gonna talk about 22 and 24, verse 20 as well. It's not how you learn Christ like these pagans. You learn Christ in a different way. And when you learn Christ and we're taught by him, God saved you, you put off the old Adam.

Your mind's being renewed and you're putting on. That happened, that's your identity. You need to be reminded of who you are and what Jesus has done for you. And then you respond with the implications of the gospel that is obedience, that is faith, that is virtue, that is sweat and toil as you respond by the spirits working in you, union with Christ.

That's what's happening. We have to be careful when we have our, it's to my shame probably too, 120 sermons in Hebrews. Now it made it easier for Hebrews because chapter 13 is where we get all the commands.

Oh yeah, there's some warning passages, five warning passages, I get that. But really chapters one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 is all about Jesus. So that made it easier.

By the way, did you realize that's the only sermon we have recorded in all the New Testament that was given to an existing congregation? Something maybe James might be or extracts from a sermon. But here, this is a sermon.

This is the exhortation. I believe Hebrews 13 verse 22 or 24. This is an exhortation. It's a sermonic epistle or an epistolatory sermon. That's kind of a punk rock band name, epistolatory sermons. That's the book of Hebrews.

That's the way it should be preached. But if we're gonna chop it up, we have to be very, very careful that we tell people how we're chopping it up and remind them to read all of Ephesians throughout the week, to remind them here's how we do things, Christ for us, Christ in us, Christ for pardon, Christ for power.

We can't divorce ourselves from the Lord Jesus Christ when it comes to holy living. We can, but it's to our peril. And then we don't have a motivation to obey. We just have this kind of duty thing. We have this, we better do it, so we have final justification settled.

And the list goes on and on and on. Graham Goldsworthy, I just picked up his book, kind of a trilogy of books that you can, I mean, he's written more than three, but a trilogy. You can just reread it.

The preaching of the whole Bible as Christian scripture. And so that's good for pastors. Maybe you're a congregant and you wanna get that for your pastor so that he is encouraged to preach Christ Jesus from the Old Testament and of course, from the new.

The first thing I tell people to do in my preaching class is make sure you preach Jesus from the Gospels because we have Jesus getting tempted and it turns into a whole sermon on how to overcome temptation.

No, no, no, no, no, no. We don't even know how to preach Jesus from the Gospels if we're not careful. Well, my name's Mike Abenroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Aben-broth, as we sometimes call it.

And we'll see you next time.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abenroth 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.