Kissing Ministries

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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
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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.
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.
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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
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King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, ministry.
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I am your host. I remember the first time I was on radio, it was 1969,
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I believe, and I think the call letters for the station in Omaha, Nebraska, were
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K -O -I -L, COIL. I think that was it. And I was a student, probably what, what does that make you, fourth grader, third grader, entered some contest and you got to go down to the studio and say a few words on the
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TV, on the radio, and I thought it was TV. And I remember they gave me a transistor radio, a little dial, and then
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I could tune in Nebraska football games and listen to Lyle Bremser, who was the famous Nebraska commentator, at least famous in Nebraska.
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He'd always say, man, woman, and child, he's gone. So that was the first time. And then in 1982,
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I was on KZUM in Lincoln, Nebraska, which was a small nonprofit, crazy left -wing loon kind of station.
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And I played New Wave punk rock music with a guy named Bill Stoughton. He was more of the synth guy and I was more of the rock and roll, clash kind of deal.
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And our name of the, the name of the show was Aural, A -U -R -A -L, Delight, delight for your ears.
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So there you go. Now it's, I don't know,
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I forgot the station that we're on. I know it's 760, W -V -N -E, that's right.
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It should be called W -A -V -E or something, The Wave. Wouldn't that be better? That'd be better marketing,
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The Wave. Chuck Swindoll on The Wave. Well today
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I'd like to go over a verse that's been pretty much just abandoned in modern evangelical circles.
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It's thrown into the woodpile of, this isn't for today.
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It was cultural. Now one of the things that you have to do when you read the Bible is you have to ask yourself the question, is this particular verse written to me?
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Is the command for me? Or am I supposed to learn something else about God or how
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He deals with people or the Israelites' response to God or something like that? So if you read in Acts where the guy who was healed got up and he was jumping and leaping and praising
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God and you've just had a bicycle accident and you've hurt your leg and that's what you should do.
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You should get up and walk. Well you'd realize there's a problem with that. And so it is easier to look at the
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Bible and say these narratives weren't written to me. They were written for me.
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They were not written to tell me what to do, although there are certainly some things that we can learn by application and do, but they're written so I can be informed about who
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Jesus is and the good news about Jesus. And so it goes back to the whole Sinclair Ferguson, where's
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Waldo approach where we're trying to find ourselves in all the Bible verses. Now if we look at the epistles found in Romans through Jude, there are some commands written to the churches that you should be able to say today as an evangelical in the church, church universal.
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This verse is for me. And so if I should rejoice always again, I say rejoice in Philippians 4, you ought to obey that command.
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There are other verses where Paul says in 2 Timothy chapter 4, do you know
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Timothy I'd really like the books, the parchments especially, that is the books.
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I think ESV splits it into two, but I think it's the Marista there and that is the Malastah cocktail, that is.
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So bring me the parchments, that is the books. Well, what about this particular verse?
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This verse today, you don't really hear many people talk about it and since I was preaching through First Corinthians the other day and actually finished it, it's been on my mind.
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And so today on No Compromise Radio, holy kiss. Greet one another with the holy kiss.
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What does it mean? And should you just say to yourself, I'm going to throw this idea out right away because I'm not a touchy -feely person and I don't kiss people.
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Maybe you say get rid of this verse because it causes controversy and it's not proper for men and women who aren't married to be kissing one another, let alone teenagers.
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Maybe it'll cause a scandal. So today on No Compromise, what does this verse mean?
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What did it mean to God when he wrote it through Paul? How did the Corinthians take this and is there a direct application for us today?
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What about this command, greet one another with the holy kiss? Well it says in chapter 16 of First Corinthians verse 20, as Paul is giving some final exhortations, all the brothers send you greetings.
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So the brothers are sending the church at Corinth greetings. Greet one another with the holy kiss.
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NAS says all the brethren greet you, greet one another with the holy kiss. What did they mean by this?
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Now let's think about it a little bit. I grew up in a culture, a
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Swedish culture, German culture, and the
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German -Swedish culture that I grew up in, in the Midwest, we didn't really talk with words like I love you, you mean a lot to me, you're the best, can't live without you.
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Whatever the terms of endearment were, we were starved for those, hence my psychological makeup as it is.
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You could say, well, we knew we were loved, taken care of, and right doctors, and nice vacations, and motorcycles, and boats, and jet skis, and stuff like that.
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They were old. They were old boats that had holes in them. So we lived in a modest house.
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I think the house that I grew up in was probably 1 ,200 square feet or something. And then we did have a cabin up on the lake.
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It was just an old trailer, an old 50 -foot trailer that we redid.
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I still remember taking the shellac off, the nasty shellac off the kitchen counters, and the kitchen cabinets.
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It was the grossest thing. I remember taking a utility scraper and scraping that film off with just the nastiness.
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Whoo, dog. But there are people in the
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Middle East now, and European countries now, and South American countries, and some other cultures, where they do show lots of affection.
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And so maybe we could talk about people from Greece or people from Israel. There are countries that show a lot of affection, and that affection manifests itself in hugging.
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I'm talking about all this is public affection between people. This is the point. I am very pro -private affection between married couples, man and wife, behind the scenes.
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I'm very pro -that. See Song of Solomon, see Proverbs 5, see
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Hebrews 13, 4. I'm all for that. What I'm talking about today, though, is displaying public affection.
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And so I'm still talking about the culture today. Lots of hugging, kissing. You'll see someone kiss on the one side of the cheek, then on the other, or one side, the other side, the other side, where I grew up and it was a handshake, a stay out of my personal space.
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Dad didn't really say, I love you. Love you was about as much as you got. And so there are different degrees of affection.
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So I'm not trying to change your culture. That's not my point. But what happened back in the
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New Testament time was similar to what happens now in countries like the Middle East or Greece, for instance.
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Lots of physical affection, lots of hugging and kissing. I'm not talking about kissing on the lips necessarily, although there's some of that that goes on.
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We're just talking about generally showing public affection in different cultures.
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So the same thing happened in the New Testament times. They would kiss all the time. So Paul writes now, he doesn't say
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I want you to kiss each other a lot in a show of affection and brotherly kindness and love and acceptance and unity and camaraderie, pledges of forgiveness and being united.
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Here Paul calls it a holy kiss. So there's the kind of kiss that is reserved for man and wife alone.
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There's the kind of kiss that is a public kiss in social settings when you greet one another.
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And there's a kind of kiss that Christians kiss one another with in public settings, that is when the church is assembled.
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And so Paul says greet one another with a holy kiss. So I have lots of questions today on No Compromise Radio.
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When's the last time you heard a sermon on greet one another with a holy kiss? I could ask other questions.
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Do you greet one another with a holy kiss? Do you kiss other Christians? How do you kiss them?
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I think that a fault is we think that the kiss must be on the lips or something. And I'll never forget the story when MacArthur said he went to Russia.
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This was years ago when communism was still big. And he said, you know, the pastors in Russia take this literally and they kiss on the lips.
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And so he said, even after 50 times, 50 men in a row kissing me on the lips, even though that happened,
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I still never got used to it. And one time
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I called MacArthur buddy just by accident, but I never have kissed him on the lips.
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Greet one another with a holy kiss. Now in the ancient East, kisses would show respect, friendship, and they were customary.
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But now here, Paul says, give a kiss of affection, a holy kiss as a pledge of unity and a pledge of camaraderie.
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This is a pure, proper, right, holy, appropriate kind of kiss.
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Now, MacArthur says in a study Bible, pure expression of Christian love between men with men and women with men with excuse me, men with men and women with women with no sexual overtones.
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Now, the question would be, how do we do this today? What should we do?
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Am I asking you to start a kissing ministry at your church so men can start kissing men and women can start kissing women?
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Paul makes sure that no one misunderstands this. And he says, holy. And most likely
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Kistemacher is right. And he says it's probably they would touch their cheek to the other person's cheek.
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And you can kind of make a kissing sound, but your lips most likely won't touch, but they might.
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And then you put your cheek on the other side of the person as a show of affection.
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Other people in the church, there's a way to greet pagans. There's a way to greet your friends. There's a way to greet your family.
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There's a way to greet other Christians when you get together. And think about the differences and think about the background, the backgrounds that these people would have.
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You have men and women, of course, slave and free, rich and poor,
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Jew and Gentile, all kinds of differences, different ethnic backgrounds, different nationalities.
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And when the church got together and here, think about the church at Corinth, all the different problems with unity, chapter one, unity, two, unity, three, unity, four, all kinds of issues.
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And when you get together, you should show a bond of unity and affection and friendship and brotherhood and sisterhood.
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And so you should show that in the form of a holy kiss. It's a symbolic expression of what?
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Love and unity and forgiveness. Now, Justin Martyr wrote about the holy kiss, and he said that there would first be some intercessory prayers when the
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Christians got together. Then there would be a time of kissing, and then there would be the
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Lord's Supper. Now, that's not the only form of worship services that are discussed about, discussed rather.
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But here we have, how do we like this for the regulative principle? Maybe Christ the sinner guys could do a show on this.
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Justin Martyr's regulative principle with intercessory prayers, celebratory holy kisses and then the
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Lord's Supper. Pretty fascinating. I did in my research find that by about the late second century, this stopped, this custom stopped because pagans would criticize them as being erotic.
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Yeah, they kiss each other. Romans 16, it's called the holy kiss here in First Corinthians 16,
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Second Corinthians 13, First Thessalonians 5, those four places, holy kiss. And then
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First Peter chapter 5, interestingly, Peter calls it the kiss of love, and I think they are synonymous.
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The holy kiss is a kiss of love. When Christians get together, they treat each other in a different way.
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You know that there's something about Christians, and they can have not ever met each other, and they are sharing their faith, and they are telling each other about the
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Savior. And when I'm in India or South Africa or Germany or Czech Republic or someplace, when
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I meet other Christians, there is this camaraderie that can't be broken. It's just unexplainable almost, the depth of love that you can have for people who you don't even know, but you know
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Christ has loved them and they have responded to that love with faith. And so there's a way that Christians deal with one another and talk with one another.
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Garland, the commentator, said this kiss is more than an extension of social custom since it is identified as holy.
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It was a distinctive practice that served as a sign of mutual fellowship among persons of mixed social background, nationality, race, and gender who are joined together as a new family in Christ.
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For those who came from differing ethnic and national backgrounds, it was a means to express their unity.
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And so slave are free, old are young. Here we have people expressing themselves in holy kissing.
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They belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. I belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. And now we have the kiss of peace.
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This was referred to by early Christians, the kiss of peace. So Peter called it the kiss of love, holy kiss by Paul.
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And Christians soon called it the osculum pacis, the kiss of peace.
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Now Wyma said that Paul's four closing exhortations to greet others with the holy kiss all occur in contexts where some degree of conflict exists within the congregation.
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That just might be the case. So when there's conflict, make sure you love one another. See, it's the end of the book at the end of 16 chapters of Q &A with Paul.
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Here's a physical sign that we can show one another. Now, probably the thing that we should think about today is how do we go about instituting this?
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Am I after men and men kissing? Well, let's just talk big picture for a minute. I'm not going to be against it.
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You know, I'm not trying to get all the teenagers to go around kissing the girls now. That's not my point, or vice versa, sadly with the predators now, with the attitude of women being predators in society today.
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I'm not after men having to kiss men on the lips or on the cheek.
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But if it happens, I don't freak out about it. Now, here's what I tend to do. Let me read to you first what
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Thistleton said in his commentary, and then I think that gives us a good practical application, spinoff point.
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It's probably going to be the highest downloaded no -co ever. We conclude that it constituted a physical sign in the public domain that get that in the public domain, physical sign of respect, affection, and reconciliation within the
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Christian community. And that it's distinctive use among fellow believers underlined and nurtured the mutuality, reciprocity, and oneness of status and identity, which all
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Christians share across divisions of race, class, and gender. It was clearly open to abuse as patristic sources demonstrate.
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And a counterpart is needed today that offers a sign, an effective sign in the public domain that accords with these aims.
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So how can you show affection to other people in a proper way, in a public way that lets them know that you love them and care for them and their
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Christian brothers and sisters? Now, when I first was in New England, 1997,
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I moved here, so that's 16 years ago, almost, I was told actually by one professor at seminary that, at theological seminary, as S.
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Lewis Johnson says, theological seminary, that don't hug ladies. And he had a military background and I think a handshake was enough for him.
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And certainly, I don't want to hug ladies inappropriately or hug single ladies, making them think somehow that I have some interest in them that would be inappropriate.
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And so I'm not talking about, by the way, hugging your secretary in private because that's not appropriate.
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I don't shake my secretary's hand. I think technically she's Steve's secretary, but I don't shake her hand. I say hello.
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I don't give her a hug unless her husband's around. It's a Sunday, something like that. So again, this is all public.
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This is public. This is holy. So when I got here, I didn't want to do that kind of just shake the hands because my preaching is fairly tough.
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My preaching is masculine. I hope more than that it's biblically Christ -centered. It's expositional, expositional, expositional.
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So I have goals in preaching, but I think I'm probably more afflicting the comfortable more than comforting the afflicted.
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So if you're going to be tough in the pulpit and you're going to be a herald and you're going to preach and you're going to kerux it and you're going to proclaim the truth in a society that is clamoring over we preaching, well, we all fail and preaching today.
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People want the pastors to get up there. I fail in this area too, and none of us really does a good job here.
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And so let's just look, of course I fail on these areas, but my responsibility is to repent of my failings before Sunday and then get up and say,
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I have a message from God for you. That's proclamation. That's preach the word. So I thought to myself in public, when
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I stand by the door, people leave the church, they can run around to other doors if they don't want to greet me.
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And that happens regularly with some of the visitors. Maybe they have a dentist appointment.
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I regularly hug people. Now, I give a good firm handshake. I've hurt my hand about four months ago, so it's not quite as firm as it used to be.
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I give a good handshake to the men and usually pull them in to give them a hug. And at the beginning, they're like, well, we don't hug and we don't do that kind of stuff.
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But the guys, you know, if they're a guy's guy and if they're okay with their masculinity, they'll give you a big hug back and it's no big deal.
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And so with ladies, I thought, what am I going to do? I'd like to show affection. I'd like to have an application of greet one another with a holy kiss.
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But I can't start off with kissing. Sometimes with a different culture, people, some ladies will kiss me on the cheek at the door.
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Sometimes the grandmas might kiss me on the cheek or something like that. Usually they're air kisses on the side, just like this
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Middle Eastern New Testament kind of kiss would be. And I don't say, how dare you?
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I usually wipe off the lipstick as fast as I can. By the way, there's a thing that they never told me about in seminary.
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And that is I'm about six foot, I was about six foot two, six foot one and a half. I'm probably six foot now, but with shoes on, with heels.
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And so I hug ladies appropriately, you know, just the shoulder area touching, right?
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Nothing below the chest area, my chest area. It's not, you know, I'm just going to kind of the upper part of your body hug.
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You know what I'm saying? You guys all know what I'm talking about. You ladies know too. And so I give them a hug and I'm taller than most of the ladies here.
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I think I'm taller than every lady here. And so I get makeup on my suit, always in the same place.
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And so then I'm thinking, you know, I pull my suit out for the next Sunday, I have makeup on my suit jacket because I've hugged some ladies at the church in public.
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They never told me to get one of those little sleeves, those little plastic things that you put on before you do the hugging ministry at the door.
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Wasn't there somebody Huggy Bear? Who's Huggy Bear? He was in the TV show. Was that Starsky and Hutch?
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He had an informant or a friend or something, Huggy Bear. I think so. My dad loved that show,
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Starsky and Hutch, Starsky, Starsky? Starsky, Starsky, Ted, help me. Oh, by the way, the other day
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I called John Dawson. In Idaho, I called him John Dawkins. So the bad news is that would mean he'd be smarter, but that'd be the good news.
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The bad news is he wouldn't be a good chef at patiodaddy .org .com. So we've only got a minute left.
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We better wrap this up. Show some kind of public affection. That's what I would do. And not just the pastor.
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There's an appropriate way to hug. And so I try to do that because I think it lends credibility to this passage where I want to show them that we're all equal in Christ and I care for them.
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I never say, I love you, except I say, I never say you're pretty, except to my daughters and my wife.
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And on wedding days in front of the groom, as the bride is standing there at the very front before the ceremony commences,
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I say to the lady, to the bride, you look pretty today. You look beautiful today. That's all I say in front of the husband.
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And I once in a while will say to an older lady who's single, you look pretty today.
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That's a pretty dress. But to the younger ones, no, because what if their husbands never tell them and now
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I do? I'm not commenting on that. I might say, did you get new glasses? But that's the extent of it. So today on No Compromise Radio, greet one another with a holy kiss.
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Let the kissing ministries begin. Right? Let them begin. It feels like I'm at the
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Kentucky Derby and those gates open and out fly the thoroughbred racehorses.
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Let the kissing ministry begin. So let's start with hugs. How's that? Hug other men. If you're a man, hug other women.
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If you're a woman. No Compromise Radio dot com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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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.
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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.
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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.