The Gospel of God (Part 3)

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, a ministry.

The Gospel of Jesus and the Problem With a Watered-Down Church

My name is Mike Abendroth. And this is the third show I�m recording today. I think in real time it is Friday, June 18th. So this is probably being played on Thursday. Let�s see, where is this? I actually think I know when this is going to be played.

This is going to be played on Thursday, June 24th. So welcome to June 24th, you folks. And today we�re talking about my favorite subject, the Lord Jesus, and we�re talking about the good news about Jesus.

Isn�t that something we all need? I hope that�s what your church is known for. I hope your church is not known for dry ice, cool blue lights. By the way, why are all the background lights on churches blue?

It�s like this blue haze, maybe a little purple haze, if you know what I mean, purple haze. I�m not going to do the song, but speaking of songs, I have been listening. I�m not a big country guy, but I�ve been listening to somebody that reminds me of Hank Williams Sr., and he is a younger guy, and his name is Charlie Crockett.

I�m going to go see Charlie Crockett in concert here soon. And so I�m going to, just FYI, you know, I know you�re all dying to know what I eat and like what kind of fashion I like to wear and fashion pastor, and you know, I�ve got Vans on.

I think they�re like 60 bucks. Pastor sneakers is not going to work with me. Old Vans I�ve got on, and I�ve got, I�m sorry, I hate to admit this, but I�ve got Diet Coke Zero. And I�m usually a kombucha guy, coffee, kombucha, but listening to Charlie Crockett.

So if you ever want to listen to Charlie Crockett, you can tell me if you like him or not. But anyway, on the show today, we�re not talking about that. We are talking about what I want to talk about. That�s kind of the fun part about having your own show.

And what if I was on Salem Broadcasting Network? I have friends that do podcasts and radio shows and stuff like that on big stations, and they are kind of handicapped. They can only talk about certain things.

They couldn�t launch on, you know, the evangelicalism and step on toes and name people by name because then they, you know, might lose listeners. But since we only have, you know, a few listeners, it doesn�t really matter.

Terry might listen, Fred, he might listen, Grant, he might listen. Who knows who else listens, but that�s not really why I do the show. It�s been very fun to do the show over the years, sometimes taxing, but my health is good.

My attitude is good. I haven�t done the Message Moment for some time. Matter of fact, where is my Message Bible? Because I think that�d be important for me to look at the Message Bible right now. Where is it?

I have my Common Book of Prayer here. I have, did Mr. Cooley steal my Message Bible? Oh, I have my Beza, my Beza Briefings. That didn�t go off so well. Now let�s just look because I�m in the Book of Romans, Romans 1, 16 and 17.

Let�s see what the message says there before we get into our passage a little bit more today and we talk and extol the Lord Jesus. Let�s see what it says. You can�t find verses in this message thing, can you?

You have to kind of just guess. No verses, only chapters. See like the original. I have to say, before I read this, you know, we use ESV here. There was lots of reasons to use ESV, but ESV, not translating the Greek word monogenes, only begotten.

Not translating it as only begotten in John 1, 14, 1, 18, John 3, 16, John 3, 18, 1 John 4, 9. That bugs me because I know why they�re doing it and they�re trying to use only or unique back to the 30s and 40s where this super liberal at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville came up with this idea.

Bad grammar, bad research, liberal background. Bauer Gingrich picked it up and then now all of a sudden, you know, we got this whole eternal generation debate going on and I go to the Bible and I�m like, you know what?

This thing doesn�t even translate it as only begotten, monogenes. It�s more than just a word study, but it just really bugs me and I�m bugged at the ESV, I�m bugged at the translators, so now I�m reading the Message Bible.

My personal preference is still the New American Standard. It has its faults, but it says only begotten. I mean, I put above the urinals here in the bathroom of the church building the Nicene Creed and the Athanasius Creed just because I want people to be reminded.

So, call me weird, but that was a fun moment. Begotten not made. Being of one substance with the Father. All right, here it is. It�s news. I�m most proud to proclaim this extraordinary message of God�s powerful plan to rescue you, everyone who trusts in Him, starting with Jews and then right on to everybody else.

God�s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what God has said all along. The person in right standing before God by trusting Him really lives.

Oh, that is so bad.

No, brother, I don�t have to be a Greek scholar, although I try to read the Greek every day. This is so bad. Starting with the Jews and then right on to everyone else. It�s news. I�m most proud to proclaim.

That�s actually not too bad, because I�m not ashamed of the gospel. It�s a laetitia, something stated negative, to make a positive truth. I�m proud of this truth, so I won�t be too, you know, it�s an interpretive translation.

It�s not true to the original, but that�s the idea that Paul was trying to make. Starting with the Jews and then God�s way of putting people right, at least it doesn�t say making, I�ll give them that, shows up in the acts of faith.

How does that show up in the acts of faith? That�s where I�m going. This is awful. This is bad. Where�s my theological mute button? It shows up in acts of faith? Really? Is that what it says? The person in right standing before God by trusting Him really lives.

No, no, no, no, no. The just shall live by faith? That�s real living. To each their own. What is the gospel? That�s the question that we�re at right now in Romans 1, 16, and 17. What�s the gospel? Strictly speaking, in the gospel, Bovink said, there are no demands and conditions in the gospel, but only promises and gifts.

John Cahoon said, the gospel contains no precepts, it commands nothing, it does not enjoin us even to believe and repent, but it declares to us what God in Christ as a God of grace has done and what He promises still to do for us and in us and by us.

The word gospel means good news, merry news, happy news, glad news, joyful news, glad tidings, makes me want to jump and shout and dance, a stand on tiptoes news. That�s what that is. He said back in chapter 1 earlier, verse 1, something about this good news.

He talks about the gospel that he�s not ashamed of in verse 16, and if you go back to verses 1, 2, 3, and 4, we learn more about the gospel that he�s already talked about. Paul says something about the gospel, and then he kind of expands.

That�s what Paul does. It�s like a zip file, and all of a sudden, you know, the key to unlock the zip file is not a double click, but anything about Jesus, and then he�s just off and running. And if you want to know more about the gospel of Romans 1, 16, just go back to chapter 1, verse 1.

He calls it the gospel of God. That�s very, very important. It�s not a gospel about the emperor like the Roman emperor. There was supposed to be good news about that emperor if the son was born, and we got good news that the emperor has a new son.

It�s good news about God and from God, and he�s the one that came up with it. He�s the one that did it. This is not our gospel to be malleable in our hands and, well, we�re going to change it around because the culture demands it, and I�ve got a cultural imperative and a cultural mandate, and it�s not really, you know, the people in New York City, I have to kind of cut and paste and cut the corners for this because I�m trying to redeem the city and all that other stuff.

This is God�s gospel, and it reminds me of 1 Corinthians when almost every verb in 1 Corinthians 15 is about�the subject of almost every verb is about Jesus, Christ, the Son of God, emphasizing God�s activity in the gospel.

Paul uses even passive verbs to intentionally focus the stress on God�s work. Christ died. He was buried. He was raised. He appeared. He didn�t say they buried him, he said he was buried. God is the one who is active in salvation.

Sinners are passive in redemption, unless you want to say sinners actively contribute to their sin. That�s the only activity going on there. The Lord is the Savior who does the saving. In other words, the gospel is God-centered.

God is the active one. He�s the Savior. He�s the saving one. So we don�t tamper with this, and you say, well, the gospel is good news, but is it new news? We all like new things. He says in chapter 1 verse 2, which he promised beforehand through the prophets in the holy scriptures, well, you know, we don�t really need the Old Testament.

God�s harsh in that. God�s old in that. God�s got a lot of laws in that, a lot of Moses stuff, and a lot of Sinai and fire, lightning, brimstone. We�re off to the new gospel of love. That�s not the case.

No. It�s not new news. It�s good news, but it�s good news in the Old Testament too, where the prophets and the law spoke of this great news. They were looking for this good news. It�s not a break with the past, one writer said.

It�s a consummation of it. This is a gospel that was promised beforehand. Luther, �Christianity did not originate by accident or in the fate of the stars, as many empty-headed people presume, but it became what it was to be by the certain counsel and premeditated ordination of God.

As Pastor Steve talked about on Sunday night, two Sunday nights ago here, it�s the seed of the woman that�s going to break the serpent head. This is going all the way back to Genesis 3, verse 15, and you see the brazen serpent.

You see the ark. You see the sacrifices. You see prophet, priests, and kings. You see these ceremonies driving us to say, this is all pointing to the great fulfillment. We see these types, and the anti-type is the fulfillment of all this is the Lord Jesus.

Even in verse 17 in our section of Scripture, Habakkuk 2, 4, �The just shall live by faith. John 5, Luke 24, what does Jesus say? �You search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life, and it is that they that bear witness about me.

These Old Testament Scriptures, �Bear witness to the Lord Jesus, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. Paul goes on in chapter 1, verse 3, to tell us about the humanity of the Savior, truly God, perfectly man, truly man, perfectly God.

And here we see his humanity, and what does he say here concerning his son who has descended from David according to the flesh? What�s Paul�s point? You want to go back and see the Old Testament promises of David, and how he�s going to be a king, and how significant the figure of David is?

That�s who Jesus is. He is truly man. He is the God-man. The prophets talked about this, yes, but then we realize, as John would say, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He was revealed in the flesh, 1 Timothy chapter 3.

He was born of a woman, Galatians chapter 4. To be our representative, he had to be human. The eternal Son adds humanity at the Incarnation. The Belgic Confession says, regarding the Incarnation, that we confess God fulfilled the promise which he had made to the early fathers by the mouth of his holy prophets, when he had sent his only and eternal Son into the world at the time set by him.

The Son took the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man, truly assuming a human, real nature, with all its weaknesses except for sin, being conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, without male participation.

And he not only assumed human nature as far as the body is concerned, but also a real human soul, in order that he might be a real human being. So, we have God, the Son, adding humanity, born of the seed of David, according to flesh, born of the womb of the Virgin Mary, born of a woman, seed of David, a shoot from the root of Jesse, an offspring of Judah, descended from the Jews, according to the flesh, seed of Abraham, assumed Abraham's seed, made like his brothers except for sin, Emmanuel, God with us.

That's how the confession reads. And he's not only human, truly and perfectly, but he's also God. I mean, he was eternally God, and he stays eternally God. He stays God always. He was declared to be the Son of God.

You want to see the highlight, the pinnacle of this? He was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is the pinnacle.

This is the peak, the resurrection of Jesus declared. It's like the word horizon, to distinguish that this God-man was everything that he said he was, including the eternal Son of God. It was demonstrated for all of us to see, powerfully defeating sin and death and hell and everything else.

It's marked out a supreme demonstration beyond a shadow of a doubt. The resurrection of God, the Son, is, as they say, the exclamation point to the good news. God the Father's amen to the Sons. It is finished.

It's wonderful. My name is Mike Abendroth. It's NoCompromiseRadio .com. You can always write me. And unless you're rude and mean or a kook, I get the emails. If you're listening and you don't want me to read something, then just be rude, mean, or a kook, because then Spencer's going to delete it and it never gets into my hand.

If you say, I disagree with you, I didn't like what you said, I need to correct you on something, you critique Paul Washer's preaching style and I don't like that, I'll read every one of those and probably even respond.

Still, you know, I guess we could have Paul Washer update, still not contacted me. And, of course, he owes me nothing, but if his pastor handler friend, whatever his confidant guy is, says he's going to get in touch with you, fine.

And, by the way, if he preaches to my two daughters, which he did, and then I'd like to talk to him about that message, maybe he doesn't have this in his radar, but if I preach a sermon to anyone and they say, I'd like to talk to you about that message, would you please call me, write me, contact me, I'm going to do it.

That's just the way I think it should work, don't you think? Don't you think? Why wouldn't they? I'm not going to yell at people or scream at people, I'm going to ask them some questions and we're going to talk like two men.

What's wrong with that? Where has that gone? Oh, brother. And, truth be told, when I did the open podcast to Paul Washer, while I didn't have any notes or anything like that, that's obvious, to all the listeners, I tried to be as nice as I possibly could.

I think I could have been much firmer and still been godly, but to get people to listen to the show, I needed to be a little bit nicer because otherwise, if I came across as a New England bulldog, no compromise radio, then I don't think people would be as apt to listen.

But my true feelings about it are probably more expressive than found in the podcast. Does that make sense? Related subject, but now more in general, the bane of scolding preaching. It is just awful. Let me just give you a little hint.

If you've got a scolder preacher, I think there's a little trick you could do as a congregant, as a lay person. Buy the book by T. David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, and give it to your pastor. If somebody, and people have given me books on preaching, most every one of them I've read, somebody did give me the new Piper book on preaching, Exaltation or something, Exposed to Exaltation.

I can't get myself to read that. But most of the time, I'll read books about preaching. And that book does a good job, T. David Gordon's book does, to try to address scolding preachers. But it does other things too.

And therefore, it's not like you're like, how to correct a scolding preacher? I'm writing a book on the law, gospel, distinction, what is law, what is gospel, and implications. And one of the implications is, if you don't understand that, it's going to lend itself to a lot of scolding when it comes to preaching.

Anyway, I don't have the book out yet, so it's going to be a while. I'm finishing S. Lewis Johnson's Discovering Colossians, and it should be out this fall. I'm on it. It's taken a long time for me with prostate cancer, and just not wanting to write, and just not really thinking about it, having other things in life.

Additionally thinking, you know what? I thought if I wrote a bunch of books, it'd help the kingdom, probably get noticed, lots of doors open. And it's like, those are really stupid reasons to write a book.

I mean, I can recognize faults in others, and I can hopefully recognize them in myself. That's really dumb, right? You have other things to tend to, like the local church that God has given you, like your wife and children.

Why did I write books when I had kids around? I have no idea. I did a lot on summers when I was by myself when the kids were gone, but still. Anyway, the S. Lewis Johnson book should be out. I do want to write a law gospel book, because I think that's going to help a lot of people.

And I'm working on a book about hell. So those are the three that I'm working on right now. I have other ideas. I've got a parenting book in the works, but you know, you've got to be an expert to write a book, right?

I'm an expert in parenting, but it's about parenting mistakes. So at least I know I'm an expert in that. So I don't know. I guess that's a round number, 10 books. Have I finished those four? And then who knows what?

Probably a whole lot of nothing. I finally, after five years, got my first royalty check for discovering Romans from Harper Collins of all places. I cashed it. It was 55 bucks. Belgic Confession, Article 19, Two Natures of Christ.

We believe that by being thus conceived, the person of the Son has been inseparably united and joined together with human nature in such a way that there are not two sons of God, nor two persons, but two natures united in a single person with each nature retaining its own distinct properties.

Thus, his divine nature has always remained uncreated without beginning of days or end of life, filling heaven and earth. His nature, his human nature has not lost its properties, but continues to have those of a creature.

It has a beginning of days. It has of infinite nature and retains all that belongs to a real body. And even though he, by his resurrection, gave it immortality, that nonetheless did not change the reality of his human nature.

For our salvation and resurrection depend on the reality of his body. But these two natures are so united together in one person so that they are not even separated by his death. That's pretty amazing.

It says, even when he was lying in the grave and his deity never ceased to be in him, just as it was in him when he was a little child, though for a while it did not show itself as such. These are the reasons why we confess him to be true God and true man, true God in order to conquer death and by his power, and true man that he might die for us in the weakness of his flesh.

When we talk about the gospel, we're talking about Jesus, the God-man. And if you're not talking about Jesus, the God-man, you're not talking about the gospel. This is historical. It's an event. This is Jesus, incarnation, earthly life.

You can talk about an eternity past in the covenant of redemption, if you like, planned there, fine. But what Jesus did 2000 years ago, that's, we're talking about, that's the gospel. That's the truth.

That's the news. And when people say, well, you know, you're the gospel, and you're the only Bible some people will read. That's not the gospel. You're not the gospel. I don't want to be the fifth gospel.

I'd be a poor fifth gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Mike. Because it's not even really Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's the gospel of Jesus according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke, according to John.

The one who said, you know what, I want you to preach the gospel is the Lord Jesus. He didn't say live the gospel, didn't be the fifth gospel. No, no. I bring you good tidings of great joy for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior, which is Christ the Lord.

Not Mike Ebendroth, not anybody else. Anyway, my name is Mike Ebendroth, this is No Compromise Radio Ministry. I really appreciate you listening. I wouldn't do the show if nobody listened. I don't need a whole lot of listeners, but we have some faithful listeners.

So tell your friends, tell your millionaire friends, God bless you.

Closing Exhortation and Ministry Sign-Off

Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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