Entitlement Society and Grace

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.

A Greece Trip Announcement and Show Introduction

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Mike Abendroth here. If you'd like to go to Greece with us, we'd love to have you go. You got the money, honey. We got the time. And so, if you'd like to go with us, that is April 17th through the 27th during spring break.

I think that's the school break for the kids. You can go with us. You can go to our website, and I think you have to email me, info at nocompromiseradio .com. There is a website linked at Pilgrim Tours, and we'll go to Greece, and we'll go over to Europe to see Ephesus, Patmos, and we'd love to have you go.

You need a $300 deposit in by the end of November of this year, so that's that. Let's see what else is happening. I hope you're listening to your S. Lewis Johnson messages. It would be very important for you to listen to Samuel Lewis Johnson, Jr.

The Entitlement War Cry and the Loss of Grace

What do I have on tap today? I did read an interesting quote that Carl Truman posted, Walter Sonberg's Worship as Repentance, Lutheran Liturgical Traditions and Catholic Consensus, Eerdmans. Now I wouldn't read that particular book, but I do say thank you to Carl for putting the quote that I could use on his blog site so I don't have to read the book.

The war cry of our age, says psychologist Bernie Zelbergild, is I deserve. I deserve love. I deserve to be trusted. I deserve freedom. I deserve friendship. I deserve respect. I deserve sexual pleasure.

I deserve happiness. Now, that's what Bernie said, now what Walter goes on to say, this war cry is the motive force of much of what is taught in the mainline church about personal ethics, pastoral care, and even the gospel itself.

Many would like to make Luther the precursor of the modern liberator who teaches a gospel of self-fulfillment in which the law becomes that which restricts us, and the gospel, in parentheses, or in quotation marks, that which releases us from any encumbrance, who binds the conscience not to Scripture but to oneself, who endorses, as it were, a new type of happy exchange.

Remember, that's what Luther called justification. Not that between the sins of believers and the innocence of Christ, as Luther describes it in the Freedom of the Christian, 1520, but rather that between the ego and the id.

End quote, page 169, Walter Sundberg. Boy, that pretty much summarizes our world today, doesn't it? I mean, that is just sadly perfect. Reminds me of 2 Timothy chapter 3. But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

Why? For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.

Avoid such people. Fascinatingly, Paul goes on to say, for among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

Just as Janus and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also opposed the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.

Grace Is Free, Sovereign, and Not Merited

Well, on No Compromise Radio today, thinking about these days, an entitlement society, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve. And when that twists into gospel-oriented thinking, then you no longer have the gospel.

One part works, 99 billion parts grace, Romans chapter 11 verse 6 would tell us it's no longer grace then, because grace is free, grace is sovereign, grace is distinguishing, grace is not for the worthy, it is not merited, it is not earned, it is graciously given.

There is no obligation for those who receive grace. That is why when we're not thinking properly, when you read Romans chapter 9, God has mercy on those whom he'd want to have mercy on, and then he gives compassion to the people that he wants to give compassion to.

Remember quoting Exodus 33 and 34, where Moses was put in the cleft of the rock, and he's asking God to see his goodness, and what passes by him, what is the essence of God that he chooses? It's not a random choice in his mind, it is not an arbitrary choice in his mind.

We don't know why God chooses, but God chooses Israel because he receives glory, and he wants to, and God chooses us because he receives glory, and because he wants to, and so think about our culture today.

What's Walter Sundberg getting at? If you say to yourself, we are entitled to all these things, well, we're now entitled with that same entitlement mentality. Instead of food stamps and other things from the government, we're entitled to God's favor, and once you have obligation tied in with favor, or you have deserving tied in with grace, it is not going to work.

You undo it, you undermine it. We have the society today, and they just want, and want, and want, and want. Let me read to you Romans chapter 11, verse 6, because I think it's so salient to our discussion.

Paul has been talking about the sovereignty of God in chapter 9, regarding, of course, Israel and how they don't believe towards the end of the chapter, and then the obligation for their belief in Romans chapter 10, and he talks about the remnant of Israel in chapter 11, grafting in the Gentiles, mystery of Israel's salvation, all according to my, I think this is, what is this Bible?

This is the ESV large print. Verse 6, but if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. And that's what we have. We have grace, sovereign grace. I can remember John Gershner saying, as I would listen to him on audio tapes, sovereign grace, it's a redundancy, bladda, bladda, blessed redundancy.

All grace is sovereign grace. That's true. We even have sovereign grace churches now, and their name contains a redundancy, but I like the redundancy. Sovereign grace. Why? Because our culture is, I deserve, I've merited, I've earned, I did this, so God must do that.

That sure makes a very small view of God and a very large view of man in the minds of those who are thinking that way. That is the wrong way to consider things. I deserve all these things. And so the new gospel is basically the law constricts and binds and gospel liberates.

It's not a gospel that talks about a sin-bearing Jesus, a wrath-absorbing Jesus, a Jesus who reconciles enemies, a Jesus who redeems slaves, a Jesus who is raised from the dead. No, it gets away from substitutionary atonement, and it just uses gospel as a liberating force.

If you are ensnared to things and the systems got you, well, that's kind of like law in the Luther paradigm, law gospel. And anything that, you know, gives you something and liberates you from the snares of certain kinds of thinking and philosophies and governments, that would be gospel.

So that really isn't a happy exchange, though, isn't it? Is it? Because at the end of the day, reality still is true. And true truth, as Francis Schaeffer calls it, is going to win out, and there's going to be a judgment day.

And judgment day, you're going to stand before God, and unless there has been a fortunate exchange—I think that was Luther's original term—a happy exchange, if you haven't had your sins exchanged for Christ's righteous life, his sinless life—isn't it fascinating to study the life of Christ?

I was reading B .B. Warfield last night. Jesus knew that he didn't sin. Jesus knew that he was never going to sin. Jesus was living among sinners in a frail, weak body like those who sin, but Jesus never sinned.

He was aware that he was sinless. He was the Son of Man and the Son of God, and he lived among these people who were sinful, and he came because he was sent. He gladly followed God the Father's plan, and he went to go save sinners.

And so when you have Jesus, his perfect righteousness, because he was a man born under the law, perfect obedience, fulfilling all God's righteous commands—whatever those commands were in the system of law back in those days that Jesus was under, certainly Mosaic law—the perfect obedience is credited to our account, and our sinful deeds, our sinful acts, our sinful omissions are all credited to Christ's account at Calvary.

And when Jesus said, it is finished, redemption was accomplished. And then the Spirit of God will apply that in time. And the Father, when he raised Jesus from the dead, basically said, Amen. Good job.

I accept it. That sacrifice was pleasing and acceptable in my sight because it was a wonderful aroma, using language of Old Testament sacrifices. So what about you? What do you think you deserve? Do you think you deserve the gospel?

You deserve God's free, sovereign grace? Now Sunday night I ask the congregation, I ask questions on Sunday morning to get you to think about what I'm talking about, but I don't really expect an answer.

They're more rhetorical. But on Sunday night when I ask questions, I don't mind if people respond. I really like it when the five-year-old kid will shout out, No! Yes! Because they're listening as well.

But you have people who are asked questions and they give you answers. And so I ask on Sunday night, what is grace? Someone said unmerited favor. That's right. There's nothing wrong with that. One other person who knows that I've quoted Sinclair Ferguson quite often gave that answer, which I like better, demerited favor.

It's not that we have just, you know, it's undeserved favor, that's true, but we've actually gone the wrong way. So grace is clouded when there's a works environment that seeps in. And so in today's environment you have, in the world that we live in, an environment that says, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve, I deserve, and then now we're supposed to preach to those people what you deserve.

Here's what we could do, I guess. Let's redeem this. Yes, you're right. You deserve all those things. And you also deserve punishment. You also deserve justice. You also deserve God's wrath because of your sin against a holy God.

And so, yes, you do deserve these things, like judgment, eternal death, separation from the good attributes of God, etc. So that's it for No Compromise Radio today for that particular segment. Now we move in to the next segment.

John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, and Particular Election

I think to keep the theme, what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about John Bunyan. John Bunyan, of course, Pilgrim's Progress, people are introduced to John Bunyan through Pilgrim's Progress. Barry Horn wrote a book on the Pilgrim's Progress, and it's called The Men and Themes and Issues.

Sorry. Pilgrim's Progress, Themes and Issues, Barry Horner, and it's far away, that's why. And he goes through and he breaks down the book of Pilgrim's Progress for you to understand some of these themes and men.

Well, I like this section here, sovereignty and particular election. And so, Horner writes, in A Confession of My Faith by Bunyan, published in 1672, he provides a definitive statement concerning his belief in the doctrine of election under seven headings, which proves to be very much in agreement with the particular, our Calvinistic Baptist of the day.

So let's just stop for a second. When I got to the church here, Bethlehem Bible Church, we were a part of the Baptist General Conference, and most of you would know that conference through John Piper.

John Piper's church is affiliated with the Baptist General Conference. You have Southern Baptist Conference, you have GARB, you have Reformed Baptist, you have ABC, American Baptist, you have, what are some of the other Baptists, Freewill Baptists.

So you have Particular Baptist, but we don't really know too many of those today by at least the name. And so Baptist means believers' baptism by immersion after salvation. General means that Jesus generally died for everybody.

He didn't particularly die for the elect because then the conference would be the Baptist Particular Conference, the Particular Baptist. By the way, every time I drive by a church here in New England that says Freewill Baptist, I just have to take a picture of that.

That's just such an amazing thing. The Freewill Baptist, that's what we're known for. So when you hear particular, it is particular redemption, limited atonement, definitive atonement, a definite atonement, those kind of things.

A parallel statement is found in the works of Christ as Advocate published in 1688. And then it has a little list here, Confession of Faith, 1672, election is free, being founded in grace, and the unchangeable will of God.

So let's tie that back now into Walter Sundberg's analysis of Bernie Zylbergeld, something gold, Zylbergeld, who died in 2002. So I deserve, I deserve, I deserve. When you look at Romans 11, which we did, and Ephesians 1, and 2 Timothy 2, election is free, founded in grace, and that helps us understand we don't deserve any favor from God.

We deserve other things, as I said, but no favor from God. The second thing John Bunyan wrote, I almost said, honestly, I almost said Paul Bunyan. I knew better than to say, and his ox, babe. When I was a kid, we drove from Omaha, Nebraska, up the freeway, up the interstate there, and we went and visited Minnesota.

I don't know where it was, St. Paul's, is that where we got Paul Bunyan, from St. Paul Bunyan? Oh, of course I know we didn't do that, but I think up there someplace there's a huge statue, maybe a rest home type, not rest home, a rest stop type place, and there's this huge ox named babe, and there is Paul Bunyan.

And so that was the first Bunyan I knew. I didn't know there was another Bunyan. My grandma had Bunyans on the bottom of her feet that I knew irritated her. There was a Paul Bunyan, but of course the great Bunyan was John Bunyan.

Here it says, number two, this decree, choice, or election, was before the foundation of the world, and so before the elect themselves had been in themselves. Romans 4, 2 Timothy 1 .9, Ephesians chapter 1 .4.

So, if election takes place in eternity past, what we do now on earth can't deserve that favor from God, because that favor from God is granted in eternity past. And the reason, by the way, it is granted in eternity past, because if God did say, I'm going to grant favor based on what you do and how you do it, we would be unable, we are spiritually unable to respond.

And so, just quickly, thinking about the doctrine of election, of sovereign grace, can help you think through and navigate the minefields of our entitlement situation here on earth. That's exactly what happens.

When you say to yourself, theology can help me in real life, this is very practical. People die for practical. By the way, when people die for practical, it's like when they were at Corinth and they were dying for something practical after 58 verses of Paul talking about a to-believe list versus a to-do list regarding the resurrection of bodies and of Jesus' body raised from the dead the third day.

The shouts for practical hush to a murmur when Paul says, you want practical? Let's talk about giving. That's 1 Corinthians chapter 16, 1 and following. At the top of the list of practical for Paul the Apostle was giving, and so not so many people like that.

They want other kind of practical things, not necessarily related to their wallet unless it is cashing government checks, but that's another sermon. Confession of Faith 1672, John Bunyan. The decree of election is so far off from making works in us foreseen, the ground, our cause of the choice, that it containeth in the bowels of it not only the persons but the graces that accompany their salvation.

Romans 8, Ephesians 1, Ephesians 2, Ephesians 3, 2 Timothy 1. God doesn't choose us because of foreseen faith. In our entitlement world where we deserve everything, how does that work? It doesn't work.

Number four, Jesus Christ is he in whom the elect are always considered, and that without him there is neither election, grace, nor salvation. Five, there is not an impediment attending the election of God that can hinder their conversion and eternal salvation.

Jeremiah 51, Acts 9, Romans 8. Boy, that's good news. We talked about that before as well. Why election is a good incentive for evangelism. Number six, no man can know his election but by his calling.

The vessels of mercy which God aforeprepared unto glory do thus claim a share therein. Romans 9, 23 to 25. You say, give me that modern English. The only way you can know your elect is when you believe the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Father draws you and then regenerates you, and your response is with faith.

You have a knowledge, you have an assent, you have trust, that kind of faith. Then you can say, oh, I was elect. You can't know elect people ahead of time. You only know elect people after they believe.

And then number seven, election does not forestall or prevent the means which are of God appointed to bring us to Christ, to grace and glory, but rather putteth a necessity upon the use and effect thereof, because they are chosen to be brought to heaven that way.

That is by the faith of Jesus Christ, which is the end of effectual calling. Second Thessalonians 2, 1 Peter 1, 2 Peter 1. In other words, we are told to go evangelize, and that is exactly how people are saved.

Now, maybe there's an exception someplace, maybe with someone who doesn't have mental capacity, or maybe we're talking about babies. But in all other cases, there has to be preaching. And whether that's from an angel or whether that's from people, nobody gets saved without preaching, without evangelism.

That's how God works it. So Wayne Grudem, when he pushes the envelope, you have to preach or no one gets saved, means that, what he means by that is, election unto salvation is decreed by God, determined in eternity past, but he also has decreed the means to said election.

The means to this election is through prayer, and specifically, if you look at Romans chapter 10, evangelism, preaching, telling people about the good news. That's how it comes about. So today on No Compromise Radio, I was struck with the quote from the book called, that I'm not necessarily recommending, Worship as Repentance, Lutheran and Liturgical Traditions and Catholic Consensus, Walter Sundberg.

And that quote there that Truman put up on his blog made me think, this is an entitlement situation here. And even as Christians, what do we get? And talking to my daughter the other night, she said, I think for the swim team, everybody makes the team.

Well, back in my day, we had to work to get into the team, and it wasn't you just showed up and you get it. Everybody makes the team, everybody's a winner. When our kids were smaller, we had the red plate, and if it was really a special time, you've got the red special plate.

If everybody gets a red plate every single time for dinner, it's not special anymore. And so what does this have to do with anything here? Well, we live in the society today where if you're alive, you're entitled to get things.

And so then, if you're not careful, you begin to think you're entitled to the grace of God. No, you are entitled to the wrath of God. You are entitled to the righteousness of God. That is, the justice of God, rather.

You are not entitled to the righteousness of God. You aren't entitled to the grace of God. You aren't entitled to the benefits of God's love. That's all by grace. So one more way to stay away from thinking with a works mentality is to keep your mind in the Word of God, and keep your mind on radio shows, I guess like this, or other ones on WVNE, and reading books.

How about The Pilgrim's Progress? That's my assignment for you. Go get The Pilgrim's Progress and read it this year. If you haven't read it, you've got to read it. It will encourage you, it will convict you, it will keep your focus on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Mike Abendroth, NoCompromiseRadio .com.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 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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