Weddings and Updates

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. My name is Mike Abendroth. It is, I guess, in real time,

February, what is it, 21st? Yeah, February 21st,

Friday. I think I probably recorded, I don�t know, five or eight shows. Why not five, six, or seven?

I don�t know, five or eight or ten shows since I�ve had the knee surgery, and I am so tired.

The long story short is I had ACL replacement with an allograft.

Allo means another, somebody else�s, not my own graft.

One of the same kind would be autograft. Not autograft, but autograft.

And then they did a meniscus repair, and so for six weeks I have not been able to stand without crutches as that repair thing is happening.

If you had just a meniscus shave and clean up, you�re walking in a couple days. Same with ACL replacement, but when

I had the meniscus repair, then I just had to sit around for six weeks. Then I�m so old that I got,

I don�t know if it has anything to do with age or not, but I got a DVT, deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot, and so I have had to be on thinners, blood thinners for the last five weeks, and it is so bad.

I could probably take two naps a day, so I basically don�t do anything except prepare my sermons.

I missed one week, that first week, when my leg was still pretty bad. But besides that,

I�ve been preaching on a stool. Some of you, I know, have noticed that, and hopefully this week, this

Sunday, I won�t have to preach on a stool. So Wednesday, just for an update, by the way, thanks for praying,

I got the okay to walk. He said, �Walk as much as you�re able to tolerate.� And I�m thinking, �Great, I�ll just start walking.�

But my leg doesn�t know what to do. My leg doesn�t know how to act.

My calf and everything else. So I�ve lost weight from the surgery. I think my stomach is bigger, but all my other muscles, not the stomach as a muscle, but I just lost muscle weight.

And so anyway, just trying to learn how to walk again. I have a wedding to officiate tomorrow.

I�m basically kind of on one crutch, limping along. Anyway, a lot of people have it a lot worse off than I do.

It does make me long for heaven. I would wake up every morning thinking, �Oh, crutches again.�

And then I would think of folks like Johnny Erickson Tata and some of our listeners, �You�ll probably never get out of your wheelchair until glory, and then you�ll get a new body, one day a resurrection body, and therefore

I know you long for that.� So I shouldn�t complain, although some days

I do. But it�s been a good test for me. I didn�t think it was going to hurt that bad.

I should have known when they gave me 50 oxycodone that it was going to be bad.

Prior to that, I should have known when they did a nerve block on the front of the leg and on the back while I was in pre -op that it was going to be bad.

So anyway, hopefully we�re going to be back recording some shows. Spencer has been playing reruns.

I just got a nice letter today in the mail saying, �Come on, let�s keep going with NOCO.� And I guess we�ll have to.

You can email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com. If you want to follow me at Twitter, it�s at NOCOradio.

I think that�s what it is. Just to let you know, just in general, Twitter is acerbic.

Twitter is kind of in your face. There�s a lot of irony and satire and people going back and forth.

I don�t do Facebook much. I think that maybe is a kinder platform. But anyway, if you only know me through Twitter, you probably think

I�m a real jerk. At times, it reminds me of that story when

I was preaching about spiritual gifts and how some have ceased. A guy got really mad at me and met me at the door of the church where I normally am just greeting grandmas and saying hello to visitors.

It�s a catch -22 when a pastor stands at the door. Am I standing there for you to tell me my sermon�s great, or am

I just trying to be nice? Anyway, the guy looked at me and he said, �You�re a liar� at the door.

Now, if I would have been thinking more on my feet, which is hard to do after you preach.

You pour your heart out as you�re preaching. I would have said something like, �Well, I know

I am. I know I regularly lie, even though I hate it.

What particular lie were you talking about? What is all this stuff doing way over here?

All my notes. The people that come in and clean the church, they move all my stuff around.

Now, the bad news is about, you know, cleaners at the church, you have to pay for them to do it.

They don�t always do exactly what you say. The good news is if you hire people from your own church to clean and they don�t do a good job, then when you fire them, then they leave the church.

So, if you fire outsiders, then nothing happens. Anyway, I said, �How did you know

I�m lying ?� He said, �Well, when people sweat, that shows they�re lying and you were sweating while you were preaching.�

Hey, dude, it was in the middle of the summer. And I�m trying to put some energy into this thing, some verve into this.

Anyway, my name is Mike Abendroth with No Compromise Radio. Hopefully, we�ll be back in action.

Seriously, thanks for your prayers. It�s been a rough six weeks. Hopefully, I�ll be able to make it out to the

Shepherd�s Conference soon enough. And what do I have here in front of me? Oh, I just got a

Pete�s Gift certificate from one of you listeners in the mail, too. I�ll mention who that is later. Right here in front of me,

I have not Pete�s Coffee, not my once -a -month little treat, Diet Mountain Dew, but my premier protein, 30 grams of protein, no artificial growth hormones, 160 calories, 1 gram sugar, 24 minerals and vitamins, high -protein shake, low -fat.

And guess what the flavor is? I said, �I never thought

I�d like this flavor.� And she�s like, �Of course you would, you weirdo.� She didn�t say weirdo, but her face said it.

Peaches and herb� oh, no, Peaches and Cream. Wasn�t that a band? Man, that�s bad.

It tastes like chemicals. All right.

So, here�s what I want to talk about today. One of my favorite things to do in a wedding ceremony is to preach the gospel.

Now, tomorrow, here�s the fun part. It�s going to be at a Unitarian church.

Now, there�s a congregational church in town, and it�s UCC, which is more liberal than the

Four C�s, and I have been told that I�m not allowed to officiate a wedding there because they didn�t give the reason, but Mike Ebenroth is not allowed to officiate a wedding there.

Therefore, I haven�t officiated a wedding there. And you know what? That doesn�t even bother me because I wouldn�t let the pastor of that church officiate a wedding there.

So, I mean, come on, let�s get real. Years ago, I met with that pastor, and I tried to convince him

I was nice, and he tried to convince me he was orthodox, and I don�t think either one were convinced, in my opinion.

So, I�m going to go downtown to a larger city, and there�s a Unitarian church, which is very pretty.

The building that I pastor in, that our church meets in, it�s not very nice, and it�s not the typical kind of congregational church, 1600s, that you might think of in some of the pictures here in New England.

But it is what it is. Therefore, lots of people, when they do weddings, although we don�t charge anything for weddings here, we pay you to do them here.

I think we just, like, a small janitor fee, that�s about it. But not the typical 500, 800 bucks, whatever.

I�m going to go to a Unitarian church, and I can�t wait tomorrow. By the way, the Unitarians don�t care what you believe.

I mean, that�s why they�re Unitarians. But their doctrine is, there�s no trinity, right?

No triune nature of God. They don�t believe in one God, subsisting in three persons.

They don�t believe that there�s one God, Deuteronomy 6. There are three persons, the

Father, the Son, and the Spirit. And that the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the

Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father. That�s the three things to kind of remember about the trinity that will generally keep you from heresy and damnation, for that matter.

I think of Matthew. Matter of fact, maybe this will be the verse that I read.

But Matthew, of course, is talking about the Lord Jesus, and he gives, he,

Matthew, records the Lord Jesus� words at the end of the book, which we know as the

Great Commission. I think the Great Commission is the Father sending the Son in eternity past, but this is a

Great Commission nonetheless. And it says here, �Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, Matthew 28, to the mountain to which

Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.� You might want to check that sometime, because I don�t think that�s going to have anything to do with doubting

Thomas. This is the different doubting. �And Jesus came and said to them, �All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name.� Now, let�s just stop right there for a second.

�Baptizing them in the name.� That is singular, is it not?

The singular name. God is one. There�s one God. �In the name of the

Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.� One God, three persons.

It does not say, �Baptize them in the names of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.�

We would get tritheism there, right? Three gods. It does not say, �Baptize them in the name of Father, and of Son, and of Holy Spirit.�

It does not say, �In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.� It�s very particular here, is it not?

�In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.�

So tomorrow, I�m going to say, maybe not this exact quote, but I�m going to say, �Welcome to the marriage ceremony of so -and -so and so -and -so.�

Well, I�ll tell you the names. I�ll tell the people the names that are there. �And welcome on their behalf, and on behalf of the triune

God.� God the Father, God the Son, and God the

Spirit. Because when are they going to talk about the triune God in this

Unitarian Church? Essentially, the Unitarians, Socinians, they deny the deity of Christ.

And then if you deny the deity of Christ, then you�re down to at least two persons who are two possible persons who are divine, and they are not going to have the

Holy Spirit divine if the Son�s not divine. And so you have, I don�t know who

Jesus is to them, a created being, probably the greatest created being for most modern -day

Unitarian Universalists. He would be a good teacher, a nice teacher. Anyway, that�s going to happen tomorrow,

Lord willing. Tonight�s the rehearsal. Why do rehearsals take so much time?

People don�t listen. People don�t get there on time. I love officiating weddings.

I hate going to the rehearsals, although I do have a wedding coordinator this time, so it�ll be much easier.

Do what she says, unless I counterman that.

Oh, I have told you probably on this show before that when I�m doing marriage counseling, and by the way, if you�re a pastor listening, you should be doing something else with your time.

But if you�re a pastor listening, this might be helpful to you. Instead of meeting with a couple 10 times for counseling, here�s what

I end up doing. Because think about it. Weddings take a lot of time. If you meet with a couple at the very beginning, and they�re going to say, �We�re going to get married.�

You ask for their testimony, and are they able to get married? Is it a biblical marriage? There�s one meeting.

You got another meeting to plan the service. You�ve got 10 counseling sessions. You�ve got rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, wedding, wedding reception.

There�s probably, I don�t know how much time is involved. And in addition to time, what

I like to do, and saving time, I like to say, �All right.

Well, let�s meet a few times and go over a few things.� And I like you to meet with each elder and their spouse, each elder and his wife.

Don�t invite yourself over for dinner, but say, you know, pick up something at Trader Joe�s or some dessert tort or something, and bring over dessert, and just talk and ask them what they would have done differently in their marriage, and what they did that was good, and honoring the

Lord, and kind of casually versus a systematic counseling class, a pre -marital, you know, 10 -week class.

Nothing wrong with a 10 -week class. Maybe you have somebody else teach that class. But here, now I have other people involved because my marriage,

I love Kim. She loves me, but we don�t have a perfect marriage, right? And there are things that I wish

I would have done differently and things maybe I don�t even talk about that I�m not aware that would be helpful to a couple.

So I have everybody else do it as well as me, and then I also say, �Pick a couple of other couples in the church that you respect the way they treat each other, and you think to yourself, �You know what?

That�s a godly marriage. Not a perfect marriage, but godly, and I want you to meet with them too.� You know, a couple people that have been married 40, 50 years.

And ask them what are some good things and what are some things they regret or whatever, generally speaking.

Anyway, so that�s for the pastors. That�s for free. But I also do this. I know that I want to preach the gospel in the wedding ceremony.

I mean, can you imagine if you didn�t preach the gospel at a wedding ceremony? I mean, what a loser.

If you can�t preach the gospel at a wedding ceremony, I mean, worse than a loser.

Ephesians 5 .25, �Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.�

And he goes on and talks a little bit more, and then he says at the very end in verse 32, �This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.�

Marriage didn�t happen first, and then God said, �Oh, that�s a good way to think about how my son rescues and dies for the bride and makes her holy.�

No, that was already in the mind of God, and then marriage followed. Therefore, it�s easy to preach the gospel.

Well, here�s how I do it in a wedding ceremony. In premarital counseling,

I ask the couple all kinds of questions, including every time

I meet with them, excuse me, are you keeping your hands off of each other? Are you sleeping together?

Are you having sex? Not because I want to have illicit thoughts in my mind and want to know all the details.

I�m just trying to hold them accountable, right? I�m not against sex, but I am against it in anything outside of marriage between God�s ordained male -female setup, and I think it helps keep them accountable when they know

I�m going to ask. Well, I have other thoughts about that, but I got to get back on this other thing.

So, I say to the groom -to -be, the husband -to -be, I say, �Give me four reasons you picked your bride.�

And that�s in front of the lady, right? And now she wants to know four reasons.

Wow. That�s pretty amazing. She smiles. She�s going to be kind of blushing.

What�s he going to say? Now, the guy, he doesn�t know. If this is like a spiritual question, or like, can

I say she�s gorgeous? She�s beautiful eyes. He thinks, you know, he has to say.

One guy said, �Because he�s a five -point Calvinist.� Oh, man.

So, they�ll say things like, �She�s godly. She loves, you know, she loves children. She balances me out.

She has a servant�s heart. She�s pretty. She�s� What else do they say?

I don�t know what you would say. What is going on? Somebody just sent me a little text here.

Oh, wow. That was my wife sent me something. Wow. This is live radio.

Something happens to cleaning a furnace thing, and she was showing me how dirty this thing was.

Anyway, then I say, �Congregation, that�s a good reason to pick a woman.

Those are four good reasons. I don�t blame the man at all. If you�re going to have a love marriage, that is something that�s not an arranged marriage, those are four good reasons.

And matter of fact, if there are parents involved in a different culture, and it�s going to be an arranged marriage, those things aren�t bad either, right?

She comes from a good family. She�s godly. She�s beautiful on the inside and out, et cetera, right?

There�s no harm, no foul for picking because of.

That�s how we do it. I used to play pickup basketball. If you lost a game, you�d have to wait two hours. We played to win, and so you�d save a couple spots, and I�ve got next game, and we�d stack the deck, and we�d play four or five games, six games, we�d be done, walk off.

We pick the talent. We pick because of. I don�t pick somebody because they can�t dribble.

Now, when I got married, I was an unbeliever, so it wasn�t, you know, she was godly, although I probably would have said, �I�m glad she�s religious, you know, or moral, or something like that.�

Who knows what I would have said? Then I say, but today we�re talking about God�s love, not just a man�s love and a woman�s love, but God�s love.

And let me read you something from Romans, a book in the Bible that tells you about God�s love and how it�s even greater than a man�s or greater than a woman�s.

We pick because of. God picks in spite of. And so, see if you can find the four words that describe every person that was ever born, except the

Lord Jesus, of course. Romans chapter 5. �For while we were still weak, at the right time

Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good one, good one would dare even to die.

But God chose His love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since therefore we have been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God.

For if we were enemies, we were reconciled at God by the death of His Son. Much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.

Much more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received reconciliation.�

Did you see that? �Weak or helpless ,� verse 6. �Ungodly ,� verse 6.

�Sinners ,� verse 8. And �Enemies ,� verse 10. Then I usually go into the gospel and talk about every person here.

You either are or you were, in God's eyes. Helpless, couldn't save yourself.

Ungodly, exactly opposite of who God is. Sinners, falling short of God's standard of perfection.

And enemies. But thankfully, Jesus wasn't helpless. He's a great, mighty

Savior. Jesus was godly and is godly. Jesus was a perfect Redeemer.

He's not a sinner at all, in whom there was no sin. And He was the Son of God. And by trusting in this risen

Savior who dies for these kind of people, you don't have to be an enemy. You can be a friend.

And off I go. And that's how I preach the gospel. And it's kind of sweet because you're talking about what happens, you know, why does this man pick this woman?

And then you turn it into the gospel. And it's pretty amazing to think about, right?

Dear Christian, God didn't pick you because you were better than your friend. Why are you saved and your brother's not saved?

Why are you saved and your spouse isn't saved? Why are you saved and your kid's not saved? Why are you saved and somebody else isn't saved?

Has nothing to do with brights, smarts. Brights.

What's brights? Being bright, smart, attractive, wise, rich, mighty, famous.

First Corinthians 1 tells us God doesn't pick many of those people. He picks some, right,

Abraham? But not many of those. A good thing it's not any.

It's just He didn't pick many as the writer. Some writers would say. Anyway, my name is

Mike Abendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry. Israel dates are in last part of February 2021 into early

March. Possible Rome extension. If you'd like the itinerary, email me.

Mike at NoCompromiseRadio .com. You fly from wherever you are. You meet us in Newark or Tel Aviv.

And off we go with Pat Abendroth, Mike Abendroth and might even have Mrs. NoCo there.

I'm not exactly sure. Deposits of $300 are due into the church here.

Bethlehem Bible Church, 307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston Mass, 01583.

Those are due first part of October. You can send them in now. First come, first serve.

Bethlehem Bible Church, Israel trip, $300. 307 Lancaster Street, West Boylston Mass, 01583.

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 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.