App For Confession

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 ministry. Mike Abendroth here at the helm on the bridge.

I was in seminary and my professor, I remember one professor said, never use a

Star Trek illustration. Since I was born in 1960 and grew up watching Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek, how could

I not? How could I not say something like when the Borg assimilates, that's like the effectual call, that's like irresistible grace, that's the invincible call of God when he calls people to himself and regenerates them.

That is assimilation. You will be assimilated. So I sit here on the bridge today.

What was it? NC 1701, was that right? I don't know, but I think that has been decommissioned since then.

I think the Enterprise was also used for all kinds of ship's names as well.

So on No Compromise Radio today, we're going to talk a little bit about confession. We're gonna talk about confession, specifically

Roman Catholic confession and then biblical confession, and we'll work through that. But before I start,

I'd like to continue my little excursus in wildlife in the kingdom come, the book by Johnson and Co, the old out of print

Zondervan book that is a satire on theological systems. On the right -hand side of every page, you have a cartoon, a drawing, as they say in New England, drawing.

And then on the left -hand side, it gives you a little theological description with lots of insight, but cloaked in the garb of comedy, satire.

This is the Pelagian. And the Latin term for Pelagian is goody two -shoes with unique spelling.

And here Co and Johnson, I bet you Johnson wrote it and Co drew it, but maybe it's the other way around.

By far the most beautiful and colorful of all the birds in the moral high grounds is the proud

Pelagian. This reigning king of pomp and splendor typically spreads his impeccable plumage for all to see.

His feathered feet is usually an unabashed attempt to attract as many admirers as his flock can carry.

So impressive is the sight that some have suggested that his brilliant display has a binding or blinding effect on the admirers of this unfallen fowl.

The first bird of this kind, cited in the fourth century AD was considered unusually immaculate in presence and disposition.

Many observers of that day were convinced that a diet of sinless sprouts and free will fruit preserved his purity and innate innocence.

However, as these lush fields of good deeds became scattered with the seeds of total depravity, the

Pelagians were forced to migrate to higher grounds. Although the species flourished there for a time, soon droves of fierce

Augustinians feared for their horns of original sin, pursued them nearly to extinction.

Large herds of scholastics and great reformers continued to flush these foul fledglings from their free will folly.

Try to say that 15 times in a row, quickly. Flush these foul fledglings from their free will folly.

With this immense train of propositional plumage sagging behind, the

Pelagian became easy prey as he was never really capable of getting his ideas off the ground.

Although the Pelagian and his subspecies, the semi -Pelagian, ultimately found safer havens among certain wilder varieties of Arminians, to most explorers, his dazzling appearance seems to have lost its luster.

Unless these plumed pilgrims recognize their fallen state, they have little hope of redemption.

Again, lots of biblical truth and biblical analysis, historical analysis when

I'm reading these things. It's just amazing. So I don't really care that much if you're a semi -Pelagian, but if you're a

Pelagian, you need to get saved from the free will folly. Today on No Compromise Radio, let's talk about iPhone applications.

Yes, you heard that right, iPhone applications. By the way, speaking of applications, we are now on a couple other radio stations and a satellite.

If you go to bostonpraiseradio .com, I think you're going to find us.

And it's quite an interesting arrangement there. If you look at broadcasters, you're going to see apostles, you're going to see a prophets, you're going to see all kinds of things going on.

And we have an interesting relationship with the folks over at Boston Praise Radio.

I think a good relationship. And if you don't like it that I'm on that station, then you can talk to Todd Friel because Wretched Radio is also on Boston Praise Radio.

So that's a very interesting thing. I don't even know the station numbers anymore, but I think we're on for an hour in the morning, several days a week, and then satellite too.

So I guess that's the other way you can catch us at Boston or all Boston Praise or something like that.

By the way, on Sunday, I think for the first time in 14 years that I've been here, at the end of a song, somebody shouted out super loud.

I mean, it's not under your breath, Reformed Baptist, hmm, or, you know, amen or preach it or something like that.

It was a scream, hallelujah. And we had Phil Johnson here preaching.

So maybe it was a Phil fan or something, maybe a Pyromaniacs fan. Phil, if you're listening, I don't know what you do, but I think you must bring out the best in people.

So anyway, that was very interesting. Back to topic on No Compromise Radio. There is an iPhone app that you probably saw back in February, and it helps with Roman Catholic confession.

And the article that I'm reading from the Philadelphia CBS website, forgive me, iPhone, for I have sinned.

Forgive me, iPhone, for I have sinned. And then it shows a small child with an iPhone app, and then it gives you a picture of what the iPhone actually looked like.

Now, I haven't downloaded the app, and so maybe you'll say to me, well, if you haven't downloaded the app, how can you speak about such a thing?

But that would be pretty small, wouldn't it? That wouldn't be right. The new app for devices like the iPhone and iPad aims to take the intimidation factor out of the confession for Catholics, and the church is giving it the thumbs up.

Well, occasionally I'll say to myself, we're coming up on our two -year anniversary for No Compromise Radio, how am

I gonna figure out how to do another show? I mean, I have a stack of about 30 things here at my table on No Compromise Studio.

We have a stack of things that we want to cover. I have a bunch of things that I've already taught in my life.

Current events pop up, and so we'll talk about those things. But since I can't make this stuff up,

I just say to myself, well, I might as well talk about it. I might as well talk about it to you, because I want you to be a Berean. I want you to discern.

I want you to think about the world through the biblical lens. I want you to put the grid of Scripture before you, and interpret everything you see through that biblical lens.

And I don't want you to be a person who will fall for the erroneous application of Matthew 7, judge not lest you be judged.

First of all, open up Matthew 7, read the entire section. And I know the world wants that for their life verse.

You know, people have their favorite verses. That's the world's favorite verse, judge not lest you be judged. We are to be righteous judgers.

You are supposed to judge things. Now, you are not allowed to judge people to eternal hell. You can't say, well, you're going to hell.

You could say, if you continue thinking that way and living that way, you are going to go to hell.

I think that's probably a fair statement. But we're not the ultimate judge, but we are to judge and discern and to be

Bereans, and even to the Thessalonican church in 1 Thessalonians 5, we're to judge things.

This is right. This is wrong. This is biblical. This is unbiblical. This is healthy. This is unhealthy.

This is immoral. This is moral. We make those judgments all day long. But if you'd like to sin and have nobody talk to you about that and have your conscience as clean as you can, because you get no external impingements upon it, then you don't want anybody to judge anything you do.

You have bought into psychology that wants to affirm, that wants to confirm, that wants to applaud and celebrate everything you do.

And if that's the case, who needs a Savior? But since we have all sinned and we continue to fall short of the glory of God, then we continually need a

Savior who never sinned and who never fell short of the glory of God, who was the glory of God incarnate, the eternal

Son of God, the glory of Israel. That's a wild, wonderful name in 1 Samuel, for God Himself.

So, today on No Compromise Radio, I want you to be a thinker. I know thinking hard is difficult.

Thinking is impossibility for many people when they are not even weaned from entertainment.

Entertainment has its place. It has its place later. And so, at least what

I'm trying to teach my kids, and I try to live this way, do what you're supposed to do, so then you can do what you want to do.

Do what you have to do, so then you can do what you'd like to do, instead of doing what you want to do first and then scurrying around to get everything else done.

We all have duties. As a human, we have a duty to our neighbor.

We have a duty to God. We have duties at our work, at home, and the list goes on and on.

And I'm not saying it's in that order either. Of course, it's to the Lord, number one. But when you have certain duties in life, you get those done first, and then you can play.

Recreation's good. Recreation is wonderful after you've done what you need to do. And so today,

I'm no compromise with this iPhone app. It's just ludicrous, but it is completely consistent. It is completely consistent.

You see on the app page, Confession, Begin Confession, in the name of the

Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It's got a little blank spot, and then it says, for it has been four weeks since my last confession.

So you're still supposed to go to the priest to confess. But here, this is going to be kind of a helper.

The article says, Katie, a Temple University sophomore, likes how the app takes you step -by -step, preparing you for the sacrament by asking questions that might point out a sin or two you'll want to divulge.

Quote, I like how you have, in the name of the Father, like what they should say,

Katie said. Teresa, a senior at Temple, says, that'll help, as long as you're not blasting

Jay -Z when you enter the confessional. See, it's just a big, fat joke.

Now you might say, well, I'm a Roman Catholic, and I like confession, but this is a joke. We agree,

Protestant and Catholic, that this iPhone thing is a joke. And I would think that would be good, but I'm also going to get into confession.

What is Roman Catholic confession? But here, the article goes on to say, confession for some people can be kind of intimidating.

So I think this will make it a lot easier for them to get through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Father Jerry Wild, at the University Newman Center, says when it comes to absolution, touchscreens can't replace the face -to -face, but support for the app shows the

Church is keeping up with the time. He said, quote, we certainly live in a technological age, so the

Church has to be aware of that and respond to that reality. Okay, what do we do when it comes to confessing our sins?

I do know that you sin, because that is the state of mankind. We have a federal representative, and his name was

Adam. After all, the curse came into the world not when Eve sinned.

She cursed herself when she sinned, but the effects upon all the progeny, all the posterity, all the people, all creation was affected when the federal head,

Adam, when he ate. He ate second, but since he was the federal head, it all was affected through that federal head.

Well, we have another federal head, for those of us who are Christians, and that federal head, his name is

Jesus. He's not the second Adam, because there might be more then. He's the last Adam.

There could be no more Adams. There are no more federal representatives. We have the federal representative, Adam, as we were born into the world, and then through the finished work of Christ and the gift of faith, we then believe in the risen

Savior, and we have a new federal head, Christ Jesus. And for all those in Christ Jesus, we have forgiveness because we have

Christ paying for our sins, and we have Christ's perfect righteousness imputed to our account.

And so when I look at No Compromise Radio, a guide to confession, and I pulled this up, not from a wild Protestant bashing website.

This is catholic .org, catholic .org slash prayer slash confession. When I look at this, it just strikes me as very odd.

Now, James chapter five says, therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayer of the righteous, of a righteous person has great power as it is working.

Sometimes I love the ESV and sometimes I'm not so sure. That is James chapter five. And so there is a confession to one another.

Does that mean there's a confession now to priest? Is that where we get the confession for the priest?

And so here on catholic .org, there's an article called A Guide for Confession.

And so it first starts to talk about sins. And I would agree that we need to recognize our sins and just how important forgiveness is.

That is true. And then it talks about the need for penance, the sacrament of penance, our confession.

So is that really a sacrament? Who made it a sacrament? What is going on? Now the article nosedives right after this.

And it says, as a result of original sin, human nature is weakened. Baptism by imparting the life of Christ's grace takes away original sin and turns us back to God.

So we part ways right away. Both Protestant and Roman Catholic would believe that confession is proper.

It's not just good for the soul. It is biblical that you are to confess. And then once we go to James chapter five, then we begin to part ways.

And then the rift is huge. The chasm is like a Grand Canyon when it comes to the

Roman Catholic's erroneous wrong view of what baptism does.

Then it keeps going farther south because one error leads to another and one compromise leads to another.

And if you have the Bible and tradition and the magisterium on equal par with one another, then anything goes.

It says here that there are two kinds of actual sin, mortal and what's the other one? Venial.

And so does the Bible give those different kinds of sins? When the mortal sin comes along, they said the act must be something very serious.

Isn't all sin serious because it's against a thrice holy God? Holy, holy, holy is the

Lord God almighty. You can tell the heinousness of a sin by the one it sins against.

Moral sin, catholic .org says the person must have sufficient understanding of what is being done.

The person must have sufficient freedom of the will. And so for those of you who are listening today, let's say you're a

Roman Catholic. Well, I'll challenge you to come up with a biblical defense. And if you start talking about the traditions and the magisterium and how the

Roman Catholic Church made the Bible, well, then I don't really have anything to say because how can I argue with that?

You have a set of presuppositions. And you're going to live by them and you're going to probably die by them, but not if I can help it because I want to try to convince you the other way.

People think I'm a Catholic basher. I'm not a Catholic basher. First of all, the

Roman Catholic Church is a Protestant basher because it's in the doctrinal statements. It's in Trent.

And so I don't have in my doctrinal statement anything about Roman Catholics, but they have in their doctrinal statement many things about Protestants and how they, how

I am anathema, accursed, damned. This is a very important subject and both people can't be right.

Roman Catholics and Protestants can't both be right. They're either both wrong. One's wrong and the other one's right, but they both can't be right.

And this is eternal issues we're talking about. This is not some minor thing. And so for someone to say this is

Catholic bashing, that is a very convenient blanket to try to throw in the subject so you don't have to listen.

That's just like a kid who puts his fingers in his ears and starts saying, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. That is ignorance and that is not going to get you anywhere.

That is not going to get you anywhere. Why can't you just listen and then examine? If you say,

I was born a Catholic and I'm going to die a Catholic, well, that's your opportunity. That's your prerogative.

But the thing is, what if you're wrong? What if your mom was wrong?

What if your grandma was wrong? I have Roman Catholics in my family. My grandmother was a Roman Catholic and she knew

I didn't hate her. She knew I loved her. I actually, you're not supposed to probably admit this, but they're both long dead and gone.

I actually had more of a love and affinity and an affection to my Catholic grandmother than I did my

Lutheran Protestant grandmother. I love them both and I was thankful that they both loved me, but I loved

Grandma Nona more than I loved Grandma Erna. I never said that in my life. I think

I just said it for the first time. So call me a Catholic basher all you'd like. I'll call your church, if you're

Roman Catholic, a Protestant basher, even though the last Pope and this Pope will do everything they can for any kind of ecumenical assuaging, assuaging.

I'm just looking at the Bible saying, where do we get the sacrament of penance from James chapter five?

I don't think you get it at all. What's the difference between the iPhone app and the sacrament of penance?

There's no difference really. One is kind of corny and obvious, but the other one is just as unbiblical.

Here we have to be very sorry for our sins. It says the essential act of penance on the part of the penitent is contrition, a clear and decisive rejection of the sin committed together with a resolution not to commit it again out of the love one has for God and which is reborn with repentance.

And see language like this, it seems good, it seems right. And then you have examination of the conscience.

But if it comes from getting rid of original sin through baptism, it's not gonna happen. If it comes to, well,

I have to confess to a priest, where does this say in James chapter five? Confess your sins to one another and pray for another that you have to go to a priest.

If you sin against someone, you go to that someone and ask for forgiveness and they, you.

But if you don't sin against the priest, you don't go to the priest and ask him for forgiveness. He has no right to grant you forgiveness.

You didn't sin against him. You don't need to go in the name of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. My last confession was blank, blank, blank.

No, you don't need that. Where did you get that from the Bible? That is not there. So when

I see some iPhone app, I just say to myself, well, this is just an easy way for people to confess their sins and then go out and just sin all the more.

Confession does what? It confesses specific sins, not general sins, but specific sins.

You don't say to people, well, if I've ever sinned against you in this, I would like to be forgiven. No, confession says, this is what

I've sinned. This is what I've done. This is how it's a sin against God and how it's a sin against you.

Would you please forgive me? You confess your sins, not anyone else's.

You confess your sins to the person you sinned against, no one else. Now, sometimes it might be a group of people that you've sinned against.

The pastor's been unfaithful to his wife, sinned against the congregation in his call and his ordination and they asked to stand up before the congregation.

I've sinned. I don't mean I. I haven't done that by the grace of God. I don't plan on it anytime soon either.

Then the congregation that's been sinned against can say, yes, we forgive you. But here, specific sins confessed to a specific person that you've sinned against.

You don't confess to everyone some group confession, exhibitionism type thing, if you've only sinned against one person.

If you sin against a priest and you'd like to confess that, that's fine. But then if a priest has sinned against you, he should confess that as well.

And this has nothing to do with some sacrament of penance. There's no sacrament of penance in the Bible. You don't confess your sins to a priest unless one, that you've particularly sinned against that priest.

Or two, as one man said, his first name was one and his last name was another.

Confess your sins to one another. If his first name is one and his last name's another, fine. That was

Luther, by the way, a strange confessor. His name is one, another, first name, last name.

Sin is always against God. I think the Roman Catholics would probably believe that as well.

And I think of Psalm 51, "'Against thee, the only have I sinned "'and done what is evil in thy sight.'"

And so when it comes to confession, confession means I agree with God that I've sinned against him and I've sinned against someone else.

Now, some sins are only against God, but some sins are against other people and God.

If you've sinned against someone, you've sinned against them and God. But if you've sinned against God, it doesn't necessarily mean you've been sinning against someone else.

And here's the great thing about the cross and Christ Jesus' perfect atonement and his great redemption, that if you conceal your transgressions, you won't prosper.

But he who confesses, Proverbs 28, and forsakes them will find compassion.

Because of the cross work, you confess your sins to God, you'll find compassion.

And then if you confess your sins to God and he tells you through his word, if you've sinned against other people, go to them and confess that as well.

There's great freedom. There's great liberty. And if you're at a moralistic church and if you're at a high -performance church, then it becomes difficult.

But if you're at a church that says, we believe in depravity, we believe in the sin hangover even of believers, and we believe

Jesus is spotless and that he has no blemish and that he's perfectly righteous and that we no longer have

Adam as our federal head, but we have Jesus, then there's freedom. No one has to go around performance -based.

We all say we have fallen short, we've sinned and we never measure up. Therefore, we look away from ourselves and look to Jesus, the great author and finisher of our faith.

He's the one that accomplished redemption and the spirit of God is the one who applies redemption.

And then we respond with faith. My name is Mike Abendroth, NoCompromiseRadio .com. God bless you.

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.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE its staff or management.