The Heart of Christ - Part 1

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. I think I've introduced the show that way 4 ,400 times. I asked chat the other day, how many No Compromise Radio shows have there been? And I think it said 4 ,385 or something.

But this is only my, what, eighth show with my sidekick, Austin Hobbs. Hey, Mike. And you know what? I've done the show so many times, I don't even know how to do your volume.

Right. Welcome back to the show. Thank you, Mike. Happy to be here. Happy for you to teach me how to use the system here.

I was explaining all the Roadcaster Pro 2 stuff to Austin, and then I didn't do what I told him to do. You can always write us, info at nocompromiseradio .com. We're trying to rev things up again. That is to say, instead of one show a week, maybe three new shows a week, and I just feel a lot better.

It's been a long ride with just leukemia and everything else. And so, up and at them, as they would say. That's what my mom would say to wake me up. She'd say, up and at them. What would your mom say?

What would my mom say?

To like wake you up when you were a kid. I don't know. I always woke up early. She'd get ready early in the morning, 5 a .m. I would just go to where she was getting ready and just say hello. And then, when I was a kid, I would just go crawl in bed with my dad.

I think I just woke up on my own. All right. Well, in our house, if we would not get up, she would give us the water treatment. And that's not waterboarding. She was a fine mother. A water treatment was she'd get some water in a cup or a bowl and just start flicking it onto our faces with her fingers and to get water on her face to wake us up.

Wow. You're that tough, huh? Welcome to Omaha, Nebraska. I think by the time this plays, no, maybe not, we are going to the Pactum, the conference in Omaha that my brother hosts at Omaha Bible Church.

You were there last year, Austin. What's your favorite thing about that conference?

Well, I think one of my favorite things about the conference is the fellowship. And we were really blessed to have a great host family. Pat set us up with a great, kind host family, the McCoys, Brian and Shelby.

And we just became really good friends with them. We're gonna stay with them again this year. They're gonna take us to the zoo in Omaha. So they're very kind. So we're gonna bring some coffee.

And they'll enjoy that, I'm sure. Nice, well, I'm staying with the Hatfields. Oh, the Hatfields, okay. Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah, I see. They have a dinner theater in Tennessee. I've not been to it, but I drove past it and it was the dinner theaters, the Hatfields and McCoys.

And so you must get a bunch of buffet food and then there's probably gunfighting and stuff like that. Oh, really? All right, well, that's three minutes of just banal talk. Banal, what's, how do you pronounce it?

Banal? Banal. Banal, yeah, what's that mean? Just like? Like harmless. Sounds good. Oh, I'll just tell you a quick story. I thought it was kind of funny. There's some construction by the gym near my house.

And I went there and I couldn't get a certain way. And the way I'm parked, it's kind of, you park side by side in a diagonal fashion. And there was, I needed to go the opposite way. So if you back out, I couldn't, I didn't want to go the way that my car was facing.

So I just backed all the way out and kind of like made a reverse U-turn because I didn't see any cars coming. And there the policeman pulls right up and blocks me. So I can't go like, you just broke the law, son.

Oh, wow. And so I just, I looked at him and then he looked at me and he just sat there. So I got out of the car and walked over and I said, sir, I don't have any excuse, I'm guilty. And he said, you know, pastor, you can't do that.

Oh, wow. And so I know him from the gym and he did not give me a ticket, but he could have. So I was glad for mercy. Oh yeah, that's mercy. So you, Austin, have been here for, let's say eight or nine months and you have started a home group just adjacent to the church is a house that the church bought a few years ago.

And so I guess it's called the Parsonage technically. And so you have a home group at the Parsonage and we want to talk about the topic that you've chosen to discuss at the home group. And I was there last Friday, which was excellent.

Tell us the topic and why you chose that topic. And actually, then we're going to talk about that topic today.

The Heart of Christ and Sanctification

Yeah, so our topic this fall is going to be gentle and lowly. It's actually the book by Dane Ortlund. We're going to be doing a book study over. It's the heart of Christ for sinners and sufferers. And we should be walking through the various passages that Dane Ortlund walks through.

So we're having Bible study. So you don't have to read the book. And so, but we're walking through that book and we're just seeing how, who is Jesus most deeply? What is his very heart? And how does he feel about Christians?

I think maybe sometimes we feel like Jesus is just like any other relationship we have. We have people, we may fail. We struggle with thinking that maybe these people resent us, are disappointed in us.

And so we want to believe that Jesus is with us and for us, that he genuinely loves us, has compassion upon us. You know, we know all these good theological doctrines that are important, they're paramount.

You can't move on for those things, but we have to have both things. Jesus is a real living and breathing person who loves you. If you're a Christian, if you're in Christ, he loves you. And so we have to know that we want to believe in these doctrines like penal substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

We also want to believe that he is a real person who loves and cares for us. And he's not disappointed in you. If you're a Christian, he loves and he is. This is why he went to the cross, to die for your sins and to reconcile you to himself.

So this book was published a few years ago. And I think it was a kind of a modern take on Thomas Goodwin's book. Was it called the little Puritan book,.

The Heart of Christ, was that it? Heart of Love? Yeah, yeah, The Heart of Christ, yeah, yeah.

And so Ortlund got in some, I mean, it's a massive seller. I don't know if 200 ,000 copies, I'm not exactly sure. He got in some trouble when he wrote it. People criticized him.

Do you remember that at all? Yeah, I don't remember too specifically, but it seemed like people criticized him for maybe overemphasizing the gentle and lowliness of the heart of Christ. They worried he was overemphasizing grace, right?

So that was their concern. What about him like talking about hell? He talks about hell way more. He talks about heaven, right? So I think people struggled with that and they criticized him for that.

It's interesting because I don't think folks criticize other books in the same manner. So let's just pick two that popped into my mind. Well, The Holiness of God by R .C. Sproul. He didn't talk enough about Jesus sympathizing as a high priest, right?

And we could go to him and find mercy and grace in time of need, Hebrews 4, verses 15 and 16. He didn't do that, but nobody said that about Sproul's holiness book that I know of, at least. And then if you think of MacArthur's book, Jesus, something about the man you could not ignore, something about you couldn't ignore him.

It talked about Jesus, if memory serves, going after the Pharisees, rightfully so. But I don't think anybody said to John, well, you didn't talk about Jesus's patience enough, that type of thing. So I think that was a false canard when they said, well, you know what, it's one-sided, right?

It doesn't show all the different sides of Jesus when that's not the purpose of the book.

Yeah, right, right. I mean, it's very limited in scope. He's not trying to address all aspects of the gospel or about Jesus' teachings. He's addressing this one really important aspect. And that's actually something he brings up in the book is how, who is Jesus most deeply?

Because I think the only place in scripture where Jesus talks about his very heart is Matthew chapter 11. This is, I am gentle and lowly in heart. So one of the points he brings up is that we shouldn't be artificially balanced.

We have to say, well, Jesus, he has come to die for sinners. That's why he came into the world. The father so loved the world, he sent his son not to condemn the world, but the world may be saved through him.

So really, by emphasizing that, he's even focusing on scripture's priorities. So he's just being, I think, a good expository preacher.

That's right. Well, to read the passage, to set the table for us today, Matthew 11, since you brought it up, I'm gonna back up a little bit to verse 25 because it is fascinating to see the context. You see the sovereignty of God and responsibility in the same section, right?

They're not irreconcilable. They're friends, as Spurgeon would say. And the intro to this is just as mind-blowing to me as the discussion about Jesus's heart. Matthew 11, 25. At that time, Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.

It's interesting, Austin, as you probably know, in Luke, I believe Luke 10, Jesus was full of the spirit, full of joy, praising the father for revealing and hiding, same context here, cross-reference.

And you think, what gives Jesus joy? I believe the word is he's jumping for joy, leaping for joy. What makes you just jump up and just go, wow, you know, your baby's born. I don't know, you win the lottery.

You shouldn't be playing the lottery. Something like that. And so what does Jesus, as it were, what does he leap for joy about and that God sovereignly reveals or doesn't reveal and hides? Isn't that pretty amazing?

That's pretty cool. I know. Then he said, yes, Father, for this was well-pleasing in your sight. All things have been handed over to me by my father and no one knows the son except the father, nor does anyone know the father except the son.

And then here's part of the joy that Jesus has, and we should have joy as well. Election and sovereign decrees should not make you full of angst and anxiety and bitterness and rage and gnashing your teeth.

The text says, and anyone to whom the son wills to reveal him. Then here's the response as Jesus calls for that, come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. I just was reading through Jeremiah and I think it's chapter six, verse 17 or 18 about this very phrase to give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble or lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. Oh, there's a liner note right there. Jeremiah 6, 16. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

Amen. So one of the things that stuck out to me when you were teaching the other night, you did a great job by the way, is when you talked about the lowly estate of Jesus and the incarnation, and then you made a comment that I want you to elaborate on Austin.

The Incarnation and Humiliation of Christ

You said something like, and you can't get lower than Jesus. What do you mean by that and explain it for us?

Yeah, yeah. So Jesus, this doctrine of the incarnation, it falls under one of his acts called his act of humiliation. That's where we get from Philippians chapter two. Well, though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality of God a thing to be grasped, but he lowered himself by taking the form of a servant, even a slave.

So Jesus, he's coming down to a sin-cursed world and he is God overall. He remains God, but he takes on a human nature to his person. And he's coming on to this world that's full of suffering, full of sin.

And he's come down for this very purpose to die for sinners. That's his reason for humiliating himself. So he's lowly, he's accessible. He's come for the very purpose. So if you think you're too filthy or slimy, you're not, because Jesus has come to die in your place.

He's come to die in the place of filthy and rotten sinners. You can't get lower than him. He has come down for you and for your salvation. So no matter how far you think you've fallen, you haven't fallen deep enough.

You haven't fallen under the earth quite yet. Jesus has come on the earth to save you from death. I love that.

Mike Abendroth today with Austin Hobbs, No Compromise Radio Ministry. You can access the books that we have, the latest book, which is, I think it's about a year old now, called The Chosen. I was happy to give that out on Sunday night.

Yes. Oh, and Pat Abendroth's got a new book out on the Ascension. You know, we talk about his life, the Lord's life, death, burial, resurrection, and sometimes we forget the Ascension. And so Pat's got a new little book called The Ascension, and he has not sent me a copy yet.

What's going on? Oh, he needs to. It's my one this year. I have not read General and Lowly for quite some time. The one thing that sticks out to me in terms of memory-wise, Ortlund said there are 89 chapters, if you add up Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

So 89 chapters of the genre of gospel literature. And in those 89 chapters, there's only one place that talks about Jesus's heart. And it's here, gentle and lowly at heart. And I think the book was a good correction of this law-driven sanctification model out there, athletic model, military model.

The Gospel as the Foundation of Sanctification

And certainly those are both in scripture, but if they're alone, your model for sanctification, and it's not a motivation by who you are in Christ, union with Christ, if it's not a duplex gratia, Christ for pardon and Christ for power, if it's not the spirit of God dwelling in you, and it's just more rules, that creates depressed people, that creates self-righteous people.

And so I really love the book as a corrective to some of that thinking.

Do you agree? I do agree, Mike. Yeah, I think if you get Christ wrong I hope so, you work for me. Right. We're gonna cut your paycheck. Yes. Sorry. Yeah, and Dane, he actually has a follow-up book to this about sanctification called Deeper, Real Change for Real Sinners.

And the first chapter is basically just a summary of gentle and lowly, because what you believe about Jesus is the cornerstone of your sanctification. If you get the cornerstone wrong, the foundation's off, and you're gonna fail.

So if you think Jesus is this harsh task master, you're not gonna be truly a slave to Christ whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light.

I think that's a good follow-up book. I'm kind of doing the same thing when I was doing the assurance and law gospel and comfort, then I wanted to do a follow-up and so I did the six-part series on American gospel on sanctification because I wanted people to know, I think holy living is important.

Right. It's just how do you get there? And then I'm working on another little booklet now called, at least initially called, Sanctification, a Primer. A Primer. So I am concerned about sanctification.

Yes, good. I don't know if you know this or not, but speaking about this topic, my friend Josh Banks, he was turned on to law gospel and assurance and all that stuff. And he asked me to write the forward of his book on assurance.

And I said, I'd love to. Well, it was through G3 publishing and G3 publishers said to him, are you sure you want Mike to write that forward because isn't he or is he an antinomian? Wow.

And we see what happened to them.

I mean, we just revert to this all the time, but why, Austin, do you think people that are kind of legalists, maybe they're not adding works to the gospel like in a Galatians sense, Galatians one sense, but they're very heavy on the law in a kind of Richard Baxter way.

Why are they often antinomian in their actions? Why are legalists really antinomians so often?

Well, I think Sinclair Ferguson in the whole Christ, he has a really good definition, or what's like the uniting principle behind legalists and antinomians. And I think that uniting principle is you only obey in hope of reward or fear of punishment.

So it's really, I think they're still under a covenant of works, but we're living under a broken covenant of works. We're having a strange relationship with God. So in order to truly obey, we have to have that restored relationship with God who we have to know he truly loves us and that he is never gonna let us go.

We have an unbreakable covenant relationship with him. So I think legalism leads to antinomianism because all of our obedience is supposed to be, can really fall under love for God. Even our love for neighbor, God created them in his image.

And so ultimately we're beholding to God and our love for neighbor. So if you have a strange relationship with the Lord, or maybe you do, maybe you are a true Christian, but if you're not abiding in Christ, if you're not thinking about the gospel and meditating upon who Jesus is to you, you can lose sight of that.

So that's why it's really important to emphasize the heart of Christ, him as the savior for you, gentle and lowly to you, because that's the way you're reconciled to God. And that's the way your relationship with God is maintained.

It's the way you know that he is for you and with you and you belong to him.

Christ's Attitude Toward the Sinner

I guess today, Austin, in one sense, we're not even talking about the book so much as the topic and the topic of the Lord Jesus and his attitude towards sinners. You asked the question last Friday night that I really appreciated.

And you asked this question, tell me the first thought that comes into your mind about Jesus after you sin. So we all probably are familiar with Tozer and he, sometimes people hate it if you quote Tozer because they tell you all the bad things about Tozer, but the knowledge of the holy, I think is a good book.

The other stuff I don't know about, but what's the, you know, what comes to your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you, right? When you say God, what do you think about? Well, this is an excellent question as well.

What's the first thought that comes into your mind about Jesus after you sin? Why did you ask the question and flesh that out for us?

Yeah, I think I preceded that question with, well, what's the first thought that comes into your mind when you think about Jesus? And of course, we're all able to give the Sunday school answer. He is the Lord, he is our savior, he is merciful, kind, gracious, you know, those are all good things.

But when it really comes down to it, when you actually sin, what do you think about Jesus? Like, what is the first thought that comes into your mind when you fail him? And that's where the rubber meets the road, and it will be evidence about how strong your faith is in that moment, because maybe we have a weak faith.

And something that Martin Luther said was that, you know, he says, be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. And his point was, he was writing to Philip Melanchthon, who's struggling with sin, he was saying, hey, don't think that God's grace is imaginary.

You know, don't think your sin is imaginary and that Jesus is an imaginary sinner who's come down to save you from imaginary sin and imaginary wrath. No, Jesus is a real savior. This isn't just some storybook.

No, he is an actual, real, living, breathing savior who loves you and has come down to die for your sins and to reconcile you to God. So you no longer think, as Luther once thought, that Jesus has a sword coming out of his mouth.

He's ready to attack you and to kill you and to smite you. So we want to strengthen our faith in God's word that Jesus is who he truly says he is. Is he gentle and lowly heart to you when you obey? But is he also gentle and lowly heart to you when you disobey?

And really, because the gospel would tell us, no, he is a real saver. He is able to save to the uttermost. So it's not this idea of a Roman Catholic view where you're only in a state of grace when you're obeying, but then when you sin, you fall out of a state of grace.

No, but because of the gospel, you're always in a state of grace. Jesus' blood covers over all of your sins. He's died for all of your transgressions. And that where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

So we want to believe that. So when we first sin, we don't want to make sin okay, but we want to truly believe that, no, Christ died for that sin. This may displease the father, but I have not fallen out of his favor and out of his love.

I've not revoked my sonship. He has not revoked that sonship from me. I am forever and belonging to him. He will never cast me away.

We had a little technical difficulty. Did I talk about the Jesus in the stained glass window? You did, yeah, yeah.

Medieval Imagery and Misrepresentations of Jesus

I already said that? Oh, you, during the, we lost some audio. So I'm gonna re-say it. Yeah, you can re-say it.

Okay, okay. It was like deja vu all over again. When I think of medieval churches, Catholic churches, 1200s, 1500s, et cetera, often there would be a picture or a stained glass image or a sculpture of Jesus, second return Jesus, and veins bulging out of his forehead or neck type of thing.

We'll talk about second commandment violations at another time. But he looked mean and angry. And of course he's coming back with vengeance. And that is true. But for believers, we're not afraid of his second coming.

We're looking forward to that. It's bittersweet in one sense because there'll be unbelievers that we love that will receive his wrath. But if that's a picture that you have of Jesus, every time you go to church and you see just that, right?

And you don't really have a Bible. You don't, you can't read and just see it. No wonder there was a need, a felt need for a kinder, softer, Mary-like mediator. Right, right. Oh, Mary, she's his gentle mother.

Your mother would never condemn you. Right, because in all of us, when we do something wrong, we expect, okay, chastisement, if we're loved, who doesn't chastise if they don't love? And we also want, after the chastisement, after the correction, after the discipline, don't we want comfort?

Don't we want, you know what? Our relationship's not broken, right? If I sin against my earthly father and he corrects me and then afterwards says, I love you, son, and here's a plan for not doing that again or whatever, you're always my son, we long for that.

And so I guess if you can't find it in Jesus, sadly, you find it in Mary or something. Or maybe comfort food. So we're working through Gentle and Lowly, more the passage today than the book, but the book is just kind of a jumping off point, and we'll talk about that next show as well.

God's Impassibility and Affective Response to Creation

Tell me, when I read the book, there was some criticism about it regarding grace, but I think he does believe in passability, does he not? There's a quote in there about the passable God.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, he was trying to affirm impassibility, but I think he didn't really communicate it very well, I don't think. So that was probably the only genuine flaw behind the book is probably a skewed view of impassibility.

Elaborate on that a little bit more. What is passability, impassibility? Why does it matter?

Why is it a hot topic these days? Yeah, so it really comes from that root word, you know, passio, that means suffering. So impassio, this idea that God is incapable of suffering. And probably more broadly, he's incapable of being affected by creation or changed by creation.

So God's passions, it doesn't go up and down. He doesn't become angry per se or become sad per se in himself. That's really rude in this idea of God's immutable. God is God, he is holy and purely and fully himself.

So he hasn't become more just, he hasn't become less angry or more loving, but he is love, he is just. And I actually brought up this example in this illustration and in home group how you think about God's attributes as this one, like a wall.

You think about his justice as this wall, you know, when you throw a ball against the wall, the wall does not change, but because the wall is what it is, it's a firm foundation, it's a firm, it's solid, the ball will bounce back.

So how far the ball bounces or if it bounces back at all, it's really due to a change in the ball. So whenever God becomes angry in scripture, that's really an outworking of his immutable and perfect and infinite justice responding to sin.

So God doesn't change, but we do. It's, wrath is simply the response to sin. But when, because of the gospel, because God has freely chosen to save sinners and to apply that salvation to us in Christ, when God sees us suffer, I think Daniel talks about how he's, God's drawn towards suffering, not because he's constrained to, but because he has chosen by covenant, he is covenant to us to be with us always.

So really when we suffer or when we sin, God's goodness to us, that infinite perfect goodness, the result of that is mercy and grace and kindness to us.

Jesus' Invitation to Rest and the Gentle Character of Grace

Great answer. Back to the text, Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. The father has given me all these things to do and say, this is a unique father-son operation coming out of father and son intimacies and knowledge.

No one knows the son the way the father does, not the father the way the son does, but I'm not keeping it to myself. I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen. Are you tired, worn out, burned out on religion?

Come to me, get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a rest, walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you.

Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. That sounds like the message, all right. What in the world are we doing? Austin, I'm trying to read through different Bible translations for my yearly Bible reading plan.

And this year it's the NIV, the older NIV. And it's fine. I mean, if you're an NIV lover, I'm not calling it the, and you're not NIV positive or anything like that. The newer NIV, you shouldn't be reading.

The TNIV, you shouldn't be reading. But if you have the old 78, 84 NIV, fine. But I personally just, it's too smooth. It's too thought for thought. It just, there's nothing kind of jarring or I don't know.

I just, it's so easy to read. It doesn't make me even concentrate. So, but if you want to read the NIV or the message, definitely read the NIV. Well, thanks for tuning in today. You can tell I'm old because I say tune in, right?

Tune in on your record. I mean, on your radio dial, Mike Gabendroth with Austin Hobbs. We're talking about Jesus, gentle and lowly. Are you trusting in this Jesus who's gentle and lowly? He says to you, take his yoke upon you and learn from him.

And he's gentle and lowly in heart. And you, dear listener, will find rest for your soul. See you next time.