Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. This is the Theology Q and A podcast. Welcome. I'm Pastor Wolfmuller of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran Churches, Austin, Texas, joined as always by Pastor Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor. I heard a rumor about you, Pastor Packer, that your favorite airport is o' Hare in Chicago.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: I had a fun time there this last week.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: In fact, this is, I think, the airport where 80% of my travel problems have occurred. O'.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hare.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: It is the hub of disaster. Oh, well, also for you not flying
[00:00:36] Speaker B: through there this week, so I'm pretty excited.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: Okay, that's good.
You got some questions for us?
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Maybe.
The first one is, does God make mistakes? Oh, Genesis 6. 6 has me very tripped up.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Hmm.
Tell me more.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: That's all they got.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: That's it?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: That's the question. That's it.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Genesis 6. So this is where God. It said, God says it grieved him, he regretted making man. Is that the verse that we have to.
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Sorry? Yes, from the flood narrative. God is sorry that he made man and it grieved him.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: I'm going to look here, verse 5. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
Sheesh, that's bad.
And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart.
I think it's an amazing thing.
I don't know exactly how to express this. I think there's something apologetic in here that God makes us so tall that we can reach high enough to hurt him, to. To slap him in the face. Do you know what I mean by that?
Like, it's. It's part of the.
It's part of the dignity or something. It's part of the.
It's part of the something of how God made us that.
That we can actually touch his heart in order to grieve.
Doesn't. It doesn't have to be that way. I mean, God could have made us in such a way that it didn't matter what we did. You know, just. What. Like, I don't know. There's a lot of things that just don't matter to me what they do.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: Like the.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: Like the bugs that are in the front yard. I mean, as if. As long as they stay out there, I don't, you know, I don't care. Whatever. But it's not that way that the Lord actually.
He. He. He cares.
It. It enough that it makes him sad when we. When we do wrong. Evil and wickedness.
And on the other hand, that our faith can.
Can actually make him.
We can please him, like it says in Hebrews, it's impossible. Apart from faith, it's impossible to please God.
So I don't know, it says something about.
It says something about the creation and the image of God that this. That the circuit. That the circumstances are such that God can be grieved at our.
Are being handed over to sin and wickedness.
That's maybe that. So that's my first kind of impression on this particular text. It seems like it's a. It's a. It's a profound gift that God gives to us that, that we can in fact make him angry, that he cares enough about us to that. That our sins anger him. You know, if someone you've met people like this and they just are so indifferent to you, like you could do whatever, and they don't even. They don't even care enough to be angry. They're just indifferent. And that is not how God is with us.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Now.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: That doesn't answer the question, but maybe it sets us up for a way to think about the question. Right? What do you think, Pastor Packer?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: I was going to say, does that mean God makes mistakes?
[00:04:19] Speaker A: That's the question. You know, all that the Lord. All that the Lord does is good, right? I mean, every.
He does all things well that he has, but he has made the world in such a way that evil things can exist and evil things can happen. He even uses those evil things and evil events to bring his will about kind of beautifully, wonderfully. But he, he, it must be that. That this world is the.
How do we say, is the best possible world.
Like the possibility of sin, the possibility of death, and the ex. And the existence of evil because of the sins of. Of. Of devils and men is in. In an overall way, good.
That men are evil and their intents of the. Of their hearts are evil is not good.
But that it can be that way is good.
And so we have to say that all that the Lord does is good and right and holy. All of His. All of his works are pure and righteous altogether. He's not the source of evil, but he is able to.
And so no, there's no way that we can say that the Lord makes mistakes, but the Lord in His act of creating the world has created the world in such a way that mistakes can be made and that those mistakes grieve him so that there's sadness that's there and sadness over the way things have gone, which would be Regret,
[00:06:08] Speaker B: I think it was. I think it was Peter Lightheart I was listening to one time that made the point. I read it in a book of his that a lot of people say the God of the Old Testament is just right, this God of wrath and anger. And then you get Jesus, and it seems like they're opposites or whatever. That's a lot of critiques against the Bible or that's two different gods or whatever from unbelievers often when they look at the Bible. But Leihar makes the point that, expanding what you were saying, that we have throughout the Old Testament a God who suffers with his people. Like, it's not just when you get to the New Testament that you have Jesus then, who suffers, right, as he sees sin and as he weeps at the tomb and as he does all these things, as he suffers on the cross. But God throughout the Old Testament is a God who suffers with and for his people throughout the entire Old Testament. And you see it in scenes like that, right? He's like you said, he's made. Made it in such a way that he is grieved that he can literally, quite literally suffer. He's any. What does it say? He's long suffering. He's patient with these things. So what we often see as we look at the Old Testament and we're like, man, it seems like the Old Testament, God is mean, he's angry, he's vengeful. But when you really look at it, you're like, okay, he waited 400 years before punishing these wicked people. He waited hundreds of years before acting here like he's way more patient than we would ever be. And often repeatedly, right? As we see with the covenant with Abraham, the idea that the covenant, he'll keep the covenant to his own hurt. And we see that repeatedly as well. And so it's a really beautiful and should be a comforting thing, not something perhaps like here it sounds like this question concerned her, bothered her, that it uses this language, but really it should comfort us. And because we see the fullness of that finally at the cross, where.
Where we see God dealing with all of these things and taking upon himself to suffer to his own hurt to save and rescue us.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So in the.
So God did not have to create the world in such a way that the world had the possibility of disappointing him.
He could have made the world so that that disappointment would have been impossible. And that disappointment is a true disappointment for him, which is the beginning of that suffering which culminates in the fullness of suffering on the cross and that also it didn't have to be that way. From our perspective, God could have created the world in any way that he desired, but that this must, because he created the world with the possibility of disappointing Him. In other words, the creation itself has access to his own pleasure, then this must be a dignity and a good that God has given to us.
A lot of the theologians want to, want to kind of chalk this up to anthropomorphism, you know what I mean? They say, well, these things really don't exist in God because God is not like us and so forth.
Which I guess is true when you want to think about it abstractly. But here's the Lord wants us to know that when he looks at the world and sees all this sin, it disappoints Him.
I mean, he wants us to know that about Himself. So that's good. It's also good. I was reading Harman. What's Harman's first name? Johan or something? Harmon Haman. Yeah, what's his first name?
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Yes, Johan Georg Haman.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the one. He was talking about the flood, that God said, look, humanity is about to completely destroy itself, so I'm going to save them by destroying all but one. In other words, we were hell bent on this path of destruction and the Lord the Flood is saving us from our self inflicted and complete annihilation. The same thing that happened at Babel. We were about to completely annihilate ourselves and so the Lord has to save us from our own self destructive impulses.
And who knows if that's what Jesus means about the second coming, that you know, that his coming is going to be to cut us off from our complete self destruction. So that the flood is also an act of God's mercy. I think that's helpful.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: All right, the next one's a little easier maybe.
Possibly.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: You always say that.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: And then I know, I like to see up. Okay. Should offerings be completely anonymous?
So this is his question. This is what is bothering, yes, bothering him.
I've started at a new church where they don't hand the offering plates or along the rows. Instead they have details to give by direct transfer on the bulletin and only a small cash box in the foyer. I always thought we should only give in cash because it's anonymous, unlike a transfer.
And although I can still, although I still can, I find it weird that this is not the way preferred by the church.
So should our giving to church be anonymous?
[00:11:09] Speaker A: Well, so we have the instructions from Jesus when he's talking about don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing.
But he also commends the widow who's there in the temple giving her might, you know, although I'm not so sure if Jesus is commending the widow more than he's lambasting the Pharisees.
[00:11:29] Speaker B: You know, I think he's lambasting the Pharisees.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: Look at this poor widow. She's given everything to the church, and these other fools are just abusing it and everything. But Jesus recognized that she was giving. And so we have these two sorts of things.
When Jesus says, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. The point of that is that we are not giving for ourselves. It is a true gift.
We're giving out of the generosity of what the Lord has provided for us.
So it's sometimes really good that donations are anonymous.
I don't think that we want to say it's sinful to note our donations, especially because there's an advantage that the government gives when you say that, hey, if you're giving to charity, that protects you from taxable income.
I don't think that there's a way that we say it would be sinful, therefore, to let the government know that we gave to charity to reduce our taxes. If the government wants to encourage people to give to church and you just have to prove that you've done it, hey, that's great.
So I think that's good. I don't like some churches used to. And I have no way of knowing why this was a good idea.
Some churches used to publish what every family gave in the year, like the end of the year, that part of their accounting was, here's all the gifts that we've received from everyone so you could see who gave what.
That seems to me to be a particularly dangerous thing. And as a pastor, and I think this is just wisdom, I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, Pastor Packer, that I make sure that I am nowhere near any of those reports so that I have no idea what anybody gives to church.
I don't even want to get close to that stuff, because my call to pastor the people has absolutely nothing to do with how much they give and support the church.
So I think there's some important places where that anonymity, anonymity comes to play.
But I don't think it would be. I don't think it's. I don't think it's wrong to have an accounting of those gifts since the.
Since the government Wants it for charity's sake. Thoughts?
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Yeah, well, a couple of times. I think mostly it is anonymous because even if you give a check or you give digitally or whatever, only very few people in the church know about that. Right? There's very few people in the church who actually see who gives and what they give.
Like you, like none of the pastors here know what anybody gives. Right. Maybe there's an occasion where there's some kind of gift that's given that we know about, but usually we don't know like week in and week out who's giving what. We just see the overall numbers and the big picture stuff, but not the details. So there's only like one or two people in the church that really see who actually is giving what. Right. There's a handful of people at the most. So it is anonymous to most people. Right. So I even think in that sense, like most people in the church have no idea what you're giving, how much you're giving, how often you're giving, whatever. Like that's not, I don't think that's an issue probably at most places. So I don't see that as too much of a concern.
I guess in one sense it's helpful if the church does know at least that you're giving something.
Right. Because we do think it is a spiritual. It's tied to a spiritual issue, your spiritual well being to be giving to those things.
I think I saw a number recently that said most Christians only give like 2 to 3% to church.
Like that's, that's a pretty standard number, I guess, 2 to 3%.
So it's, it's pretty low anyways. But yeah, I don't, I just.
Unless you're like going out of your way to let everybody know what you're giving, which would be entirely different issue.
I don't see how that like the church treasure or however your church functions, like seeing what you give unless you're trying to give to impress them. But I don't think that's the case for most people. So it's not something I've ever really worried about because I don't have access to it. So it is anonymous to me. Like I don't know. I don't know what you're giving or how much you're giving.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: I came up with this cheerful tin thing. This is my idea for giving. So to grow in the joy of giving. Second Corinthians 9 talks about each of you should give what you've decided in your heart.
So it's Our own heart's decision.
The decision is not outside of the heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion. There's no rule law. God loves a cheerful giver.
And this key thing is that the Lord wants that cheerfulness in giving. So how can we do it? So here's my four small steps. This is to start the habit. So give any amount to the church on a regular rhythm.
A dollar a week or a dollar a month or whatever. Just start with a particular thing and do that for three months.
Then if you're already doing that, then switch to a percentage. Don't change what you're giving, but just calculate it. So say you're giving a dollar a month and you make $10 a month. Well, that's 10%. Or you give a dollar a month, you make $100 a month, that's 1%, whatever. So calculate your current giving as a percentage of your net income.
Keep doing that. You're thinking in proportions. Then each year or when the budget changes, ask could I increase this by a half percent or by 1%?
So if you're at 3% of your income, could I go to 3.5% for the next year?
And just do this and think I'm going to go up 0.5% for the next 20 years headed to 10%, that's great. And then once you get to 10%, this is good. My suggestion is that, that 10% of your giving goes to support your local congregation. And anything more goes to support other things, seminary or whatever sort of outreach that you like or whatever. But then there's a check in at each point.
Am I happy about this? And here's where the devil will creep in. Because the devil will say, ah, the church is always asking for money, rah, rah, rah. And he'll make you like you start to begrudgingly.
If there's any begrudgingness, then stop. And if there's begrudging, if you're like, well, I want to give the money away, but at mad at the church or whatever, give it to somebody else and then go and work on that problem at the church. But do not do it begrudgingly, that's a wide open door to the devil. And the question is why? Why not keep doing this? Or why not grow? And if the answer is I'd like to give more but I don't have it, then just don't. Just stay where you are. It's fine.
Decrease if you need to. It's fine. It's fine.
If you, if the response is, I don't trust how the church is using it, then you better go talk to the church. Give to someone else and talk to the church and get that. I don't want to give more.
This is now the whole idolatry of Mammon, you know, I want it for myself. I don't want anybody else to have it. And that's this.
This question of generosity. And that's where we got to check our own. Check our own hearts. So that's my little baby steps for.
For generosity.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that's helpful. You should provide a. Can you provide a link to that or something?
Probably on the video.
[00:18:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know if we. We are using the questions as occasion to talk about other things. I'm not sure if we've answered either one of the questions yet.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Well, yeah, the first one you said no. This one we said, no, you don't have to be anonymous. So we answered it.
[00:19:16] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, good.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: We answered more than what the question asked.
[00:19:21] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
Abundant and overflowing.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: That's right. We went above him, above and beyond. I mean, we could have just said, does God make mistakes? No.
Is it. Is it wrong to. For the church to know that you're giving? No. And we could have just moved on, but those would be very short videos.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: What did Pastor Davis said to me the other day? He said, well, you surpassed my exceedingly low expectations.
[00:19:47] Speaker B: That's our goal.
We should get that.
We need a merch store, and that can be our first shirt.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Oh, man.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: We surpass. Hopefully we surpass your exceedingly low expectations.
[00:20:02] Speaker A: Okay, what you got next?
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Christian obedience and the Constitution.
Oh.
I have a practical question about how the Christian is called to obey his worldly rulers.
Suppose one is subject to multiple layers of authority where he lives, for example, the state's government versus the federal government. If these authorities are at odds, should he obey as a direct local authority or the supreme authority? I imagine the latter generally, at least as the former, would mean to be complicit in the disobedience committed by the local authority. If I'm correct, then seen as the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land in the United States, wouldn't a Christian be permitted to disobey unconstitutional laws?
I'm asking because recent controversy regarding automated license plate cameras has had me thinking, where's.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Where are the automated license plate cameras? Coming in
[00:20:56] Speaker B: all over the place. This is the whole Flock camera, which is.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: I keep. I keep hearing about that, which is. I know.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Separate.
I mean, it's a related issue. And that's what got them thinking. But I think that would take us way off of.
That'd be further off topic than you've been for the last two. We don't want to go down that road. I don't think until.
[00:21:13] Speaker A: Do you want to talk about how. I was thinking about having a camera at church so I could take attendance, get some Chinese person to, like, build the algorithm for me, you know, the Communist government. They'd be like, oh, we've got all these people's info already. We can.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: I was thinking the other day, it'd be great to have cameras up front, talk to Pastor Gray about this. We have cameras up front that count. Accurately, count everyone.
And then also, because so many people won't actually mark their attendance, it just takes attendance for them and enters it for us with AI, we could do this. Now, I see all kinds of issues with this, but, you know, and I
[00:21:51] Speaker A: think we're both going to show up at church on Sunday, and nobody's going to be there.
[00:21:55] Speaker B: No one's gonna be there to be like, we'll show them.
[00:21:58] Speaker A: We are not going to these big brother churches.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Look, I haven't done it. I'm just saying it would be really nice if everyone just entered their attendance. We wouldn't have to think about these things.
Anyhow.
[00:22:09] Speaker A: It's hard to figure out who's. It's hard to figure out who's not there. And then people get upset because they're like, pastor, I didn't go to church for three weeks and you didn't notice. And you're like, I'm. Yes, I didn't notice. This is hard. I wish I could notice all these things, but.
So the layers of authority, the.
And the. What does it mean when we live in a. In a country that's ruled by law?
Is great. I think it's an amazing thing. I was thinking about this this morning, actually listening to the world and everything in it, and they have the, you know, they've got the court watch, and they're always talking about the cases going before the Supreme Court. And I was thinking, how amazing is it that every day the Supreme Court is trying to figure out something about Our constitution written 250 years ago or whatever. I mean, this is like, that's amazing that we haven't sorted it all out, and we're still trying to figure it out. And one thing I. You know, there's a lot of things that maybe to not like about Ken Paxton, but one of the things that I like about him is that he was always suing the Biden administration.
I just like the fact that the state is. Is suing the nation or that the. The nation is. Can sue the state, that there's this, like, somewhat adversarial relationship between the different realms.
And I, I remember in Covid distinctly that Governor Abbott, governor of Texas, he had a zoom call with all the pastors, and he said, hey, we're about to put in restrictions for Covid stuff. We're going to do it at the state level, and the counties are going to do it and cities are going to do it.
And he said, but you guys are your churches and you're covered by the First Amendment. You can do whatever you want.
And I will not only not enforce the restrictions that we're making on churches, but I will protect you from the county and the city if they try to enforce restrictions on churches. It was an amazing thing to say. Now, he went on to say, now, having said that, we're going to try to be wise. And so if you have a way to keep the restrictions without burdening your conscience, then that we would appreciate the help, which gave us a way to try to be helpful and try to follow the laws, because it wasn't given to us as a coercive thing.
But there was things where it was like the city was putting in all these places, all these restrictions in place.
And so that it was the state versus the city, and you had to kind of manage that, like, who are you obeying? Who are you listening to? And so forth and so on. So we find ourselves in these situations all the time. All the time.
And it's one of the reasons why Paul says that the law was not written for the good, but for the evil.
In other words, if we are endeavoring to. To keep the Ten Commandments, then in a profound way, it's never going to matter.
Like, the laws of the state are not going to matter to the Christian because we're following the law of God. And if following the law of God puts us against a particular state law or federal law or something like that, it's going to be fine. You might be persecuted or punished by the state, but it doesn't, you know, you still have a good conscience.
Now, sometimes the law is not, I don't know, like, there might be certain forms that you have to fill out, and the Ten Commandments doesn't cover those forms. You know, you can fill out the forms. You know, you want to be obedient to the one who's the ruler, but we want to pursue the good such that we don't have to.
We don't have to worry about these kind of the bureaucrats that are putting down the hundreds of thousands of pages of laws.
So we don't have to go and figure out if we're keeping them or not. We're trying to be good people.
Now, how does that apply to the particular situation?
I think that if there's contradictory laws, we want to say, well, we have to follow God and not man. And so what does it look like to be a good citizen in this way, to be a good neighbor and a good person? That's what we want to do. So that even if the law of man, whatever it is, would be against us, we can still have a good conscience that we were loving God and serving our neighbor.
And whatever level of law is best at loving God and serving the neighbor, that's going to be the one that we'll kind of sit with. Right?
So it could be that federal law is better than local law, or it could be that local law is better than federal law. But we have a way of judging because we have the Ten Commandments.
And I think that's where we're. Where Christian wisdom comes into play.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: I mean, I think one of the things we could mention that people can look into for this is the Magdeburg confession, because it does deal a lot with disobeying government and how that looks. But one of the things that came out of all of that was this idea of the interposition of the lesser magistrate, which is kind of the opposite of what the question is. But I think it's helpful, at least start there, that if the people above are enforcing unjust things, hopefully there's someone locally who steps up and says, you know what? This law is unconstitutional. Right? It violates. If I enforce this, I'm violating the oaths I took to uphold these various other laws and constitutions. So I can't do that. So I won't do that.
Right. So going back, you mentioned Covid.
I don't want to get anyone in trouble. So this should be as vague as possible. I sent, at one point, I think I did six weeks of like 10 or more services a week. It was about six weeks or so. And I was like, you know what?
Seems like they're letting other people do stuff. So I sent an email to the. To the county about all of this. And I said, look, the state actually says, we encourage churches to do this. I said, it doesn't. That's the verb that governs the whole paragraph. It doesn't say I have to do this. So here's what we're going to do from here on out. And I sent it to them and the county lawyers said, we disagree with your reading of that. And I said, well, I'm not a lawyer, but I do know grammar, so I'm gonna go with my reading. And the law enforcement agency in charge of like those things said, well, if anyone complains, we'll take a look on Monday.
So it was just great, right?
That agency was stepping in and saying, we think you're right. We think to do anything else would be to overstep our bounds. And so if someone complains about you guys doing church, the way you out have outlined here, then we will check it out on Monday, which obviously means no one's going to be there, so we'll be in compliance or whatever. So I appreciate that because. And I think that was the right thing for that agency to do because I don't think we were in any way violating anything within our rights.
So you need magistrates at the lower level who are willing to say those above us are wrong and to stand up. Now, if you don't have that, and if this in the case that they gave it was the opposite, right, the local government was the one violating the Constitution, violating law, then in some ways I think that gets trickier because you don't really have anyone on your side at the local level. But it is true. Like the law of the land is like the supreme law for us is the Constitution.
The tricky part, as you said, though, is that we all, we get interpretations of the Constitution, right? So that can get difficult. Like, I know people who will, right? They don't want to get their car insured or register their car because they think that violates the Constitution or whatever. And people often pick hills to die on. That I think are often silly, right, that I think maybe they think they're making the good fight, but really they're not by doing anything. And it gets harder and harder to prove that the thing you're fighting for actually violates whatever law.
So, yeah, I think like you said, we need Christian wisdom and we do need to wrestle with, okay, which they're in violation of this other law. These laws are in conflict. What do I do?
And it may look different depending on the situation, depending on which laws are conflicting and depending on if it's worth.
If it's worth having that fight or not. So I don't think it's an easy question, but I do think a Christian is permitted to disobey unconstitutional laws but it may not always be the wisest thing to do. So.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: That'd be my. That'd be my final thought on that. Is it. Are you permitted?
Sure.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: All things are. All things are lawful, but not all things are good. This is, you know, we want to. And this idea of just, look, if our up and down is by God's law, then we don't have to worry about if we get sideways with, with man's law.
But we do want to become all things to all people. That does mean something, you know, so that, so that Paul would obey laws that he was not obliged to obey for the sake of the conscience of the people that he was serving. Because this is not all about, you know, how can I, how can I embrace my individual freedom, but rather how can I serve God and my neighbor? That's the whole point.
So, I mean, our American principle of freedom is helpful because it gives us the freedom to serve God and love the neighbor.
But we just want to make sure that we don't replace it with freedom as the goal. That's never the goal for the Christian.
We're not set free.
You're free, but not as a cover for vice. We're set free so that we can serve one another. That's what we want to do. And there's also, you know, what you were talking about, the lesser magistrates. There's also the case where the, the lesser magistrates are wrong and tyrannical. And that's why the greater magistrate is more helpful.
[00:31:58] Speaker B: Right, exactly.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: So we have that wisdom from the Ten Commandments to figure out what level is actually more in line with natural law.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Paul also, it's fascinating to me, at least when you look at the New Testament, he will take advantage of his citizenship at some times, like, hey, I'm a Roman, don't do this to me.
Right. To get out of like, punishment. And other times he doesn't seem to take advantage of some of those things. And it seems all to be based on what will best further the gospel.
Like, he'll use those rights when it seems to further the gospel, but he'll not take advantage of some of those rights if it's not going to. So that seems to be his guiding principle. Well, this actually further the gospel, not is this legal or illegal or are they being unconstitutional or whatever, but am I actually going to further the gospel by this decision or not? That seems to be his overriding principle.
[00:32:49] Speaker A: Yep, it's great.
[00:32:52] Speaker B: All right.
In what way is Jesus the word of God?
So they, they say that's basically the question. And then, for example, John 1:1 seems to be talking of Christ, not the Bible, right? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: This is, I was just reading this morning, this hermeneutics text by Dr. Schultz that he's written. I'm only in chapter one, but he has these great Luther quotes from his Christmas sermon on John 1.
Here's a couple. So I'll just read a little on this topic. So Talking about Genesis 1, from these words, Moses, it's clearly proved that God has a Word.
So the Lord spoke through which or by means of which he spoke before anything was created, since all things were created by divine utterance, as the text of Moses clearly and forcibly expresses it when he says God said, let there be light, and there was light.
But let us go further.
If the Word preceded all creatures, and all creatures came by the Word and were created through it, the Word must be a different being than a creature and not made or created like a creature. It must therefore be eternal and without beginning. Again, the Word and He that speaks it are not one person.
So that the Word that the Lord speaks in creation and through which creation happens, is the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Logos, who was in the beginning. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This is why he's a distinct person and yet in one being, God and all things were created through Him. And that Word comes down into flesh and tabernacles with us. That's the incarnate Word, and that's the joining of the divine and human natures of Christ in the personal union.
So that we can say from that Genesis 1 text and from John 1 that the word is the divine nature of Christ. Or to say it the other way, just simply the Word is the second Person of the Holy Trinity.
[00:35:30] Speaker B: He has a couple questions with that. So then their. Their question then is, okay, if that's true, how does that relate to the Bible, which we call the Word of God?
So what's the next step there? So if you understand who Jesus is as the Word of God, how do we get from there?
Okay, Jesus is the Word of God. He's distinct from the Father. Right.
But now how does Jesus relate to us calling the Bible the Word of God?
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Right. That's good. So maybe a couple things in between. So the Word is what is now going to distinguish humanity from the rest of creation.
So part of that being created in the image of God and the likeness of God is that we are verbal. We're given the capacity to hear and to know and then to be able to speak, to hear God's word and to speak back to him and then to speak to one another.
And this is especially seen in the fact that Adam is given this task of naming all the creatures, of putting a word to all the things that the Lord has created. So there's this sort of sense that the whole creation is a verbal thing. But humanity especially is given this gift of language and it's preserved even after the fall, so that we're still human, which means we still are living in the Word. But now you have this distinction between what God says and what man says.
And, and so we have all of these words that, that we speak, but there are words that God will speak to us.
And that, that's.
That happens whenever God talks and when he talks directly or when he talks through a prophet. And what we have in the Scripture is the word that God has inspired not only to be spoken by the prophets and the apostles, but to be written by the prophets and the apostles. And he's done that chiefly to capture his words to us.
So when we talk about the incarnate Word of God, that's Christ in the flesh, we talk about the preached word of God. That's every time God himself speaks, or someone who's sent by God speaks his word. And we speak about the written word of God. And that's that those prophets and apostles who had the mandatem scribendi, the mandate to scribble, who had the, who had the command to write, and they've written down these books that are collected in the Scriptures. So the old Lutheran way of talking about the Bible is the books of the prophets and the apostles, which is so helpful for a couple of reasons. Number one, it reminds us that the Bible is not a book. It's a collection of 66 books. It also reminds us of the chief character of those books in, in distinction to all the other books that are collected in the world.
The distinction between the Scriptures is that they're the books of the prophets and the books of the apostles. Those are the people that are called directly by God to speak for Him. And those people in their office preached, and those prophets and apostles also in their office wrote. And so we have this beautiful gift from God is the captured writings of his.
The inspired writings of his inspired men, the prophets and the apostles.
[00:39:05] Speaker B: And maybe important to know the whole reason that we have the written word of God is to point us to the Incarnate Word. Of God. Right. Jesus says all of these things are about me. Right. The whole purpose of these things is to point to me, which also based on several things you said. Modern hermeneutics, I think often like their way of reading the Bible, is to treat the Bible as any other book.
And I think because of that, including even among Christians, like people who actually believe it is the word of God, we often miss things because we're reading it like any other. It's not any other book. It is a collection of books, but with a divine author ultimately, who weaves them all together to point us to his Son. And if we don't start with that understanding, then we miss.
We miss a point in the Bible, but also miss out on seeing Jesus in the text and seeing how God wants to point us to the Incarnate Word every time we open scripture.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: 100% right. Beautiful.
[00:40:08] Speaker B: All right.
The validity of. The validity of the Lord's Supper. Oh, when is it valid or when can it be invalid? I guess is really their question. I come from a conservative Pentecostal background, and I've been diving into Lutheran theology, having discussions with a local pastor from the Selk here in Germany. Cool. While learning a lot, one topic caught me off guard. The idea that the Lord's Supper could be considered invalid, especially in connection to the office of the Holy ministry.
Coming from my background, the concept of a valid or invalid sacrament is quite new to me.
Could you help me understand how Lutheran theology views the validity of the Lord's Supper in relation to the pastoral office?
What actually makes the sacrament valid or invalid according to Christ's institution?
[00:40:55] Speaker A: Wow. It's a great question.
So there has to be a distinction between sacrament and not sacrament.
So, for example, like. Well, just to take it like in Ephesus, if you wanted to be a priestess to Artemis, you do a bunch of crazy things, including self castrating, and you would be baptized in a vat of bull blood. You'd go under and out.
Now there's got. There's a way that we Christians are going to say that is not baptism.
Right?
They call it baptism, but it's not. I mean, it's not a Christian baptism. It's invalid. It's not a valid Christian baptism. Or to come a little bit closer to home, there was ritual washings that happened in the temple and you would go. And they called them baptisms. The priest would go into the bronze laver and he'd come up out of it, and the Christians would say, that's not baptism.
Or the heretics would do Baptism. There was a Gnostic baptism. And who knows? You're baptized like the ELCA does now, you know, you get baptized, okay? Not all ELCA does this, but you get baptized in the name of the Mother and the daughter and wisdom, or whatever sort of pagan nonsense it is, right? So that's. And you're like, not a baptism. So where is the line between what is a valid baptism and what is not the same for the Supper? Because there was lots of cults and other people that would have a. A love fest or a love meal or some sort of sacrament or some sort of liturgical meal together.
And there's got to be a way for the Christian to say, that is not the Lord's Supper. It's some other God's Supper or some other pagan supper. Paul even says it like this. I don't want you to be partakers of the table of Demons. And the table of the Lord and Hebrews says that we have a meal, that those who eat the meal of the temple sacrifice in Jerusalem are not worthy to eat. Our meal is outside the camp, so that there's an eating of the sacrifice that happens with the priesthood in Jerusalem that's not the Lord's Supper. This is something different. In fact, it's important where Jesus institutes the supper after the Passover meal is finished, so that he's making a new meal, so that when we eat the Lord's Supper, we're not eating the Passover. And when someone eats the Passover, they're not eating the Lord's Supper. They're distinct.
So that question of validity is what marks it as a Christian baptism and what marks it as the Lord's Supper.
The answer that the church has come up with, and I don't think this is distinct to the Lutheran Church, but maybe to the ancient church, is that the validity of baptism is connected to the confession of the Holy Trinity.
And the reason it's so is because in the words of Institution, that chief text where Jesus himself institutes the baptism, Matthew 28, he says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
So that confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is bound up to baptism.
Now, that doesn't mean that it's just the formula that's spoken, but the understanding of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in which those words are spoken.
So it doesn't depend on the individual faith of the pastor. It doesn't depend on the individual faith of the congregation. It depends on the.
On the understanding of those words in the particular place. So let's do a few examples and then we'll go over to the Lord's Supper.
The Mormon Church might baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, but their confession denies that Jesus is God.
So they do not confess the Trinity. They deny the doctrine of the Trinity, they do not confess. Well, they have a weird doctrine of the Spirit, but it's not a trinitarian doctrine. So therefore, even if they use the right words, we would say that their baptism is not valid. It's an invalid baptism.
The same thing is true with oneness. Pentecostalism. They've adopted a doctrine of God that falls under the ancient heresy of modalism, that God appeared like Old Testament as the Father and then New Testament as the Son, and then now in the church age as the Holy Spirit.
And so one God, not three persons, but three modes. So they baptize in the name of Jesus to confess this. And we would say that's not a trinitarian baptism, therefore it's an invalid baptism.
So that the validity of baptism is bound up to the confession of the doctrine of the Trinity.
That gives us a beautiful way of saying that even if someone has a bad doctrine of baptism, like whoever, Baptists say it's just a symbol. We say, no, it's actually a valid baptism and efficacious too.
And it also. Sorry, I like this question because it lets us really think carefully about these things.
It also gives me a way that say that there's a Lutheran pastor who's not a Lutheran. Let's say he's like a Hindu, but he acts Lutheran.
And even though he believes in Krishna and a million gods, he has never told anybody that. And he confesses the Trinity. And let's say that that Lutheran congregation has no Christians in it. They're all like Buddhists and atheists, same, I guess. And Muslims, who knows? But they all are confessing the creed. In other words, they're all hypocrites in their hearts. They don't believe anything, but with their mouth they're confessing these things.
It actually turns out to be a valid baptism.
So it doesn't depend on the individual private doctrine of the baptizer or the baptized or anything. It depends on that public confession.
Let's say, on the other hand, you got a Mormon guy who's really trinitarian, like he believes in the doctrine of the Trinity and everybody else there also believes in the Doctrine of the Trinity, but the public confession denies it.
Then those, the words that are spoken have the meaning that is there by the public confession. And so then it's not a valid baptism. It's not the private belief, it's the public belief. So they're on baptism. Now, one more thing on the Lord's Supper and then I want you to jump in and make this all clear. This took me like all three years at seminary trying to figure out why we Lutherans say that the Baptists have a valid baptism, but they don't have a valid supper.
Like what makes that valid and the other one not.
And here is my three years condensed into one sentence and it is that Jesus establishes the validity of the sacraments as he institutes them.
So when Jesus institutes baptism, he connects the validity of baptism to the confession of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus institutes the Supper, he connects the validity of the supper to the words of the Supper. This is my body given for you. This is the blood of the New Testament poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.
So that all those churches that confess that the body and blood of Jesus are there to eat and drink for the forgiveness of sins have a valid supper.
And all those who deny it, who say that the body and blood is not there, do not have a valid supper.
So that the validity of the supper is much tighter because it's actually tied to the doctrine of the Supper, whereas the validity of baptism is much broader because it's not tied to the doctrine of baptism, but rather to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
So that's where the conversation comes in.
Okay, well, Pastor Packer.
[00:49:10] Speaker B: Well, you stole my thunder because I was going to ask the follow up question, which is why, why do we make this distinction? And you just answered it. So that was because I think that's, I think that's the question that we get pushed on a lot. Right? That's one of the questions we get pushed on. Hey, you'll say they misunderstand baptism, but you'll say they have baptism.
But when we say they misunderstand the Lord's Supper, we say we don't have the Lord's Supper. And it does seem extremely, from an outside perspective, it seems arbitrary and inconsistent. Like we're allowing one, but not the other.
What's the deal? But I think you just explained it very clearly, which is.
And part of that is too, right? Maybe this helps people who don't understand where we're coming from, like we don't have a doctrine of the sacraments.
Right. We have a doctrine of baptism and a doctrine of Lord's Supper. We, we don't just shove them under one umbrella and say everything about them is the same. We make distinctions about them. And that allows us.
Because we think the text is making distinctions, which is what you just pointed out. Like, one is, hey, the foundation is the Trinity, the triune name. The other one, the foundation is, this is my body, this is my blood. So we're trying to stay as close to the text as we can and make our distinctions based on the text and not an arbitrary category that we're trying to shove them under, like the sacraments.
And so when others hear that, they think, well, they're both sacraments, so why don't you treat them the same? And our answer is, because they're similar, but they're distinct. They're not. They're not identical. And yes, they're both sacraments, but we're not going to treat them as the exact same thing, which is what everybody wants us to do. Right. Because the other pushback would be about our inconsistency here, would be, well, you baptize them, then why don't you commune babies, for example? Right? That's the other.
The other one. And the answer is the same. Well, we don't think they're exactly the same thing and that they were given for different purposes and they have a different function in the church. And we have different texts we have to wrestle with about what God says he gave them for and who they're to be given to.
So hopefully that helps people understand, like, how we're approaching it, because I do think it's a fair critique from an outsider like you. You guys seem like you're just.
You just want to tell us we can't. We're not having Lord's Supper. Like, you're just. You just don't like us and you just want to. You want something over us, and so you just throw that out there, but you'll let us have baptism. Thanks. But you're kind of mean on this other one, right?
[00:51:38] Speaker A: I think so. Here's my speculation about this. When I wonder why Jesus did this, why he didn't make them more parallel in the institution.
And so there's two. Two of the differences between baptism and the supper are that baptism is necessary for salvation.
Unless you are born again of water and the Spirit, you can't inherit the kingdom of God. Now, that doesn't mean that it's impossible to get to eternal life apart from the gift of Baptism, the Lord can do what he wants, but for us it means you better baptize that baptism is connected to salvation. As soon as someone believes in Jesus, they're baptized in the New Testament. I mean, you know, blam.
So that connection, the necessity of baptism. And also there is no warning about the danger of baptism. Whereas with the Lord's Supper there's a provision that warns of the supper. In other words, Paul says, this is why some of you are sick and why some of you have fallen asleep, because you came to the supper in an unworthy way.
And so the Lord opened up baptism to so many people.
So many people have the gift of baptism even though they don't know it. They think that their baptism was like their own work and it wasn't. It was the Lord's work to cause them to be born again so that the Lord wants as many people to be baptized as he can. But then the Lord in a way sort of protects people from unworthy communion by making a false communion, not communion, so that the Baptist who would be sinning against the body and blood of the Lord if they had the body and blood of the Lord are not sinning against it because they don't have it.
So that the Lord has this sort of fail safe built in to the Lord's Supper. This is my speculation anyways about why those are different because the proprium, the sort of proper work of each of the, of each of the sacraments is different. And so the Lord makes them as maximally beneficial as, as he can by their institution.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: Okay, so maybe last follow up question for this.
So what if a local Baptist church, that the whole church was like, yeah, of course it's Christ's body and blood. That's what it says.
Right. And so maybe their denomination confesses differently, but this local church, the pastor, everybody at the church says this is Christ's body and blood. Obviously, because that's what the text says.
Do they have the Lord's Supper then?
[00:54:19] Speaker A: This is the doctrine of the lesser magistrates applied to the.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Yeah, in some ways, yeah.
[00:54:25] Speaker A: If it's the public confession of the place, in other words, pastor people public confession their teaching, it's the true body and the true blood. They would have to say, and in this way we are different than the Southern Baptist Church and we deny that whatever 10th article of the Baptist faith and confession, because in this place we know that the words are true, then I think you would have it. But you would have to be that explicit because someone coming in and saying, oh, this is what Baptists believe According to those governing doctrines of what is believed in the place would say that it's not the body and the blood.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: I've been surprised over the years the number of people that end up in church from a Presbyterian or Baptist background that say, yeah, I believe it's Christ's body and blood, right? And then I'm always my follow up question, always, then why are you, you know, your church doesn't teach that, right? Like, you know, your individual belief is going against what your actual church confesses and trying to figure out like how. I'm glad you got to that point. But you know, you're part of a church that, that says the opposite. But what you can see why it happens though, if they're hearing weekend and week out, this is my body, this is my blood, right? And they're just hearing the words of institution and that's, that's where you end up, right?
[00:55:44] Speaker A: So I. So another speculative theory about this and that is that every, that the. It must. And I think it has to be this way, that the Holy Spirit is protecting all of us from the false doctrines of our own churches.
So that the Holy Spirit is working in the hearts of the sacramentarians, those who deny the Supper, he's working to actually protect them from that doctrine and to give them the truth. So that every person, every Christian is more Lutheran than their own confession.
But we Lutherans are always surprised about this because we find people who are the same. I was talking to a guy, he's Baptist and he says, well of course it's the body and blood. That's what Jesus says. I'm like, you know, tell your convention that because they deny it. But it's like, well, I have it in the Word and it's here. And the same thing is true, I think with Catholics and even Mormons.
Everybody is slightly more on the Lutheran side of their own doctrine than, than we would expect.
And I think this is the Holy Spirit working to protect us from the false doctrines that the churches would teach.
It also means that the result of that, the other result is that when we Lutherans are critiquing the other church bodies, we are normally critiquing their official beliefs. Like here's the official stance of the Catholic Church, here's the official stance of the Baptist Church.
And most people who are in those churches do not hold to the official stance.
And the result is we look like zealots and particularly mean because we're going like we're shooting the missiles over the top of them, hitting the base behind them. But They've. They're not standing in the base.
And so.
So it seems like for Lutherans, we're like, man, every denomination is very different.
For most other people, they say, oh, we're almost the same.
And that.
It almost has to be that there's. That, like, there's a difference between. The way that we see the difference between the denominations depending on where you're standing.
It's an interesting spiritual phenomenon, and I think it informs our pastoral care, too. At least it ought to.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: I also think we're at a weird time where I think a lot of the lines are being redrawn in many ways.
Maybe not yet at the official levels, but on more local levels, you see more and more people looking at, well, even this is a minor thing, and maybe not doctrinally, per doctrine, per se, but the number of churches that have, like, Lenten Advent services that aren't, like, Lutheran or Roman Catholic now. Right. Like, there's a huge increase in that.
[00:58:39] Speaker A: There's.
[00:58:39] Speaker B: There's a lot of people looking at the Reformation time period or the early church and like, hey, these guys are making a lot of sense and a lot of stuff. And they're starting to adapt things so that you will find people in church bodies that, like you said, sound very, very much Lutheran because of what they're reading, looking into.
And oftentimes they just don't see how it doesn't connect maybe fully with what their church officially believes, because maybe in their church, it does sound a lot more Lutheran than you know. There's this one commentary series I use, that's a Roman Catholic commentary series, and it's on the New Testament. And some of the books sound like. Even when I, like, just sound Lutheran. And you, like, look for, like, little things, you're like, man, that sounds really Lutheran. Then you go to a different volume in the same set, and you're like, no, that's not. That's not Lutheran at all.
[00:59:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:59:29] Speaker B: Like, but it's just weird. Like, based on the author, you're like, oh, this could have been written by Brian Wolfmuller, right? And then the other one, you're like, this could not have been written by him. You know what I mean? Like, it's just. They're like night and day. And I. It's just a weird tension that I'm seeing more and more across various denominations.
[00:59:46] Speaker A: It's a great time to be alive. It's so good because, I mean, the Holy Spirit works in every generation, but you get different glimpses of it in different ways. But one of These. So, like that the evangelical church is waking up to the idea of receiving something from the past.
This is great. But then they wake up to that, and they think, well, I have to go to Rome. But then they go to Rome, and then they come three years later, and they're like, I haven't heard the gospel in three years. You know, I got to find where the.
I want to receive gifts from the fathers, but I don't want to give up the forgiveness of sins. You know, I mean, sheesh.
So that's. You know, everyone's kind of pushed in the Lutheran direction, which. But we should rejoice in that. But look what I mean. We should also hold this word a little bit more loosely, Lutheran. What does it mean? It just means to receive the gifts that Jesus wants to give. So we always have to be under that critique as well. I mean, are we receiving the gifts that Jesus gives in His Word?
And that has to be the definition, because every generation has its own heresies that have to be. Have to be identified and rejected. And it's hard for us to see where we are.
We see the sins of our fathers, but it's hard for us to see our own sins.
But the Holy Spirit is always working in that way. So it's just one man. I'm so glad that Pastor Packer, we are here in 2026, alive and rejoicing in the Lord's Word in the midst of his church. It's. It couldn't be. It couldn't be a better time.
[01:01:18] Speaker B: Well, on that note, we're. We're done. That's five.
[01:01:21] Speaker A: Thanks for the questions, everyone. Wolfmuller Co contact. Sign up for Wednesday whatnot when you're there. You know, the Wednesday whatnot has been sent out consistently for four weeks.
Count them, four weeks.
One more going out today.
Lord willing. Five weeks in a row. We'll see how that goes. That's a free weekly newsletter, so that's great. And thanks, Pastor Packer, for all that you do. Praise the Lord. Safe travels. We'll see you all next week.
