Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians, welcome to Worldwide. Wait a minute, it's not the Worldwide Bible class.
Welcome to the Theology Q and A podcast. There we are. That's what we're doing.
It is Pastor Wolfmuller here. That's who I am. St. Paul and Jesus, deaf Lutheran churches. I'm trying to turn down my microphone. I think I turned it up too high.
St. Paul and Jesus, deaf Lutheran churches, together with Pastor Andrew Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois.
Pastor Packer, heard a rumor about you that you are been crying yourself to sleep every night the last couple of weeks thinking about how you're not going to be at the catechism retreat this year up in the mountains.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: That's true.
That's legit.
[00:00:41] Speaker A: You should actually.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Legit rumor.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: You got some questions for us?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yeah. The first one's on how do we teach Christians to handle suffering?
So this is in response to something you said recently about suffering.
And they want to know basically when we teach catechism class or adult instruction or whatever it might be, where does that fit in? How do we take the time to make sure we're training up people and teaching them how to handle suffering?
Especially they said, with like modern day stoics giving all kinds of instruction to people all over the Internet.
How are you training people to be ready for suffering in the Christian life and what suffering means for the Christian?
[00:01:26] Speaker A: It's such a great question. Here's so the first, I'll just write, I don't know the answer, but I have a few ideas. Why? I don't know. So there is not really a place to talk about suffering in our dogmatics.
And one of the difficulties that we have in the Lutheran Church is that our church was born out of the polemics of the Reformation, which is fine. It's great. It's a huge blessing for us because we have this great clarity on the doctrine of justification, this great clarity on the doctrine of the scripture, great clarity on the doctrine of the church. But most of our sort of official documents don't say much about the normal Christian living kind of stuff.
Like for example, the only place you really find prayer discussed in the Book of Concord is in the catechisms where you have the Lord's Prayer unfolded for us and that's beautiful. The teaching on the Lord's Prayer there is great. And those are the sort of non polemical teaching documents. There's a ton, an absolute ton of instruction on suffering that comes out of the Reformation, but it's not in the Book of Concord because it's in the sermons and it's in the preaching and it's in the writings. It's in stuff where, like Luther says that the seventh mark of the church when he's outlining these marks of the church is the cross. And by the cross, he means the afflictions that the Christian endures.
So we have this rich treasure trove of teaching on how the Lord deals with us, and especially through suffering.
But it kind of doesn't show up in our dogmatic tradition anywhere. Because it. It doesn't. It's not necessarily a polemic. Maybe it is. I mean, we just got finished with the worldwide Bible class. We're working on Luther's commentary on Genesis and the Joseph thing. And he talks so much about how all the sufferings of the saints is the Lord playing with us. In fact, I wonder if I could show you that. I put together a little collection of.
Of Luther talking about how our suffering is God playing with us, but how difficult it is for us to endure this. I wonder if I know how to. And maybe we can share the link for this in the show notes, because there's all these passages where Luther says, this is how the Lord does it. Let me find a short one so I can read you an example.
Thus, David fell in a horrible manner on account of his smugness and pride in order that he might learn what sin is and be able to say from the heart, against thee, thee only have I sinned. I see that we are all accused and condemned in thy law, but no man understands this. I, however, confess that I am such a great sinner that I have deserved wrath and am worthy of eternal death. In short, I am nothing else than sin. So that thou art justified in thy sentence and blameless in thy judgment by others who claim to be righteous.
Therefore, let us learn. So here's Luther talking about. Let us learn to cling to the consolation that although guilt gnaws at our conscience and the goad of the law and death torments us, yet this is not being done for our destruction, but rather for our instruction.
That's key. It's not destruction, but instruction and cleansing. In order that we may come to a knowledge of ourselves and our corruption, let us endure the hand of God who cleanses us, that is, laughs and plays with us.
For those who refuse to endure his hand argue about satisfaction and when this cannot be enough, are forced to despair. Although God cleanses even hypocrites and godless men, they, like glass, are broken before the cleansing is accomplished. There's so much here but here's this point is that God is laughing and playing with us, but for us it's death and destruction and. And agony.
But for the Lord, it's a playing all the way through. I mean, the Savior plays with us with a savage purging, and he does it to improve us and not to destroy us.
So that there's so much on this life of suffering. In fact, when Luther, he says you can make a game out of the Scriptures. You have the theology which teaches us the law and the gospel, and then you have the life which teaches us to love and suffer.
So that you basically have four things in the Scripture, the law that shows us our sin, the gospel that shows us our Savior, and then the commands that teach us to actively love and to passively endure the suffering of this life. I mean, it's just such a huge part of it. But I don't.
And for Luther. And here's the thing that I. The dot that I am trying to connect, and you can. Andrew, I think you can help me with this, because I've been trying to connect this. For five or six years actively, and I have not been able to stretch the line far enough, is that when we think of justification, we do not think of suffering like those two. That's like different categories in our mind.
But when Luther thinks of it of justification, that's exactly what he thinks of. He thinks of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit dealing with each one of us to not only plant his promises in our heart and declare us righteous and forgive our sins, but also to deal with us as his children so that he can help us see our own failings and even correct us in life. And give us fear. I mean, give us courage in the midst of fear and hope in the midst of this darkness. He deals with each one of us, and that's part of our salvation. It's part of our justification.
And we have this sort of theological framing of things that's so abstract and so distant that it's hard for us to connect these dots.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: Well, it sounds like you connected it right there.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: Well, maybe I can connect them when I talk about it, but I can't connect them in my mind.
They're like two different categories.
Like when Luther says we're justified by faith, he means by that that.
God acts angry, but he frowns when he looks at us and smiles when he looks away, like Joseph to his brothers. Remember how Joseph is playing with his brothers and he's weeping? He loves them so much, and he hides them and he weeps and he. And then he washes his face and I don't know, puts back on the Egyptian eye mascara or whatever and comes out and rah. But inside his heart is.
But outward he's like this. And that's what Luther means by justification.
When Jesus is treating the Syrophoenician woman like that. When he says I didn't come for you and he loves her so much, I mean, he can't wait to rescue her daughter from the demon.
He's.
His heart is overflowing with love for her. And his face is like that is justification for Luther. When the Lord comes to Jacob on the Jabbok river and he shows up and he just, you know, John seeing it and it's like.
And he gives them the suplex and they're covered in mud.
That is justification for Luther.
For me, justification is that faith apprehends the promise of the gospel of the death of Jesus on the cross. But it's very visceral.
It's like that we suffer. There was this line in Luther that we read today, it said the feeling of God's wrath is a sign of life.
I mean this is like what this kind of the reality of living this life in the midst of all of these afflictions and knowing that God is merciful and loving and that all of the stuff that happens is from God because he loves us.
So that the troubles of this life are not in spite of God's love, but exactly from God's love and for God's love.
This is.
These things are deeply embedded and ingrained. So that our Christian life is not just the kind of agreement with some sort of assertion, but it's a full on wrestling with God day and night that's all baked into it. And we just, I don't know the Lord, I can see it, but it's like I'm watching it from a distance. It's like I'm standing on the other side of the river. Like I'm.
Maybe I'm Judah and I'm standing on the other side of the river and I'm watching my dad wrestle with God all through the night. And I'm like, but it's dark and hazy and I can't quite see. And I'm like, what is happening over there?
It's like I'm not yet in the battle, but I can, I can see that there's something there, but I'm watching it at a distance.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: So if you're teaching a new members class or like a kids confirmation class, something like that, how do you. How do you prepare them for the suffering of the Christian life? Like, where do you bring it up? Or where do you talk about it? Or how does it, how does it work into your, your thinking when you're, when you're teaching them these things?
[00:11:05] Speaker A: I don't know it. So I'll tell you what's helpful is the, is this worldwide Bible class going through. We've been. For three years now, we've been studying Luther on Genesis, and that's all it's about. It's about prayer, suffering, and faith. It's all the same. And so it keeps it on the top of my mind. So as I'm teaching and I'm preaching, it's just always there. So that's super helpful. But there's not a real place for it. Right. In our catechesis.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: It should be.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: We should probably teach the two parts of the Christian life.
Normally when we teach sanctification, that is in the narrow sense, like that growth in good works that follows justification.
We normally talk about active sanctification, which is our life of love.
That's where we should probably add in passive sanctification, which is our life of hope, which is our life of suffering.
That's probably the place where it belongs. If we could put it in there and, and flesh it out right there. So that the Lord gives you the cross not because he hates you, but because he loves you. So everything comes because of the death of Christ. God, who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. How shall he not also, together with him, give us all things so that all the things that come to us come to us through the cross of Jesus, which is the proof of God's love for us. It's the shape and form of God's love for us.
And this thing that God wants to deal with us through the death of his son.
Now, all things then come to us as a gift.
Where do you put it in there?
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Well, I usually start the class oftentimes talking about erratio, meditatio, tentatio, because I usually kind of warn my classes, like, look, if you're taking these things seriously, sometimes for the first time, don't expect that you're not going to be attacked. The devil's not going to try to attack and steal the word of God from you in some way. If you're getting into the Word. Like, it's not like it's gonna be just like smooth sailing throughout this class. There's gonna be trials and temptations and there's going to be suffering as you wrestle with these things. And then I often talk about it too, under your will be done, because I'll talk about Christ in the garden. I have a great woodcut of like an angel handing Christ the cross from heaven, like handing it down to him as he prays in the garden. And so usually show that and talk about that. So those are some of the places I try to work it in. And then also where you mentioned under the life of the Christian talking about sanctification, I usually try to work it in there as well.
[00:13:34] Speaker A: Here's this Luther line. Look at this is crazy. He says, this wisdom and game of God pertains to those who sob and cry out in accordance with a contrite and humble heart and a dimly burning wick. They're the ones who feel it. To them, consolation must be offered in order. They may not despair, but be brave. As Psalm 20:27:14 admonishes, Be strong and let your heart take courage, for to feel God's wrath is a sure sign of life.
Oh man.
Phew.
All right, great question.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: Ready for the next one? Sure.
All right, it's on 2nd Corinthians 5:10.
Essentially, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. So what they want to know is if they understand this correctly. So I'll give you their quick summary.
We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that Paul's not speaking.
Paul speaking to believers, not describing the final judgment of unbelievers. And so this is a personal evaluation of a Christian's life by Christ.
Their second point, it's not about salvation.
Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. And so this is not determining whether one goes to heaven or hell.
And then third, receiving what is due, you know, the Christian being rewarded for faithfulness and obedience, etc.
Do they understand it correctly?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Maybe I'll just kind of start with my explanation and you can tell me how they match up. Because I was pulling up a lot of times that idea, hey, we're going to be judged and if you do good you go to heaven. If you do bad, you go to hell. That sounds like a works based salvation.
I always think the key to understanding that is Hebrews 11:6. Apart from faith, it's impossible to please God so that the judgment based on works.
In other words, if the Lord Jesus says on the last day, okay, all you guys who believe in me come up this way. And all you who don't, away you go.
And those who are sent away are like, wait a minute, I wasn't ready for this.
My whole life have been ready to be judged on works. And so the Lord says, okay, let's do it that way. And the results are the exact same, because apart from faith, it's impossible to please God. But this idea that the judgment is based on works is just biblical doctrine. So, John, here's the passages. I can share this too. This is from talking about the Athanasian Creed this last week.
And here's one of the this is kind of the third major objection to it. But Judgment of Works John 5:28 do not marvel at this. The hour is coming in which all who are in the grave will hear his voice and come forth those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.
So that's just almost like word for word, the creed, and that's Jesus. And this passage is also very important because it puts that resurrection of death there to the resurrection of condemnation, so that it's not just the Christians that are raised, but all people, and that that punishment is an eternal punishment.
Matthew 25 Jesus also come, you bless my father, inherit the kingdom, depart from me, you cursed into everlasting life the sheep and the goats, he'll render to each according to his deeds. Romans 2 this is, I think, the big one. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:10, that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
So there's also a sense of what there's a sense of reward on the Judgment day.
We think of Judgment Day as condemnation day, but we should think of it.
It's the judgment that the Lord gives is twofold. On the one hand, he'll judge those who have lived apart from him and present themselves on that day apart from his work on the cross.
To them, that day is a condemnation day. Depart from me, noting also that the day is a directional day. So for those who are with him, come to me, and those who are away depart from me. So there's a vector that's set on that day.
But for those who are with Christ, it's the judgment of righteousness. Your sins are forgiven and in fact a day of reward. Those who lead many to righteousness will shine like the stars in the heavens.
So that's my kind of full take on it. How does it match up with our
[00:18:16] Speaker B: questioner Yeah, I think they got it. They got it pretty much right. I usually like to quote Augustine, right? St. Augustine says something to the effect of God is so good and gracious that he not only, like, gives us eternal salvation, but he blesses the works we've done, which the Holy Spirit has worked in and through us.
So that's even more evidence of God's grace. Because, of course, like Gerhard says, right? Like, all of our sinful works are 100% purely sinful, but all of our good works are never 100% purely good. They're always tainted a little bit by sin, by false whatever, you know, false motives, whatever. They're never perfectly good. And so that they have to be cleansed by the blood of Christ, too. And so that God, in His mercy and his grace, still blesses us by rewarding us for things he's worked in and through us by His Holy Spirit, which just grace upon grace, right? Like, it's. He's adding to what he's already. He's already going to save us. Like you said, like, hey, here's a. Here's a different standard. Well, you guys still didn't meet that standard. But for those who have faith, all these things they've done have pleased God, right? Like, all. Every good work they've done has been pleasing to God because of faith and because of Christ.
And it's been the Holy Spirit working those things in and through us. And God says, yep, I'm going to reward those two.
So pretty amazing.
[00:19:36] Speaker A: I'd like to hone in on that last thing is. And I think this is beautiful. So all of our works are stained with sin, but all of that sin is purged away so that all that's left is the goodness of the good works, the things that God caused to be brought forth and that he delights in so that he'll. It's like he finds our good works out in the gutter, and he. And those are also cleansed and then given back to us. And then this is the thing that. I mean, I'm still trying to get over this. Well, I don't know if I'm trying to get over it. Maybe I'm trying to get into it that your good works and the glory that God gives to you, Pastor Packer, on the last day will make me so happy.
Like, now we only know envy and jealousy. I mean, we hardly can rejoice that someone has something that we don't have, like that's a cause of so much pain in life.
But on the last day we'll finally be set free from that.
And so I'll no longer be jealous of your deadlift weight, for example, but I'll be so happy that the Lord has given you such humongous hamstrings or whatever.
But this is the point, is that we'll be able to delight in the rewards that the Lord gives to other people.
Our great joy will be to look around and to see all of the. The saints shining like the brightness of the stars. And who knows how bright I'll be. That won't matter to me. The joy that I'll have is the brightness of everyone else around me. Oh, man. Can you imagine being that. That free to delight? I mean, it's just this is part of this angelic joy that Jesus is talking about at the repentance of others.
And to have that.
That joy, oh, man, what a day.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: I do want to clarify something, because I now live near Pastor Hemmer, and so all of the pastors in the area, we just walk around feeling weak and pathetic because we're near him and he's like, superhuman. So we just all feel weak all the time.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: It's good to have that.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: He keeps us humble.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: All right, next. Next question. Can you lose your salvation?
And they want to talk about Hebrews 6. So this is from. This is not from a Lutheran. This is from a reformed person.
They say, it seems to me to say that you can lose your salvation as a Reformed. I say they were exposed to the truth and maybe grew, but never took root or choked out by weeds. They were never of the elect.
So they're wrestling with this as a reformed person, because of course, they would say, well, you can't actually fall away if you're elect. And so they're wrestling with this verse. So I guess I should probably read the verse is for us, Hebrews 6, verses 4 through 6. For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, to have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: This is a notoriously difficult passage.
So it's especially important, just as kind of our theological approach, when we see the difficult passages that we want to line them up with other passages to make sure that they all fit together.
Our Lutheran fathers lumped three passages together.
This passage from Hebrews 6 and the other parallel passage in Hebrews is Hebrews 4.
Those two passages, along with the end of John 1 where it talks about the sin that leads to death, together with the warning that Jesus gives about the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit as the sin that's not forgiven. And it's important to note that Jesus does not say it's the unforgivable sin.
He says it's the unforgiven sin. And that's very, very different. Because to be unforgivable is like the sin is of such a huge, massive thing that Jesus can't handle it. That's just not the case. The reason it's unforgivable is not because of the nature of the sin itself, but because of the nature of the way the Lord gets forgiveness to us, which is namely through the Word and Spirit. So that if we cut ourselves off from the Word and the Spirit, either through pride, which says we don't need repentance, or despair, which says we cannot be saved, then we are cutting ourselves off from the way that the Lord gets his mercy to us. Now, the interesting thing about the Reformed is that they say that's impossible because they want to run everything through God's sovereignty.
And when you take the power of God and you mix it up with the doctrine of election in this way that God predetermines who he can be saved. And then you pull that back through the Scriptures, you end up doing a number of things.
The worst of the things that you do is you limit the atonement. That's the L and the tulip, which says that Christ died only for the elect and not for the sins of the world.
But the other thing that you do is you end up getting a double predestination that God determines to send some to heaven and some to hell.
And when it gets to the question, can I have faith and then not have faith, Can I be a Christian and fall away? The way that when you pull election backwards through that you get the perseverance of the saints, right? And you can't, you can't fall away. The problem is when you're doing the theology that way, like taking the sovereignty and election and pulling it back through all these other doctrines, it ends up distorting the doctrine away from what the Scripture says. So the Bible warns about falling away. This is one of those passages. I think the clearest passage is in the parable of the Sower, when Jesus talks about the seed that falls amongst the stones and he describes what this means. These are those who receive the Word with joy and believing for a time, grow up until persecution comes along and then their faith withers and they fall away.
So the Lord is constantly warning us about the danger of apostasy, of falling away. Now the reform come because they don't see it as a possibility, because of their kind of logical construct. They'll say, well, if you fell away, you never were there in the first place. Which introduces a great source of discomfort to this doctrine, which is intended to give us comfort, which comes to us in the form of, well, if someone fell away, they weren't really saved. Did they think they were saved? Yes. Do you think you're saved? Ah, right. I mean, but now the Lutheran doctrine, or any other free will doctrine of. So we have the bound will doctrine of election, but any other free will doctrine of election still has that same sort of thing.
The point that, in other words, if you try to run comfort through the doctrine of election, primarily, it ends up being uncertain. Because election, like faith, is hidden.
Election is hidden in the eternal council of God. Faith is hidden in the heart.
So we are to look to for assurance and comfort, not to those hidden things, but to the revealed things. Those who elect are called.
So we look to the calling to see our election.
And we see that calling in the preaching of the Gospel, in the absolution, in baptism, in the Lord's Supper. We see that calling showing up. And so we have our confidence in those things, not in the hidden things of God.
Now back to the Hebrews 6 question.
I think the key point that our Lutheran exegetes will make is that this is presented as a warning, not as a description.
In other words, the text is given to us not to describe what's happening, but rather to warn us away from taking the Word of God lightly, taking repentance lightly, taking the cross of Jesus lightly.
Because the danger is that if we show up on the resurrection, on the day of the resurrection, on the judgment day, apart from the cross of our Lord Jesus, we are doomed. So here the preaching is coming to us, saying, hold on to Christ, do not let go of him, cling to his promises.
And if this is you, then that judgment day comes to you as a great gift.
But if we show up on the judgment day, clinging to our own works in place of Christ, then there's no hope, there's no going back.
It's lost.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: I think the part that bothers people in Hebrews 6 and I guess Hebrews 10:2, but especially in Hebrews 6 is that it says if they've fallen away, once they've been enlightened, then it's impossible for them to come back. I think Dr. Kleinig in his great commentary in Hebrews deals with this well because he basically says his whole point is once you reject Christ, there's no other place to turn for salvation. So it's impossible to be restored. If you've fallen away from Christ and you keep rejecting Christ, what other options do you have for salvation? The answer is there isn't one.
So the whole point of Hebrews 6 is you reject Christ.
And it's very clear that they have been enlightened, which is language throughout the Bible. Right. Of having your eyes opened because of the work of the Holy Spirit. So it's clearly not that they were pretending to be believers, they were actually enlightened. You see the same problem even in their question because the way they phrase the parable of the Sower is that they were exposed to the truth and heard the truth, but not that they actually believed. But that's not what the parable says. As you said, the parable says they believed, they had it and they believed and then they rejected it. Hebrews 6 says the same thing. They were Christians.
And if you're a Christian who rejects Christ and fall away and you keep rejecting Christ and there's no hope of salvation, and that's the warning being made, right? If you, if you lose Christ, you lose everything. That's the point.
And then whether you're a Christian or a non Christian, if you don't have Christ, you cannot have salvation. That's the point of Hebrews 6.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Yep, we do it. There's always this comfort that we want to put on top, is that when people are worried about losing their salvation, this. And this is, you know, cfw Walter gives us this beautifully.
The fact that you're worried about losing it is an indication that you have not.
Because those who have lost their salvation aren't worried about it. And it is possible to reach a place where your heart is so hardened that, that you've in some ways you're handed over to judgment. It's just on the way.
Here's the point is that only God knows that.
We do not know that about ourselves or about anybody else.
So the Scriptures are always coming to us, calling us to repentance and to faith.
And our assurance is in that repentance and faith in knowing that we're sinners who are redeemed by Christ. That's what it means to be enlightened. To know that we're sinners redeemed by Christ, and so we just want to stick to that truth and let everything else go.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: All right, next one.
This is again in response to another video. Is every job really a God given calling?
So they say. Recently you spoke about the differences in the importance of various callings.
And in connection with that, I have a question. Should we call any kind of work a calling, or should we spend much more time first trying to understand whether a particular job truly benefits one's neighbor and helps glorify God? For example, if a person works in some sphere of mindless entertainment that doesn't lead people towards truth and beauty, should he seriously consider changing his line of work and strive to take up something more important?
I've simply noticed a tendency among us Lutherans to wave this off and say, everyone has their own calling, without trying to understand whether what you're doing really brings benefits and leads people toward the good. I would be great, very grateful for your pastoral reflections.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: This is great. I. I want to give it like an initial response and then I'm particularly interested in your thoughts on this one, Pastor Packer. I do think that.
So I see something good and something dangerous about the question. So the good thing is that when we read Luther, we see a man hunting for the words of institution.
And he says, why would a man take a wife? Why would a woman take a husband? Well, it's instituted by God and good, and so we can know that it's good even if we mess it up.
Why does the maid sweep the house? Well, she has the fourth commandment on your father and your mother. And so you can see the institution of God recognize that the institution itself is good, even though sinners are in the institution.
So we should be hunting that down. Is the thing that I'm doing instituted by God?
Is it put in place to serve God and to love the neighbor?
Now, the danger in the question is that if I can't connect the particular vocation that I have to a specific command of God, then I can be led into despair.
I think we should think about this. But we should also know that the Lord delights in the children of men and that there's a lot of things that he seems to care about that maybe we don't.
Is it good for a Christian, for example, to be a professional athlete?
We're like, what good does that do?
How does that help feed people or whatever?
And I think the Lord is actually pleased with all of these different parts of humanity. I mean, probably not being a Gladiator in the old Roman arena. I'm not sure that that's a particularly good idea connected to murder. But, but in this realm of what the world is, I think the Lord's heart is broad.
So the danger is coming along and saying, hey, if this isn't directly related to whatever, to putting food on tables or to, or to, or to governing the world, then it's going to be an illegitimate vocation.
I think there's a bigger margin in the things that the Lord is pleased in. At least I want to. I'm interested in expanding that.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: So, yeah, I think going back to what you said about the gladiator, right? If our fence is the Ten Commandments and we're free with our vocations to play within that fence, right? As long as we're not violating those. So like, obviously a Christian couldn't be, as you were saying, like a gladiator or a, or a mobster or, you know, a, you know, for hire assassin, just taking out whoever you get paid to take out, whatever, like ridiculous examples, right? Or a prostitute, which would include, sorry, only fans, right? Things like that. Like all those things would be under that. Like those are violating clear commandments of God, so you couldn't do those things.
Like you said, the danger with the question is, okay, what do we mean by for the good? Because it mentions mindless entertainment. But is all mindless entertainment bad?
And I would say no. Like, there's a place, there's a place in our lives for mindless entertainment, right? It can be beneficial. It can be good for you to have something that takes your mind off of things, where you get to like, unwind, unplug, whatever from life and just kind of do some mindless things.
So that can actually be something that's serving your neighbor. Entertainment is, like you said, athletes, right? Entertainment is a part of life that God has built into what we do. We produce things that entertain one another, whether it's music or various art or sports or whatever, those can be used for good, for the neighbor and entertaining them.
So I guess my caution would be I think we need to be careful about narrowing it so much to maybe things like just that we like or dislike, right? Like I don't like that thing. So I can write it off as like, not a good vocation because I don't like that thing. Well, just because you don't like that thing doesn't mean it's not benefiting someone else. Maybe it doesn't benefit you, but that's okay. Like, not everything has to benefit you personally. But maybe it does benefit this other person, right? So, I mean, because even mindless entertainment, some people think any kind of TV show or movie is mindless entertainment and you shouldn't watch anything.
There are Christians, even Lutherans, I've heard say that kind of thing. Where others would say, no, it's, you're free in Christ to enjoy a good movie, right? As long as, again, violating the commandments, you're free in Christ to do these things. So that's where my caution would be. Like, what are we defining as good? We want to be careful with, like, calling mindless entertainment. Because your definition of mindless entertainment, mine might be very different.
And maybe what you're thinking of is actually sinful and wicked. And what I'm thinking of is just like, oh, silly or fun stuff that just relaxes someone.
So I understand what they're getting at. And I think in a sense they're right. We should all be asking ourselves, am I serving the neighbor through my vocations?
But we have to be careful, like Yusuf, if it's not commanded by God or forbidden by God to be. Use Christian wisdom there. But maybe not get too legalistic about what you consider good versus what maybe your neighbor considers good.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Remember these five questions that we introduced to give shape to our Christian love. And so the first question is, what do the commandments say?
And then, what is my calling or vocation? And then the third, what's my neighbor's need? The fourth is, what am I good at?
And then the fifth is, what's my neighbor's sin? That's the constraining question. But that fourth thing, what am I good at? Like, maybe somebody is good at,
[00:38:38] Speaker B: I
[00:38:38] Speaker A: don't know, computer game programming or something like that.
They ought to consider the commandments first and their calling and their neighbor's need. But then our own talent, our own capacity, it factors in there also to how we shape our lives and what vocations we pursue. It is good for Christians to think, well, maybe in two things, especially when it comes to our callings and vocations, to think, what life can I pursue that will give, that has purpose?
In other words, a lot of times we just sort of get led along life and we end up showing up somewhere and we're like, I don't know what I'm doing here. And this is the midlife crisis for a lot of guys, right, is they get to the middle of a career and maybe it's successful to provide for their family, and they've got money and a car and Something, but it's kind of.
There's no real purpose connected to it, and that meat falls out from underneath. There's help there in the doctrine of vocation, which is that the Lord has established all these things.
But it's good if you're at that place in life where you can think about, how can I make sure that I have meaning and purpose in my vocation? That's a helpful question to ask and to work through with your friends and your pastor.
So that's important. It's also important for us to consider our entertainment, like what we do for entertainment, and recognize that our entertainment is functioning to shape our conscience.
And that can be helpful or it can be hurtful. And so I do think we need to add a level of mindfulness in our thinking about these things and make sure that our. That our entertainment is not just a constant feed of things that will callous the conscience.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: Or even just that, the amount of time perhaps, that we spend on entertainment. Because that shapes you in a different way too. It may not be Harding your conscience, but it may be making you lazy, negligent of all kinds of other duties because you're just getting sucked into mindless entertainment. It has its place. But if that's all you're doing, then that's a real, obviously real danger. You mentioned video games. Computer programmer for video games.
I know some people want to rail against video games all the time. I don't really play them, but I know even, like, you know, guys that do or whatever, that's fine. But if you're spending like eight hours a night playing video games to neglect of everything else, that's. That's a problem. You know, like, that's different.
But doing it once in a while to unwind. I don't. I obviously don't see how anyone could say that's, like, wrong or sinful.
But yeah, if you're doing eight hours a night to neglect your family, that's a whole different ballgame we have.
[00:41:24] Speaker A: You have to think to yourself, like, if you sit down to look at social media, which is this. I mean, so video games, social media, all this sort of stuff, I'm like, for me, I'm like, that's. I don't. I'm not sure that's a good use of. But I do have Twitter. So if I think, okay, how much time is me looking at Twitter gonna be when I put it, when I shut it down, I'm like, oh, that was a good use of my time versus, oh, that was a bad use of my time. And I don't know, the time range is probably about two and a half minutes.
Like, anything more than that, I'm like, that was not a good use of time.
Less than that, I'm like, oh, okay, good. But, you know, you can sort of think about it, like, okay, if I'm gonna go play some video game, how much time playing this thing am I gonna. When I stop, I'm like, okay, that was good. That was nice. Versus when I stop, I'm like, what am I doing with my life?
And it's probably in the minutes range and not the hours range. You know, I think that's probably the. But. But it's good to think about that when you're not, because these things are just built to grab your attention and just like, you know, squeeze it like a lemon to where there's no attention left for the things that you ought to give attention to, like the word of God and your family and asking us questions on YouTube.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: All right, the three good uses of
[00:42:45] Speaker A: time
[00:42:48] Speaker B: as we're on social media. Okay,
[00:42:54] Speaker A: Sanctifying your algorithm. One question at a time. That's right after this video is over. Shut it off.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: This is. This is about Solomon and Job.
So they just began watching the channel. They're lcms Lutheran, born and baptized. Their pastor recommended watching these. So now they have two questions.
They're reading Job and Ecclesiastes. And so they want to know what are the key takeaways for Christians from Job first and then from Ecclesiastes? And specifically, they say, is Solomon realizing through his God given wisdom how pride has blinded him from God's love?
And is Job's suffering and ultimate awareness of God's perfect will a key to our need to repent and believe that Jesus Christ has taken all of our suffering, which is the beginning of knowledge.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: I'll take Job. You get Ecclesiastes. Okay, so.
So Job. Here's the key for Job.
Remember that Job's righteousness is a declared righteousness.
It starts out with this glimpse into heaven where God himself says to the devil, have you considered my servant Job? He's righteous and blameless. In other words, Job is a sinner. I know that from Romans which says, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He's a descendant of Adam and Eve, so I know he's a sinner. So his righteousness is not that he's sinless, but that he has faith in God and is therefore justified and forgiven. And Job knows that he is righteous not because he looks at his life and sees his perfection, but because he goes to church. Remember, this little line I think is the most important.
It says that Job used to offer a sacrifice in case his children, when they were feasting, had sinned.
So Job had the sacrament of the altar, which gave forgiveness for him and his family. And he trusted that.
Now, the whole assault on Job is from the devil and this demonic council, which is Job's three friends.
And it's a fight like this.
Job knows he's forgiven and righteous from church, and he knows that he's a sinner from his life.
And the temptation is to think that God must hate you because look how bad your life is.
In other words, it's a fight of two words.
It's trying to answer the question, what does God think of me?
And where do I get the answer? Do I get it from the sacrifice, or do I get it from my circumstances?
The amazing thing is that it looks like, as we're reading the book of Job, that his friends are starting to win, and Job is getting more irritated about it. And that Job might be lost from the heavenly council and brought into the demonic counsel. But what happens? Job finally goes too far, and he says, I'm righteous. Look at me. And the Lord intervenes immediately and says, job, that's too much. You're righteous because I declared you righteous, not because you're sinless.
But he comes and he and he. And he humbles Job and he comforts Job. And then here's the key thing. At the very end, the Lord goes to Job's three friends, and he says, now, you guys, I also want to be forgiven. So go to Job and he will offer a sacrifice for you. In other words, the whole book of Job was confirmation class for Job's three friends. And at the end, they're welcomed to the sacrament of the altar. The devil loses those three guys to the Lord's altar and to the Lord's name.
So that the key takeaway in all of this is that our suffering is not proof of God's anger and wrath or displeasure, but in fact comes to us as a gift from God. Like we had this earlier, that the knowledge of God's wrath is a sign of life, this amazing stuff, so that Job is teaching us to not be. Look around us, to figure out what God thinks of us by looking around at our circumstances, which like, hey, things are good, God must love me, things are bad, he must hate me. No, we know how God thinks about us because we also go to the sacrament of the altar, and there we hear this Is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. So I know that I'm righteous not because of my life or my deeds, but because of the sacrifice of Christ which is shared with me. And now my own suffering becomes a way for the Lord to lead other people to his name and his altar.
That I think is the key takeaway for Job.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Maybe if I can add one thing about Job because it ties in with something we talked about earlier, with being the rewards for our deeds and things like that, is that Job has a whole chapter where he says, hey guys, I know I'm not perfect, but I defend the orphan and the widow and I break the teeth of the wicked. And like he lists like all these things he's done as a godly man to strive to be a good Christian among his neighbors, to show them, like look, I haven't been cheating people, I've been helping people.
So you guys keep saying I'm wicked, but here's the good works I've done. And you know, he had been praying for forgiveness anyway. So it's like why do you guys keep telling me I'm suffering because I'm so wicked when I've prayed about this and I've been striving to live a Christian life.
Now with Solomon, they say something really interesting.
He's realizing through his God given wisdom that pride has blinded him from God's love. There's a debate on Solomon when, when he wrote Ecclesiastes.
If you wrote the end of his life, it, it could be very well evidence that he repented.
Um, which is how I like to like to kind of take it that way because it's more comforting when you think about Solomon to think that that was the last thing he wrote. Um, but we're not a hundred percent sure. But it's interesting cuz Solomon used the gift God gave him his wisdom to rebel against God.
Like when you read everything that's going on with Solomon, how did he, how did he gain so much wealth and wives and all of these things that he wasn't supposed to be multiplying, that the Lord forbid kings to multiply.
He used his wisdom that God had given him. So he's a great example of someone using a gift God has given you to rebel against God, which was his pride, that as they asked, did blind him from God's love. Then I think Ecclesiastes seems to be right, which, it's a great, I think evangelistic tool for today's people because it's Solomon's. Like I tried money I tried women, I tried music, I tried drugs and alcohol. Basically, like he talks about wine. But for our context today, you could say he tried drugs and alcohol. And he just kept seeing that apart from Christ, everything's useless and meanless. But then if you have Christ, then you can eat and drink for tomorrow we die. Like, you can actually do that. You can actually eat, drink and be merry if you know that you have Christ. And so it ends with pretty simple instruction, right? Fear God and keep his commandments like fear, love and trust in God above all things, and then live a Christian life. That's his summary of everything he's wrestled through. But most of his wrestling through that book is, I tried everything to fill this void.
St. Augustine calls it right, that God shaped hole. Our hearts are restless until we rest in the O Lord. He was restless looking everywhere for the fulfillment to those things and couldn't find it until he stopped running from God and realized it was God who gave meaning to everything under the sun. And then we realized that, then it put it all together. So I think Ecclesiastes is super helpful with talking to people about what they're realizing in their own lives right now. Like, hey, why are you depressed? Why are you looking around and wondering why your life doesn't have meaning and purpose? It's because you're doing it apart from Christ. Like, he's what you're missing.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: That's really.
I'm just thinking about this, what you said here, and this idea of being empty.
And there's, you know, we talk about these groans that we have. Like the body groans and the conscience groans and the heart groans and it wants to be filled, but.
So we try to fill it with the things that, like, we try to fill our bellies with food, but it keeps groaning. And we try to fill our conscience with, I don't know, good works or numbness from abuse or whatever.
We numb it with alcohol, but it still groans. It makes the groan worse. And so the full life is the life that Christ offers. This is what he says, I'll give you life to the fullest. And apart from him, there is only emptiness.
I think in some ways people are coming to church and they're realizing that, like, I got to the end of that line and it's empty.
It's nothing there.
Meaning comes from.
And I think this is helpful. Meaning comes from the past and purpose comes from the future.
And so we have these four big questions, like, where did everything come from? Why did things go wrong?
And to know the answer to those two Questions gives us meaning, and then what's the fix and what's the finish that gives us purpose?
And so everyone's trying to craft meaning and purpose from answering these questions. But Christianity comes and offers the argument of Christianity, of creation, fall, redemption, resurrection.
It gives us meaning and purpose, and it fits into our lives. And in some ways, it's exactly what you said. But I'll adjust it, because the Epicureans say, eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we die. But the Christian says, let us eat, drink and be merry. Yesterday Christ died, and tomorrow we live forever.
So that our eating and drinking and being merry is all under the. Under the umbrella of God's mercy and the hope of eternal life.
So Ecclesiastes is doing that. It says, you can try all these other things. And.
And Solomon, like, alone had the ability to do that.
Like, the danger is, for me, I'm like, well, people say money can't buy you happiness. And like, well, I can't prove that, but Solomon could.
And it is this weird thing. I mean, we see it now, like, all these celebrities are like, hey, look, being famous is a curse.
And people who are not famous are like, well, you can say that. Well, yeah, who else is going to say it?
Like, but it's true. If we have.
If we are aiming for happiness or fulfillment, we're going to miss it. If we're aiming for Christ, we're going to have it. This is the mystery. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all the things are going to be added to you. But if you're busy trying to add all these things to you, if you're trying to have treasures in this life, if that's your aim and goal, then what is it? You know, what do you benefit if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?
So there's some deep wisdom from Solomon here.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Also, I haven't quoted Lewis or Chesterton, I don't think, in any of these, so I might as well quote them both. So Louis basically says, right, like his own wrestling. When I found that there was nothing in this life that could satisfy this desire, this longing I had, you know, I knew there had to have been, there had to be something else. There was this other desire outside of these things on earth, because I had this desire for something that none of these things could fulfill. And then in a similar vein, but in a typical Chesterton way, he says, the man knocking on the door of a brothel is looking for God, right? So you could say, you know, the man addicted to onlyfans or porn or whatever. Like, he's looking for God. He just. He doesn't know what he's looking for. He's looking in all the wrong places, Right? Like you said, trying to fill that emptiness, that void.
I've always loved that Chesterton quote because it strikes. It's funny on one hand, but also it reveals this deep need people have for God that they try anything and everything but God to fill, because in their sin, they're running from Him. And it's only when they come to the end of themselves and these things that they realize it's Christ that they need.
[00:55:15] Speaker A: It's the fig leaves of the garden, right? Like, let's put the fig leaves on. And it looks like it works until the sound of God comes. And then it's like, ooh, these are insufficient.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: So all these ways that we try to try to salve our own pain are insufficient apart from Christ. But in Christ now, all things come to us as a blessing, right? I mean.
I mean, in Christ, the Lord gives.
There's good things in life and there's bad things in life.
It's this question. I remember I was talking about suffering and how the Lord gives us crosses. And a man said to me, pastor, my life is pretty good. Does that mean I'm not a Christian? And I said, no, no, look, the Epicurean says, pain is bad. Pleasure is good. This is the life that we're. This is the good life is a life of pleasure or a life apart from pain. The Stoic comes along and says, no, pain is good because it leads to virtue. This is the good life, the life of virtue. The Christian says, jesus is Lord.
So if we have a life of pain or a life of pleasure, a life of much or a life of little, if we have a life of hunger or a life of satisfaction, if we have a life of poverty or a life of riches, Christ is Lord through all of it. If we're healthy or we're sick, if we're alone or we're surrounded by friends, whatever, Christ is Lord, and we receive all of it from Him.
And he gives it to us based on what he knows we need and wants us to have so that we receive everything as a gift from God, who is Lord over all this. And there's not one way to be a Christian. There is one Lord who rules over all of us Christian people.
[00:57:01] Speaker B: All right, we are done for this week.
[00:57:04] Speaker A: Thank you all for your great questions this week. I mean, it's not our job to evaluate the quality of questions, but I will take this occasion to tell you that they were great and we appreciate you very much. Wolfmuller, cocontact, you can send in your questions. I'm looking here that we're up to.
The list is not getting shorter, but longer.
372 questions, plus 50 on deck. Whoo. Anyhow, keep them coming and we will get after them. We're so appreciative of you. If this is helpful, make sure to, you know, comment, like, subscribe. All that stuff actually just helps us go out on the algorithms to sanctify the algorithms there. That's really great. So thanks again for being part of the fun. God's peace be with you.
