Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Pastor Wolfmuller here, joined by Pastor Andrew Packer, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. You know, I was in Arizona last weekend and everyone says, hey, I heard a rumor about you.
Me, Pastor Packer. I heard a rumor about Pastor Packer that you and Flammy are fighting about the nephilim again.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: I don't think so. Did we?
[00:00:20] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Wait. Did you meet my sister in law then?
If you were in Arizona, you don't remember?
[00:00:29] Speaker A: No one. I do not think anyone claimed you as their brother in law. Ouch.
[00:00:34] Speaker B: When I was there.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Ouch.
So probably I did.
Good evidence that it is your sister in law.
You got some questions for us today?
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Sure.
About the nephilim? No.
All right.
About Mormons.
Should she have invited the Mormons into her house?
So here's. Here's the question.
A few weeks ago, Latter Day Saint missionaries came to our home to get some context. My wife homeschools our seven children. They came in the middle of the week and in the middle of the day, which I feel was planned. They would assume the husband is not home, which I wasn't. My wife did not invite them in and politely said she was not interested. When I got home, my wife felt guilty that she did not witness to them and share the gospel.
I did not see it that way and told her that more harm would come by inviting them into our house with our children for them to spread their false gospel. And her first calling as a mother to protect her children from that. She was not prepared to refute their theology with them in front of our kids. Her conscience should not be burdened by that.
So what do you think? Should she have invited the Mormons into her house?
[00:01:42] Speaker A: I. I don't think it's wrong to invite the Mormons in. I used to do this all the time when Carrie and I were first married. I would go onto the LDS website and request a copy of the Book of Mormon so that they would come and I would give them pancakes. And, you know, these. You got to think about these poor. So, okay, first of all, it's good to remember that these Mormon missionaries are real people.
And like, you know, they just graduated high school and now they're two years living. And that the requirements of the missionary life for Mormon missionaries is pretty rough. I mean, you. You're totally with another person for two whole years. You can hardly talk to your family.
It's a very isolated life. It's a. It's. They're. They're. They're just living on kind of poverty wages. Barely scraping by, at least it used to be that way. So to be able to offer them a meal and things like this is great.
And then to speak to them clearly about the Lord Jesus, because it's a totally different religion, although the Mormons will argue that it's Christianity. But it's. I mean, nothing is the same. It's just the doctrine of God, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the incarnation, the doctrine of atonement, the doctrine of salvation, the scripture, everything is totally different. The hope for eternal life. I mean, the main thing about Mormonism is this saying that comes from doctrines and covenants. Is it doctrine and covenants as, as man is now, God once was, as God is now, man shall become.
Is that from doctrines and covenants? Anyway, that's the kind of overarching, wild idea of Mormonism. So it's not a wrong thing to want to engage with the Mormon missionaries and want to speak to them about the love of God in Christ, but it's also not required.
So just because someone knocks on your door does not mean that you are obliged to give them your time and attention.
Just like when someone calls you on the phone, it's not so that someone ringing the doorbell or calling is not, does not instantly oblige you to, to divert your attention from what it is that you're doing and to, and to go and give that attention to them. And especially if someone is unexpected in the. They're. It's not arranged. It's right in the middle of something.
It's just fine to say, I wish you well, I'm in the middle of something.
God bless you.
Maybe you could toss out there, you should worship Jesus. I remember these Mormon missionaries were, they were walking around the parking lot of our district convention.
So there's like, you know, 150 pastors, and here are these Mormon missionaries. I said, man, you guys are in the shark tank. Good for you.
And I said, you should worship Jesus. And they said, we do.
I said, okay.
It's good.
So I, I don't think that this mom should feel guilty, as if she had some sort of special obligation to serve the people that knock on the door, but nor if she wanted to. And she's like, hey, you know, why don't you come back later when I've got a little time. My husband's around. We can, we can have a cup of iced tea and, or, I don't know, something less caffeinated and, and talk about the Book of Mormon. That'd be great.
Here, by the way, is the resource to look at. I'm gonna. This is free. Do you know. Did I tell you about this book? Yes. Have I told you about this past record? Did we talk about it last time? This is a free to download or you can also.
You can buy it somewhere.
Let me see if I can. Yeah, there it is.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Hi, Lulu.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: You can just. If you go to Wolfmuller Co and search for Mormon or Book of Mormon or whatever, here it is.
Download it for free purchase from Lulu. It's just a great argument against the Mormon case that they say that Joseph Smith could not have written the Book of Mormon because he was too dumb.
And this book argues. No, no, this. If. If you were to guess what kind of book Joseph Smith would write, it would be a book just like the Book of Mormon. So it's great.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: There's also mrm.org right. Mormonresearchministries.org has tons of stuff, including tracts you can print out.
One is on one I used to give out to Mormons that came to my house was on who the real Jesus is. So they've got a lot of good resources there. That's mrm.org I believe it's its website also. I had a question for you though, about inviting them in.
Are you ready for my question?
So, second John, verse 10.
If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I think always that this has to do with church fellowship and not home fellowship.
So otherwise I just don't know how. Remember what Paul says, not to associate with people who are sexually immoral. And then he comes back and he says, when I said that, I was talking about those who are claiming to be Christian and they're living a sexually immoral life. I wasn't talking about those who are of the world. Otherwise you couldn't participate with anybody.
So I, I think that when we have these sort of warnings, it's. It's not against.
It's not a. Like a warning against hospitality. It's a warning against kind of confusing fellowship issues. That's. That's always been my take on that. But I don't know. You. You have. You think it should be stronger than that, that we can say, hey, we're.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: I think at the very least to our homes, it would apply in the sense that, like, I wouldn't want to do so much that I'm helping them further their journey. Does that make sense? Like, I wouldn't Want to give them so much help and support that it's helping them go door to door to my neighbors to take a false gospel.
Right. So I don't think it necessarily means you can't show any hospitality.
But at the same time, I do think there's probably limits to that because, you know, like a Christian missionary, right? If someone came to you and, and you put them up like to help them, like you'd be helping further their journey, right? You're giving them support.
So I think there'd have to be a line at least at some point of you wouldn't want to be supporting them.
I don't want to help them get out there and do more of what they're doing, if that makes sense. So that'd be my, my one concern.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: I always thought of it and maybe this is wrong. I always thought, well, hey, I'm holding em up.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Well, there's that too. Yeah, the longer I talk to them. I had a Johor witness one time in my neighborhood that I talked to for so long that they, and they got so frustrated they left my neighborhood. Like they just got frustrated with me and just left and left the neighborhood. Cause I kept pointing out like where they were wrong and they just got frustrated and left. Which, you know, I counted that as a win because they left my neighborhood.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: So there's this, there's this other thing too.
Remember Luther's little aphorism? He says we want to kick the dog and console the child. So when there's, this is the idea, when there's false teaching, the false teacher is like a dog who's biting a child and the child is like the falsely taught.
And so when we go into these theological arguments, we want to. It's a different attitude that we have towards the false teacher than towards the falsely taught. And we say, okay, well these missionaries are teaching, okay, fine, but they're also kids, you know, I mean, so I think we want to assume even if someone is propagating false doctrine, that they're passing on the thing which they were taught. So we want to treat them first as the bitten child rather than the biting dog until they prove themselves otherwise. So to say, hey, you know, you, you want to believe the Bible and I want to believe the Bible. Let's take a look at what the Bible says about Jesus, about salvation, about these other things, and we can rejoice together in it.
So that's helpful. What's the other book about? This is that there's a Mark Cares wrote the book speaking the truth in love to Mormons. That's also another great little resource.
[00:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's also very helpful.
All right, next one, a Christian response to superstitions like luck and horoscopes.
My name is Stephanie. My husband and I have been longtime fans of your channel.
They watch it together. Okay.
Our third child was born this past May. When we shared the news with several friends and family members, all professing Christians, more than one person commented something along the lines of, oh, he's going to be a Gemini.
My instinctive reaction is to roll my eyes and move on. But the more I think about it, the more it makes me wonder how often Christians give at least some credence to beliefs connected to horoscopes, superstitions, or luck.
Especially in a cultural moment where interest in the occult seems to be on the rise. How should a faithful Christian respond when presented with this kind of worldview, offhandedly yet lovingly and faithfully?
[00:11:03] Speaker A: There's maybe a couple of different things in here. So when you're speaking of, like, horoscopes and the zodiac and all that kind of stuff, it's good for us to recognize that that goes way, way back. And the Lord never liked it. There's never, There'. Any.
There's never anything good that comes from this idea that, that the stars have some sort of ruling capacity amongst men. It's always connected to witchcraft and so forth. And, and if anybody takes it seriously, like, it's kind of weird that you think, well, you know, like, everybody born in these 12 days or in this 20 days is going to have the same kind of personality. And then that, and then all of a sudden it switches. I mean, it's just, it. Ha. It's. I don't even think it's really that serious. I think if you get into, like, real astrology, everyone's looking into, like, what phase of the moon was and all this kind of detailed sort of little stuff, but all of that still has this idea that, that everything is sort of governed by the stars.
The, the problem is that everything is governed by God. And this idea that there's this strange celestial arrangement of things is like the first step towards, towards a secular thinking. It's like it's replacing God with the creation and, and is bad.
Now, superstition, ah, this is a different category. It's also not good because it, again, takes the idea away from that God is ruling and reigning and that, that you can sort of get yourself on the bad side of the cosmic stuff, you know, like, like a black. What are superstitious things like walking under a ladder, stepping on a crack. Walking, you know, the black cat. All these kind of things. Spilling salt.
I'm just trying to think of, like, the common, weird, superstitious things that.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Breaking a mirror.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And to say, look, we aren't.
That's just. The Lord has not arranged things in such a way that there's these, like. You get on, like, bad energy from the universe if you do these wrong things. The problem is that we don't want to respond to superstition by being more secular and mechanistic in our thinking, but less. In other words, what we want to do is say that, look, there. There are invisible realities at play.
First of all, God and our Lord Jesus, who sits above all powers and principalities and rules and governs all things for the sake of his beloved church.
See the very last verse of Ephesians 1, this beautiful promise. So that we don't want to think of things simply as a sort of materialistic, reductionistic world that we're living in.
There's more that meets the eye. So our response to superstition is not like. No, that's.
That's too spiritual of a view of natural things. It's. It's probably less.
And then there's luck, which I think it's okay to say that things are sort of distributed from our perspective in a haphazard way.
And it looks to us like, you know, one day you're driving along and one day you hit all the green lights in a row and you're like, huh, it's that all lined up nice. And it normally doesn't, and it does. So we use luck to describe that phenomenon. Maybe it's just a sense that the way that the Lord governs the world is not in a.
In a.
Like a. It's not a perfect distribution of. Of good and bad. Everything's kind of strange.
It's. It leans into my.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:14:57] Speaker A: I haven't. I've tried to figure out how to articulate this apologetic argument that grows out of the fact that reality is weird.
And so things sometimes just show up in weird ways.
But I think that superstition and astrology and luck are kind of three different categories that we want to respond to. That's just my thumbnail response to that question. What you got?
[00:15:21] Speaker B: I was gonna ask, where do enneagrams.
I think some of this is related to horoscopes.
That was a big thing for a while. And even in Christian circles, like, I am this personality.
Um, and enneagram has A weird kind of history too. And then the other one that, you know, see how many people we can get upset with us if I ask this. Essential oils.
Now, I, I don't think there's anything in of themselves wrong with like certain scents relaxing you, whatever. But if you actually look into their book, which I've done, I've read parts of it where it says, like, if you combine certain scents, it'll help you with like, friendship or like, you know, other stuff like that. It seems like we're getting into a whole different category of this scent smells good and helps relieve my stress. And now we're saying if you combine them, right, it'll do these other things, which is.
Sounds a lot like. What. What does that sound like? It sounds like witchcraft to me. You know, combine these things and you get this desired results.
I think all that's coming from the same place. It's the same idea though, right? It's. It is biblically speaking, that's looking for control or looking for luck or looking outside of Christ for these things and looking to try and control them on your own. So, yeah, I think we got to be aware of all that stuff. Be more careful maybe than. Than we are with some of it. And again, I'm not saying that whatever various sense, various things, there are various homo pathic remedies. I get all that.
So you don't have to mention that in the comments, but I think you gotta be careful with some of this when they make claims that are ridiculous, like, combine this and it'll help this part of your life or whatever.
Beware.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: So have you seen the health. Health conscious cholos video?
No, there's nothing essential about these oils, fool. That is the funniest thing. Do you have an essential oil for stupid? I actually do.
You had. You. You have to watch that.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: You have to link that in the comments.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Kucha.
Oh, man. Oh, man. It's. I think it's good, healthy, clean comedy. Health cons. I'll put. Yeah, put a. I'll put a link to that.
Is this what they anointed Jesus feet with?
Oh, it's great.
How did that get onto essential oils from astrology?
That's. That was my fault.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: All right.
Yes. Send all your complaints to me. All right.
How should we understand religious toys?
That's the next question. How do we understand these? So what do you think about something like a. A pocket Jesus and children's toys, like a nativity set or Noah's ark? Does it border on a type of irreverence? Do you Think it might be too casual for a child to play with a Jesus dollar.
So what do we do with these toys that are supposed to be religious in nature?
[00:18:18] Speaker A: That is such an interesting question.
I saw the other day there was like, blocks that were like Lord's Supper set.
And the kids are playing church, which the kids will do anyways. It's an amazing thing. The kids just left to their own. They'll start to play church. And like every kid gets re. Baptized by his older brother like five times, you know, in the little kind of play church. And I remember one of the kids was the pastor, and this is all he did for playing church. He said, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down.
It's like, that's actually really accurate.
I. So I. There might be, I would say, you know, the, like the. The Noah's Ark. Okay, let's. Let's take one at a time maybe. So Noah's Ark is an interesting one. I've wondered about this, because Noah's Ark on the one hand is like the perfect setup for like, children's room and painting and stuff like this, because it has a rainbow and it has all these animals and it has a big boat.
And so it has all these elements that are like, like set up for all these children's toys and everything. On the other hand, it's the Lord's wrath in destroying all of humanity, except for eight. And you sort of missed the point.
I mean, you. Maybe you don't. When you would just have, hey, like if. But you. It would be hard to imagine like a Noah's Ark set that would have like a bunch of corpses floating in the water outside the arc.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: I was gonna ask about that. What if it's realistic?
[00:19:58] Speaker A: So, so you. So there's a danger that you just.
I don't know, that you kind of miss the point, but I don't know. What else are you gonna do? Maybe just take away the boat and it's like an Adam and Eve set, you know, and it's like you could name the animals in the. In the garden, I suppose, but there's a danger, you know, painting Noah's Ark and Is that it? It.
The. The childhood memories of the toys make it hard to get to the adult reality of what the. What it preaches.
There's something maybe similar and maybe even more if you had, like, dolls of Jesus and the disciples.
I just think it's. While it's not wrong to have religious art and depictions in this way, in fact, in some ways, when the Lord Jesus took upon Himself. Our humanity. We're almost required to make images now of Jesus to confess the incarnation. I mean, that's required is too strong. But it's that Christian impulse.
But to make them. They were always understood as objects of reverence and not objects of play.
But. But like, so. So I don't think. I'm not sure that we should be giving the children those things like a Jesus doll. I don't. I think always a doll was especially for the young girls to practice being mothers, not to practice being, I don't know, directors of the Gospel accounts or something.
But if the kid. If you find the kids playing and they're like out in the yard and they have like 12 little sticks and they're going around following this other, and it's like, oh, it's the disciples. I don't know if I want to chastise the children for using their imagination to.
To impress the gospel stories. So I don't want to be against it in that way, but I do. I'm not sure it. It seems irreverent to be giving like a Jesus dollar or maybe even like a Moses doll. Maybe that'd be all right. Maybe you have a. Like a Moses and Aaron figurines.
I wonder how they could, you know, or Joshua, instead of having like the he man stuff, you have like Joshua with his sword or something.
But I don't know. That's just my first. Again, first take at that question.
Do you give out Jesus dolls at church, Pastor Packer?
[00:22:33] Speaker B: No.
We had something. What was it? I don't know where my kids got some of these. I don't remember where they got them from. These, like, little small Jesus figurines that. But they're not really dolls to play with. They're more like to set somewhere or something. But I think the danger with, like, your question about irreverence, I think that maybe even the bigger danger is.
And I. I use this argument years ago from a King of the Hill episode where Hank Hill is teaching Bobby that he doesn't want Jesus to become like another toy that goes up in the box and gets on, puts on, put it on the shelf, right? There's a danger when we give our. Our kids religious things that are. That are just childish and silly.
I think because a danger is then the kids think that's something they kind of grow out of, right? I think there's a danger of it being a childish thing. We already have that problem. Especially it seems like with boys thinking when they grow up that this stuff is women and children Right. It's not, not for men. It's for. So I think there has to be at least some caution with some of that. Like you said, I don't think it's wrongfully. Kids use their imagination.
I just, I would be really careful about what it is, what it looks like, like, you know, how goofy looking is it, et cetera. It wasn't Ken Ham from Answers and Genesis who always complained that all the Noah's arks and all these children sing, it's so cartoonish and small like he already puts in their head that this couldn't possibly when they get older, right. Hold these animals. Because all I remember is this tiny little boat from when I was a kid and it could hold like five things, right? Like, right. Sometimes you can set up weird expectations. So I would just be careful about them starting to see it just as like another toy or another thing that. Okay, now I get bored with it, right? I'm bored with my Jesus doll. And so now it goes, goes in the box. Like that gets weird fast, right? Like all of those things. So generally want to get our kids give kids, especially as they're growing up, right. Things they can grow into as Christians.
Kind of like when you're your kids when they're little, they want to put on your clothes and they are all big and baggy on them and they can't walk around in them. They put on your shoes and they're like flopping around or whatever. We want to give our kids stuff they can grow up into in the faith. I'm really hesitant about giving my stuff kid, my kids stuff that's going to cause them to want to grow out of it really fast.
I, I didn't think that way about like I'm all for teaching some really simple hymns to kids, but I also want them to start learning harder hymns at a young age so they can keep that hymn their whole life. So they're not like, oh, that was a dumb song I sang when I was five and now, now I'm 16 and I don't. That hymn's silly, right? I want to give them stuff that they can grow up into. So even with that I kind of approach it that way.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: I think that's right. We, we're working on that because we're building a new curriculum for our Sunday school. And like every other school, you know, you have your children's books and then you have your grown up books. And the, the danger is when we, because we start teaching the Bible so early to the children that they can think oh, it was a children's book.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: And, and it's not. So we actually don't. We start working out of the scripture once we get to middle school, like opening the pages and working through the words. It's not like the other stuff is not biblical, but we're using the story books and the Bible books and now so that we're trying to get this idea that the Bible is the book that you study the rest of your life.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: All right, next one.
Should you recommend essentially a non Lutheran church to a fellow Christian?
So here's the situation.
Is there ever a time where when you're talking to someone and the relationship reaches a point, they're willing to come to church with you, would it be okay to recommend them to go to a church that is not your own?
Maybe you know, the person has specific oddities or beliefs that would not make them a good fit, but maybe another church or denomination would suit them better.
I was taught you don't want to put stumbling blocks in front of Christians. So I'm wondering if there was someone who was a Christian, but as for example, anti sacramentarian or some other position, would it be wise to recommend a church or denomination that matches what they believe, knowing full well that I don't believe it?
Or should you still recommend them to go to your church knowing that they might burn out or disagree with the church doctrine, regardless of the truth?
[00:26:44] Speaker A: I would say two things, maybe three on this. So number one, it's important for Christians, pastors, elders, all Christian members. One of the things we have to think about our own congregations is that we want these to be places where we want to bring our friends.
We want people to be here. So just that, that conception about the church, that, that I want to bring people there. And it's one of the very difficult things when people are having struggles or difficulties in their congregation and they realize, I wouldn't want my friends to come with me to church, I wouldn't want my neighbors to, to, to come to this place? That's a, that's an indication of a problem. That's a symptom of a, of a, of a deeper, deeper problem. So one of our diagnostic questions for our life, our Christian life, is am I in a church where I, I want to invite people to come along? It's otherwise, it makes evangelism difficult. And I've been in times in churches where I wasn't convinced that what was happening there was helpful and good. And so like, I'd be talking to people about church or theology or Christ But I didn't have a place to bring them. It's bad.
Okay, so that's the first thing. So our churches should be places where we want to invite. And if we're hesitant to invite people to church, that's just something that we want to talk to the pastor about as quick as we can. Like, if you're watching this and you realize, man, I don't actually want to invite people to come to church with me, that's a great reason to schedule a cup of coffee with your pastor and sit down with them. Now, does that mean that the only option is to recommend your own church? Of course, you're talking to people in all sorts of different situations.
And it could be, of course, that you're talking to someone out of town, different place, whatever, that you're recommending a different church. But what about a different theology?
I, I think that, I think that the way we want to think about this is not that people need to arrive where we are, but we want them to be coming this direction.
So if we can think about it in the terms of the direction that people are moving, that's going to be really good. That's going to be really helpful.
So what's the next step? Closer. So I could imagine talking to someone.
And in fact, I did this just the other day. This is a slightly different circumstance, but there's a. Two, two kids and they're dating. One's a Lutheran, one's a Baptist. And I said, you're going to want to go to the Lutheran kid, you're going to want to go to church with.
At the Baptist church with your girlfriend, and you want her to come here. And when you guys have theological questions, you're going to want to come and sit down and talk to me. And then you're going to also want to go and talk to, to her pastor so that you're.
And the goal is not to become Lutheran or to become Baptist. The goal is to believe what the Bible says, which also means being Lutheran, by the way. But I didn't tell him that. That's just a hack that I know as a Lutheran pastor. But anyway, to just go to your. You want to go with the Bible says, so you're going to go and compare. I could imagine someone leaving one church and commending to them another church that's not a Lutheran church, but I couldn't. But it would be totally dependent upon the circumstances. I wouldn't just say, hey, this church matches your belief, so you should go there.
Although, you know, you, you maybe could, too. But to say, hey, you know, I don't agree with this doctrine of the Lord's Supper or, you know, they don't baptize babies, but here the Bible is taught better than it's taught over there. You can imagine that. But we want people to be moving towards this clear confession of law and gospel of the kindness of God in Christ that's brought to us in the Word and the sacraments.
Because the Lutheran church is the Lord's answer to the question, what does Jesus want to give to us? I mean, here are all the things that the Lord wants to give.
And so when we're convinced of that, it's hard to imagine letting someone go anywhere else because we know that they're not getting everything that the Lord wants to give.
[00:30:50] Speaker B: I've done it when it's usually a spouse that for whatever reason, like, does not want to go to Lutheran Church for various reasons, right?
So I've talked to the other spouse before and said, look, if they refuse to go to church here with you, but they're, you know, they've told me, hey, they're willing to go this other places. I'll at least say, if you're going to go someplace else. Here are churches that at least we disagree with them. At least they're striving to be faithful, right? Like, they're, they believe the Bible's God's word and, and they want to be in accordance with God's word, but we think they're wrong in these things. So at least, at least they have that going for them.
So I've done that on a few occasions, but it's usually because someone in the relationship is refusing to whatever reason they don't want to be Lutheran or don't think they want to be Lutheran. But I usually try to get them at least to come here first. Right. Like you want them at least to try. And if, and if you can't convince them and they're like, hey, I don't agree with this stuff, then.
And they're like, I don't think this is the right church for me because I don't agree with you, well, that's.
At least they've tried it out, you know, and know that they think they disagree with you. And then maybe down the road they'll change their mind. But I've only really made those recommendations when I feel like one person in the relationship is not going to budge and it's either go nowhere as a family or at least try something even if I disagree with some of the Things they, they believe.
All right, next question.
When should a Christian leave a corrupt culture behind?
So kind of asking questions about modern, modern, modern day Sodom and Gomorrahs.
Uh, my question relates to God's location and vocation calling to Christians. My family lives in a state and somewhat local county jurisdiction which constantly doubles down against the truth of the word when it comes to decisions regarding where to live.
Does there come a point when the Christian can no longer stand firm and needs to leave a corrupt place like the biblical account of Sodom? Or are we planted and expected to be salt and light like Jonah and Nineveh?
We have young children still and they've had to learn a lot about culture, a lot more about culture than I would have preferred at their young ages. But my husband and I are natives to this place. We love the place and the people, but the culture and anti God leanings and law and society are more corrupt by the day.
I realize this is a corruption in Western culture in general, but it is extreme where we live.
How does a Lutheran Christian decide when to stay or when to go?
[00:33:19] Speaker A: This is a marvelous question, and I think that the question already answers itself. So this is a matter of Christian wisdom. Well, okay, so let's first say that not everybody actually has this choice.
So I would say that probably most people in most of history did not have really a choice about where they were going to live and be.
You don't have a choice where you're born, you don't have a choice where your family is. You're just there.
And a lot of times you don't have the means or whatever to, to be able to up and move.
If you do have the choice to move, it's always really good to say, well, I want to make sure that I move to a place where the word of God is preached, where the sacraments are rightly administered. So I'm not going to go to a place that's a desert for the preaching of the gospel. I'm going to go to a place where I can hear it and rejoice in that if you do have that choice. But how, this, this is the question of how does, like our, how much should the secularization and wickedness of our culture shape our decision about where to live and where to go? We see people in some times, in some places in the Scripture, they'll just, they're up and move. For example, when the kingdom was divided under Jeroboam and Rehoboam, the faithful moved south out of Israel and down to Jerusalem, where They could go to the temple and worship with the Lord's people there. We see other times where the Lord's people stayed. For example, we were looking at this passage in Jeremiah. Is it Jeremiah 28 or 29, where the Lord says, stay in the city where you're exiled and build houses and plant gardens and get your sons married to daughters and daughters married to sons and have children and pray for the welfare of the city where you are, so that the Lord will put Christians in these places as salt and light. He had to drag Lot from Sodom and Gomorrah and this. It's not 100% apparent to me that Lot should have left until it was. That it was okay for Lot to stay there until the Lord took him out.
I don't know. There's a two impulses here, and there's the sort of the flee. The impulse to flee because of the.
Because you feel the corruption of the world and you want to protect your children from that. That's a good and godly instinct. But then there's also that can go too far, as if we can ever reach a place that's escaping the world or that's escaping our own sinful flesh.
So there's always a freedom that has to be exercised in wisdom about if we have a choice, where do we live and where do we stay? It was part of the calculation of our family to move from Colorado to Texas. We had a call, so it's not like we were just out of the blue deciding, but when we were looking at the two options is. The culture in Texas, I think, is much more friendly to children and family and to. It's a more respectful culture. There was a lot of violence, especially in the schools in Colorado where we were. That was really hard for our kids to be in the middle of. And so that was part of the.
The calculus behind thinking about if we should move down here. But of course, we moved right into the middle of Austin, which is not known for being the home of great orthodox confession.
So that's also part of the fun as well, saying, hey, we can go to a place and be lights in the midst of a crooked and dark generation. Maybe that's the word to kind of end. My reflection on. That's what Paul says. The Lord has put you as lights in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and we will be that light no matter where we live.
You are very quiet, Pastor Packer.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: They mentioned that they love the people in the place, and that's a lot harder to replicate than Perhaps they think, you know, if you have a good church and you have good friends, I, I think those often outweigh even like where exactly you live, right. So if you have friends and your kids have good friends and you have all of that in a place, I think that has to be weighted pretty heavily because that's often harder to replicate than people think. I think sometimes people think I'm going to move somewhere and I'm going to this place and it looks like culturally that it lines up more with me than where I currently live. I think that's sometimes harder to pull off than people realize, especially just because we live in an Internet age and every place you go is infected with these things. It's just to a right, lesser, greater degree. I think there's no perfect place. I don't think anywhere right now that you're going to go to completely escape this stuff.
And so if you have a good group of people around you and a good faithful church, those I think are the top priority. So even if you move, you only move to a place that has a good faithful church where you can at least replicate that. And then if they have that, Lord willing, then you'd replicate the friends and other things. But I'd be really cautious about thinking I'm gonna escape, escape this going one place or another. I just, I've seen people try it and it just often does not work out the way they think it's going to. It's never quite right. It looks really great from afar. And then you live there and you realize, oh, they have all kinds of issues too, right?
So if you have a faithful church and good friends, no matter where you go, that's the most, I think that's the most important thing. Like those are the two things I'd look for first in any place, and then the rest of it I think you can kind of figure out. But I would just be cautious. I'm not saying you can't do it. I think you have to make what's the decision you think is best for your family and be wise. But I think you just have to be cautious about is it really going to be better?
Like, I'd want, I'd want to do a lot of research before I, before I made that move.
[00:39:24] Speaker A: There's a danger. So we know I have three enemies. World, flesh and the devil. And so there's a danger of worldliness, and that is that we do not feel the trouble that we ought to feel from living in this world and the culture and the way that it despises everything good.
But when we start to feel that pressure, what happens is that the temptation is to think that that is the problem, the world is the problem, and we forget about our own flesh and we forget about the devil. And so then we start to come up with solutions to the trouble of the world.
As if we can, if we can solve those solutions, live in a different place, have a Christian culture, whatever, whatever that we as, then we won't have any trouble forgetting that we, we drag the world around inside of us with our sinful flesh and that the devil will not relent until he's thrown into the lake of fire.
So there's the temptation. When Christians feel that being strangers in this world, we sort of overreact and we put all of our eggs in that basket of trying to escape the corruption of this world.
Again, to your point, it's not like we shouldn't do anything and try to make the world a better place and fight against all of these cultural things, but we want to see it in as this kind of matrix of enemies that are fighting against us with the devil and our own sinful flesh.
[00:40:51] Speaker B: And wherever we're at, we're called to be faithful. So like that's non optional.
So that's all right, let's move on to the next one.
Do you, Pastor Wolfinger, are you a cannibal?
It's communion cannibalism.
So here's the question.
My name is Jack, I'm 23, from the UK, from Wales specifically. I'm not Lutheran myself, more sort of a Calvinistic Baptist evangelical. But my pastor, who's friends with Hans Fine of Lutheran satire fame, is a big Luther fan, which made me only more curious about Luther Lutheranism to see what all the fuss is about. For the past year I've really enjoyed watching all your videos.
One question I have is what do Lutherans really believe by the fact that they receive the true body and blood of Jesus in communion?
What does that actually entail?
This is my body, this is my blood. Taken literally, it's a point of pride. Sticking point for Lutherans. But what actually is the implication of that? When you guys receive communion, do you believe you are literally eating and swallowing Jesus in a cannibalistic sense?
I've heard this referred to as Kaepernitic eating or cyclopic eating. He hasn't mentioned that, but and rejected by Lutherans. So in what sense are you receiving Christ's true body and blood? Hope that makes sense. Part of what I'm asking as well as do you believe you are feeding on Christ's broken body and drinking his shed blood on the cross or his present resurrected body at the right hand of God given to you from heaven. I've heard so much discussion on Christology, mono visitism versus historianism, real presence versus spiritual presence. It's just really confusing.
[00:42:30] Speaker A: Great question. Okay, so we want to start with the Lord's Supper, where Jesus institutes the supper and he gives his bread to the disciples and says, take and eat. This is my body given for you. And then take and drink. This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. So we say, okay, we're Christians. That means we want to get what Jesus gives. And what is he giving? His body to eat, his blood to drink.
And we say, okay, good. That's really good. Now, it was the earliest of accusations that we can find against the Christians that they were accused of being cannibals. Remember that? I mean, it goes way back to the Roman times.
And this came up again in the Reformation where the reformed tradition of the Anabaptists accused the Lutherans of a cannibalistic eating.
A capronetic eating is what it's called because that refers to John 6, where Jesus says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part of me. And they all left except for the disciples. And Jesus says, this is a hard saying.
Jesus says, will you leave also? And they said, lord, that's when, Peter, remember, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the.
You have the words of eternal life.
So we don't have. You're the one that gives us life. Where are we going to go? We can't go anywhere else but that. Kaepernatic eating. What was the other name that you had for it?
[00:43:50] Speaker B: Cyclopic.
[00:43:51] Speaker A: Cyclopic eating. What is that?
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Cyclops?
[00:43:53] Speaker A: I don't know. Oh, oh. Because Cyclops was a people.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, there you go.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: I'm getting there. I'm slowly getting there.
The Lutheran says, no, no, absolutely not. We do not. This. This is forbidden to eat the, you know, human bodies, etc. Etc. That's not what is happening in the supper, but that the Lord is giving us his body and his blood to eat and drink in this unique and special way in the supper so that we can receive it as a pledge of the forgiveness of all of our sins.
So the Lutherans talked about this. They invented words for it. They called it the sacramental union. And that is to say that that's the way that Jesus joins his body and his blood to the bread and the wine for us to eat and drink.
And you say, well, what does that mean, sacramental union? And they said, yeah, we. It just means the way that Jesus joined his body and blood to the bread and wine for us to eat and drink. We.
We don't know. But it's. It's there in such a way that when we're taking his body and eating it and taking his blood and drinking it, we're not sinning against the commands of, you know, eating a human body or whatever. It's, in fact, it's a good work. It's something that he's commanding of us to do.
This question about the crucified body or poured out blood is answered especially by our Lutheran confessions in Article 8 of the formula of Concord. And it talks about how the attributes of the divine nature which are communicated to the person of Christ are also communicated to the human nature of Christ in his well, in the Incarnation and fully then demonstrated in his state of exaltation. So that it's his human nature that's in every place so that it's able to be on the altar for us to eat and for us to drink.
So it's not like when we take the Lord's Supper, we're getting like, part of Jesus body, I guess toe or nose or whatever.
He's giving us his body, and when we drink the wine, we're drinking his blood.
He's giving us the gift of all of it there. And he's giving that same gift to everybody that comes to communion.
So it should not be thought of as like carving up the body of Jesus and divvying up his blood to be distributed in all these places. But rather, it's this true gift of his body and blood, which is his human nature, that's now given to us as this pledge of the forgiveness of sins. And to try to say anything more than that is just to push past what the Scriptures give and reveal to us.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: I mean, Sacramento Union literally means mysterious union, right? It's just like I always tell people, I don't fully understand the Trinity. There's a lot I can confess about it and a lot of things we can say about it.
But I can't fully grasp one God, three persons, three persons, one God. I can't fully grasp Jesus being fully God and fully man in one person. And I cannot fully grasp the mystery that Christ's body and blood is united with the bread and wine for me to receive. Like, I can't fully Grasp it with my mind. It's just something I. I can confess and say, this is what it is because Jesus says so. And I just kind of have to bow before it and say, that's.
That's what. I can say these things because they're true. Just like the Trinity. We can say all kinds of things that are true because the Bible teaches it. But I can't ever say, man, I fully. I fully grasp that with my mind. Like, it, like it's. I don't have any questions anymore, right? There's nothing, Nothing left for me to wonder about. And I feel like, same with the Lord's Supper. It's a. There's a mystery, mysterious element to it. I can say certain things. I know 100 are true because Jesus says so. But then I have to say that that's. That's what I've got.
And I. I think that's why it's confused in some ways, because a lot of people want to figure it all out. Right? How does this work exactly? I think part of it is we can say by his word. That's how it works, because of who he is. That's how it works. But then we have to say there is a mysterious part of it. Like, I don't fully comprehend it, not in the way I. I'd like to. And I think part of it is just saying, jesus, you said it, and I'm going to trust you on this.
And that's it.
[00:48:22] Speaker A: I was on some Calvinist radio show a couple of years ago, and the guy, he. This is the guy. He said, hey, Brian, you're my second favorite Lutheran, because I know one other one.
And we were talking about baptism, and he says, and the Lord's Supper came up, and he says, oh, you. I would have to have you on again to talk about the Lord's Supper. I could never understand the Lutheran view of the Lord's Supper.
I said, I just tell you, it takes 30 seconds. It's like, okay. So it goes like this.
Jesus says, this is my body.
And we say, okay.
I mean, that's it. That's like Jesus says, take a drink. This is my blood poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins. And we say, okay.
And it gets back to our fundamental question. For when you're looking for a church or looking for a denomination or developing your confession, and you're asking the question, what does Jesus give? Or what does Jesus want me to do here? What is Jesus giving? Well, he's giving according to the word. He gives me his body to eat.
So I say, okay, he's giving me his body to eat. That's what he wants. And Jesus wants me to have that. That's why he's giving it to me.
So I take and eat his body. That's what I do.
And anything more than that is, or anything less than that is less than what Jesus wants to give.
[00:49:43] Speaker B: Another question I think is fair to ask. I think anyone who's listening to this, who struggles with this question, ask yourself, why is this the miracle that I believe just can't happen?
Why is it every other miracle in the Bible? You're like, yes, that's fine. Jesus can do all these things. A virgin can give birth. Jesus can rise from the dead. On and on it goes, all of the healing miracles, the 5,000, feeding the 5,000, the 4,000. And then you get to this one, you're like, nope, he can't do that.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: He can turn. I heard someone say he can turn the whole Nile river into blood, but he can't turn that wine into his blood. I thought that was a nice.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it's an issue of trust, I think. Can he do what he promises to do?
And everywhere else we say, yeah, he can do what he said he's going to do and he does it. Okay, well, trust him on this issue too, even if you don't understand all the details.
All right, number seven, the last question of the day.
Technically he has a follow up question, but we'll save that for next week because I don't want to give that one short change. So the difference between Christians and non Christians, he says, is the second use of the law, the mirror. So this is a question about sin.
He says non Christians pull back and away from the mirror, the second use of the law, while Christians lean more into it each day.
Is that a proper understanding of this? He says that's the biggest difference between Christians and non Christians is how they either pull away from the second use of the law or lean into the second use of the law.
[00:51:17] Speaker A: That's an interesting observation. Okay, it's certainly true that the way that a Christian thinks of themselves versus the way that a non Christian thinks of themselves and in terms of righteousness and judgment, that those are going to be very different. So we can explore that difference. Is that the main difference? I don't think so. I think the main difference between the non Christian and the Christian has to be the way that they think about Jesus. But it's related, right? Because we think that Jesus is our Savior, which means we think that we need Saving.
And that already is a fundamental difference between the way most people think about themselves and the way Christians do. So we all have a conscience. Every person is created with a conscience. And that conscience is making judgments constantly about what we're doing, what's being done to us, what's happening around us. It has a standard of right and wrong.
And that standard can either be a good godly standard or a made up standard, or something in between.
You know, it's one of the reasons why like, different ideologies are reshaping our conscience based on different standards.
So like you can buy carbon credits and feel good about yourself. That's because your conscience has been, I don't know, reshaped by environmentalism according to a different standard rather than the ten commands, whatever. So, so we, but we all have a conscience that's making this judgment. And the conscience is very sensitive, especially to the things that are committed against us.
But we are motivated to make the complaint of the conscience go away.
That's a moaning, remember these fundamental groans of the human condition. And one is the stomach groan, the body groan, the lust groan. That's the kind of the groan of the flesh.
But then there's the groan of the conscience.
And that's this sense that I'm wrong, you're wrong, this is wrong.
Ah, now I can make that go away.
So I can try to make that go away by doing good works, by getting drunk, by convincing myself that things aren't that bad, whatever. But everybody is making an argument in defense of themselves. This is what Paul says the conscience does. It either accuses or excuses.
So most people who are not Christians are busy excusing themselves.
And you can hear it when you talk to them. I mean, you hear the condition of a person's conscience when you're having that conversation.
The second use of the law is in part, in large part a silencing of my own defense in the conscience.
It's that the voice of self justification comes to an end.
Paul says it like this.
By the law, every mouth is stopped and every person is held guilty before God. So all of this business of trying to avoid the verdict of guilt is.
This is one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives. That's stopped because the verdict is spoken already by God. You are guilty, but your sin is put away. You're acquainted.
And so the Christian declaration of the forgiveness of sins, which is the verdict delivered to the conscience by the Holy Spirit through the word of God that we're forgiven, it brings an end to all this kind of Clamoring avoidance of the voice of the conscience.
And I think that's the way I would articulate this distinction here, is that the Christian can hear the condemnation of the law which is echoed in our conscience. I'm guilty and we can agree to it. Whereas the conscience, apart from the, apart from faith, can never agree to that accusation. It has to always make the case lest it plunge into despair.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: So maybe a better way for them to reframe what they're thinking would be not the biggest difference between Christians and non Christians, but perhaps one of the biggest differences when it comes to the law. Right.
Specifically. Right. Really, Their question is, had they said the biggest difference between Christians and non Christians when it comes to the law is perhaps the second use. Whereas Christians, as they put it, kind of lean into it. They're not.
Not that we enjoy it, but that we're willing to say with God, yes, you're right about my sin. Not that the Christians like delights to see their sin, but they're, they're like, yes, that's, that's correct. This is sin. I need to confess this. Whereas a non Christian is indeed pulling away.
So they, they got a lot right. But making it the biggest difference then would be where they, where they go wrong. Because there's things behind that, like you said, like how they view Christ, faith versus unbelief, those kind of things that lead to this. So it's not the thing, but it is, it is a big difference at the very least.
[00:56:23] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and to think about it too, I was thinking about this the other day.
If it's not true that we're damnable sinners, that no one is righteous, no, not one. That all have fallen short of the glory of God, that we deserve God's temporal and eternal punishment, if that's not a true thing about you and me and everybody, then Christianity has done a terribly wicked thing in the teaching of the doctrine of original sin, that we've been going around telling people that they are wicked in the eyes of God and deserving of hell itself. And if that's not true, I mean, that's a terrible thing to say to somebody, you know, so the doctrine of original sin is a terrible, is a terrible thing. It's either terrible because it's true or it's terrible if it's not true. Now we say, well, no, it's terrible because it's true that we have to know this thing for a number of reasons. I mean, number one, because it's true, and number two, because it is the context in which the statement Christ saves makes sense.
So for the gospel to be true, Jesus has to be the savior of sinners, which means we have to be sinners that need his saving.
[00:57:38] Speaker B: All right, Josh, we're going to save your second question for next week.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: Wow. Two follow ups coming next week. Thanks, everyone for. Well, thanks for sending the questions. Wolfmuller co contact is the way to get those questions to us. Look at all these questions.
We're definitely getting more than we're ANSWERING. Up to 230 questions.
Anyway. Keep them coming. Pastor Packer picks his favorite ones now, which is why we got to talk about essential oils.
[00:58:07] Speaker B: That's right. That's right.
[00:58:09] Speaker A: Keep those questions coming.
If you're, if you're watching the YouTube video, if you comment and like it, that's helpful. It lets people, lets YouTube know that you like the content and they, they send it to other people as well, which is kind of cool.
So, so liking this comment is like liking your church. It's inviting people to come along. So send your questions there.
And thanks again for the conversation, for being part of the fun. Thanks, Pastor Packer, for all your help and all your wisdom here. It's really great. God's peace be with you.
