Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to the Theology Q and A podcast. I'm Pastor Brian Wolfmuller, St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran churches in Austin, Texas, joined by Pastor Packer.
Packer of Pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is that you gave up preaching shorter than 20 minutes for Lent.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I wish.
Like, I would totally do that.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: Sound like what you want to give up? I tell you what, you got some questions for us here?
[00:00:31] Speaker B: I do.
All right, first one, what the Lutheran. What does the Lutheran Church teach about prayer?
[00:00:40] Speaker A: That's a good question to think about. What is distinct about. Because every Christian. Well, in fact, every religion, I suppose, teaches about prayer. But what's unique about the Lutheran view of prayer? I would outline it from the introduction to the Lord's Prayer from Martin Luther, who says, before we get down to the business of praying, when we think about the Lord's Prayer, let's think about these four things. Number one, prayer is commanded, especially in the second commandment, you shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God. And so we don't have the option to pray, which is, in fact, a comfort for us. My picture here, you remember how Esther, they wanted her to go to talk to the king, and she's like, you can't just go talk to the king. If you just walk in to talk to the king, the guys there with the swords, see them, they cut your head off. You have to be invited to talk to the king if you want to go and talk to them. But they say, well, you're going to die anyway, so you might as well. And she says, okay, if I die, I die. And she goes. She takes that risk to go before the king to make a petition. And this is, if that's so risky to go and stand before an earthly king, how risky is it for us to go and stand before the King of the universe?
But we have the command to pray, which is God's invitation to come and stand before him, so that we go with boldness, with freedom of speech, to stand before the Lord and ask him for the things that we need. So the first is a command. The second thing is we have the promise of prayer for things like Psalm 50:15, call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will hear you and I will answer you. Or Jesus commands about prayer, where he says. He says, ask, seek and knock, for all those who ask will be answered. And all those who knock, the door will be opened, and all those who seek will be fined. And Luther Takes that promise, by the way, as actually a threefold pattern that we ask for the things that we know that we need. And if the Lord doesn't immediately answer, then we seek the scriptures to make sure that we're asking for the right thing. Because we could be asking for things that are wrong and foolish. And when we see that the Lord has promised these things in the Scriptures, then we keep on knocking and we practice persistence in prayer that like the widow who knocks on the, on the judge's door and won't let him off the hook until she. He gives her justice. Or the neighbor who goes to the, to his friend and says, hey, can I have some bread? And he gives it to him just because he won't go away.
So that. That persistence in prayer is part of holding on to the Lord's promises. In fact, I think one of the most beautiful things that I ever heard about prayer was Pastor Tim Paul's who said that prayer is the Christian saying, but dad, you promised.
So our prayers grow out of the promises of God. The third thing is the need for prayer.
And here what Luther means by that is that when Jesus gives us the Lord's prayer before he tells us what to ask for, well, before he tells us what he wants to give to us, he tells us what we need.
And that's an amazing thing, because left to our own, we don't know that we need the name of God, the kingdom of God, the will of God, deliverance from temptation, or leading not into temptation, deliverance from evil. We don't know that we need those things so that Jesus is even teaching us the things that we need that we should ask for.
So that prayer, and especially with the Lord's prayer, the Lord opens us up to desiring the things that our spirit ought to desire. Our flesh has plenty of desires. Some are fine, some are sinful, but our spirit is dead until it's awakened by the word of God. And then we realize, wow, we should want his word, his spirit, his kingdom, all these things to come to us. And then the Lord gives us. The fourth thing is the Lord gives us the very words to pray.
A lot of people will say, when you pray, don't pray these rote prayers. But the scriptures are full of prayers that the Lord wants us to pray. And it's a huge advantage to pray the prayers that are written down or spoken by God himself, because then we don't have to wonder, I wonder if Jesus wants me to pray. We don't pray thy kingdom come, if it be your will. Because we know it's his will because he told us to pray for that. So when Jesus says, when you pray, say, that doesn't mean that every prayer is a. Is a prayer from the Psalms or from the Lord's Prayer or a written prayer book. We certainly pour out all that we need to the Lord, and we come to him and we cry out to him, and we cast our burdens on him, and we speak to him of all the good things that he's done and of all the things that we need for help. But we do have this scaffolding of prayer which is given to us in the Psalms and most especially in the Lord's Prayer. And I think that's a pretty wonderful and unique perspective on prayer that's brought to us by. By the Lutheran tradition.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: There's a lot more people probably than maybe some Lutherans think that are very against, like, written prayers or memorized prayers. I remember one time my kids, this is a number of years ago, prayed like, the table prayer or something before a meal, and someone, like, rebuked us for having our kids do a memorized prayer. Like, how can they mean it from the heart?
So I asked a very simple question. I said, when you go to church, does everyone go in there and just sing whatever they want? Like, do you just sing random stuff, or do you sing written things that are already. Already written out? Even some that maybe you've memorized and you know now, like, well, yeah, of course we do. I said, well, then how can you do that from your heart?
Because that's what we were being asked, right? Like, if you. If it's memorized, if it's written down, and they're like, oh, like, just kind of hit them. Like, it's not really different, right? Because we worship is a form of prayer in that sense, too.
So I've never understood that or the idea that you can't pray the Lord's Prayer. It's just a model of how to pray, but you better never actually pray it.
I was taught that growing up, right? Like, you don't pray just shows you, like, how to pray. But don't ever actually pray those words because that's bad.
And that stuff's out there a lot. So I think it's helpful for you to go through all of that and explain the beauty of the Lord's Prayer, what it's for, and why we have it.
All right, you ready for the next one?
This is a. There's two questions here.
So we'll start with the first one, then we'll Go to the bonus one.
First one. Is any pastor really above reproach?
All right. So he asked, what does it mean to be above reproach?
For example, if a married man, after becoming Christian, looks at pornography, does that disqualify them from the pastoral office?
If not, what about actual adultery?
Where does repentance function in restoration versus disqualification?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: It's a good question.
When St. Paul gives us that requirement for the pastor first Timothy 3. Two, that the pastor has to be above reproach, that has to be a real qualifying standard for the pastoral office, and it must be applicable. Otherwise it's just sort of a meaningless thing that St. Paul writes. So if we were to say, you know, who's above reproach? If nobody's above reproach, then there can either be no pastors or that standard can't apply.
If we are to say, well, look, to be above reproach means to be without sin, then that certainly means that nobody is above reproach.
I think that. So Luther, when he talks about it, to go back to his advice, and I think this is a pretty good standard, he's going to say that there's two things this applies to public open sin.
And so first of all, it applies in the church to the teaching.
Luther says that the Christian can overlook a lot of weaknesses of the pastor, except for false doctrine. If he teaches false doctrine, he's out. So that the first above reproach means being orthodox in your doctrine and in your confession and able to teach that and defend that orthodoxy against error and heresy.
He then goes on to say that the pastor needs to live an outwardly upright life for those outside of the church so that his life as a Christian is not scandalous. The life that he lives is not preaching against the word that he preaches. It's not a demonstration of disobedience to the commands of God while he sits there and tries to preach the commands of God.
So I think that this is. It's not a. A rigid sort of standard, but it's the standard of. Is the man's. Is the man's life, his public life, a matter of scandal for the Gospel and the word of God and the church.
So some things.
While private sins, some private sins would disqualify a man from the office.
That's a, that's probably a different category than what it's talking about here. Above reproach. Because this is talking about really, what is your name? Are you thought well of by outsiders? And that's one of the qualifiers that, that Paul will put on this when he's talking about it with Timothy,
[00:10:04] Speaker B: when it's talking about.
Luther even says on this, when he's talking about this, that when the children are in your house, like, if you're letting your children just kind of like when they're under your care, be wild and rebellious and stuff, that. That, too, is not being above reproach. He ties it not just to the pastor himself, but how he carries out his vocations in the home. Like, what that looks like to others.
Because when we hear things like, well, no one's really above reproach. It's just there to tell us we all need to repent.
Well, that's not how anyone ever viewed it until maybe the last 50, 60 years. Like, all of our Lutheran tradition says above reproach actually means something.
And we've seen this even recently. We've had some things where that have been kind of scandalous, or at least scandalous accusations. And what do you see? Like, I saw this all over Facebook and other places. Like, people are like, oh, that's what all pastors are like. Right? That's what all those Christians are like. Even though, statistically speaking, it's, like, not true at all. Like, statistically speaking, pastors are less likely to fall into some of these things. But it happens. What do people do? They blame the pastor, they blame the church, they blame the Bible. Like, it's. It brings so much reproach that for some people, it'll keep them out of church. And we can say things like, well, it shouldn't. That shouldn't matter, but that's not the way human beings work. Right? Like, they hear those things and they think, oh, they're all just a bunch of hypocrites and none of them meet these standards. And then they just kind of turn their back and walk away. He mentioned in. In his question, I don't know if you've seen any of these. Mike Winger, who's made a lot of videos against some of these charismatic preachers and teachers and some of their. Their sins and other things and has brought them to light.
And people have. Christians have attacked him, basically saying, you're not allowed to speak against these guys because they're these famous, you know, charismatic preachers, which is also equally dangerous. On the other hand, like, saying these guys above reproach means you can't reproach them at all or bring anything against them because of their. Their office, which is also not what it means. But I've seen that going around lately, too, I think.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: So I I have a, I'm gonna, I'm drawing a picture here, a note card and, and I think this might be helpful. I, I didn't finish it yet. But there's kind of a scale when it comes to breaking the Commandments.
So just take the fifth commandment. You shall not murder. And there's the sort of, the lust of the heart when it comes to murder would be anger. So that's the anger there. And then that sin is going to work its way out in different degrees. So it starts with anger, then it goes to bitterness, then it goes to cursing. So it works its way from the heart to the mouth and then maybe it works its way out to what the Bible calls brawling. Maybe you just come, you become aggressive or you have this great temperature and you're very short tempered and you'll just sort of go off on people and then, and then it becomes brawling, I suppose would be the, Let me put that up here. It becomes physical and then even more physical.
So there could be, you know, causing someone bodily injury or murdering someone or, and that could be even worse. There's accidental murder and then there's cold blooded murder and then there's, there's genocide, there's mass murder and there's genocide. And these are just sort of like escalating degrees of breaking the fifth Commandment. Now Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, look, it's the same from my perspective in some ways. He's kind of looking down and it's just like a yes or no. Did you murder?
And you're going to be guilty before the throne of God if you did any of these things. If you're angry with your brother, you murdered him in your heart. But I would much rather someone be angry than stab me in the face with an ice pick. Right.
And so there's a couple of other sort of standards here too.
So what Jesus is not doing in the Sermon on the Mount is saying, well, look, if you're angry, you've murdered, so you might as well actually murder.
That's the opposite of what Jesus is saying. But that's, I think sometimes how we treat it, it's like it's all the same, but they have completely different consequences. So I'll just make a, I'll draw a line in here somewhere and this is going to be the legal line at some point. All your sins against the Fifth Commandment are not illegal. Nobody can arrest you for them.
They're legal, but they're bad still. They're immoral. And then above the Line, these things are going to be illegal and you get arrested and, and thrown in jail or fined or whatever for it, right? So that's one, that's one line. That's one standard. There's going to be a standard that's, that's lower than this. It should be. And in some ways this is a higher standard, right? There's going to be a more demanding thing from culture. So let me write in here, law and culture.
And this cultural standard is going to be like, well, look, if you do that, you're not going to be arrested, but we're going to all be embarrassed to be around you. If someone is. Flares off at his family, out at a restaurant, you know what I mean? And just flies off in a rage.
We're not going to. You can't arrest the guy for that. But there is some embarrassment. So there's a way that our culture is trying to drive down the sort of standard here.
And then what Jesus is indicating is that the Christian conscience should actually go all the way down so that we should realize the pain all the way here. But all of us have a sort of different standard.
And this is a float. It's going to move up and down on the hardness of the conscience.
So let's say that like, I have a bad temper and I just will. Will get so mad at people. And I don't. I've been doing this for so long that I don't. It doesn't even bother me. Now, if I ever threw a punch, man, I'd be embarrassed. But if I get mad, it doesn't bother me. That's an indication of how hardened my conscience is toward, toward the fifth commandment or toward that person or toward whatever.
Let's say I'm a brawler. I like to go out and get in bar fights. And I. And it doesn't trouble me at all. It doesn't bother me that I do that. So my conscience isn't troubled by that. But, but if I actually, if I knocked someone out and sent them to the hospital so they didn't remember their name for three weeks, then I felt bad. That sort of shows you where the conscience is now. Now the, the law of God is always trying to tenderize the conscience.
The, the devil is always trying to, to pulverize and to codify the conscience so that it, it doesn't feel the pain of my own sins. And, and here's something amazing. So that the devil is doing two things. The devil is tempting me right here to do those sins, which are just north of the hardening of my conscience. So maybe I feel it a little bit, but then it serves to like, inch this thing up. So where I'm doing more and more stuff that I don't bother with, and the reason the devil is doing that is because all of these things underneath that kind of float of the hardness of my conscience are now available.
I. I become available for the devil. I don't have a way to resist the temptation of doing those sins because they don't even register in my conscience. So the devil can use me to hurt and harm other people. It's, it's a pretty amazing sort of dynamic, and it's a. Something we really have to pay attention to, that how our conscience is working. But I would say here that the church has its own, well, one more thing. And then to the good repute.
One of the things that the difference between the law and the culture is, is that both the law and the. And the culture are working to tenderize our conscience, to show us that these things are sinful. And it should be that the culture is actually holding us to a higher standard than the law itself does. But that can be reversed. And especially with the sixth commandment, what we see is that reversal of the pressure of the culture.
So instead of the culture applying pressure to sanctify us towards chastity, the culture applies pressure to encourage our sinfulness and to harden our conscience towards sexual sins. It's an amazing sort of thing. And this same scale exists with every commandment. But you can imagine the sixth commandment where there's all these things that you can do to break the sixth commandment that are not illegal. But what the devil is trying to do is, is, is harden your conscience so that you don't even realize what these sins are, where the law is trying to tenderize them. And at some point, the devil's hardened your conscience so that now you don't even feel bad for doing criminal things against the sixth commandment until the FBI shows up, you know, so, okay, now I think I want to add one more thing to this, and that is that the church has its own standard of what is acceptable behavior.
And when the scriptures say that a man is above reproach, that means that he is not violating that standard of expectations in his outward life. And it's stricter than the culture. It's not enough to say, oh, well, that guy does everything right according to the law or according to the cultural expectations, but there's a Christian expectation of certain norms that are helpful to both tenderize the conscience to define what's good behavior. And also to apply especially to a man who's looking to be a pastor or a man in the office and say he is above reproach.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: It seems like the additional temptations there, too, are for the guy. On the one hand, we'll just stick with pastors right now, since we're talking about pastors being above reproach, but the pastor, on the one hand, to be like, well, all sins are equal. So it doesn't matter. I'm still breaking the commandments. So I can kind of. I can go anywhere almost on this chart, because all sins are equal, which is one terrible way to go. The other terrible way to go would be I'm staying below that cultural line. Therefore, look how great I am. Right. Like there's the temptation to. To apathy on the one hand or pride on the other. Like, we're always kind of running in between those two things in addition to all the other things that you just mentioned.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: Yep, that's great.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: All right, so let's move on to.
This is an additional bonus question I
[00:20:51] Speaker A: would say, just to add to it, that the above reproach is. Should not be taken away from repentance. So if a guy thinks, hey, I'm going to be above reproach by my own works, that's. That's that prideful thing, which is exactly what you were talking about. About. So this humble recognition that my sin goes all the way down is part of our.
And adding this in. And I think this will tie into the next question, that part of our being above reproach or just being Christian is having a growing disgust with our sinful nature.
Like this flesh that clings to us. Just. It's dag. And it's this knowledge of sin. Remember, there's two ways to know that you're a sinner. And one is because you go out and sin, and the others because you go out and try not to.
And so that. That knowledge of sin from the try and not to is an important part.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: I realize we're actually probably gonna have to split this maybe into three because we didn't get to this question, which I think is important that they asked.
So what happens?
Where does repentance come into restoration versus disqualification?
Right, That's. And I think that would be. I guess we can lump that with the next one too, is they give the example of someone is divorced before coming to Christ and they come to Christ and they get remarried.
Could they be a pastor? But really their question is where. Where can Someone be restored to the office if they've sinned and been removed. And then where. Where does disqualification mean? Permanent disqualification. That seems to be their next. Really. Those two things kind of go together there.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: So let's think about this. So maybe the category to bring in here is to just to remember that there are temporal consequences to our sins that are disconnected from the eternal consequences of our sins.
And our confidence, all people's confidence constantly, is that Christ intercedes with us before the throne of God and that he is the one who bears our reproach and carries our sorrows and forgives all of our sins so that there is no sin that disqualifies us for eternal life.
I mean, the only sin there is what would be the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, which is not believing that sins are forgiven, that the Holy Spirit who brings the forgiveness of sins is not bringing that for me.
So that the death of Christ takes away the sin of the world. And to trust in that, even through the most abhorrent violations of the Lord's law, is what the Christian is called to do. And that means that any person can be restored to fellowship with the Church. Also that repentance and restoration is possible for all people, not only to Christ, but to the body of Christ, to the church.
Now, the office, though, is different because there is a difference, a set of requirements that's given for the office that is above repentance, that repentance is all that is required to be a Christian. But there are standards that are placed on the office that are over repentance. And so is it possible for someone to sin? And they could say, yeah, you can come to church, come to communion, rejoice in the life that the Lord gives, but you can't be a pastor anymore. And I think that's the case. I think once the office has been taken from someone, it's. It's in some ways taken from them.
And it's a. It would be the difference, I suppose, between like a young man who's a virgin and not yet married versus a man who's been through a divorce. I mean, both of them are single, but they have a different relationship to marriage.
So the man who is in the office and is removed from the office has a different relationship to the office than the man who's maybe going into the office or pursuing the office or just is a layman who hasn't had the office taken away from them. And this is also not only for the sake of the church, but also for the sake of the conscience of the man who's in the office. It's hard. It is very difficult to hear the word of God that you are preaching.
So there's unique challenges to the Christian faith of a pastor, just like, I mean, there's unique challenges to every calling. But being a Christian and being a pastor have a unique interface with one another. It's especially because you're so close to the word of God, but you're on the giving side and not the getting side of the word of God. So I think that it's important for a man who was a pastor, who has had the office removed from him to take these considerations very, very carefully in the conscience. Now, what does that have to do with. Okay, so maybe let me pause there, because we didn't get to like the divorce question, especially before the office. But let me, before I switch, get your thoughts on that.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: No, I agree completely. I think there's a con. I've seen a lot of confusion.
I don't know, last 10 years or so, I see this come up a lot. There seems to be a confusion. Well, because I'm forgiven. Therefore, you must let me back into the office.
But like you said, those are not the same. It's not the same thing. And in fact, if you are removed from the office for valid reasons and you do repent, you should rejoice that your sins are forgiven.
That's an amazing thing that should delight you. And to, I think, constantly complain, well, but I should be allowed to do this other thing is to misunderstand all kinds of stuff. I mean, there's.
The Lord doesn't have to give us anything. And to give us forgiveness after we've really blown it in that way should astound us and should make us fall on our faces, like with joy and weeping. And, you know, I mean, it just overwhelm us that God is that gracious to us that he would forgive us. But it doesn't mean I get everything back. There's temporal consequences, all kinds of things we do that cannot be undone.
And so we have to live with those. And I think sometimes guys just are unwilling to live with that and want to say, well, you don't really understand the gospel if you won't let me do this. It's like if you understand the gospel, you delight that you've been forgiven and move on like that. That's how I often approach this. It frustrates me when I hear that because it seems to be a confusion of two very different things.
And again, it goes back to this above approach issue, either that means something or it doesn't. And if you've blown the office in certain ways, there's no way that you can be considered above reproach anymore. You just can't. Like, you've, you had your opportunity and you blew it. And that's on no one but you at that point.
And I think guys need to look in the mirror and take that seriously.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: I do think that to the, to the next topic, that there are some sins or decisions or things that you could have done before you were a Christian that would make it unwise for you to pursue the pastoral office when you are a Christian.
But in general, in some ways, the way that the Bible will approach about it is you're, you're a new man when you're baptized. When you become a Christian, you're a new man. And so those old ways that are thrown off, even if you were walking in the ways of the Gentiles and the ways of darkness, you've thrown those away.
That, those, I do not think in most cases, those disqualify you.
We see examples, but we have to be careful not to figure out if this is an example for it. But we see, for example, Paul, who was a murderer of Christians, and then the Lord calls him to be an apostle. Now, if it was up to us, like if Paul came to us and he wasn't directly called by Jesus and said, I'd like to be a pastor, we'd say, well, but I think you could. I mean, I think there's a way to say you are a new man now. So if a man is married and divorced and all this before he becomes a Christian and now he's applying for the office, and how do you apply that? I think that there's a way to, to give good consideration to those things and say, yeah, this is good for you. If there's other complications, though, like maybe there's child support for like multiple children and all this sort of, you're like, hey, let's, you know, let's think a little bit carefully about what this all means. But I, in general, sins committed before you become a Christian, I don't think, tend to disqualify a man from the office when it comes to a man in the office. This is a tricky question because always these divorces become at least a question.
So the way that we treat it in the Missouri Synod is a, is a divorce for a pastor or seminarian or a Christian man before he goes into the office becomes a question of eligibility. And then it's taken on a case by case way. And there's a. And there's a way for us to say, well, look, if, if these are the conditions, and we understand, rightly, that, that this was an unavoidable sort of thing or whatever, whatever. And we say, okay, this, this particular divorce, while scandalous and sorrowful, doesn't disqualify you from the office.
My own personal convictions are, I think, stricter than the general kind of outlined requirements of that our district presidents use.
But I can hold those because I'm not a district president and I don't have to have these interviews. And so I can, I think if I had to make those decisions, this would be a particularly difficult thing.
But I think in general, it's good for us to recognize the office is not a.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: What?
[00:30:16] Speaker A: It's not a. It's not a.
The office is different than forgiveness. Like you said, the office is different than salvation. Salvation is freely given. The office should not be assumed.
And that it's good to hold those two things together.
It's difficult, though, like you said, Pastor Packer, that we would like so say, I think, oh, look, I have not disqualified myself for the office. And now I become proud of this. I mean, this is exactly where Paul says, let he who thinks he stands, beware lest he fall. I mean, am I qualified for the office because of anything that I've done or accomplished? By no means. It's only the Holy Spirit who upholds us and who gives us all of these things. And so none of the standards should be taken as a matter of, I don't know, pride or, I don't know, there's all sorts of spiritual dangers in the whole conversation on every which way.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: All right, are you ready for the next question?
[00:31:19] Speaker A: Yes.
Is this quite. What question is this, by the way? 2, 3, 4?
[00:31:24] Speaker B: This is 4. Technically, I'm keeping track.
All right.
Why do you think most Christians misunderstand the nature of faith?
[00:31:34] Speaker A: That's a good question.
I think that most.
Here's a. Here's a category that we can use to introduce this confusion. And this is a helpful heuristic. Our old Lutheran fathers, like Francis Pieper, he talks about the difference between saving faith, reflective faith, and this is.
This is so important because reflective faith is that faith which is aware of itself. Like you and I are sitting here and I could ask you, hey, do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth? And you'd say, well, yes, I do actually believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. I Do believe in Jesus. I do believe in the Holy Spirit. I do believe that the scriptures are true. You're thinking about it and you know it.
But there would be times when I would ask you that and you would not know it. For example, in the middle of the night tonight, if I came over to your house and said to you, pastor Packer, do you believe in God the Father Almighty? You would probably just say, in other words, you're not aware of anything. You're not aware of your believing. And there's some people who, I mean, this is especially at the end of life, like with dementia and things like this at the beginning of life when we don't have that capacity for self reflection, when we're running away from a rabid dog and we're not thinking about it, that we don't have that awareness of faith. But that does not exclude us from having faith.
So one of the big problems that is at the basis of American Christianity is this confusion of reflective faith for faith itself.
And I think it's the main reason why they say things like babies can't believe because babies can't know that they believe or confess that they believe because they don't know anything about themselves and they don't talk. And so the inability to self reflect and the inability to speak are understood as the inability to believe because those accidental things of faith are taken to be essential.
And this mistake of replacing saving faith with reflective faith is one of the things that shapes evangelicalism. So here's the, here's the picture that I have been trying to think about is if you're a kid, let's say you're four years old and you. And dad says to you, you're playing in the front yard and dad says, hey, jump in the car, we're going to go to get a slushy at Wendy's.
And you jump in the car and you're driving over to Wendy's and the windows down and, and someone's on the sidewalk and they say, hey, what are you doing?
And you say, I'm with my dad, we're going to Wendy's to get a slushie.
And he says, oh, you must have really strong faith in your father and his words such that you would trust what he says to you.
And you say to this guy, dad said we're going to Wendy's.
What are you talking about? Like, I don't know that I trust Dad. I, I just trust him. He says something and he keeps his promises and I'm with him in that whole Deal. And this is the saving faith of the Christian, is that we trust God, we trust his promises, and then we almost later come to realize it.
And the danger then is that if I think that my saving faith is my reflective faith, then the will starts to get in there. I'm the one that chose, I'm the one that believed, I'm the one that did these things. And now all of a sudden, my own will becomes a part of my conversion, a part of my believing, a part of my salvation itself, and we lose the purely passive nature of God's grace and God's promises.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: It becomes faith in knowing that you have faith. Yeah, right. It becomes.
It's a really dangerous. It's a small, subtle step, but it's a. It's a big one that I think most people like their faith is in the fact that they know they have faith and that. And then that makes. As you said, it makes faith then a work, right? Because then it becomes like, this is what I am doing. And my faith is in the fact that I am doing this because I know I'm doing this. And that's why, you know, too bad for babies, because they can't know they're doing this. So tough luck for them.
[00:35:51] Speaker A: Which is so. I mean, Jesus talks about babies having faith all the time. In fact, Jesus says, unless you have faith, like these little children, but you can even. And the evangelical has to hear that unless you have faith like these babies who can't have faith, then you can't. Then you can't enter the kingdom of heaven. I mean, it just kind of makes it nonsense. But I remember ministering to Linda, who you'll meet in the resurrection, and she was dying, and she said to me, she was always afraid that she only believed because her parents took her to church and her parents believed, and she didn't really have her own faith. And she says, pastor, I don't think my faith is strong enough to save me.
And I said, well, Linda, I think you're probably right.
I think your faith isn't strong enough to save you. But you know, who is your Jesus? He is strong to save. And he's the one who says, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can tell the mountain to go for a swim. And she said to me, this is. She always would say, oh, Pastor, you got me there.
But that's what faith is. It doesn't know how strong it is. It knows how strong Jesus is. Faith is looking to Christ for these things, trusting His Word.
So faith, we want to try to keep pushing all the time away from fideism, faith and faith and pushing towards faith in Christ. Those eyes that are fixed on Jesus.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Yeah, we always want to push them towards the object of faith, not back looking in at the faith itself, which is the temptation constantly.
All right, next question.
What does Psalm 127 mean when it says the Lord builds the house?
Is it talking about God just giving everything to us, we passively receive it or something else?
And then related to this is how then do we discern God's will? So these are all going together. Psalm 127, God's will.
What does it mean that he builds the house? How may understand his will in light of the promise that he's going to build the house?
[00:37:45] Speaker A: Yeah, unless the Lord builds the house. They who labor, labor in vain.
This is attacking the idea that we are self made or that our lives in any way are independent from the Lord and His will and his work.
So it's the, you know, you imagine the same sort of tension comes up whenever you pray for something. Like you sit down for dinner and you thank the Lord for the food. And then the people who made the food, the people who hunted the food, cleaned the food, built like, hey, what about us? You know, we did this ourselves. In fact, I think the atheist will say, what do you pray for? You didn't, God didn't do this, you provided it for yourself. And Psalm 127 is a direct assault on that idea. This is, we do not make ourselves, we do not build ourselves. You can, you can use your hands to build the house, etc. Etc. But it's the Lord who does it and it's the Lord who protects it, and the Lord who sustains it, and the Lord who keeps back the termites and the marauders from knocking it down and, and tearing it over. So everything that we do in word, or indeed we do in the name of the Lord our God. And if he's not helping us, then it comes to, it comes to nothing. That's the, that's the basic import of the psalm.
[00:39:00] Speaker B: I mean, that's Deuteronomy 8, right? Like you're going to go into the land, you're going to have lots of crops and lots of wine and you're going to build houses and you're going to look around and say, look at what I've built with my hands, look at what I've done and you're going to forget all about me. Right? That's the only key passages there in Deuteronomy about what's going to happen to them when they get in the promised land. And then what happens when they get in the promised land? They say, look at all that we did. We built all this stuff.
And then later, that same, like, almost verbatim, right? That's what Nebuchadnezzar says right? Before he is turned into a beast and has to crawl around on all fours and grow out his hairs and nails and is a crazy person for. For a while.
Um, that's always a temptation for us to think we've built it and done ourself, which is, I think, too, I.
I can't remember. I remember hearing this at seminary about, like, God's will with making decisions, which is the connection she had, the question she had kind of flowing out of this, right?
That evangelicals often want freedom where there is none. That is, when it comes to, like, salvation, right? Our will is bound. But then where they have all kinds of freedom within the confines, within the bounds of what God's word sets out. They want God to tell them everything they're supposed to do, like, be told exactly what to do and when to do it, because they're afraid to make a decision there. They're afraid of, like, screwing it up. I read a book.
Relatives gave this to me. I don't.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: I don't remember.
[00:40:26] Speaker B: I was in high school, senior, and they gave me a book that said, you should pray about everything you do in the day. From everything from, like, what color socks you're going to put on to what you're going to eat for breakfast to where you should park at the store.
Like, it was that detailed. Like, you got to pray and get direction from the Holy Spirit and all of these things.
And even as a high school senior, I read it and thought if I tried to live my life this way, I would go insane.
How could you do that? You would be driven mad.
And then I was given a different book. I think it was called, like, Decision Making Will of God or something like that, which wasn't Lutheran at the time, but it basically laid out what we believe, which is, hey, God gives you wisdom to make wise choices based on His Word. Just make those choices all the while. And this is Luther's point, his commentary in Psalm 127. While you're making those wise choices, you're putting it all into God's hand and asking him to bless it, because you know that he's the one who's gonna make it work out how it's supposed to work out. So you don't do those things. Thinking I'm in charge of my life. I'm in control.
This is God's will for me because I chose it. You say, lord, bless this as you see fit.
And it relieves a lot of that tension for us, I think, and gives us a great deal of freedom to make wise decisions and to know that the Lord is building the house and we can trust him for that. Even as we're out there making the best decisions possible based on the information we have accordance with God's word.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: It's great.
This is. We lean on this in all these circumstances, on this promise from James 1, where the Lord says, if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask the Lord who gives to all freely. So the Lord has promised us wisdom and he sets up our lives so that we need it, so that it's okay to say, okay, now I have to be wise. My will is bound towards the things of God. I can't believe on my own or call upon him, or trust in him on my own.
But I do have some freedom towards these things that are in front and around me. And I want to rejoice in that freedom.
[00:42:20] Speaker B: All right, next question.
How do we respond to messianic beliefs without alienating our family?
So here's the situation.
I have family members who call themselves Messianic Christians.
First, my sister got into this group years ago and now some of our daughter. Our daughters in laws. They spend a lot of time denouncing all symbolism and festivals that the traditional church has followed and admonishing people to follow God's laws up to and including taking their kids out of school to observe the Feast of Booths and the like. For example, they will not celebrate Easter Christmas, but they'll celebrate Hanukkah. I'm running into more and more of this style of theology.
They seem to cross all denominational boundaries outside of liturgical and creedal congregations and do a lot of their proselytizing online.
How can I best witness to them without driving them away? They're always ready with what sound to be like fantastical arguments for their belief system.
Being the older and more original Christianity. I've actually seen this in a number of places too.
It does seem like it's.
It was around for a while. I want to say in the 90s was pretty popular if I remember correctly, but it seems to make a comeback. I'd say in the last 10 years I've seen a lot more of this, so.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: That's right. And there's this whole Hebrew roots thing that gets into it.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it's related.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's. We have to see. Okay.
Man, there's so many things to say here.
The first is that let's focus on this. When Jesus, on the night when he betrays, when he was betrayed, took bread, broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, this is my body given for you. Then he took the cup when they had supped and he gave it to them, saying, drink of it all of you. This cup is the New Testament poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Those words New Testament have to be considered with great care and depth.
Especially the letter to the Hebrews dives into this idea because that New Testament was promised already by Jeremiah the prophet.
And Hebrews digs into this and it says that when he says New Testament, he makes the old obsolete.
And that which is obsolete is soon coming to an end.
So the Lord himself has already built in a kind of obsolescence clause into the Old covenant which gives way to the new. Now some people would say, well, look at all these passages in the Old Testament Old Covenant that talk about this is a perpetual covenant for all the generations. Like circumcision, for example, is a perpetual covenant. Why don't we still have circumcision? Because the New Testament is so clear about that, that if you seek to be righteous by circumcision, you've lost your faith, you've fallen from grace.
And Paul, while he does circumcise Timothy doesn't circumcise Titus and says that it's not necessary for salvation and that you cannot be held in bondage to that. Now how could the New Testament take that Old Testament covenant, which was a perpetual covenant, and change it?
The answer is because a covenant only lasts as long as the person who made the covenant lives.
Now if you were to look at the Old Testament, say, well, the Lord made that covenant with Abraham, but remember, he didn't cause Abraham to walk through the cut up animals, he did it himself. So you say, well, that covenant will only last as, will last as long as God himself lives. It's perpetual until God dies.
And at the death of Jesus, the old covenant comes to an end.
That's why Jesus is able to say, I, I'm giving you a new covenant which is taking place of the old one. Now that new covenant doesn't require celebrating Easter once a year or Christmas once a year. But that new covenant does mean not celebrating the Passover because that's part of the Old covenant. And it does mean celebrating the Lord's Supper.
So for the person writing this question, I would really hone in on that language of new covenant, especially as Hebrews 8 and 9 unfolds it from Jeremiah and what, and what that means.
Now the other thing that I would like to suggest is that the, is that Judaism now is pretend Judaism.
It's Phariseeism.
And Phariseeism, you'll remember, is at least, at least indifferent, but at worst has an animosity toward the tolerance towards the temple. But if you just go and read through like Exodus 20 through numbers 10 and you see all the instructions for the tabernacle, for the sacrifices for everything else and look at what's required there and then in Deuteronomy and just ask this question.
How can you claim to follow Moses if there is no altar for sacrifice?
How can you follow the instructions of Moses if there is no tabernacle or temple? How can you be truly Jewish if there's not a, if there's not a sacrifice? How can you keep the feast of Booths if you're not offering 13 bulls at the altar on day one and 12 on day two and 11 on day three? That's what the Lord says.
So that what is Judaism now is, it's the exile answer to the question how can we be Jewish in Babylon? And, and since we can't offer sacrifices, we offer the sacrifices of our works, but it's not the blood promises which the Lord put in place to preach Christ.
So all of this is a bit kind of wrong headed from the get go. Those are my two thoughts.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: I mean my thought, I'm a simple man, read the book of Galatians. Is that like, I just feel I've never understood this. I had a tour guide in Israel who was a Christian. This is back in 1998, I was a senior in high school, got to go this Youth Leadership Conference thing and, and was over there and our tour guide was a Christian and so neat guy. But he, he was into some of this stuff like you know, he would only call Jesus Yeshua and stuff like that.
Wanted everyone to get the Amplified Bible and also this other Bible, this Messianic Jewish Bible that had all the names translated properly. He said, right, so interesting guy, honestly good tour guide, but into some of this stuff. And then since that time I've seen it over and over again and I just always want to ask, have you ever read the book of Galatians? Like Paul literally deals with all of this, right? Like, because if you just replace these feasts and festivals with circumcision, you get to the Same. It's the same answer, right? You're saying you can only be a Christian if you have Jesus, plus the feast of booze, right? Like, you've got to do all these things. You've got to keep all of these festivals. And it's interesting to keep Hanukkah. Cause it's not even, like, technically in. Like, you know, it's not technically commanded in there, but. So, like you said, they're grabbing it from these other places, but on and on you go, like. And they don't even celebrate them, as you said, the right way. Like, they're not even close.
Because if you're not building a little booth for yourself and making the sacrifices, you're not celebrating the feast of booths. Like, literally, there's, like, things that God commanded you must do, or you're not celebrating it. So I've. I've never gotten this. I think it's this weird obsession. It's kind of like, you know, larping. Like role playing. Honestly, it's kind of what it is. I don't want to sound overly mean or harsh with this, but that's what it reminds me of. Like, we're going to pretend we're an Old Testament saint, and if you don't pretend with us that you're an Old Testament saint, then you're not really a Christian. And they'll use. Because these are the same people that will use words like Yeshua. They won't say Jesus.
It's like, well, you know, the New Testament is written in Greek, right? And so, like, that's some of the stuff they come up with. I just. I don't get it. I've never understood it. I feel like the New Testament's so clear on this. Whether it's Hebrews 8, 9, like you said, or whether it's the whole book of Galatians. Like, that stuff's dangerous. And it usually leads to Phariseeism, as you said, because that's what it is. I've never seen it end up any other way, so hopefully you can get through. But it's. It's a. It's like other stuff we've talked about. It's an ideology which is much harder to talk people out of.
Right.
So pray that God will open their eyes to. To see the scriptures rightly.
All right.
Is it really God's will that you fire me? This question. I'm not gonna lie. This one made me mad. Like, there's not a lot of questions I read through, and I'm, like, fired up.
This one. This One made me mad because not at the questioner. I feel bad for the people that work at this company like this. This really upset me. So I'm going to read this and we'll. I'm gonna skip some of it here.
I have nothing.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: I'm just looking at it now.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Wow, this is some intense stuff. And it made me angry. I'm like, man, this is spiritual abuse. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. Okay,
[00:51:31] Speaker A: I'm gonna read the question to you and you could answer it. I had a question related how people talked about God's will. I work for a Christian led company and leadership talks all the time about how it's God's company which leads to interesting and challenging conclusions sometimes such as when people leave or when they have to fire people. It's framed as God's pruning the company or quote, we're letting them go so they can be in alignment with God's will for their life.
Our CEO has taken a step back lately and sort of just letting things play out, saying, I don't know why it has to be this way, but God does.
There's a general attitude of profound relief that we get to work for a Christian cause and don't have to do non meaningful work like other companies.
Some of these statements feel manipulative. I don't think they're intended that way or like the person saying them lacks agency or doesn't want to own any sort of responsibility for decisions. But it's confusing. I'm also encountering it now while I'm looking for new jobs. We trust God will tell you if this is the right job for you. The implication being that if I make my decision based on other factors like pay, etc. Set up purely about what I think God wants, I'm somehow not spiritual.
Before I was Lutheran, I was of the mindset that God uses us in any job and vocation in life, not that we need a special job or ministry to make our job significant.
I'm not even fully sure what my question is other than how should I think about these type of statements and is there a way to respond? I feel like if I'm verbally disagree, the perception will be that I don't believe in God's will for people, but I guess I think his will is bigger than mine than that of an individual job.
Thoughts?
[00:53:01] Speaker B: I think that last sentence kind of sums up with why people use that language. Right? She's afraid to disagree. Why?
Because if she disagrees she's going against God's will. Like, I. It's hard for me to fathom a company that fires someone and their excuse for firing them is, we want you to go find God's will for your life. Like it is. It's a disowning of responsibility. It's as just using God's will as a manipulative tool, it sounds like, to make themselves feel better for firing people or letting people go or people leaving the company maybe because they don't want to put up with this. So rather than saying. Looking at themselves and saying, maybe we should change the way we treat our employees and talk to them, it becomes, well, we're letting them. They're going off to align with God's will for their life.
And then even, like, we trust God will tell you if this is the right job for you.
Seems like a way to try to manipulate employees to stay right. Like, we, we haven't let you go, we haven't fired you. Which means.
Right, because it's God's will for you to be here until we fire you, apparently.
And this goes back to several things we looked at even today with God's will, and then also the doctrine of vocation.
These, these owners just seem to own up and say, when we're firing someone, like, it's either because we can't pay you, like we don't have enough money, or you're doing a poor job, like, just be honest about it. Now, the ironic thing is there's ways you probably could word that that don't sound as manipulative, but a CEO doing that, or even stepping back and taking his hands off and saying like, oh, this is just the way it is because it's the way God wants it is exactly what Luther rebuked in his commentary in Psalm 127.
The person who says, hey, this is all out of my control.
It's just, it's God's will.
It'd be like the person who says, God's going to give them a job and so they're going to wait for God to give them a job, and then they never apply for jobs. They play video games 18 hours a day and. And their mom says, why don't you have a job yet? And they say, well, because God hasn't given me one. She's like, have you applied? She's like, I don't need to apply.
God will give me one. This is the same exact thinking. And I just, I think because I came out of some of this and got used to some of this language, that it really just irritates me and makes me angry because it's manipulating these dear Christians who think, right.
I can't disagree because I'm disagreeing with God's will. This is the same way as those pastors who talk this way about their vision, right? For the church being God's will. So you can't argue against it, because even if you think it goes against scripture, God gave me this vision or this whatever now you got to do.
Sounds like you have other job options. And honestly, I can't tell you what to do because I'm not going to tell you what you should do. You should make the best decision based on, like you said, important decisions like pay what's best for your family and perhaps the work environment I would add, too, would be a good, wise decision to make. Make a wise decision based on those factors, not on the boss manipulating you.
It just seems spiritually abusive to me to use this kind of language with your employees.
You know, can you imagine if I, as a pastor went to someone, like on our staff and said, well, this is God's will. It's time for you to go.
Like, people would be furious with me for doing that. But apparently if you run a company, you can get away with it. I don't know if I went to a member who I didn't. You know, maybe there's a member annoying me or something. And rather than go through the process of excommunication or something because they're not actually sinning, I just go up to them and say, well, it's God's will for you to. To go. It's time for us to part ways.
It's just. It's just terrible. I don't like it. That's my rant. I'm too fired up about it now.
[00:56:46] Speaker A: I had someone who said, hey, I heard from Jesus.
He told me direct. He had a direct message. And I said, what's that? And he says, well, he's upset with you for this thing that you said about me. And I said, this is a long time ago. I said, well, look this, I don't think this is fair at all. Because they said, why does that. I said, well, because you get to trust what Jesus says, and I have to trust what you say.
Next time Jesus talks directly to you, why don't you tell him to talk to me too so I can also trust in him. But here's the kind of spiritual manipulation of this individualized discovery of the Lord's will. And we'll remember that if the Lord does reveal something to us privately it's to be revealed privately. In other words, that's what the Lord intends it. He holds us publicly to the word that goes out publicly. So if someone comes and says, I was on prophecy bingo with Roseboro the other day, and we were showing me all these prophets, I'm like, here's the wicked thing. If someone comes and says, here's the word of the Lord, they do three things. Number one, they put me under their authority. So now I have to trust what they say, not what, what the Lord says. Number two, they obscure the scripture for me because they think that I could not have gotten to what the scripture meant until they are the ones that had the special word from the Lord to reveal it to me. So they not only make. Put me under their own authority, they also obscure all of the prophets that the Lord has given. They take the Bible away from me because now I have to trust in them. And the third thing is, they do it under the guise of the.
Of the Spirit, so that it sets me up to expect or to demand the Spirit to give me those revelations. And as soon as we expect God to keep promises that he never gave, we're set up for this spiritual disappointment. So this whole idea of the.
Of being under the guidance of this individualized reveal will of God, the whole thing is spiritually, is really spiritually dangerous. Like you said, spiritually manipulative.
[00:58:50] Speaker B: So I want someone at that company the next time they come to you and say, whoever you are at this company, if you hear this and you're working there and they say it's God's will that we let you go, I want you to respond, God told me it's my will that you give me a pay raise and then I stay here for another year and you're going to give me extra vacation time. I just give a list of demands and say, God told me this is what his will is for me here in this company and see what happens. Because I'm gonna guess that they're gonna take their version of God's will over yours every single time. Which is why I hate this stuff, because.
But I think that's why the way you should respond, though, I'd be like, oh, really? God told me that.
That you're to give me a big fat pay raise and extra time off. So let's get on that.
[00:59:35] Speaker A: Hey, I know we only got to six questions, but I think we're gonna put a bow on it here because I think we've done well on this path. Pastor Packer, and thanks everyone for jumping in too to send your questions this way. Wolfmuller co contact is how you can get a hold of us. So. So thanks for sending these in. It's really great.
Thanks for subscribing and, and commenting below as well. That's a helpful way to let YouTube know that these videos are helpful for you. So to send them out there as well and, and let them fly. And that's also really great. And we'll see you soon. God's peace be with you.
