Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, welcome to Q and A podcast. I'm Pastor Wolfmuller in Austin, Texas with St. Paul Lutheran Church and Jesus Staff Lutheran Church joining with Pastor Packer. As always, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, heard a rumor about you. That is when you asked the chatbot to give you a workout, it said, hey, take it easy. You've peaked.
Is that.
[00:00:19] Speaker B: No, that's, That's. If this is peak, then the bar is very low.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: It's like, take it easy, Arnold. Slow it down. Making the rest of us look bad. You got some questions for us?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Maybe, you know, it's, it's interesting.
I often, like, put questions in our thing and then I'm like, ah, I move them all around and I change it and then I go back and I spend like, way probably too much time just trying to even organize questions. So. And I apologize to people like, I. I'm also trying to answer them too, on top of the other stuff, but they're coming in so fast. It's. It's been more difficult. We still have 142. I haven't either moved or answered, so.
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, look at. It's growing.142 in inbox 62 on deck. You all right?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Well, yeah, they keep coming in.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Send them to. If you, if you have questions, wolfmuller.co contact. That's where you can send them. It's great.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: This one's pretty straightforward.
What is the Lutheran teaching about Jesus and is it different from other denominations?
[00:01:27] Speaker A: That's a great question. So I think it's the. Well, the difference is the interesting part. The Lutheran Church confesses what all Christians confess.
The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God, three persons.
We also teach the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus, that Jesus is God and man. And those are the two great mysteries of the Christian faith. That's what actually is the mark of the border of what it means to be Christian. The confession of the Trinity and the confession of the Incarnation. And so the Lutherans hold to those two great mysteries. Profoundly hold to those two great mysteries.
Our Lutheran writers were always really clear to confess the creeds which articulate these things.
So the teaching of Jesus when it comes to those kind of orthodox standards is held up by the Lutherans. There was a way that, as our Lutheran theologians were reflecting on the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Incarnation and especially the two natures of Christ, that they clarified things that had.
Well, they brought some further clarity onto. Onto this mystery that hadn't been established really in the church. And so when Martin Chemnitz puts together his three genuses, these three discussions about how the two natures relate to one another in the person of Christ, he was bringing some clarity on things that were always confessed and thought of by the church Father as well. So that, for example, all of the divine attributes are not only communicated to the person of Christ, but also to the. To the human nature of Christ, and that. That's fully realized at the ascension. So that it's. It's Jesus the man who's with us in every place and who rules the universe, etc. This is a marvelously comforting doctrine and clarity that was brought on the doctrine of the two natures of Christ.
It's not different from what was. What was gone before, but it was a unique. I would say this. It was a unique piece of clarity.
Maybe the other difference is.
I'll tell you a story. I was at a. I was at a wedding.
This was great. It was two members. One was.
He was a law student. He was. Just graduated from law school. And so there's a bunch of law student guys that were there at the wedding. And they came up to me. Well, they were hanging around after the wedding. And I went over to talk to him. You could tell his group of kind of young lawyers.
And one of them said he was wearing a yarmulke, a Jewish guy. And he says, man, you messed up our pool.
And I said, what's that? And the other guy next to him, this kind of young curly hair guy, says, well, we bet on how many times you would mention Jesus in the service.
And the other. And I turned, I'm like, are you serious? This kind of cowboy hat guy says, yeah. He says, I had 0 to 15.
This other guy said I had 15 to 30. Another guy said I had 30 to 45. And I said, what was it? He says, we. You were. Is like two minutes in and you're like, jesus this, Jesus that. And you blew past it like the first seven minutes. I think I. It was 70 plus or something like this. It was great.
So all so. And they said, now this is a. They were. Had done this apparently at the last couple of weddings and, and the Episcopal. I said, well, how'd it do? And said, well, we're at Episcopalian church, and I think Jesus was in there like four or five times.
Like, the emphasis on Jesus in the Lutheran Church should be apparent to anyone who comes to visit. Like, wow, you guys are pretty big on Jesus. Well, that's it. Because this is what Christianity is Christianity is the statement that Jesus is the Savior. That's the whole kind of fight of the Reformation that the Lutherans are saying Jesus is the Savior and if he's the Savior, then nobody else is. It's an exclusive statement. We can't save ourselves. Our works can't save us or whatever can't save us. Jesus is the Savior.
So this idea that Christ is at the center, that Jesus is not just to get us into our Christian life and now Moses takes over, that's probably the pietistic or evangelical pattern or Jesus is there to help us, but now we're really doing our own meritorious salvation building. That's what happens when you have a free will theology like Rome.
The Lutheran Church wants Jesus to be the alpha and the omega.
So when this is a kind of watchword for the Lutherans, we preach Christ and him crucified.
And that should be the mark of our Lutheran teaching. It shouldn't be a distinction, but practically so theologically it's not really a distinction, but I think practically it shows up being a distinction between the other churches.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Some of the recent polls, they come out every year with these various polls for what Christians believe or what they get wrong. And sometimes it's rather shocking even on Jesus, what people get wrong.
Why do you think?
Like among Lutherans, it seems like because we require more of our members, oftentimes through catechesis and things that we talk about these things more like whenever I do an adult instruction class and we go over Jesus and it's stuff. It's not that they've never heard any of those things before, but oftentimes that they haven't thought it at that level of depth.
How important do you think it is that we do that and continue to do that? And is that the thing that's keeping us right, like centered on Jesus and teaching the right things about Jesus versus churches that maybe just say, hey, you have to believe Jesus is the son of God, he died and rose again for you. But none of that's ever really what those phrases mean, is never really maybe fully explained. Like it's kind of surface level.
[00:07:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Well, so number one, the Lutheran Church is a, is a, also a theological church. Right? I mean, we're interested in doctrine, unlike almost every other churches. You maybe have some Reformed churches that have that similar interest in theology, but even there it's a little bit different.
So no one's confessional like a Lutheran. And that's sometimes hard for Lutherans to realize. Like even our subscription to the Book of Concord is totally different than like a reform subscription to the Westminster standards.
There's something different going on there and we have to pay a little bit of attention to it, which means we're going to be. We're going to. We are going to be constantly interested in theological things. I remember coming across from evangelicalism.
I think the only reason, the only time we ever studied the doctrine of the Trinity in the evangelical church was when we were doing anti Mormon apologetics.
That was it. Otherwise you wouldn't even maybe know that we were trinitarian just from the normal service and the normal conversation.
They were. Theologically, they were. But it's just the interest was not in that topic. And it could be dangerous for us too, because there's.
I mean, there are fights about the Incarnation, there are fights about the Trinity, but mostly it's with heretical groups or sects, people outside of Christendom. That's not a real live question in the Christian church. Now the live question has to do more with, I suppose, the scripture or salvation. And so we dig into those questions a little bit more than those basic mysteries. But it's good. It's good that we are going back to these things. I suppose it's good that we have Christmas that pushes us back to the doctrine of the Incarnation and the birth of Christ. And we've got to think about it every year. It's good that we have Trinity Sunday where we confess the Nicene Creed and everyone gets to hear it at least once a year. And we get to think about these great mysteries and that we're preaching on the Gospels so that we get to. Because the Gospels are doing this constantly, showing us both the divine nature and the human nature of Jesus, almost always in parallel. So Jesus is sleeping and then calming the sea. You know, Jesus is hungry and then he's sending the devil away. So the Gospels are always giving us the two natures, demonstrating them in parallel to one another. He. He's the son of his mother and he's changing water into wine, in other words.
So the Gospel texts are always putting this before us. And so I think that's also helpful that most every Lutheran church, well, every Lutheran church should be hearing the Gospel every Sunday and probably mostly hearing it preached on every Sunday. And that's good.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: I often use example, like when I'm going over, especially like adult destruction. But in other times too, when people might say, well, you guys get too much into the details and these things aren't that important as an example of if the Jehovah Witnesses come to your door. And you ask them, you know, did Jesus die for you? They would say yes.
Even if I asked them, did Jesus die for your sins? They would say yes. If I said, Jesus, who is fully God and fully man, died for your sins, they would say no.
Well, think very clearly. We're talking about two different Jesuses and we got to figure out who's who. I mean, you don't go very far in answering the question, who is Jesus? Before you start doing some really in depth theology. Like, you just can't avoid it. So when Christians try to say, well, it doesn't matter that much as long as we all believe in Jesus. Okay, but which Jesus are you believing in? Like, who is he? And if you get that wrong, it's going to screw up everything else. So it's not like we can just kind of gloss over these things and be like, well, it's okay if we don't really look into who Jesus is or what he's done. It's like, no, you get that wrong. You get everything wrong. Ask, you know, just start talking to a Mormon or Jehovah Witness and ask some really specific questions. You'll very quickly realize that you're not talking about the same thing.
[00:11:22] Speaker A: That's great.
Jesus himself gives us that question, who do men say that I am? And that becomes the very heart of our theological reflection. I remember Dr. Markow, it said, the reason why we have so many detailed theological confessions is that is that there's so many errors. So he says, imagine you go to buy a car. This was his picture. Imagine you go to buy a car and you sign the contract for the car. And you come to the car and it doesn't have any wheels in it.
And you're like, hey, where are the wheels? And he's like, well, that's not actually part of the car. You got the car, but no wheels. And so now the next time you go to buy a car, you're like, hey, can you write something in there that the wheels are included? And you're like, great. And you go and you get the car, but the air conditioner's not there or whatever, or the something else. And so it gets, every time there's an abuse like this, there's an addition to the contract. And we are now, you know, 2,000 years into the history of dealing with theological errors.
So our contract is getting longer and longer and longer.
You wouldn't have to, if there was no errors in the church.
You wouldn't have to have these long theological discussions. But there are and I suppose it's according to the Lord's will. He talks about beware of false prophets. So it's one of the essential things that the church is doing is looking out for false doctrine in this way and confessing it. It's also something if, if the church doesn't grab ahold of the history of the church where all these debates were happening, then something is lost. So the evangelical church kind of wants to.
Their sola scriptura idea is something of an ahistorical idea. Not in every case, but in a lot of cases, like, hey, we're just at the end of the book of Acts. And so they skip over the history of the church where all these fights were happening.
And so they have to do it all over again.
It's nice to, to be the inheritors of all these biblical conclusions in the creeds and confessions.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: All right, are you ready for the next question?
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: So the question is pretty simple, but I'll give some context to it too. So people have some numbers to go with this.
Why are the non denominational churches growing so much when it seems like other churches are, are shrinking, including even the lcms, our church body, to give you some stats. Let's see.
In the early 1970s, non denominational church members made up 3% of American population. Today it's about 12 to 14%, which means about 45 million people say they're part of a non denominational church.
For comparison, the Southern Baptist convention has about 12 and a half million and the Catholic Church has about 62 million. I'm getting this from the, the sub stack graphs about religion.
He does a lot of, a lot of deep dives into these numbers and he shows one of the reasons he believes they're growing is because they're, overall, their demographics skew much younger than a lot of these other church bodies. So a lot of these other church bodies, including our own, for example, our mean age is 60.9, which is, you know, just a couple, couple days older
[00:14:43] Speaker A: than you and me.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, just, just a little bit.
They tend to skew much younger. So why do you think it is that they are growing so much, especially in the last. It seems like since 2018 especially, there seems to be a, seems to have risen quite a bit. So why is that? Why are they growing so fast? Why does it seem like they're gonna keep growing, etc.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Here's one, here's one difference. So this is a. I don't know if we can answer this whole thing. And, and I. So, and it's Weird from my perspective because I was in the non denominational Calvary Chapel, came into the Lutheran Church, and I mostly see that just because of where I sit. I mean, people will find some of these questions that we're doing here on YouTube and they're coming into the Lutheran Church, my congregation.
There's a lot of folks that are coming from the non denominational church into the church. So I'm seeing the exit into the Lutheran church just because it's my little. So I don't have the broad samples to do the comparison, but the little one. So in, in. In my little world, it seems like there's. It's going the other direction as well, which is, which is helpful. And here's what, here's what I notice the.
There's a. I used to have a technical name for this. I see. If I can remember it. There's an assumed.
This is only a small part of the puzzle, but I think it's an important part to bring to our, to our minds. There's an assumed chief relationship.
Acr I can't remember. I had it. So that. That, that defines the context of a space.
Here's what I noticed that in the.
Okay, so here's the story where I started paying attention to this. There's one Sunday I was greeting people after the service.
This was at Hope in Colorado in Aurora. And that we had two, at least two that visited that day. One was a young family and the other was a young single.
And I saw him greeting at the door and the young family comes through and they say, pastor Wolf Mueller, your church is one of the most welcoming, hospitable places. It was. Everyone's so friendly. It was so wonderful. It was amazing to be here. And I thought, well, you know, the congregation reflects the characteristics of the pastor. That's just.
And then like two people later, this young single was visiting and he said to me, hey, I really appreciate the service, but your congregation is kind of cold.
Like, everyone seems kind of not very friendly at all.
And I said, you know, oh, what am I going to do with that? And I started to think, well, where are they sitting? And who? And I thought. And I had to. I really was thinking about that a lot. Like, how could two people on the same Sunday have such a completely different experience of the culture of the congregation?
And I started working on this idea that there are these expectations of your chief vocations or your most important relationships that are kind of assumed in a place, and if they match up with your expectations, then you feel at home and if they don't, then you feel like you're out of place.
So when you're a child, your chief relationship is with your parents and with your siblings, it's with the home. And then as you grow, it kind of, you bring in friends and it kind of expands until a lot of times when you're off to college and when you're on your own in that young single part, your chief relationships are no longer with your family, with your parents or with your siblings, but rather with your co workers, your fellow students, and with your friends. And so you go from being sort of family, which is a vertical orientation, to, to friends and colleagues, which is a kind of horizontal orientation. And I think that the Lutheran Church assumes the family relationship. It's just baked in. When we give examples, we give family examples. When we talk about vocation, we talk about husband, wife and child. We have that sort of family thing. And if you're not in a family, if you're a young single, if you're out there working and grinding and trying to carve a place for yourself, it just, no one says anything. You might not even know why, but it just doesn't. It's like, this is not my place. It's not my place. But what happens a lot of times is you get a little bit older and you find a spouse and you start having a family. And then the evangelical church feels, because now your own life is kind of back oriented towards the family, a lot of times you'll gravitate back to the Lutheran Church where that's the kind of assumed invisible culture of the place.
Now I think what this means is for the Lutheran Church that we need to in some ways over emphasize the vocation of friend and the vocation of cowork and neighbor, because to sort of balance out the assumed chief relationships so that it's okay to be a single person. One of the single people who feel most comfortable in the Lutheran Church are the people who hate being single and want to be married. But the problem is like, well, I got to go to the evangelical churches to find the other singles, you know, so we have to emphasize that those vocations and callings so that this sort of unstated.
What audience. I don't, I don't. That's a terrible word to use. But you know, the, the hearer, we have all these assumptions about who is hearing what I'm saying.
And if we have the assumption that all of our hearers are part of, are defined by their role in the family and not by their relationships because those are totally different kinds of relationships. Then people end up feeling like they shouldn't be part of the place accidentally. The evangelicals are good at that. It's one of the reasons why their emphasis is on evangelism.
Because if you're in a family, you almost have this assumption that your parents passed on the faith to you and you're passing it on to the children. There's not a lot of conversion because you're trying to kind of maintain that doctrine. But when you're out there, your friends come from all sorts of different families, and so you're gathering them in. So bring your friends to church, bring the people here with that emphasis on friendship and evangelism.
That's the whole culture of the place.
And there's nothing wrong with that culture. In fact, that culture is good. Evangelicalism. Here's another thing that the evangelical church has that we don't is the assumption of conversion.
And I think we've talked about this too, that they just assume that people who are pagan are going to become Christian.
And we, I think on articulate. We don't articulate this. If you ask Lutherans if they believe in conversion, they say, yeah, but we generally think, well, someone's just going to be the way that they are, grew up Lutheran, you stay Lutheran or you leave. Those are your kind of two options. But if someone's flat out pagan, we just assume that that's how they're going to live and how they're going to die. And that's a bad, wrong assumption. God changes hearts and he changes hearts through the words. And we, we should expect that in our prayers and in our conversations.
So those are the, I think the two differences that I, that I noticed between evangelicalism and Lutheranism that are, I don't know, a rebuke or at least a like a thing that the Lutherans need to be aware of. I don't. You got thoughts on that? I don't think we've talked about that. So I'm interested in your reaction.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I think connected with that a few things I think maybe draw people to them maybe more than some Lutheran churches. One is that I think that sense of community, sometimes they're just better at building that because of some of the things they do and how they approach people. I think part of that too is.
And we've this came up with the worship discussion. So I think it's related to that there's kind of a lower bar of entry to become a member of those churches. Right. Whereas we usually require some kind of adult instruction class that can take multiple hours, you know, some anywhere from eight, 10 or more weeks to teach someone.
We had someone in our class recently coming from a different denomination and he told his son in law originally he thought like why are we, why do we have to have so many classes? What in the world? And now he's into it. He's like, oh, I get it now, like this is great. And I understand why we're having so many classes. I'm learning so much. But it sounds to someone like why in the world do I need, you know, I'm a Christian, why do I need to have hours upon hours of classes to join your church? That seems like a high threshold, a high bar. Whereas most churches you show up for a little while now you're, now you're a member, maybe answer a few questions and then. Related again, it goes back to I think the worship discussion.
A lot of what they do, often not every non denominational church, but many.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: Appeals more to emotions which is what kind of is driving people right now. So it's a more emotive experience, makes you feel a certain way. Whereas maybe you go into Lutheran church and it's much more unfamiliar. So I just think there's some things there. One, some of those I think are easy to fix like the having a welcoming community, finding ways to connect people. I think those are things we should be actively working on. Some others are a little harder because we don't want to lower that threshold of what we require of members. And then also we don't want to change. I don't think our worship just to meet that kind of what people think they want. Rather we're trying to train them and say you think you want this because of how you make it makes you feel. But we want to push you over this direction because we think this is better for you in the long run. And it may not, you may not love it now, but we think you'll grow to love it if you stick with it. That's what I often tell people that look, I get this, this form of worship is different for you and maybe it's a little harder. But I promise you if you stick with it, you're going to grow to love it and then you're not going to want to change once you, once you really get into it. So I. Those are a few things I think that could be part of it. Like you said, it's a pretty, it's a complex question and there's a lot of things we're not looking at or covering. But I think those are just a few of the things that at least impact why those numbers are falling out the way they are.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: This, the first book that I wrote. Has American Christianity failed? Wrestles with this theologically, not statistically. So where has the evangelical church fallen short of the full comfort of the gospel and their doctrine of free will, their lack of the efficacy of the word, their non sacramental theology, their ahistorical theology, their bad eschatology, their emphasis on good works over.
Over Christ's saving generosity, all these are kind of fail points of the theology. But it does tap into the sort of American culture of I can do it. You know, it matches up with our, with our culture in a lot of ways. So.
So if people are interested that that book is hanging around, there's some videos about it too. So.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: All right, we're gonna move on. I moved this question up because it's a, it's a throwback for us to, to before times because it's from a former LVR worker. So for those of you.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Lutheran Valley Retreat, where Pastor Wolf, mayor for, for how many years did you do catechism retreat there?
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Still happening.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Total.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: We still.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: I know it's still happening, but so we started. How many years has it been now?
[00:26:14] Speaker A: 22,000. No, no, 2007. Wow. We're coming up on 19 years of Catechism retreats.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: I think at one time I'd been to 10 in a row, but I don't make it anymore. All right, favorite.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: So favorite week of the summer. It's so great.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: It is great. If you're, if your kids are able to go to it. It's really fantastic.
This is from Alex. He worked at LVR from 2020 to 2022. His camp name is Micro and he's married to Demo or Devin.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: LVR 2022 and 2023.
Anyways, he has two unrelated questions we might need to.
Actually, he has three questions, so if we really wanted to, we could.
All right, let's maybe break this into three. So let's start with the first one.
This is a question. I, I think it's an interesting one because I, I've been asked it. So first one, why does David say he has sinned against you and you alone, O Lord?
It seems to me obvious that he sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah as well.
So Psalm 51
[00:27:20] Speaker A: and Joab and all the people and the lady who killed one of his soldiers with a pot from the side of the wall. And there's hardly anybody that David didn't sin against. And then in Psalm 51, he says, you and you alone, O Lord, here's my explanation. I do not think that David in that way is trying to minimize the impact of his sin, but maximize the impact of his sin. And so if we, if we can take this thumbnail idea of the difference between a troubled conscience and a terrified conscience, I think this is going to be helpful. So a troubled conscience knows that it's done something wrong, that it's broken, broken a law, that it's sin, maybe even against God.
But it also thinks, well, it's not that bad. Everybody does it. It, you know, nobody's perfect that a troubled conscience acts in that way.
A terrified conscience, on the other hand, realizes that the holiness of God has been offended and his wrath has been activated.
Activate wrath mode so that I am the. I deserve now God's temporal and eternal punishment.
And that's a truth. I mean, we say that in our confession of sins. And I mean, that's an amazing thing that we're saying I deserve hell, and I deserve everything bad between now and hell. And then I deserve hell. That's what that confess because of my sin. That's a profound recognition of what our sin deserves.
Something shifts when you move from a troubled conscience, which probably most people have, to a terrified conscience, which only the Christian has created by the Holy Spirit.
Maybe it's possible to have a terrified conscience apart from faith. You can't live long with that.
So the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin and we realize that the problem is not sin.
The problem is God's wrath over my sin.
And so when David gets to this point by the Holy Spirit through the prophet Nathan, he realizes that his problem is God's wrath over sin.
And I think that's what's being articulated there by you and you alone. Have I sinned, O Lord? In other words, this has been now between you and me, I realize the problem. I. And I can't fix it. I can't. I can't make it right. I can't solve my own problems. My only hope is you're saving me. That's my, that's my take on that one. What do you think?
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. That's usually the way I go about entering. It's not that he's saying my sin has only been against God and I haven't harmed anyone else. He's saying my sins are so great that now I've. Who I've ultimately offended, who's. Who's behind all of you know, because what does murder do? It's destroying one who's creating the image of God. Right?
Even adultery is like going against what God has commanded concerning marriage. So he realizes that ultimately, as much as he's sin against those people, that what he's done to God is even, even worse in a way, right? Like it's. It's a step up. I've rebelled against you.
And in my rebellion against you, that's like the worst thing I've done.
Not minimizing the horrific things he did to all those other people, but that he realizes, okay, it's God who's ultimately behind, behind standing behind them, who I've.
Who have disobeyed, who I've rejected, who I've especially remember. It's. I love it at the end of. Is it 2nd Samuel 11. The verse reads chapter 10. I can't remember off top of my head right now where it says, after David's only sins, it says like the most understated verse in the whole Bible. I think it says the thing that David had done, displeased the Lord. It's just like, just a short little verse. And then the whole next chapter is David being confronted in his sin and him realizing he deserves to die because he realizes what he owes God now because of. Because of what he did. So like you said, I don't think it's. He's not trying to minimize what he did to others. He's trying to show how much what he did to others also broke his relationship with God. Because as Luther said right on the small cult articles, when David did these things, he'd abandoned the faith, right? He committed apostasy when he committed these sins. And so David realizes what he deserves because of that sin against others before God. And. And now he's saying, I've screwed it all up and I need your forgiveness.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: This comes up especially when our Lutheran confessions teach us that we honor the saints in three ways, and one of them is the strengthening of our faith. Especially when we see those who sinned so profoundly restored. And how amazing to see, like Nathan the prophet goes to David and then breaks him after a year.
He's been apostate and faithless for a year. And then Nathan, through this carefully preached sermon of the law with a man who steals his neighbor's sheep. And this appeal to David's sort of righteous judgment where his conscience was still functioning, and then applies it to his own conscience. I mean, it's so one. And then David is crushed.
And then Nathan says to him, the Lord has put away your sin, which is so amazing that the absolution can come to David now. There's still temporal consequences, but, okay, the absolution comes to David, and this is strengthening our own faith. I mean, this is why Jesus set up his church, so that we can receive there nothing but the daily, unending, uninterrupted forgiveness of sins.
So the Lord wants us to know that he puts away our sin by placing them on Christ and by suffering in our place.
So this is why we pray. Psalm 51, a lot of times after the sermon created me a clean heart, O God, the same prayer that David does. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation.
And the Lord answers that prayer for David and for us beautifully.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: Can you imagine being Nathan? I think it's Bo Garrett in his commentary on the New Testament. I can't remember the precise name of the book, but he kind of envisions Nathan walking through the halls of the palace, having to go confront David. Right? Because if you go to a king and those days and you confront him with murder and adultery and he doesn't like what he hears, then you're a dead man. Right. I mean, so his. His boldness and going to bring the king to repentance is pretty, Pretty amazing, too, in of itself.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: All right, question number two.
Why don't we cast lots to make decisions in the church anymore, as we see in Acts 1:26, as well as several other times throughout the Old Testament?
[00:34:08] Speaker A: This is. So I want to introduce a category, and then. But then I want to hear. I want to toss it to you on this one. But. So when we have to be careful when we're reading the Book of Acts to determine if the text is descriptive or prescriptive, that's the category that the old theologians give to us. And so a prescriptive text would be like, do it this way. We're prescribing something to be done. So when Jesus says he gives the Lord Supper and he says, do this in remembrance of me, we understand that as prescriptive, the Lord is telling us what we ought to do. When we see the Book of Acts, there's some things, I suppose are prescriptive, other things would be understood as descriptive.
So we have to ask that question.
Is this describing something?
Are we supposed to maintain a college of 12 apostles through replacing one by the casting of lots of. I think the Mormon Church does that. The Catholic Church has something, I mean, a little bit like. Not exactly like that, but a little bit like that.
They understand it to Be prescriptive. I think we understand it to be descriptive.
That's what they did. But it's not telling us what we ought to do. So that's the question that we have to ask now. Why the casting of lots is. We understand it to be descriptive rather than prescriptive.
While we do take the, that they voted for the two, we take that almost as prescriptive that we can vote for who's going to do it. But then we don't cast lots to determine at the end there is a church that does it.
Someone was telling me about this how a congregation, they just throw all the eligible men into a hat for president and vice president and then they just draw a name and you're it for the year.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: That's.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: I mean, maybe that would be a fun way to do it. But what do you thoughts on that distinction?
[00:36:05] Speaker B: I think part of this too, I mean, that's a distinction, right? Descriptive prescription. We mentioned that before for context and things that we have to understand that when it comes to casting of lots, I mean, part of me is like, hey, this seems like a lot easier way to even maybe call a pastor or something, right? Like instead of voting and all these things we do. But part of it too is we realize that we now have the fullness of God's word given to us, right? And we use that to guide us and make wise decisions based on that. Because even before that, like narrowing it down to the two wasn't done by casting of lots. It was done by qualifications, right? And they had two men equally qualified. And so then they, they used the casting of lots to pick between two guys who are equally qualified.
It wasn't like those two people were random, right? That wasn't just by, by, hey, let's just find some guys and then see what God Sundays. It was two guys that are equally qualified. We don't know who to pick, so we're just going to cast lots.
So even though I don't think it's something like we're required to do, I also, I don't think I would ever say, hey, you should never do this, right? Especially if you're doing it in that way. Like, hey, we have two equally qualified guys. Maybe if it's a callist or something. And so we're not sure what to do. So we're gonna, we're gonna just basically cast lots and leave it in the Lord's hands and go with whatever he says.
I don't think that's the most. I don't think that's A terrible idea. I just. I don't wanna be careful too, because I don't. We don't have a promise on any of this that like we should. There's no command, hey, you should cast lots to determine this. And there's no promise that, hey, if you cast lots to do this, then it's going to go the way you want it to go or anything like that. That's where my hesitancy is.
But maybe I'm just weak in faith and don't trust what the proverbs say, that every right, every decision, the lot is cast, but every decision is from the Lord.
Maybe I lack faith in that. I don't know. What do you think?
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Has this happened to you where. There's been times where Carrie and I are like, silly decision, like, where do you want to go to dinner? What do you want to do for this? And we're like, we can't decide. It's like two things. So you flip a coin and then it lands on one thing and you're like, nah, we're going to do the other.
So you realize you thought they were equal until you decided on this. And then you change your mind. You know, this is. That's how a casting of lots works around here. So we do have. It was in the Old Testament, the priest was given the Urim and theorem and they were to be used for certain things.
But that was part of the Old Covenant and we don't have that in the New Covenant.
One of the hard things for us though is casting lots means I'm not in charge. Right? And I, and I do think that, that we can take from that, even if it's not casting lots, to know that, that we are not in charge of everything. And we're not to be micromanagers in the Lord's church. No, nobody is Pastors, people that this, this, this remains the Lord's church. His work is and will is being done. So we can rejoice in that.
All right.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: There's a bonus question here too for question three.
It's kind of tiny with this last question, but it's a new one mentioning that a lot. The lot being caster, plays Judas and brings apostles back to 12.
But what is the significance of any of Paul being added later, which brings the number to 13?
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Some people have said so I don't. The answer is I don't know. I don't know. Paul calls himself one untimely born right when he's writing. I think that's in the Corinthian correspondence.
All the other apostles walked with Jesus, saw his miracles, heard his teaching, were witnesses of the resurrection.
Paul, he was still going by Saul, was an opponent of Christ and the resurrection. In fact, they're approving the stoning of Stephen, the first martyr, three years after the.
The resurrection of Jesus. And then on the way to Damascus to arrest the Christians, Jesus appears to him and calls him so. So why are you persecuting me? Who are you, Lord, etc. And he's baptized and he becomes. He becomes an apostle there.
Some people will say the Lord wanted Paul in there, not Matthias, when he was chosen as the 12, and that the Church did wrong to put someone in there themselves rather than let the Lord choose. I don't think.
I don't. It's hard to read that in that story of that, you know, the Pentecost story. Well, it's pre Pentecost, the story of replacing Judas with Matthias.
I can't see that the Lord was displeased with that. There's no indication. But nor is there kind of implicit approval that's given.
But I think that the Lord will, this is the point. The Lord will choose who he wants. And he wanted Paul, Paul to be the one who would bear his name and suffer for his name before the Gentiles.
And so the Lord wanted him, so he went and got him.
And here's another distinction that I think is really helpful. And that's the difference between the immediate call and the mediated call.
So when the Lord calls prophets and apostles, he calls them directly. He says to Elijah, you're my man. To Jeremiah, come, follow me. He appears to Isaiah in the temple, and he lets him hear the holy, holy, holy. And then he touches his lips and he sends him to preach the rejected word. This is the Lord will call prophets directly. And the same with the apostles. To Peter, to John, to James, to Matthew, follow me. You're with me. And that immediate call puts someone into a unique office to not only speak, but write on behalf of God. So we call the Scriptures the prophetic and apostolic word because it was written by those men who were specifically called into that office directly by God. The Achemnates will talk about. How do you know if someone's directly called by God? Well, the Lord will give miracles to them, signs to indicate that they're directly called. But then there in the Old Testament is the sons of the prophets. They're not called directly by God. They go to seminary and they go to prophet school, the school of the prophets, it's called. And they learn how to teach the Lord's Word. They are there to teach what Elijah and Elisha preach.
They're there to unfold the word of Moses. And the same is true in the New Testament when we put pastors into place. That's a mediated call. It's a divine call. It's from God, but it's through the church.
And so I don't say, thus says the Lord. You, Pastor Packer, don't say, I have a word of the Lord from you, because your call is not immediate.
Your call is mediated. And that's why our call is confirmed not with miracles, but rather with the Scripture. We serve the Scripture and we show our faithfulness by showing that the teaching that we have comes from the Scriptures.
So in the Book of Acts, we see those apostles hand on the office to other men. But those men that they hand the office onto, it's true also in Titus and Timothy, the office that they handed onto, they're not now apostles, but pastors and teachers.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: I was just going to say very quickly, just briefly, that the 12, right, we know, is where there's 12 apostles because there are 12 tribes. So you have to have 12 because it's the, the new Israel, right? It's, it's the church. The fullness of all of that and all that that was pointing forward to in the Old Testament is now fulfilled in the apostles. And it's interesting because I don't think there's anywhere in the New Testament that ever counts. Paul, like, it never says, like there's 13 now, right? So he's asking about the number 13. It doesn't ever talk about 13. Ever mentions 13 apostles. Not really brought up.
I think perhaps because Paul is the apostle to wear to the Gentiles. So you have the 12 who are the fullness of the church and represent Israel. And now Paul, it's kind of like his own thing, right? He's different. He is an apostle, but not in the same way like you were describing the difference between what, what they saw and how they were with Christ versus Paul. And now Paul is in this kind of, this whole new thing where he's going off to do what he's going off to, to the Gentiles. So I don't think it has anything to do with, like, it's just he's viewed differently. He's his own kind of thing. In a way, he's an apostle, but not, not quite like the other apostles. He's. He's an apostle to the Gentiles. So he's kind of set apart in Separate.
And so he's not. They don't count him as 13, which is weird for us, but they just. It never talks that way, so.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: Yep, yep, that's true.
[00:44:44] Speaker B: All right, this one is on not doing enough good works.
Greetings from Florida. I've been a Christian most of my life. Raised Roman Catholic, but left the church in my late teens.
I have not walked a consistent Christian walk, and over the years, I'm 63, I have fallen into serious sins, but I've repented, ask God's forgiveness, and now I'm striving to finish out my life on strong spiritual ground. I've always battled ongoing anxiety and OCD as they call it, and now, though I want very much to live a peaceful life in Christ and get back on solid ground, I'm constantly torn that I'm not doing enough for God's kingdom.
Not officially a Lutheran, and I've been exposed to many, many teachings, many of them false.
My question is this. At my age and somewhat declining health, I feel like I am not and cannot do enough for God's kingdom. I'm a homemaker and I take care of my husband, who is still working full time. I run the household and care for the pets, garden, etc. But I don't leave the house much due to health issues, so I cannot get out there and do service work. I feel guilty and always stressed out that I'm not doing works that will earn my rewards at the judgment seat and that I will lose my heavenly rewards.
Some pastors, not Lutheran, call me a lazy Christian and say I will shame Christ.
Can you give me any advice? Thank you. I am planning on starting to attend my local LCMS church this weekend and hopefully the pastor will allow me to convert.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: That's. Oh, this is such a great question.
So, number one, the place to start is exactly where the note finished is you got to have a connection to a church and a pastor. Every Christian needs not only their own church, that's my church, but their own pastor, that's my pastor. You know, if you've got a couple, that's great.
So.
So that's really important because as we wrestle through these things in our own conscience, we want to be able to apply the Lord's Word directly, not in abstract. Because what how the devil works is you hear the gospel of God's grace and, and guilt and shame and regret are all like cotton in the ears and it just blocks it out. Well, that's for the people that have been Christians their whole lives. That's for the People that have been trying, that's for the people who didn't squander their, their inheritance in, in righteous, in rambunctious, you know, prodigal living or whatever. And so the devil blocks out the word. So to have the word brought directly to you face to face is so helpful.
There's a way that the kind of contours of the heart that we're after is a heart that fears, loves and trusts in God above all things.
And what I heard in the question, there's a lot of fear of God in there, which is good. We have to have the fear of God.
But when the fear of God takes over so that there's now no trust in God or love for God, that's the dangerous sort of situation.
And that's what happens when one of the ways that happens is with scrupulosity. That's the church word for ocd, I think. Can you think we can that make a one to one equivalent of OCD is the way the culture talks about what the church says, scrupulosity. And that is a kind of a very fine tuned conscience that registers the slightest sin and is constantly, what Luther says, that conscience that's constantly yapping at you and barking at you like the neighbor's Chihuahua. You know, the slightest noise and you get the yap, yap, yap, yap of the conscience.
And it can drive you insane because that yapping conscience won't let you hear the word of kindness from the Lord and the word of forgiveness and the word of grace and the word of the gospel that says that all of your sin, all that you've done wrong and all that you failed to do right, including all the years apart from Christ that were wasted years in your own mind, that all of this is forgiven and covered in the blood of Jesus and that he loves you and that you're precious to him. Apart from any of your works, apart from any of your failures, apart from any of your mistakes, apart from all of your regret. He loves you and he likes you and he died for you. And all of your sins are forgiven and there's a place for you in heaven and there's no earning it or deserving it. Even if you were young and just starting your life and had all the energy in the world, could your tears forever flow?
Could your years be filled with the abounding works of God? Even that would not earn it or deserve it anyways. And to think that it would is somewhat blasphemous.
So we just are trusting beginning to end in The Lord and his mercy. And to be able to hear that from your pastor is really wonderful.
[00:49:46] Speaker B: She sounds like she's a lot like Luther was. Right. Before discovering the gospel.
Right. That kind of place where I'm not doing enough. I know. And you know, even his father confessors, like, you don't confess anything interesting. Right? Like, it's like you keep coming here every day and you haven't. Haven't told me anything that's really all that, all that interesting. Like you just need to trust Christ. Right. And I also was thinking as I read through that, like the whole idea of not doing enough. She's being very faithful in her vocations that God has given her despite her limitations. Right. She's having health issues. So she says she can only, in quotation marks only do, take care of her husband and her home and do these things. But that's where God has placed her and where her primary, her primary good works are being done.
[00:50:29] Speaker A: Right.
[00:50:30] Speaker B: I think that goes back to this helpful understanding of the Lutheran doctrine vocation that just because you're not off doing quote unquote, service stuff for the church and yet you're being extremely faithful where God has placed you within the confines of what you're able to do right now.
God is pleased with those works. Like, he delights that you're serving your husband and your family faithfully and taking care of the home. Those are good things and you shouldn't look down on them just because they just take place in the home.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:50:57] Speaker B: Because that seems to be the underlying thing is these aren't good enough because I do them at home and they're not being done outside the home. Well, you said you're having health issues that limit what you're able to do.
So you should also delight in the fact that God's giving you the home to serve and he's pleased with that. He's delighted that you are, in faith, serving your husband and your household. And that's what God wants you to be doing. And if you're unable to do stuff outside the home, that's okay because you're doing exactly what God has called you to do in that place. So as I was reading that, I was like, wait, you're doing all kinds of stuff.
You're actually, you're doing exactly what God wants you to do where you're at. So don't despair as you cling to Christ. Realize he's giving you these works to do in your home and you're doing them. Thanks be to God.
[00:51:45] Speaker A: That's Right there. Although this. So remember the scrupulous conscience. Those will say it's not enough. And I, but I. And I'd like to say that that is actually a gift from God.
I. That when I realize that I'm. I, you know, I'm trying to. I, you know, wake up in the morning, Lord, let all my doings in life be pleasing to you. I'm trying to serve God, but I realize I can't do enough.
I can't love enough, I can't serve enough, I can't whatever, teach enough, I can't give enough.
That's a gift from the Holy Spirit.
But I'm going to respond to that in two ways. I'm going to say, well, I got to do more. Or I'm going to say, Christ is my life, Christ is my. So that my eyes are now off of myself and onto Jesus.
So letting that realization that you can't do enough be for you the trigger to lift up your eyes to the hills where your help comes from, to know that you can't do enough is true.
But that Christ says it's finished and that the wrath of God is satisfied in him and that he has run the race and is waiting for you at the finish line, that is your hope. And your only hope is in Christ. So with eyes on Christ, the prize who has accomplished your salvation, we can then rest when we need to rest and work when we need to work and love and serve and live and die because he's got a hold of us.
So we are not enough. But Christ is.
[00:53:17] Speaker B: All right, last question.
I actually think I'm going to switch it out because that one I didn't realize had a part two.
So we'll save that one for next time because it has possibly part 2 and 3. So changing things up from what I was going to do studying other religions, I'm wondering how Lutherans should study and be interested in what other religions and Christians dominations and sects believe and teach. I found that by knowing what other religions believe, it's easier to talk with people from those religions and trying to point out the falsehood they believe. But Satan. Satan probably would use the study of other religions as an opportunity to tempt Christians away from the truth.
What is a proper way of studying other religions so that we are also resisting the devil who will attack us.
[00:54:04] Speaker A: It's great. This is called comparative symbolics. And so that you say, and you can do it at a number of different levels. So like what's the difference between the Lutherans and the Evangelicals and the Catholics and this is probably my adult instruction class. Every time we have a chart, here's what the Lutherans believe, here's what the Catholics believe, here's the evangelicals, here's what the orthodox, so you can see the difference and why and what's the purpose and everything especially important when it comes to baptism, confession and absolution, Lord's Supper, doctrine of Scripture, doctrine of Christ, Trinity, etc. So that we know these things. There's a great book and there's lots of books that do this. But remember that old Religious Bodies of America book that we had to use for our comparative symbolic. Did you have that book when you were at seminary or did they.
[00:54:49] Speaker B: We didn't use it. I have it on, on my shelf. I don't use a lot my work. My only concern with that one is I think some of it might be kind of outdated. There was a series and I think daughter Dr. Adam Francisco wrote a couple of them that CPH published. That's super helpful on this. There was, I think One God, Many Gods was one of the books. And one book, many books.
And then maybe the other one on comparing denominations is like one church, many churches. I might have those slightly wrong, but if you look them up you can probably find those books. I thought those were super helpful because they walk you through each one and they ask key questions about each religion and how it compares to scripture. And they're short like I think most of the studies on them has like a handout that's two sided, pretty short, good overview and very helpful I think to comparing and staying grounded in the scripture while you look at them not getting, seeing right away, hey, here's how they differ from us and why it matters like immediately.
[00:55:54] Speaker A: That reminded me there's this three volume set that I don't think it's, it's out of print but you can find it online. It's the Philip Schaff Creeds of Christendom and it's a just a collection of all of the like original theological statements. It goes up to 1850 or something like that. That's also really good because it lets you dig into the text itself. I think this is really good. When we're comparing, it's not saying oh here's what they think or here's what they were not doing this by opinion but we're going and saying here's what the confessions are, here's what the west, you know, here we're talking about the Westminster Standards or here we're talking about The Council of Trent or here, we're talking about this. And I don't. I think that the. The Lutheran Church should be the boldest in this way. Okay? Every Christian should be. Because we are not interested in being Lutheran. That's not our interest.
Our interest is being biblical.
And we should only be interested in being Lutheran because we're convinced that what it means to be Lutheran is to believe the Bible. And if someone comes along and shows me something different from the Bible than what the Lutherans confess, then we are going with the Bible. We're after the truth. And we are not afraid to be wrong about it, because that's what. If we're wrong, we want to know it.
So this comparative symbolics is really an important thing, and I think we should approach it without any fear.
The fear of God, that we are serving him, but not the fear of changing our confession or changing our doctrine. It's always the.
So there's a lot of couples that are going through this. Like, there'll be a Lutheran guy and a Evangelical girl or a Lutheran girl and a Catholic guy. And they're. And they are. Maybe they're starting to date and they're trying to figure this out, and they want to be.
They want to be together in their confession. And they'll come to me and I'll say, look, don't be afraid.
You might both end up, you know, Methodist by the end of this. But here the Lord is going to use your conversation to draw you closer to the Scripture.
And the goal should not be that you make him Lutheran or that you make her Catholic or whatever, that the goal should be, we want to believe and confess what the Bible says.
We want to hold onto the truth of the Scripture now.
And then I will say, well, and I'm. You can do. I can say that because I'm convinced that if you do it, you'll be Lutheran. But don't try to be Lutheran. Try to be biblical. Try to just hold on to what the Bible says. Try to. We have this question, what does Jesus want to give to us in the church?
And when we, if we pursue that question almost monomaniacally, what does Jesus want to give to us in the church, then I think everything else will sort itself out and in a sanctified way, right? Because now it's not just this fighting about what the different confessions believe, but digging into the Scriptures. Some of the things that I can argue and articulate the clearest are those, are those arguments that I had to have, like the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. This was for me, nine month agony of study in the scriptures to come to the Lutheran view that baptism forgives sins. And I can articulate it really clear, the amillennialism versus dispensationalism. This was 18 months of profound wrestling with the scriptures to try to come up. And now I can talk about it, I think maybe more clearly than I can talk about anything because I had to go through that wrestling with the scriptures themselves. So the text here, the promise to lean into, is John 7:17, where Jesus says, those who will to do my will, I'll teach them the doctrine.
And so to pray with the confidence that the Lord gives to us. Hey, Lord, we want to follow you. We desire to do your will. Teach us the doctrine you've promised. Teach us the doctrine. And the Lord answers that prayer and will bless us in that way.
[00:59:44] Speaker B: All right, I think that's all seven for today.
[00:59:48] Speaker A: Thank you, Pastor Packer, for all the questions. Thanks to everyone that's listening, all you YouTube theologians, when you like and subscribe, it's great for us, that helps the algorithm. Pastor Packer thinks that some of our topics last week got our videos dinged by the algorithm because we were talking about soldiers, words we shouldn't say. Yeah. And the vocation of, of being a soldier and all this sort of stuff. So anyway, when you, when you all engage in the videos, when you subscribe to the channel, when you like and comment on this, that, that it's helpful, it puts it out there for everybody else. So if you found this helpful, that's a way to, that's a way to help us. We thank, thank you for your attention. Thanks for being a YouTube theologian.
God's peace be with you.
