Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to the Q and A podcast. I'm Pastor Brian Wolfmuller in Austin, Texas, with Pastor Andrew Packer of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. I forget every week, how long have we been doing this?
I heard a rumor about you, Pastor Packer, and that is of all the magical creatures, leprechauns are your favorite. Is that true?
[00:00:20] Speaker B: No, that wouldn't be true at all.
[00:00:23] Speaker A: Unicorns?
[00:00:25] Speaker B: No.
I mean, they're cool and all, but no, you're just. I'm just leaving a mystery.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: All right, what do you got for us today?
[00:00:35] Speaker B: All right, first question is, what is the Lutheran view of purgatory?
[00:00:40] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good question.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Do. Can you do a video about purgatory and what Roman Catholics believe and why we do not believe it?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: There's some great stuff in this on Kim. I hope volume two, which will come out this year of our Chemnitz examination of the Council of Trent, is going to have a big section on Purgatory because. Because Chemnitz really digs into. Show how the Catholic idea of purgatory came from all these dreams and visions, which is really kind of an amazing thing to think about, that It. It doesn't come from the scriptures. It's probably one of the motivating factors for the. For the lifting up of the apocryphal books, because you can find some purgatory stuff in there, because this sort of Greek cosmology was creeping in already. And so this idea of this intermediate space in the afterlife was making its way into even some of the pious reflections.
But the Lutheran doctrine is that there is after death, a judgment, and there is either heaven or hell. Those are the only two options, because those are the only two options for humanity. Either you are with the Lord Jesus, or you are apart from Him. The Catholic idea of purgatory is that there has to be a place of purging after this life, because if you're not perfect in this life, you have to be made perfect to go into the life to come. And so purgatory is that place of purification or that place of purging through suffering or whatever, so that you can be made fit for the beatific vision. The Lutheran confession of the Gospel makes purgatory not only completely ridiculous and unhelpful, but a dangerous idea, because there's a way to become purified and perfect and fit for everlasting life apart from the blood of Jesus. When we say that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all of our sins, this is what we mean that we are now declared holy and righteous without spot or blemish or any such thing. Not by our own works or efforts, not through our own suffering or whatever, but through the work of Jesus Christ.
I remember I was over in the Vatican, and the Michelangelo's Judgment painting is there. And do you know, this caused a huge controversy when it was painted because Michelangelo apparently was listening to some of the Reformation preaching. So he paints this great, huge, beautiful, magnificent painting of the last final Judgment. And there's people being brought up to heaven and people being sent down to hell. And some of the bishops said, well, where's purgatory? And Michelangelo responded, it's not in the book.
Just write. It's not in the book. So if it's not in the book, it's certainly not helpful for the gospel. So the Lutheran Church, out of hand, rejects as false doctrine the teaching of purgatory.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I've always just quoted Chemnitz on that from.
From his examination where he just says, basically, purgatory is the belief that Jesus blood is not enough to get you into heaven, that you have to do your part and in this case, suffering.
Right. And then the idea, like, well, how long? Well, we don't know. We'll just make up some numbers, and then they sell.
We should. We should mention, because I think some people don't realize this. They still sell indulgences. Like, you can still get indulgences for various things to get time off of Purgatory.
But. But again, how long is it going to be? Well, nobody knows.
Could be thousands of years, could be millions of years. Nobody knows because it's all just made up. And there's no guidance in the Bible on it. So we just say, oh, you're gonna be there for a really long time based on what sins you had.
And Chemnitz is like that. That means that Jesus death isn't enough.
Like, you have to suffer instead of Christ suffered, but that wasn't enough. So now you have to go suffer to purge out the rest of it. And it's just so backwards. And it. It takes away from Christ's death. Right? That's the key thing it takes. It robs us of the glory of Christ's death and the comfort it offers us, which is why we should reject it.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Right? It's this. It's like. It's a terrible exchange rate. It's like. It's like pesos in the 80s, you know, it's like, you know, one act of penance could spend like 10,000 years out of purgatory. Like how many years this, this earth to heaven exchange rate. And then. And like this is the. One of the precipitating causes of the Reformation is they were selling these plea indulgences which are still available. That means the whole thing. You get all of whatever time out of a coin in the coffer springs a soul from perfect purgatory.
Wait, rings, springs, you know, the whole thing. But it does point to the, to this.
This is maybe helpful to say what is the major metaphor of salvation? And for Rome, the major metaphor, it's. Is a banking metaphor.
And so you. And merit is exchanged, and there's a treasury of merit in heaven, and that, that's locked up. And the Pope has the key and he can dispense this merit. And when you're doing a good work, it's. It's making a deposit, and when you're sinning, it's making withdrawal. And if you die and you're not in debt, but you don't have a full account, then you go to purgatory to fill it up. And if you die and you have a full account, then you're a saint and you go to heaven. If you die and you're in debt, then you go to hell. So it's a banking metaphor applied to salvation. And there are some banking metaphors, but if you take that as a complete picture, you diminish the. Well, you diminish the doctrine of justification, which is a courtroom picture. And it's not a metaphor. Actually. Justification is this picture that we stand before God as the judge, guilty, and Jesus stands at our right hand and presents the evidence for our innocence, not of our works, but of his suffering and death. And we are there declared to be acquitted, to be righteous.
And that is our justification. That's the chief metaphor that the scripture uses. And again, it's more than a metaphor. It's just the true picture of what it means to be saved.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: I've noticed. I don't know if you've seen this. I've been to a few Roman Catholic funerals and purgatory is never talked about at the funeral. My understanding is it's talked about at the wake often or before the wake, but not during the funeral. And that's been my experience. I've been to several funerals where it's not mentioned at all. And I've asked about it and I was told, oh, well, they talked about that either the night before or not at all. Right. It doesn't come up.
And so when they preach at a funeral, they offer the comfort and hope of heaven, as if there is no purgatory.
It's like, well, but you guys, I don't understand. It's like, if that's your comfort and hope and you're preaching that, you know, but you actually believe in purgatory, then which is it? Like, are they in purgatory or are they in heaven? Because I've been to several funerals where I walked out thinking, oh, they're definitely not in purgatory, you know, so I need help on that one.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I can't help you. Except for the fact that if you're offering the.
The funeral Mass in the person's name, you're trying to get that merit, that meritorious action of the Mass applied to them to help with their time in purgatory. So it's. In some ways, it's kind of baked into the cake there.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: All right, next question about speaking out publicly.
Oh, this is a fun one. All right. We see many Christians speaking out about many political matters, while others seem to remain silent.
John the Baptist and Jesus both spoke boldly to both political and religious leaders who rebelled against God or who persecuted those they should have protected.
What are good guidelines for us as Christians regarding speaking out? How, when do we leave it to leaders?
God calls us live as salt, light and salt. So it seems that we should speak out.
I would like to see our leaders speaking out more. How do we appropriately urge them to do so? One thing that seems to be happening in social media and other places is that many feel we need to label someone as all good or all bad.
In reality, most leaders do many good things, but may also have areas where they are clearly headed in the wrong direction. If you like someone, it seems that we are more hesitant to address the beginning of problems, but maybe being more bold at the start would prevent things from escalating.
What do you think?
[00:08:41] Speaker A: So, okay.
There's a lot here.
I. I want to make this distinction, though.
If we as Christians have an opportunity to speak to a leader, to either encourage their good works or to rebuke their sin, we ought to do that.
But what I'm afraid what mostly happens is people are just posturing on social media like it's. It's not like if I. If I go and I preach about, you know, something that President Trump did or something that Governor Abbott did or something that the mayor of Austin did. I. What? I don't know. The odds of them hearing that are probably pretty slim, which means I'm not actually preaching to them. I'm just preaching about them.
So I want to, I want to make that distinction carefully. But to say, look, if we have the opportunity to speak to those people who are in authority or have power, ought to do so according to the conviction that we have of the Lord's word.
I'm not so sure that we need to be posturing. It seems like that's what a lot of this is happening, is that you just are kind of railing against things. Everyone's required to have an opinion about everything now in social media.
And I remember when I started my website back, I don't know, 20 years ago, I was. Everyone was getting the blogs, and I said, I, I don't want to get a blog. It's not because I don't think that my opinion is right and everybody should know about it, but I'm at least embarrassed about that. You know, I mean, like, there should be a little bit of, of, of shame about the fact that we just are.
We want to make sure that our opinions are known about everything.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Now, that being said, the church does have a responsibility to preach, and that preaching is all is also to the state. It's one of the vocations of the church is to call the state to repent, especially when it violates the Lord's word. And the vocation that God has given to the state, which is to cause little deaths to prevent everybody from dying.
And so there is a prophetic role and, and I think the questioner is right that the church could do more of this, could engage more in the, in the public conversation.
But again, we have to do that out of love for our neighbor and not just as a kind of platforming ourselves or something like that.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: They used to call it virtue signaling. And I used to use that phrase too, right? Where you have to, you want to make sure everyone knows, like, what side you're on. But I heard this talk at a conference where the guy said it's not really virtue signaling, it's purity signaling. You're trying to show that you're pure, you're in the pure group, and that you're, you know, you're doing all the pure things to belong in that group.
And he said the primary issue with that is the reason people do this is because once you remove Christ from the center of your, your, your thinking and your worldview and his atonement, then, like, there's no atonements. And so you have to, like, you know, this, this whole cancel culture stuff, like, I'm on the pure side, so I got to cancel the other side. I think it works on both, you know, ends of the spectrum, whatever, but it's because Christ atonement's not at the center. So you have to have a scapegoat. You have to have someone to blame stuff on and announce that you're pure and they're not. You know, she was saying all good, all bad kind of stuff about various sides.
The other thing I struggle with is, like, for example, in church, I have lots of thoughts and opinions on lots of things going on in our country. You know, we've got wars, we have all these things.
But I also don't. Most of the time, I don't feel like I have enough time in a sermon to get into all of the nuances of, like, what's going on.
If you just do a throwaway line in a sermon about some political topic, even if it's, you know, we can talk about something like, we can say just war is. Is good, and we can teach on in Bible class or whatever, but then trying to work through an actual war in real time and apply those things is way more difficult. And I don't have the time to cover all of that in a sermon without distracting everybody, because the moment you bring up a current issue, right. And so I wrestle. Well, how do you do that? How do you talk about some of these things without making a political football and distracting everyone from the word of God? How do we apply the word of God to those things?
And I'm not sure, you know, the sermon's the best place for that at all, because I just don't. I don't have time.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Right.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: I have, like, 15 minutes, sometimes a little bit longer here to preach.
And if I have to take 10 minutes to explain a political situation and what the word of God says on it, I've wasted, you know, a lot of time.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: So we can do it here, though. I'll just ask you your political opinions on the YouTube channel. That'd be great.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. We can talk about Trump's. Trump's picture of him as a doctor, Red Cross worker.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: That's part of it, though, is that, like, there is an ex.
There. There is. There's also this, like, the. The hero of subtlety. You know what I mean? Like, people will. Will hide behind. Well, it's a very nuanced sort of thing, you know, and.
But then there's also this, like, what you said. You just have to be either on board or off board with these different people in their. In positions. And it's. It's like, I. I don't know.
I, I don't know. I, so I, I also wrestle with this is that I, I want the preaching and the teaching to, I, I want the people to know that we're actually living in the world that we're living in.
So as things are happening, as the world is on fire, those ought to be addressed in the sermon. But it also should be a little bit of a respite from this 24 hour relentless pestering of all of the things that are happening out there and all the news and especially all the bad news.
So I wrestle with this idea of the service as respite verse versus relevant. I, I, I don't know, I'm, I'm always back and forth on that too.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: Well, I think part of the issue, even with, with that, because I agree, I think there, there's a tension there.
But then again with so many of these things, like sometimes I don't feel like I have enough information because I don't even know where to get trusted information anymore, quite frankly. On, yeah, a lot of these things going around, you know, like whatever the current hot thing is for the week.
Like where do I actually find out information to know? Like, is power being abused?
Am I being informed properly?
And I don't want to use that as an excuse but also like to bring it into a sermon which should, like, if I'm preaching on something, it should be because I know 100 that what I'm saying is correct. Right? Like, I better be sure if I'm saying thus saith the Lord that I've got my facts straight. And I struggle with figuring out sometimes I, I don't, I have my own personal opinion, but I don't know who to believe or, or where to go with this. And I trust like zero politicians right now, so I can't think of any of their words for what they're saying or what they're doing. Like they all just constantly lying to us.
So all that to say I wrestle with the same thing and I don't have an easy answer. I don't, I've seen, I've seen where people want to be constantly relevant in referencing the news like every sermon.
And it may get a crowd fired up. You may even track quite a bit of people if you're just preaching those cultural things, irrelevant things all the time. But I don't know if you're actually preaching the word of God as much as they end up thinking they are versus just stirring up a base wisdom on those things I think is much harder and complicated and Difficult. And that's the thing. People don't want to walk through biblical wisdom like that. That's a much longer trek. I think Bible class is a better place to try to address some of those things.
I mentioned some things in Bible class this last week that had happened the previous week with Paula White and some of the ridiculous things she said. And I felt like I had more time to talk about it there, you know, and it wasn't taken away from sermon, so I think that's a place. But you have a lot. You have less people than you have. So I don't know all that to say.
I'm trying to figure it out and I don't have good answers.
[00:17:09] Speaker A: I do like I do always recommend these two things, the world and everything in it, for news. I. I can hardly get news from anywhere else now. I just love those guys at the World News Group so much.
And I especially appreciate Albert Moeller, who is.
Has his briefing every day where he's thinking about the things that happen in the news from a Christian worldview.
He's a Baptist, so once he gets to the theology questions on Friday, I just have to shut it down because it's way too Baptist, but.
But that kind of thoughtful, patient with an eye towards history, engagement in the news with an eye towards the what's true and good.
These are great resources that I've found.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: All right, another one, another fun topic.
Living together before marriage.
[00:18:02] Speaker A: Oh, there you go.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: I recently had a conversation with a gentleman and struggled to respond to a situation he presented. Situation is as follows. A man and a woman who are dating slash engaged are living together, yet are doing so without gauging in sexual contact.
I'm gonna guess, according to what this guy told him.
[00:18:22] Speaker A: What Pastor Packer. I'm just, I'm so suspicious.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, in essence, I was a married couple in every way. Besides the fleshly union, I believed it still to be in sin because they are practicing to be married without being married. Yet the lack of sexual contact is the stumper for me. I still think it violates chastity to live in this way, just like if they were only sleeping in the same bed together. But I could not enumerate why, given our world's definition of chastity, simply being the lack of sexual contact. So what biblical evidence can we use to demonstrate that this is a lack of chastity and therefore sinful?
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I suppose part of it has to do with are they living as husband and wife or are they living as roommates? And I, I, you know, I can suppose that there would be a way for people to live together as roommates and that would be chased.
Although if you have a couple and they're headed towards marriage, it's going to be pretty.
It's going to be pretty tricky. I got a. I think I can. I want to share this.
I. I wrote an article called five Critical Questions to To Ask Before.
Before Living Together. This is really to ask before.
There it is. Before any intimacy before marriage. And this is, I hope, just highlighting that it's on Wolfmila Co Living Together.
Highlighting that the fact that intimacy before marriage and intimacy after marriage are different acts.
It's not just that something fundamentally changed in it. So the first question is, what are you practicing? Which this is what I'll ask couples. Hey, look, you're actually practicing being an adulterer, which is not something you want to be good at. And it's not something you want your spouse to be good at either. Who likes this activity, Jesus or the devil?
Hopefully that activates the conscience. Here's the maybe the main one is I'm pregnant. Good news or bad news? And this is, I think this is so helpful in getting to the fact that whatever's going on outside of marriage is a very different thing than what's going on inside of marriage. In other words, if whatever's happening outside of marriage, you hope doesn't work.
So, and, and this is, and maybe on this one, this idea that, well, you know, this also, Pastor Packer, is that a lot of times you might be talking to couples that have been married for a long time and they'll say, pastor, you know, we, it's been, we can't remember intimacy, etc. To recognize that the devil is pushing people who are not married into bed with the same ferocity that he's trying to pull people who are married out of bed.
So to remember that does marriage change anything or who authorized this activity? And here's where we confess our understanding of marriage is from what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, we do not give ourselves to each other. Well, okay, we do, but that's not the main thing. We were bought with a price.
We belong to the Lord and he's the one who gives us away. It's the Lord Jesus who gave me to carry and carry to me in marriage and made the two of us one. What God has joined together, says Jesus, let no one separate. So that marriage is the Lord's act.
And he's then authorized husband and wife to come together. He hasn't Authorized. Anything else? And what'll give me a good conscience? This is the key question. And a lot of times when I'm talking to couples, there'll be a tough moment in the conversation where. Where I'll say, hey, do you remember when this troubled your conscience? And one of the couple will say, yeah. And the other will say, what? No, this bothered you? Why didn't you say something?
Yeah, what.
So what's going to give me a good conscience? And I think that this couple has to wrestle through that. What, you know, what is. What's going on? That you're here living together?
What's going on? That this is the circumstance. Is this giving you a good conscience or a bad conscience? So that's my little five question diagnostic.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: I am, as you noticed, by the way, I read the question. I do question how well someone is remaining chaste in such a living situation.
If your goal is to marry them or you're dating them and you're living in the same place and no one else is there, like, at the very least, you're putting yourself in a situation that's just stupid, right? It's not wise.
You're also giving the impression to others, right? Everyone else is assuming that's what you're doing, too. Like, you're not avoiding the appearance of evil, for sure.
So, I mean, those are two big issues right there.
And a lot of times people think they're being chased, right? When they're. They're not.
So they have convinced themselves, hey, we're actually. We're living together and we're being chased. And the reality is maybe far different from that I did see, and I think Lutherans should consider this. So I've seen a couple things recently. One, this mega church pastor, who obviously disagree with him, all kinds of things, but I thought this was cool. He preached against living together before marriage.
And all these. They enter all these couples, like, he called them out, like, during the service, said, you, you guys all need to come talk to us, whoever you are here. So this is like this massive church. So they had like, hundreds of couples come talk to them, and they took them through some, like, counseling and told a bunch of them, hey, you shouldn't get married. Like, you need to. You should probably break up, whatever, you know. But then, like, 80 some couples, they married in, like, a church service like, a week or two later and, like, you know, took care of that, which I thought was kind of cool.
But more practically for us as Lutherans, I saw a church, this pastor saying they have a fund for couples that are living together. Basically, that's when they come to them and say, hey, you need to stop living together. You need to get married. And they say, oh, finances, this or that. They're like, all right, we have this money and we will help you. We're going to like, what do you need? We're gonna help figure this out so you can do this the right way. And I thought that was a great approach to it. Like, you know, they're trying to help, not just call them to repentance, but be like, we're going to help you do the right thing. And I was just really impressed with that. Like, that. That I think should be a goal of all of our churches right now is get a fund, start putting money into it. So that when we talk to these people and they say, well, because of insurance or because of this cost or that cast, we say, we got it covered. We'll pay for this, and we will help you with that, and we'll help you get on your feet. And we want you to do this the right way. And we're committed. So committed to that. We believe this is so serious that we're gonna. We're gonna financially support you to get you to that point. Now, if it's a couple who, like, is just making excuses and does have the money, that's one thing, right?
[00:25:24] Speaker A: But that's right.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: The idea of going to a couple who really is, like, they're terrified because of the money aspect, for whatever reason, I think we should be able to step in and say, hey, we believe this so strongly that we're gonna support you even financially. Like, churches have some skin in the game.
[00:25:41] Speaker A: I. I think there's something else here, too, to say that the. We. We don't talk about enough the promises that the Lord gives to keeping the commandments. So we're. We're so used to talking about how the law condemns. But they're blessings that the Lord promises when we.
When we suffer in order to keep his word.
So that when someone comes to me and they said, well, it's. It would be harder for us to be married than to be not married, then the. It's. Yeah, that's right. But that's. But that's the Lord's problem to solve because he's the one commanding you to do this thing.
And. And he promises to bless those who. Who are. For example, he blesses marriage. He does not bless fornication. He does not bless. In other words, there's blessings from the Lord here. And if we can't See, it if to us, it looks like a whatever, like an impossible financial situation. In some ways, we have to trust the law, not just the gospel. We have to trust that this is what the Lord wants. And if it means that we suffer, we suffer because we belong to Him. We're his children.
So we have to chase after a good conscience. It's this seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And all these things will be added to you. And this is a.
I mean, this is. This place where the church is. Is saying such different things than the world does. When it comes to what do we do with our body? What do we do with the fact that.
That we're made. Well, to be husband or to be wife, to be father and to be mother. What do we do with that? The church has such different expectations because the Lord has such different expectations that we get so much grief from it. But we don't do ourselves any favors by. By not speaking clearly here.
[00:27:29] Speaker B: All right, you'll like this.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: So maybe I will speak as clearly as possible. The Lord expects every Christian to be chaste. And that chase, that chastity, looks like abstinence before marriage and faithfulness in marriage. That's. That's the Lord's expectation. And there's no compromise on that. There's anything different than that is a. Is a sinful violation of the sixth commandment.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: Get married, have babies, and just.
Just do it. Like, quit making excuses. That's honestly, like.
All right.
Can Baptists and Lutherans ever understand each other? That's the question.
All right. How, as Lutherans, do we have meaningful conversations with Evangelicals or Baptists? I'm a newer Lutheran and have Baptist friends that are very upset at my decision to leave Baptist theology.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Boy, oh, boy.
[00:28:17] Speaker B: It seems as though we have different interpretations of what sola scriptura actually means, and they went to throughout all of church history. Now, of course, I'm not speaking for all Baptists. However, it's hard to have productive conversations with those friends who were once close while they want to disregard my reasons for being Lutheran because they interpret scripture differently and don't like the historical evidence. Any advice?
[00:28:37] Speaker A: Yes, I got lots of advice. I mean, this is so. First of all, this is hard.
I remember Carrie and I, when we went from Calvary Chapel. Then we're going through catechism class. We lost all of our friends. I mean, they just didn't want to have anything to do with us. I. And it surely wasn't because I was really obnoxious about my new Lutheran Doctrine that had.
I'm sure that had nothing to do with it at all.
Just, you know, it's that stage. How. What's the Calvinists have? Their cage cage stage? Yeah, I think we have the cage stage. Lutherans, when you're early on and so zealous, it's so hard to.
To navigate those conversations in a cheerful way.
But here's maybe a couple of things to think about.
Number one, the evangelical does not have a immunity to the conversation of the distinction between law and gospel. They're going to be ready if you bring up baptism. They're going to be ready if you bring up the Lord's Supper. They're going to be ready if you bring up predestination or whatever. They're not going to be ready if you bring up long gospel. And that's actually the most important thing to, to talk about and to think about. So to say, hey, the Lutherans are pretty helpful on this in seeing that the Lord speaks with two words. He speaks with his commands, and that's what we're to do. It also shows us what we don't do, and so it condemns us. And then the Lord speaks with the gospel, his promises of the forgiveness of sins, especially for us in Jesus Christ, and that those two are to be held in distinction to one another.
That's really helpful.
And then it can hopefully be a foundation for future conversations, like, for example, about baptism and say, oh, well, one of the big differences between the Lutherans and Baptists is that is that Baptist church understands baptism as law, what we're to do, and the Lutherans understand it as gospel, what the Lord does for us. That's why we say it forgives sins. So to set that groundwork of law and gospel, I think is really helpful. The other very helpful thing is to emphasize our doctrine of the Bible because most Baptists think that the Lutherans are like progressive, light Catholics, you know, so to. So to come back and say, well, look what the Bible says, that's what we go with. And we almost have to overstate our sola scriptura position because like you said in the question, part of the Lutheran doctrine of sola scriptura is that we do not diminish a very generous view of the history of the church. We receive it as a gift.
But that generous view of church history looks like a loss of sola scriptura for the Baptist, which we could just say, well, I can become all things to all people in this way and just say, that's fine.
Just look at the Scriptures. We just have to look at the Scriptures. And I think this is helpful in all of our conversations with people of different denominations or different religious views, is we can just have this simple thought that we're going to look at the Bible and it'll be great because we could both be wrong, or one of us could be right, or one of us could be wrong according to the Scripture. But we just want to end up in the confidence of the clear articulation of what the Bible says.
So I don't have to convince anybody to become a Lutheran.
I don't have to convince anybody not to be Baptist. I just have to come to the conversation and say, hey, let's just look at the Scripture and believe what it says there. And that's going to be great. And I'm convinced you end up Lutheran, but even if you don't, it's fine because you have the words of the Lord Jesus.
And this. Maybe I'm stepping back, back, back to the whole big question of denominations. The big question to ask to make all of these conversations sanctified is what does the Lord Jesus want to give to us?
And we can start to answer that question specifically in the church. What does the Lord Jesus want to give me in church?
And I go to the Scripture to see what he wants to give. And then that starts to shape not only my theological understanding, but also my understanding of worship, liturgy, everything else.
You're muted to me. Pastor Packer. I don't know.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: Sorry. I had to turn it off because they were mowing the lawn behind me and it got really loud. And I noticed it started showing up as a volume on here. So I didn't think people wanted to hear a lawnmower, the riding lawnmower going by my church window.
As I was saying, I think another. Another really important thing is to ask good questions. Like, good asking them, like, what do you mean by that? Or.
Or what about what do you think this means in this passage? Why do you see it that way? Because a lot of times, a lot of people, and this is true of all Christians of all denominations, including a lot of Lutherans, they haven't really thought through why they believe what they believe, right? They're. They're they're saying things. Cause that's what they were taught. That's how they're catechized. And so they have, like, a memorized answer and they know what to say. But if you take them through a text and, like, ask them lots of questions, you can begin to maybe make them think versus, like, they're gonna get defensive. If you state something that they, they sound so foreign to them, like baptism now saves you. Like that's so foreign to them. They're gonna say, what do you mean Baptism saves Jesus saves. And we of course want to show them, well, Jesus saved through baptism, but they aren't ready to hear that. If you just throw out baptism now saves you, they're gonna, they're gonna, the walls are gonna go up. So get good at asking them really good questions. I mean, very similar to like apologetics and outreach, right? Like ask really good questions and get people questioning their own thinking. And I think you can really help them get much further than just trying to have debates all the time. The thing is, you know, this too, coming out of like coming on Baptist background, Baptists generally are like really solid, well meaning Christians, right? Like they, they love Jesus and they love the Bible and they believe they're being faithful to the Bible. And so the moment you start like attacking that, they feel like you're getting them to be unfaithful to the Bible, that they, right, they're trying to be faithful to Jesus. That's what they're trying to do. And so I get good at asking questions and thinking through questions with them. And that might go a long way versus trying to, to debate throwing things out at each other where nobody's really listening.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: Yep, it's great. It's really great.
[00:34:58] Speaker B: All right, next question on the mercy seat.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Oh cool.
[00:35:08] Speaker B: Could you answer these questions on the mercy seats? Exodus 25:17 and following has a description of the ark of the covenant in the mercy seat?
Leviticus 16 and following has a description for the atonement sacrifice.
My questions, what does the mercy seat represent in how is it related to Jesus? Death on the cross. Great question. Does the book of Hebrews say anything about blood covering the mercy seat being a forth telling of Jesus sacrifice?
Why did the priest have to sprinkle the mercy seat with blood? The mercy seat was on the lid to the ark and covered the stone and grave. Ten commandments.
What is the significance of the cherubim? I thought God said not to make any graven images.
So there's several in the mercy seat. And then related to that, the cherubim over the mercy seat. So wow, it's great.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: I think this is, I mean, just to start with this first contrast, when Aaron is there making a bull seat for the Lord, that's the golden calf. And the Lord says, no, I'm making a mercy seat, I'm not going to ride on a bull like baal. And come to you with power. I'm going to sit on a throne defined by mercy. And especially it's covered in blood, the blood of the sacrifice. So here, can you imagine the Ten Commandments are there preaching from the ark. Here's what the Lord requires. And I know that that makes me guilty. And now that blood of the sacrifice is going and, and covering the blood, so that is covering the. Those commandments so that, so that the Lord sits on a seat called the hilasterion in the Greek that we translate as, as the propitiation. In other words, it's the place where the, where the fiery wrath is put out by the blood of the sacrifice.
And there's a handful of places in the New Testament just you can see that word propitiation.
First, John, it talks about how Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. Romans 3, I think, talks about that word, specifically that propitiation. And we should just hear mercy seat in those particular places. Exactly. So the Lord wants to judge on a seat of grace and kindness and gentleness and mercy. Hebrews probably, let's see, Hebrews 9.
Christ did not enter into the holy place made with hands, which are figures of the true, but into heaven itself.
Now to appear in the presence of God. This is this indication that the earthly tabernacle which Moses made according to the image of everything he saw on the mountain, that that's so that the earthly tabernacle becomes a picture of that heavenly tabernacle.
So the mercy seat and the cherubim become a picture of God's throne in heaven and the four living creatures that surround it. So the two cherubim on the mercy seat are two of those living creatures. And then the two angels that are woven into the curtain are the other two. So whenever anybody sees the throne of God, there's the four living creatures swirling around. So that's pictured in the shadow. So that blood on the seat is a picture, is a shadow picture of Jesus ascension into the heavenly throne room where he presents his blood to the heavenly Father and we're declared righteous and holy. So that's the beautiful connection that Hebrews makes for us.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: You also see this, right? The parable of Jesus tells about the.
The Pharisee and the tax collector, where the Pharisee is putting down the tax collector and saying, oh, I'm glad I'm not like, oh, Lord, I'm glad I'm not like that guy. He's a wicked sinner. I'm so great. Everyone should be like me.
And then the other guy prays Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. Or literally, like you were saying, lord, be propitiated to me a sinner. He's looking at the mercy seat, right? And crying for mercy. He's looking at the mercy seat and asking God to be merciful. And Jesus says, that guy's justified. He goes down justified, and the other guy, the Pharisee, does not. So he flips it all on its head because mercy's at the center of the whole thing. That's interesting too, because you mentioned the bulls. The bulls get incorporated into the temple, but they get put under the labor of water and facing the four corners of the earth, because now they're being turned into something that's going to carry God's mercy of baptism eventually out to the world. So even that symbolism gets flipped on its head, right?
From what Aaron intended to. To how it ends up getting incorporated in the actual temple itself.
But yeah, all of that's designed to point to Jesus. That's one of my favorite things, right? When you have the. The great text of Jesus in the temple and translations, translate that part. I must be among my. My Father's things or business or whatever.
But I like to picture that Jesus is talking, pointing to all the things and being like, here's how this thing is about me. Here's how this thing's about me. Here's what this really means. Here's what the mercy seat means. Here's what this means. Here's what all these things meant. Here's how it's all fulfilled in me. That's how I imagine it going. Like Jesus just sitting there and pointing at everything and saying, we gave you this because I'm going to fulfill it in this way. We gave you this because it's fulfilled in this other way. Like, this is all about me. So I don't know if that's what happened, but that's how I imagine it.
[00:40:15] Speaker A: I found the. I looked up the verses here. So Romans 3:25, God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith. Then first John 2, 2 and 1, John 4:10. So he himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.
And then in this is love, he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins, the hilasterion or the hillasmos, the mercy seat for our sins. So the place where the blood takes away wrath.
It's beautiful. That was a setup question.
Can you star whoever wrote that question? And let's that's just so great. It's like, could you preach to me about this?
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.
Even the questions were great because they were all.
They were clearly thinking through the text very carefully, and they actually had all the answers to their own question within their questions, which was fantastic.
So all that to say, I think your first name is John. It looks like John. You were right. So well done.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: All right. This next question has to do with comparing our callings.
Can we say that one calling is more important or valuable to another? And they're asking because of claims or things they've said in the Augsburg Confession.
So the apology, Oxford Confession, says here, perhaps they will exclaim that according to the manner of Jovinian, marriage is made equal to virginity. But on account of such clamors, we shall not deny the truth concerning the righteousness of faith, which we have explained above.
Nevertheless, we do not make virginity and marriage equal. For just as one gift surpasses another, as prophecy surpasses eloquence, the science of military affairs surpasses agriculture, and eloquent surpasses architecture. So virginity is a more excellent gift than marriage.
How do you understand these lines? These seem very contradictory statements. In what sense can we say, for example, that eloquent surpasses architecture? Obviously, people are different, and there are some hierarchies among us. Some are smarter, some are stronger, some are more patient, and so on. And we can say that one person has greater talent in architecture than another. And of course, talents and callings are not the same in the sense that everyone has their own goal. But how do we compare callings themselves, saying that one is better than another, without slipping into saying that one calling is more sacred and pleasing to God? In what sense then is meant that one calling surpasses another?
[00:42:45] Speaker A: It's great. I think there's a simple way to say this, although the problem is that one of the reasons why this is so difficult is because our Lutheran theology and actually our culture match up on this, where we want to pursue humility. And that's right, to pursue humility. But. But if we can just start with this idea that there's differences in life, there's differences in gifts, there's different importance in different things, then we can just start to say, well, we can start to see what's going on. In other words, maybe this like the.
The person who writes the. The. If you just open the newspaper, the person who writes the political news on the front page is doing a more excellent work than the person who's writing the baseball box. Scores on the. In the sports section. And, and I. Now, this is not to diminish the baseball box scores. It's great, but it's just. It's just not as important. And there's some things that are going to be more important in this life and, and some things that are not going to be that important. Important.
Some work is just more humble work and some work is more excellent work.
And it's fine. It's great. It's. But it's just there. There's not. It's. No one should be embarrassed that their jobs or works are humble. Like.
Like the person who's doing agriculture shouldn't be embarrassed that they're not an architect, or the person who's doing. Who's doing architecture shouldn't be embarrassed that they're not writing poetry or whatever. But there's just differences in the different callings that we have, different requirements, different personal requirements that are involved there. And so the Augsburg Confession just grabs a hold of that. Now. The important thing, though, is that none of this has to do with our standing before God.
The architect and the farmer are going to stand next to each other in the kingdom of God.
What are the other ones?
I guess the Virgin and the married are going to stand next to each other in eternal life. That it is faith, and faith alone that brings us through the judgment day to hear, well done. Come to the place prepared for you. But in the distinctions of this life, there are just some things that are going to be more important than others.
[00:45:08] Speaker B: We see this all the time. On a practical level, you see people complain that athletes are paid ridiculous sums of money and teachers and firefighters and others. Right. Are not.
So we have, even our culture understands that those jobs, like an NBA player who's making $50 million, that even though they're getting paid way more, is not as important as a teacher.
Right.
Although the reason it's valued more. This would be an entirely different discussion, though, is that the real reason it's valued more, even though people complain about it, is because we value entertainment above.
We value entertainment above education.
That's why.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Right?
[00:45:49] Speaker B: That's why they get. That's why they make all that money, because they make lots of money, because they entertain us and we actually value that more. But that'd be a whole different discussion. But people acknowledge this seems out of whack that we pay this guy 50, 60 million dollars a year, and this teacher who's dedicated their life to these kids is making 35, 45 grand a year, barely making it. People look at that and they objectively know something's wrong here. This is clearly a more important work. And even to their credit, some athletes are like, hey, I get paid to, to play, play the ball and have fun. Like, you know, they seem to know, but they're not gonna turn on the money, obviously, but they seem to know that it's not as important as what a lot of other people do. I've appreciated, Right. When some, sometimes athletes are called heroes. I appreciate when those athletes are like, hey, no, like the real heroes are. And they'll mention like first responders and other people and give deference to them. I think that's right. Because no, they're not actually heroes in any real sense of maybe a sports hero, if we're going to be really specific. But we seem to just. We have this instinct about those things.
But when the confession puts it like that, then I think we get uncomfortable. Especially because of the marriage.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, so talk about that. Because they will, they will quote Paul who says, I want everybody to be like I am.
And, and we would are surprised by that because we think coming out of the Reformation and this lifting up of marriage and the marriage of, of priests and, and the diminishing of the monasteries and the nunneries, we think that the Lutherans would say the opposite. It's a higher calling to be married than it is to be chaste and committed to chastity. So how do you explain Melanchthon's take there?
[00:47:29] Speaker B: Well, and he's just following Paul. And I think there's two things we can say. One, the losing confessions are also very clear. That being remaining a virgin, staying chased your whole life like that, in that way is given to very few people. Right. It's a gift very few have. So I think it's one of the reasons it's higher.
It's a scarcer gift. Scarcity tends to drive up value. Right. In most things. And then the second thing is that Paul says is they're not like, as a pastor who's married, I'm also distracted by what, taking care of my wife and my kids.
Right.
And that doesn't, doesn't. I don't think it makes me less of a pastor, but it does mean I have things that take me away from focusing on purely these things. And that's Paul's whole point. Like if you're single, you can, that's your sole focus can be the kingdom of God. And you don't have these kind of earthly distractions, whereas I do. You do. Right. I missed.
We recorded From. I recorded from my house last week and missed three days of work and was in the hospital three days, two nights with my son.
You know, that took me away from this vocation because I had another vocation. Paul's point is if you're single, you don't have those kind of poles, these things pulling you away. You don't have that, that pull, that tension and you can focus on that. I think that's all length insane, but you can correct me if I'm wrong.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: No, I think that's right. I think that's right.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: All right. Given all your comments on worship and music, I'm not going to read this whole one. It is quite long. But is there no place then for any new music in the church? So this is a, this is someone who's new to Lutheranism and they're coming out of hyper charismatic church, non denominational Reformed Baptist. Like they've, they've been through various churches, they're Lutheran now and feel like they have this gift to create music. To create songs.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: And their question is, it seems like there's not a lot of new music coming out locally online for, for Lutherans.
So the question is, why is it that we don't want new music?
What is the role of someone with those gifts in the Lutheran Church today?
How should they use those gifts of making new music? What kind of outlets would you direct them towards to use those gifts or should, you know, I guess the kind of question is, is this something I should pursue or is this not needed these days?
[00:49:55] Speaker A: Yeah, 100%. We need musicians and more and more of them. But let's make this distinction too. Is that not everything, not every kind of music should be used in worship, but that doesn't mean it's bad.
Like we need a lot of theological music to fill our homes, to fill our cars, to fill our, you know, as we're, our phones, as we're jogging and working out and we need more and more stuff. So just because we don't use contemporary worship music doesn't mean that we're not needing all the time new music and especially artists and people who can do concerts and play and so that Christians have venues to go to and there's, there's musical events that are there that we, we need more and more and more of, of this.
And so we 100% need Lutherans to pursue all of the arts and all the gifts that the Lord has been given.
And who knows what that is? I mean, if you're just like a hard rocker or a Ska band or whatever, then great.
So don't think just because it's not going to be used in worship doesn't mean it's not valued or not helpful. There's a lot of other places where the Lord blesses us with music. One of the problems, the divide that's opened up in the church over worship is this idea that we either are or are not receiving as a gift the history of the church. And so part of our Lutheran identity. I don't like the language, but part of our Lutheran identity is this generous view towards church history, which means an embracing of the way the church has worshiped all through the, through the history, through the centuries. And that means a rejection of contemporary worship as a, as contemporary worship. I want to define it as a worship that shows that we are cut off from history. I mean, that's what contemporary means.
It means now, not then.
So we have to reject the not then part of contemporary worship.
And it's getting sharper too.
I can imagine it could have gone differently if the argument or conversation would have happened differently, but it didn't. It was just, this is what it is. So we cannot show ourselves to be.
We cannot disinherit the church fathers, we cannot disinherit the church of the past.
We have to maintain that, to maintain the gospel, really. I think that's what's at stake.
But that does not mean that we shouldn't be doing all sorts of music all the time. So go for it, do it and then send me stuff and I'll put it on Wednesday whatnot. And more and more people can watch your music and it'll be great.
[00:52:44] Speaker B: It seems like as well there's a, there's a place and it's harder because of our use of the hymnal. So it's kind of set right. But I think you could, like if you're, even if you're making like modern, a modern day hymn that would fit, fit a confessional Lutheran setting, that the first place to take it to would be your pastor. See if he wants to use it in church sometime, right. Like you approve it from your pastor and then perhaps maybe like it's good enough. And then it goes on to maybe your circuit and it starts gaining some traction. You're like, oh, this is a really, you know. And then by the time we have another hymnal supplement or I don't know, another hymnal, whenever that is, whatever happens, like it could work its way into there if it proves itself over time. So it is harder, I think from that end to get your music into our churches.
Right? Because we kind of want it to have some kind of traction over time.
Not just something that a couple people thought was good, but. But we need that too. Like we need some people writing today who are going to last. Like, right. Stephen Starkey, like, got a bunch of hymns in our hymnal. And those are, those are newer hymns. Those, those were not written 100, 200 years ago. Those are fairly new and recent. So we need more of that. You just have to realize in our church body it may take you longer to get traction with that than perhaps in other, other church bodies where it's just going to get played and they don't care if it's going to last a long time.
Like you said, it's now, so we'll do it. But I think we need that. Or settings of various hymns or settings of psalms or settings of the gradual and al. Verse. Like there's all kinds of things that you could really put your creativity into that could be used by your local church body and then all kinds of people. That's actually far easier. There's lots of settings of hymns for choirs, for orchestras, for, you know, for the brass, whatever, for all these things. There's, there's ways to do that as well. So I think there's a lot of options for this person out there depending on how gifted they are and what they want to do.
Which made me think too, because one of the questions that will come up with music. But this is an entirely different discussion, but I'll throw it out there now for a future discussion, is Lutheran's probably to start thinking through the role of AI in music because that's becoming very popular.
But we don't have time to send now. But that can be a different discussion for a different day. But. So I, I mentioned that though, because I think we need more human beings writing.
I want more human beings making music, not, not merely AI. And so I. We need lots of people, like you said, doing this and we need lots of people making great music, whether it's for home or church or wherever it's. It's needed. So I don't think they should feel like they can't use this gift. It's just finding an outlet for it and getting it out there. I think it's way more difficult in some ways and way easier than others. Like you can release your music pretty easily nowadays online.
The problem is getting an audience for it because there's also thousands of other people doing the same thing.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: So there's, there's two places I know that are trying to incubate new artists. And so one is the Songwriters Initiative out of Concord Cordia University, Irvine. The other is and I don't know if this is launched yet, but Flame is working on a like a hip hop, cooperative, Lutheran kind of music making thing. So keep your eye out for those. Depending on your genre, you can check out those two places as well. Trying to incubate new musical writing and new musical work.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: All right. I think we hit them all today.
[00:56:15] Speaker A: All right. Thanks everyone for tuning in. Thanks for sending the questions. Wolfmuller Co contact is where to send your questions. You could also subscribe to the Wednesday whatnot while you're over there. And we'll be back soon. Thanks again for the questions. God's peace be with you.
