Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: YouTube theologians, welcome to the what is this podcast called again? Q and a. What?
[00:00:05] Speaker B: Not the podcast.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: I'm Pastor Brian Wolfmother, Pastor St. Paul and Jesus deaf lutheran churches in Austin, Texas, and Pastor Andrew Packer is with me, who is a pastor of good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, I heard a rumor about you, and that is that in until you were 14, you thought that packers fans were actually your fans.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: I still believe that. Isn't that true?
Man, next you're gonna tell me there's no Santa Claus. That's messed up. You're killing me.
[00:00:43] Speaker A: What do you got for us today?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: This one's kind of long. It's a question about the fear of death, and it's related to some things you've talked about before. So I'll go ahead and read it and let you respond.
I'll skip some of it. I don't think we need the whole thing, but I'm very afraid of death and dying. I'm afraid of the unknown and having no sense of awareness of eternity. There's a part about a fear of judgment which I will get to, but believing in God is a hard sell. The idea of miracles and afterlife is tough. I struggle with even calling myself a Christian despite going to church and praying daily, because having faith means I should even face something like an execution with a smile on my face.
This next part sort of ties in with the fear of facing judgment.
I know you're going to tell me it's normal to fear death and doubt. However, what differentiates between doubt and having no faith? That is, not being a Christian. Surely there must be a mean between extremes that separates the christians from agnostics.
He says a little about himself. He's diagnosed with OCD and not the neat freak, funny kind.
I bring myself to great stress. I remember there was one point in my life where I played over my death, every waking minute of my idle thoughts, not even exaggerating. I couldn't sleep, eat, or even interact or act to myself. I was shaken with fear and it even affected me physically. I don't think I'll ever truly not fear death, nor will I ever stop doubting the possibility of the unknown for something so tough to believe in. Let's face it, the idea of heaven and resurrection is a crazy thing to believe in as it goes against everything we know about our universe. Please make a video as I think this could be an excellent discussion.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: That's a great question. So this, and it's really. It gets to this profound human crisis, which is that we are presented with two unbelievable options, and that is that death is the end and that death is not the end.
Like, we. We rail against both of those things. We.
There's something just. It's just hardwired. I think it's part of our theology of our fallen nature is that we is that there is a crisis at death because we can't.
We can't believe that it's the end. It's just impossible.
It's going to be faith either way. And we can't believe that it's not the end, that there's a judgment on the other side because we have no experience of anything like it. And so death presents this crisis to every person. And it's a fearful thing, and it's amplified.
The fear of death is amplified in our bodies, especially pain and sickness, and all of the other stuff that comes with being corruptible. It's amplified by our conscience, which knows that there's a right and wrong in the universe and that we're on the wrong side of the right and wrong line.
It's so that. So that everything, the human life is screaming at death. And even for the christian, we still have our flesh, which means half of us is screaming at death at the reality of death. We were just in the worldwide Bible study a few minutes ago talking about how worship, this is melanchthon's definition of worship, is faith fighting despair.
And these two things are always clashing in the human heart.
And so it's. So we're faced with these two kind of impossible things. And so what do we do? We can pretend like one or the other is not true if it's just up to us. But then I think the result is the kind of.
I don't know, the person who wrote mentioned OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. They're all. Are these. There's neuroses that work their way back from hopelessness into our current life. And I think that's one of them. That's one of the ways that it shows up. And it's not to. I certainly don't want to diminish or dismiss the difficulty of those things, but to recognize that if we're left to ourselves, we are in an impossible position.
So we turn to the scriptures and we see what the Lord says about death.
So these kind of two impossible things, that death is the end and death is not the end.
Now, come to us in the scriptures slightly, in a slightly different form, but both kind of fighting against each other on the one hand, that we're told from the scriptures that death is punishment, and then, on the other hand, because of the shed blood of Jesus, that death is a gift.
And so I think that the key shift here in our sort of mental framework as we think about death is recognizing that death is in the hands of God, that death is God's instrument, and it's God's instrument to punish our sin, but that instead of sending it to us, he sends it to Christ, who endures death in our place.
And now death becomes God's instrument to bring us to himself.
So if death is loose, if death is like the dog that's not on the leash, then it can only be fearful. But if the leash of death is in the hands of God, then we can, I think, start to rein in this impossible human reaction to death and begin to fight against it with hope.
So I think that would be my one suggestion to the person who's writing it, is to begin to imagine death in the hands of God. And that's the only way to begin to.
To let death come to us as, in fact, a gift that the Bible wants it to be. I don't know. Thoughts on that, Pastor Packer? Pastor?
[00:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I think in some ways, this one's hard. I think my first advice would be I would encourage them to regularly meet with their pastor to kind of work through these things, because it sounds like they said it's something they've wrestled with for a long time, something that's really burdening their conscience and heart, and sounds like someone would be perfect to go sit down with your pastor a few times and hash it out with them. I was reminded, as you were talking, if you remember the place where Luther talks about the person that came to him, saying they just can't believe that Jesus forgives some of the sins they've committed. Like it was just too much for them to believe. They just couldn't wrap their head around it, and they just couldn't believe that Jesus would do that. And it's one of those weird spots because Luther, who's so good with the conscience, so helpful with those things, his answer, I think, kind of shocks people because he says, you need to repent of your disbelief like that. Like you're saying your sins are greater than Jesus death, and you need to change your thinking on that. You need to flip it around and realize Jesus death is so much greater and his blood shed for you so much greater than any sin you've committed. And in some ways, and it's hard to know without knowing this person and just having this, this question like this, but just in general, I would say perhaps looking at those promises of God, all the promises in God we have about death for the Christian and about the resurrection of the body and about what Jesus has done for us and looking at those promises, and he says struggling with doubt and doubt can be a form of unbelief. And going back to those promises again and again and letting the Holy Spirit like just imprint them on his heart and mind that these things, yeah, they sound too good to be true.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: He's right.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: But the amazing thing is in Jesus, they are actually true. And I don't know, again, without knowing the person, with only having this brief email, it's hard to know exactly what they need. But I think that at least would help to look at those promises and realize that this is the God of the universe who's promising this and nothing's too hard for him to do. I think if we start there, that the person who promises it, one, wants to actually do it for us and we know that because he sent Jesus and two, has the power to accomplish it, then that's at least a starting point. I don't think it fixes the whole problem. I don't think it'll take away all of the doubts and fears, but I think it's at least a place to start. Is reminding yourself who is making these promises and what they've done to bring them about.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: There's a little, there's a line in the email that it, it's a, it's a tricky one. It says, I don't think I'll ever change or something like that. This and the, that that thought is, it's, it's pride hiding as humility. And so it's hard to see from, from, from our own perspective, it's hard to see this in ourselves. So your advice to visit with a passion who can listen carefully is really good advice because that looks like to us, from my perspective, the idea that I can't change looks like humility, but it's really pride saying that my heart, my thoughts can't.
It's a resisting of the Holy Spirit is what it is, because it's kind of an obstinacy, but it's hard to diagnose. From our own perspective, it looks humble.
And so it's good to have someone help you to see that. No, the Lord does, in fact, through the word change the way that we think about things, the way that we see things, the way that we look at things. Maybe another point too, for your idea. That we want to hold the promises of God up before our eyes as an exercise, and we're being drawn to those promises, to trust those promises, that the Lord who gives those promises keeps them. It's an important reminder that, that not being afraid of death does not come about by trying to not be afraid of death. This is the boomerang paradox. Remember that if you're throwing a boomerang, the best way to make sure that you don't hit something is by throwing the boomerang at it, because the boomerang curves. So if you aim at something, not only do you miss it, you guarantee that you miss it. Happiness is that way. Joy is that way.
In fact, the love of God is that way.
But the fear of death is that way, too. If I try worry, to not worry is that way. It's really related. If I try to not worry, I guarantee not only that I will not not worry, but I will worry more.
And if I try to not be afraid of dying, the result is I will be even more afraid of dying. So that's not the goal.
The goal is, what you said, is to see that Jesus has risen from the dead and that the fearlessness of death grows out of that fact, that historic truth that Christ has risen from the dead. And it starts to have its implications in my own heart and my own thinking. So we can't say, well, I'm going to sit here and be less afraid to die.
If you do that, you end up more afraid of dying. So it's our eyes, off of our own selves and on Christ that starts to have these effects and that we begin to be less afraid of dying without even realizing it. And that's probably the point, is that when death comes along, then we're like, oh, I'm not afraid of you anymore. The spirit has worked. That. That confidence in me, maybe it's easier.
[00:13:20] Speaker B: To see with, with another thing that guys struggle with. You know, you tell a guy, don't, don't think about lustful things. Like, well, now you're making him think about lustful things, because you can't. That's not the way it works. You have to replace those thoughts with something else. Just what you're saying, right? You can't, you can't just say, I'm not, I'm gonna not be afraid to die. Like, you have to put something in your mind that actually helps that not. And just telling yourself that's not going to do it.
The previous point, too, you made right before that about reminding me of people who often are very hard on themselves or very critical of themselves, think they're being humble. But really it's just pride, like you said, disguised as something else, right? It's the same, just the opposite side of the coin, because their focus is still on themselves. So the more the focus is on ourselves, the less it's on Christ. We're not looking outward, we're looking inward, and we're still bound up with pride. But it comes across as, oh, I'm not a prideful person, because I think so lowly of myself. And the answer is, you're still thinking about yourself, which is the very definition of pride. Like, you're bound up with yourself. And I think that is part of, at the heart of this, this struggle, because it's obsessed with trying to not, in their work, up their own strength, not to be afraid of this, when that's not where it's going to come from. It's going to come from outside of themselves, through the word of God. Not something they're going to solve by trying harder or trying to make themselves think a different way, but by replacing those thoughts completely with what the word of God says.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: There's something I remember doctor scare, our old seminary professor, made this point about preaching law and gospel. He says, the sinful flesh loves to hear the law, which you would be surprised. You're like, well, it seems like you would hate it. And I think in a sense it does. But he says, because at least you're talking about me still, like, I'm a poor, miserable sinner. Well, it's nice that we're talking about me, because that's my favorite thing to talk about. We were working on this this morning in worldwide Bible class, how part of both the twin sides of the coin of pride and despair are.
It's the same sentence structure. I am great. I am miserable. It's both I am. And where faith ends is that Jesus is Lord. And now I am what he says I am. I am a forgiven sinner, but I am his. This is Jesus is Lord. Makes me now into the not in the subject of the sentence, but the object of the sentence. And the Lord himself is the subject who is giving and serving and loving and forgiving and encouraging, emboldening, enlivening, resurrecting. The Lord is doing all of these things to us and for us.
That's great.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Well, let's move on to something somewhat related, the topic of grief, which often comes in the face of death. It says, good afternoon, I'm teaching a grief series at our church and need to grab a better resolution on regrets than the curriculum provides. I enjoy your Sunday drives home and other whatnots. So I'm not surprised that you have a segment on the good work of grief.
And there, that's from October 19, 2021. There .4 is regrets and truly presents the gospel that my participants need to hear. So thank you. But they very well might have questions about what you say in. .4 Jesus tells us that our loved ones are not angry with us either. They look at us with the same love that Jesus looked at us with. Where does Jesus tell us this? And I'm anticipating this. Are our loved ones looking at us? If you have a moment, I'd appreciate the clarification so I don't muddle it up in class.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah, this is so.
I can't remember those different points, but this is, you know, we think of grief as a sin. That's the bad thing, whereas grief is a good work.
Jesus wept over Lazarus. That teaches us everything we need to know about grief, right?
That it's okay to cry. I think that the grief. We can define grief as this. Grief is the shape that love takes when the object of our love is absent. I think I made that up, but it seems like I couldn't. I must have had read that somewhere. I just can't remember.
But I think that's right. So we grieve. The point of grief is that we don't grieve in such a way that our love for the people who are there is affected. So that's the benchmark to look after when it comes to regret. This is an interesting thing that because you and I, Pastor Packer, have the privilege of being at deathbeds and seeing this all the time, people's regrets, because it's there. Because all the things that I ought to have done, I cannot now do, because the person who I should have served in this way is now gone.
And so we're able to put off that guilt until the point of death, and then we can't put it off anymore. We realize there's a finality there. And the wave that hits you, I should have loved more, I should have been there more, I should have, et cetera, et cetera. Now, you can have regrets before the person dies, but it really comes along then and now what do you. Now what are we going to do? And most of the time, people try to comfort other people in their regrets by saying, oh, no, you did everything you could. You were a good son. You were a good father. You were a good whatever and I know that that's not the case, because love always demands more than I can give.
I can be a good dad and a good husband and still have regrets because I should have loved more.
So the hope that we have in the midst of regret is not that we were good children, but that Jesus died for us.
We don't fight our regret with making claims of goodness, but with Christ, who gave us to one another and who loves us.
Now, I must have made the point in the video, which I wouldn't have thought of now, but probably as good, is that Jesus does not hold our sins against us so that those who belong to Jesus also don't hold our sins against us. And that I think part of the joy of death is that purging away of fleshly sight so that now I will be able to see people as Jesus sees them.
Now, I don't know. I do not know if that means that the dead in Christ are able to know the things that are happening on the earth. This is a question people have all the time. Like, when we go to heaven, will we know what's happening down below? I don't think we have any indication that that's the case. I don't know if we have any indication that it's not the case. We just don't have enough information to know the state that what we call these theologians call the intermediate state of the soul, rejoicing in the face of Jesus after death. That's what Paul says. It's better to depart and be with Christ. That being with Christ, Jesus knows, and we are there with him. And so I suppose that he could pass on information to us, etcetera. If he wants us to know things that would lead to our joy, then I think he could give it to us. Like the angels who rejoice when one sinner repents. They have that knowledge. So will we have that angelic knowledge and that angelic joy. We just. Again, I don't know enough from the scripture to say one way or the other, but I do know that there will be no grudges for the saints. I mean, because part of the joy of being free from our sinful nature is that, like Jesus, we are able to completely forgive and to rejoice, even in the sinner who sins against us. And so that there's a perfection when we are covered with the righteousness of Christ, there's a perfection that's imputed to us, and that when we do finally see each other in the resurrection, that we'll rejoice in that. That there will be a forgiveness of sins that prevails. So I don't know if I can say anything more than that. I think that's as far as the scriptures will let us go. But thoughts on that.
[00:21:48] Speaker B: It made me think of Hebrews chapter eleven, right? It lits all these saints and it tells us what they did by faith. And yet we know from the Old Testament, pretty much all of them have some kind of sins recorded about them. And yet Hebrews eleven doesn't mention them at all, right? Because they're with the Lord. And what's remembered now is what they've done in faith. And so when you're talking about that, that's what it made me think of, because it's a very similar idea, right? Those who have died and gone before us, they're not thinking, wow, I wish my spouse, who's still on earth, like, I wish they'd been a better spouse. Like, they're filled with perfect joy and peace and happiness in the Lord's presence, and they're not worried about those things. We think about those things because we realize the opportunity to do those things is gone, but for them, it's been replaced. All of those worries and fears and their own regrets are all gone. Whereas for us, at the very least, maybe we could see it as an opportunity to repent of those things if we realize we failed. And then, as we say, like in private confession, like, I'm going to strive to do better, right? To use as an opportunity to look around at the people who are still with us and strive to love them better, so we don't have as many regrets when something happens to them. Even though, as you said, we're still going to have some. Because there's never a day where we can say, well, yeah, I loved everyone around me perfectly today. And so I'm all good, right? We have to continue to live in repentance about that. But we can strive to do better and use the grief as an opportunity to maybe reprioritize some things or look at how we're doing with those things and use it as an opportunity to repent of sin and strive to do better.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
And throwing ourselves on the mercy of Christ, being disgusted in our selfishness, but rejoicing in this also that.
So the same Jesus who forgives my sins is the one who decided that.
That Carrie would have me as her husband and that I would have her as my wife and that we would have our children as our children and that our children would have us as their parents, so that it's the Lord who loves us, who gives us to one another. And he intended us to be good gifts, and he sees us as good gifts to one another, so that now I can receive my, you know, my children, who have failed to keep the fourth commandment, and me, whose I've failed to keep the fourth commandment. We've sinned against each other, and yet we can receive each other as gifts from our Lord Jesus. And that's how. And that's what I think part of the judgment reveals is this. You know, we're so. We're so.
We're so worried about the judgment because we think it's like a stripping off. Everything is exposed. And there is a sense that judgment is exposure. But for the Christian, judgment is what Paul says. I don't desire to have my clothes off. I desire to be further clothed.
Is that the judgment for the Christian is being wrapped in that robe of the righteousness of Christ, so that now we see each other not as.
Not as sinners, but as forgiven sinners, as redeemed sinners, as the brothers and sisters of Christ.
So Luther would always talk about the eyes of Jesus and how Jesus sees us. And I think that's part of the gift of the resurrection, is that we begin to see each other now and then fully as he sees us, which is. As his beloved children, which is beyond imagination. It's great.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: I think we might skip the last question because of time, unless you want to do that one instead of talk about Denmark. But I was going to ask you about your trip to Denmark and what you taught on there, and if you can give us an update on how the Lutherans in Denmark are doing, because I don't think that's an area where people.
I don't think most probably people that watch this have any idea what's going on with the church over there, or is there anything you could update us?
[00:26:01] Speaker A: It's complicated. I've been over to visit Denmark twice and to. And try to understand the history. Denmark was the first country to become Lutheran, if I have that right, as an entire country.
But an interesting thing happened in 1580 81. Oh, I got. I forgot to remember if it was. I think it was Christian II, who was the son of Frederick III, but the king who. The son of the king who embraced the reformation and made Denmark, he was also a Lutheran. He, at the time of the formula of Concord, though, rejected the formula of Concord. And I got to dig into the history of this a little bit more.
It's a fascinating history. He thought it was a little too. He had a good friend and counselor who was calvinistic, and he felt that kind of cutting off of the calvinistic side to be too harsh. And it might have been that he was convinced by Elizabeth I in England that the formula of Concord was a catholic plot to divide up the Protestants. And Elizabeth I's idea was that the Protestants should provide a united front against the Catholics, both theologically and militarily. And so the kind of exclusiveness of the formula was understood as undercutting that protestant unity, general protestant unity, which I think is really. Anyway, the result is that his.
If it's if I'm right, if it's Frederick II, oh, Christian. The third, it's the second, it's whoever. Anyway, his sister was married to one of the princes who signed the Book of Concord down in Germany. She sent him two gift copies and he burned them and outlawed the having of the formula, the Book of Concord.
Okay, I found it. Frederick II. This is who we're talking about.
In July 1580, he burned his copies, he banned the owning of. He made pastors sign a document that said that they did not have or own a book of Concord. It's an amazing sort of thing. And I think at that point it's kind of two strains of Lutheranism emerge. It's you have your Augsburg Lutheranism and your Concordia Lutheranism, and the danish folks are that's this Augsburg Lutheranism. So it doesn't have a way of sort of cutting off Calvinism.
It doesn't have a biblical authority. Now, some people were arguing with me when I was over in Denmark. We were talking about this a little bit, and they said, no, look, because there's other parts of Christendom that had the Book of Concord, and they still went along with this and kind of other stuff. But anyway, it's an interesting sort of thing to think about now that came forward to Denmark, to the major character. There was this GruntVig back, oh, a couple hundred years ago, 100 and 5200 years ago now, who was a reformer in the church, and he set up this kind of pietistic community where you had an intermission. So you had this church, state church, which was the liturgical church, where there's baptisms and marriages, confirmations, etcetera. But then you had the intermission, which was more of a Bible study house, and you had these parallel tracks that were, in my view, never antagonistic to each other, but on their own sort of. They had their own sort of community and energy with them, so that most people in Denmark are members of the church. They go to the church to get baptized and married and even confirmed.
But those who are studying the Bible, that's happening in the intermission, but they're not exclusive of one another. One became liturgical and sacramental. The other became biblical. And so those two ideas of word and sacrament in some way sort of separated from one another. Well, recently there's been some pastors in the state church who are like, hey, the state church is just as kind of progressive and liberal as you would expect. Some pastors are like, hey, this is not biblical. And then some folks who are influential in the intermission who are thinking, hey, the sacraments are the Lord dealing with us. And this kind of separation of the two is a problem. And so they're trying to pull those together. So they started this Luther study days a number of years back, before COVID and. And the idea is to try to bring this together, the more conservative element in the state church and the more sacramental element in the intermission, to make an argument for a kind of full lutheran doctrine. And so they asked me to come and present, and they had a couple other people presenting papers that were there as well. And so I got to go and do it. And it was wonderful. So I had three topics and three papers. One was on the original righteousness of Christ. So what it was like before the fall.
The second one was about the heavenly court and the conscience and how they're related to one another. And then the third one was, they wanted me to talk about this line from the formula of Concord, the whole Christ is our righteousness, which has to do with the osiandrian controversy and how Jesus is not just our righteousness according to his divine nature, but the entirety of Christ is our righteousness. And so that was also. It was great. So that was.
Those lectures are online on the Luther study days in Denmark website. I think I put them out on Wednesday, whatnot. But that was. That was what we were talking about. So that was a lot of, that was a. It was a lot of fun. It was great. It was a great trip.
[00:32:10] Speaker B: It sounds like there's at least some encouraging news then, that they're trying to return to a fuller vision of what the Bible has for them, including, it sounds like, even maybe an interest in the formula of Concord for those Lutherans who have maybe not had it as a binding thing on them for quite a long time. But it sounds like they're starting to move towards, both sides are starting to move towards a more biblical view of what they should be, which seems encouraging, at the very least.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Very encouraging. It's a thing this maybe can end with an encouraging thought.
I get to bounce around a little bit and see people here and there. And so I got to this last, I don't know, year and a half or so to visit down in Australia and down in Germany and over in Denmark. We just were in Kauai, Kerry and I, and got to visit the Lutherans there. There's a little church, and I would say that 2% of the church was born Lutheran, was born in a lutheran family. I mean, almost everybody is converts. There's these pockets that are all over the world that are.
That there's this joy of what it means to be what it means to have this assurance of the law and the gospel, that Christ is the savior of sinners and that people are discovering this great heritage that we have in our lutheran doctrine and in the book of Concord all over the world. All over the world.
It's an amazing thing to see. I was thinking about just when we were flying yesterday that I wanted to put a little booklet, something like what only Lutherans have, and just to do a little list of the teachings of the biblical teachings that only Lutherans assert. For example, the absolution. The lutheran church is the only church with the absolution. The lutheran church is the only church that teaches the efficacy of the scripture. The lutheran church is therefore the only church with word and sacrament. Churches either go towards sacrament or word, but not both. The lutheran church is the only church that has the body and blood for the forgiveness of sins in the supper. The lutheran church is the only church that teaches baptism saves in the sense of justifying.
There's so many unique.
Lutheran church is the only church that teaches that God saves through preaching.
So there's so many things that are unique to the lutheran church, and I think we've forgotten that. It's easy for us to forget that we have this great heritage from the Lord, from these biblical doctrines that are assaulted and denied in these other places. And not only does this give us great joy, it shouldn't give us pride, it should give us a sense of urgency.
For example, when we think that most christians in the United States have never had the Lord's supper, that should give us some urgency, or when we think that most christians their whole lives have never heard the absolution, that should give us some urgency.
And so it's good. I think it's really good to think about that. There's people who are discovering this and they're like, where have you guys been?
This is the thing I was looking for. And you have it. And you're not like, by the way, big billboard sin is forgiven here or whatever, because most people lack the assurance of salvation, and it's because their theological superstructure is built to avoid it and ours is built to bring it forth.
So anyways, it's an encouraging time to be alive and to be in the Lord's church and to rejoice in all that the Lord is doing.
[00:36:21] Speaker B: It sounds like you need to get on that project right away.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: Well, I hope you're taking notes, Pastor Packard.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: I wrote it all down.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: That's great. Well, thanks everyone. YouTube theologians for being out there. Pastor Packer, thank you for feeling the questions. If you send more questions to Wolf Mueller Co. Contact theology, question those. Go to pasture, Packer. He grabs them. He was just lamenting that he needs some more questions this morning. So send in those questions. That'll be great. And keep in touch.
Wolfmieler Co. Is the way to do it. Upcoming events are there as well.
Thanks again, Pastor Packer and everyone for listening and watching God's peace be with.
