Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, YouTube theologians. Welcome to the Theology Q and A podcast. I'm Pastor Brian Wolfinger, pastor of St. Paul and Jesus Deaf Lutheran churches in Austin, Texas, joined by Pastor Andrew Packer, pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Collinsville, Illinois. Pastor Packer, heard a rumor about you, and that is that you will preach anywhere.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Anywhere.
Like, anywhere. As far as. Like, any church, you're going to start rumors. You really are starting rumors. Now.
I heard Pastor preach. Packer preached at a Baptist church because Wolfmother said he preaches anywhere.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: He will preach anywhere.
Anywhere, anywhere.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: I will. I will be preaching in South Carolina on Pentecost. So I guess that's anywhere what I
[00:00:43] Speaker A: hear South Carolina counts as. That's in my mind.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Anywhere, anywhere, anywhere.
I've lived in South Carolina, but I've not been to the part of South Carolina we're going.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: So.
[00:00:54] Speaker B: So that'll be new.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: All right, you got some questions? Here we go.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Do Lutherans believe the soul sleeps until resurrection? So do we believe in soul sleep?
[00:01:05] Speaker A: No.
Next question.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Moving on.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Paul says to be absent from the bodies, to be present with the Lord. Okay, so here's our. Here's our doctrine of death and resurrection and so forth. So we are body and soul meant to always be together. But death is that unnatural rending of body and soul at the moment of death.
When that rending happens, the soul is the perfection of the forgiveness of sins is realized in the soul. It's perfected and made ready for the presence of God. So to be absent from the body, to be present with the Lord, for me to live as Christ, to die is gain.
So that we understand that those who sleep in the Lord, that means die, are with the Lord. We have that picture in Revelation, which is a.
It's a hard thing to actually get our heads around, but it's the souls of those who were beheaded for their preaching of the gospel under the altar and crying out, how long, oh, Lord, until you avenge us? And they're given a white robe and said to rest a little bit longer. So there's a sense that's the intermediate state when the body and soul are separated from one another and the soul is with the Lord in. In joy and bliss, and the body is resting in peace, hopefully in a Christian grave or whatever's happening to the body. It's there on the last day when the Lord comes with the voice of the archangel and the sound of the trumpet.
The Lord will return in glory. And all the dead are raised. That means everybody that ever existed is raised up out of the Dead, those bodies are revivified, made alive again. Those souls that were separated from the body are returned to the body so that integrity is restored. And for the Christian, their body is then perfected. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. It's a spiritual body, which is an amazing thing to see because we won't normally think spirit or body, but it's a perfected body that's untouched now by the corruption of sin and death.
And that body and soul brought back together for the Christian is the resurrection of life.
The body and soul brought back together for the unbeliever is what Jesus calls the resurrection of death.
It's just a horrific idea to think about. But so. And then the Lord gathers all people and judges them. The sheep on the right, the goats on the left, and all those who are made fit for the presence of God by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ are welcomed into his presence. And all those who are not are sent away. That's really that direction of judgment. Come to me and depart from me, and then we are forever with the Lord in the new heaven and the new earth where the righteous dwell. That's. That's how that goes. So we. The. That intermediate state of the soul apart from the body is.
Is one of being in the Lord's presence, receiving his gifts.
It's called sleep, especially in reference to the body, because the body is what sleeps and then is awakened on the. On the last day. So we don't believe in soul sleep, but rather we believe in body sleep, rest in peace.
That's our doctrine of death and resurrection.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: I looked it up because I didn't know. Looks like it came from.
From what I found, really, with a quick search, is the Anabaptists are the ones who maybe promoted it the most. It looks like it. Throughout church history, it kind of popped up here and there, but was never very common. But then the Anabaptist to reject.
Kind of surprisingly, this is going to shock you as an overreaction to some of the things that the Roman Catholics taught, like purgatory and predator saints, that they.
They went towards soul sleep. So that's kind of. That's rather interesting to me also. I found out that because Luther used sleep language for death, like you were talking about the body sleeping, that some people started attributing this to Luther, which as you just said, clearly is not the Lutheran view, nor was it Luther's view, just to be clear.
But that seems to be where it came from and still is hanging on. I didn't know, we've had a few questions on this. I didn't realize it was still.
Still out there.
I wanted to add, too, that this person is from Poland, and they also had a question about Israel, which we answered last week. So if they missed that, be sure to check that out, because we did.
We did answer that.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Is our Israel views. Is that one of the categories that YouTube demotes when we talk about Israel, or.
[00:05:38] Speaker B: I don't know. That's a good question. We'll have to.
Hopefully not, because this video will be demoted, too.
[00:05:43] Speaker A: Well, talking about death and Israel, two words you're not supposed to use.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: We're in trouble. Yeah, the D word.
All right, here's a. Here's a fun question for you.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: All right.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: They want to know what you think about the Shroud of Turin.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: What do you think about the Shroud of Turin, Pastor Packer?
[00:06:04] Speaker B: All right, I will tell you because I see.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Because you know about this, and I don't know anything.
[00:06:11] Speaker B: So I was. I've been on the fence for it for. For a while.
The thing that probably pushed me kind of over in. In the direction of it being legit was an on the line interview that Brian Stecker did. I can't remember who he was interviewing. It was a very long interview on this topic. It's very good. People should check it out. It's gonna be much longer than anything we go into.
But all the research on it has convinced me that it's most likely. I think, most likely.
I want to preface this, too, with a couple things. One, I think it's most likely legit. But two, if it's not, it does not disturb my faith in any way. My faith and resurrection of Christ is not based on the Shroud of Turin. So if it's not real, I don't really lose anything. So I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it if it turns out, oh, we finally figured out it's not real. But all the study they've done on it, everything from study of the image itself and how it could have possibly gotten there to the material, to various pollen and things that have been on it, like, and then its history, leads me to believe that it most likely it is the actual real burial cloth. So I lean very strongly in that direction.
But like I said, if someone came, came out and said, here's evidence that it's false, I'd be like, oh, that's a bummer, and I'd move on. But also, I'm kind of surprised at how many Christians, like, are kind of like, Nah, it can't be real. Like Jesus was wrapped in a burial cloth. So like we, we shouldn't be surprised if we actually find physical evidence. And I think especially Lutherans and maybe people that are not Roman Catholic in general are kind of scared of this stuff because of, we know all the jokes about how many pieces of the cross. Luther said, right, you could build like 12 crosses with all the fragments of the cross and all these things. So yeah, there have been abuses of so called relics over the years, but it doesn't mean that everything's fake.
And I think we're just suspicious of everything.
And so, and even in the question they list a lot of the evidence. Like they list is long. If I read all of this, it would take take a while to read through all the evidence for it.
So yeah, based on the image itself, the garments itself, it's its composition, pollen and its history, I lean very heavily in the direction of, I think it's legit, but if it's not, I won't lose any sleep over it.
That's my take, I think.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: And I mean my thought is really, really similar. And that is I know that there was a shroud and if it survived that, there still is a shroud. And this seems like the most likely candidate for that shroud.
But it's not like there wasn't.
It's the same with the grave of Jesus.
This seems like there in the church of the holy sufferers, the most likely place that Jesus was buried. Maybe it wasn't, but there was a place where Jesus was buried. Or also like you said, when you have all these relics.
I was at some church somewhere for a doxology thing and I was walking by the wall and there was this little picture on the wall and it said, this is a piece of the cross. It had this little piece of wood and it said, this is a piece of the cross. And I said, now that may not be a piece of the cross, but there are pieces of the cross somewhere. And there was a real cross. So it's good for us to, I mean there's all this kind of magic stuff that comes with reliquy. And it, the, the, the, the problem is this like reliquy mythology like obscures the fact that, that there, these are real things. If the, if the things that we're looking at are those things or not, doesn't matter. Like I saw the bone of Titus in Crete this last summer. Like maybe that's the skull of Titus, maybe it's not, but Titus is buried somewhere In Crete, there is a skull of Titus. So it's really good for us to remember that these, that the Bible is history and the people who were in the Bible are real people, that the places are real places that Jesus. I mean, somewhere there's probably pieces of sandals that Jesus wore and, and the garment that was gambled for, and the dice that gambled for those garments. They're somewhere. I mean, maybe they're ground into dust by now, but, you know, the baskets that gathered up the 12 loaves, they're hanging around somewhere. I mean, maybe again, they're kind of decayed by now, but all these things are real, very real things. And it's good for us to remember.
To remember that. We're going to go to Cologne in a couple of weeks and there apparently are the bones of the three wise men hanging around in Cologne, Germany of all places. Like, are those the real bones? Are those the real skulls? I don't know, but they're somewhere and it's good for us to remember that.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it was Dr. John Bombaro, by the way. I looked it up really fast. It was on the line. It's like, it's a long interview, but it's worth people's time if they actually want to hear all of the evidence.
And he said something in that interview that is what kind of pushed me over the edge, which is basically like, if this was any other thing and you had all of this evidence, we would say, yeah, it's whatever this thing they're saying it is. But because it's connected to Jesus, we're all like, like, maybe because we don't want to be. I think part of it is we don't want to be.
We don't like fools, which I think is a good thing.
So people are skeptical because we don't look silly saying, hey, this is it and it's not it.
On the other hand, like, if it really happened in history, there has the Lord leaving historical evidence shouldn't shock us or surprise us. And that's why I finally decided to say, look, I think it most likely is, but if I'm wrong, it doesn't. Doesn't affect my belief.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Here's an interesting question. I don't. Does Bambaro talk about this, that if, if this, if the shroud is the. Is the legitimate shroud, which seem seemingly. That's what we have, why that is the thing that the Lord has preserved for us.
Like, we don't have anything else like it. Right? Like, because the part of the claim of the shroud is that it's captured, like, the physical result of the resurrection. Like the image is imprinted from the energy expended in the resurrection of Jesus, which is pretty cool. But why is this the only thing that the Lord has. Has kind of carried along in the church for us to have? We just don't have anything else like it. I just wonder if there's reflection on.
On the Lord's purpose in that.
[00:12:36] Speaker B: I don't remember specifically if he answers the why question, but he does talk about how leaving. It shouldn't surprise us that he left behind a miraculous cloth with this, a miraculous image that no one's been able to figure out how it got there or been able to replicate it since.
And sometimes I saw in a discussion recently, someone brought up, oh, but the Bible says there's a face cloth. Yeah. And if you read the stories, that was preserved too.
So. And it was always in connection with this, the Shroud of Turin as well. So we, again, we shouldn't be shocked if the Lord left this beautiful sign of the most important event that ever happened in human history, the resurrection of Jesus. Like, it shouldn't shock us. And so I encourage people to look into it. I tell people all the time, like, look into it. Do your own research.
See what you think. But don't. Don't be afraid to look at the evidence and actually be like, oh, there's way more evidence for this than I thought, because that's. I was very skeptical until I actually looked into it. And I was very surprised at how much evidence there was and how much historical data there was on it and how much. How much people have studied this to try to disprove it. And in fact, people have tried to disprove it, have come around on it. Right. They've studied it and been like, oh, oh, this was fake. But I've studied it now, and I'm pretty convinced it's real. So that's cool. Look into it. It's worth your time.
All right, next one.
Cultural Marxism.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: Oh, boy.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Is it a threat to our faith?
[00:13:58] Speaker A: Well, yeah.
Next question. I wonder, is there more to it than that?
[00:14:04] Speaker B: Well, they actually outline, so they give a few thoughts, that on human nature and sin, it tends to emphasize collective identity over individual identity, which can lead to a denial of personal sin. The role of the church, which often gets undermined by ideologies that distract from the core message of the gospel, contrary versions of justice and mercy. In fact, I would argue there's probably not really any mercy. Right. This goes back to something we talked about. Before where once you push out the atonement of Christ, then.
Then you're always looking for scapegoats. And I think cultural Marxism does that well. Right. You're always looking for the next scapegoat that you can blame something on and put all the guilt on them and then you don't have to feel guilty.
And then because it's an ideology, which you just posted something right. In the Wednesday whatnot from Pastor Graph, which maybe you could pull out and. Yeah, mentioning that seems to tie in
[00:15:03] Speaker A: well with here, this introduction.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: Tie in well.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Graph just. Boy, oh boy. Yeah, I'll pull it up. He did this great sort of summary of what ideology is and in a page in an unpublished paper I didn't. Which I did not get permission to share, but. Oh well, I'm sure he won't be too mad if I share it again on YouTube.
[00:15:23] Speaker B: We'll ask forgiveness.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: So we have.
We have. I should just open the sub stack. That'll be good advertising for the Wednesday whatnot. I, I want to define cultural Marxism. That'll be maybe the kind of first step because like, so just to take the general approach of Marxism, which is a, which is a materialist approach to the world. Right. It, it understands that.
That there's. There is no God, that, that everything is materialistic, but it also has the sense that there is a. There's sort of a driving force that's at work. So it does. Am I, man, I'm. I'm also always so out of my league when I'm talking about this sort of stuff. But, but that Marxism has this, it's adopted this Hegelian sense of.
There's this kind of purpose of history. So that there's. So it's. And classic Marxism is an economic thing. So it's going to set, you know, it's going to be a set against capitalism as the, as a system that alienates people from the fruit of their work and so forth. And so it's going to call for a revolution to bring about a utopian thing.
So this, this call for revolution to rise up against the capitalist overlords. That's economic Marxism. But that when we say cultural Marxism, that's taking that same sort of system and, and instead of applying it to economics, it's applying it to the culture.
So now you have various classes that are set against each other, either ethnic or whatever categories you choose. It could be religious, I suppose, in our day, because we live in the time of the sexual revolution, that you have these oppressed classes that have to now rise up and overthrow the oppressors. So you're always looking for the system of oppression and always conveniently finding it outside of you, against you, so that now you're justified in your revolt against the oppressors and you end up being subsumed into the ideology itself.
And everything about that is anti Christian. I mean, every single thing is not just different than Christianity. It's. It's almost the precise opposite of Christianity.
So I don't know. Pastor Packer, can you give a better definition of cultural Marxism?
[00:17:53] Speaker B: No, I think that's a pretty decent summary.
Is used so broadly now too. I think originally referred to what the Frankfurt School and things coming out of that and how they were trying to apply what you said to all areas of like kind of culture and life. And then it gets used a lot in political debate now, but sometimes a little broader.
And then of course, some people see it as like a conspiracy theory kind of thing of subversion. But I think your summary was a decent and at least fair overview of. Of what the questions getting at and what we're trying to discuss here without getting into all of the academic specifics because it is used. I mean, it's. It's like all terms has come to be rather broad in what we're applying it to.
But I think I. At its core, I think this. I think this is very helpful here. So go ahead.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: And here's. So this is just graphs, unpublished paper. Footnote 2 On ideology where he just gathers up.
It's. He's just looking at what. What do we mean by the word ideology?
So he quotes Kenneth Minogue first in his Alien Powers book. A philosophical type of allegiance purporting to transcend the mere particularities of family, religion or native hearth. Its essence lies in struggle.
In this way, ideology, used in its proper sense is an overarching intellectual system which claims to uncover a hidden structure of domination, allowing the intellectual system to then advance the program for liberation of the oppressed class from the oppressor class.
As Aaron notes, an ideology presupposes an apparent system of formalization of facts, interpretations, desires and predictions, the opium of the intellectuals. Mahoney speaks of the ideological project to replace the only human condition we know with a utopian second reality. The second reality is at war with the first reality, which is known by objective truth and the reality of moral law, the deepest wellspring of human nature and God's creation, the persistence of the ideological lie. And then Havel brings it across as ideology. This is Vaclav Havel in His the power of the powerless.
This ideology is a specious way of relating to the world that offers human beings the illusion of identity, of dignity and of morality, while making it easier for them to part with them. That's kind of a stunning point.
So this is kind of graph summary of what do we mean when we say ideology? And I think it's a, it's a helpful definition because it's.
You have this kind of idea that you define everything as oppressor and oppressed.
But then you have to, you have the hero, the rescuer of the oppressed, which rescues them by overthrowing the oppressor.
But it, then, it kind of continues the cycle because the rescuer then becomes the oppressor. And it just is this, this kind of. I don't know, it's like a, it's almost like a Hindu cosmology of, of, of one era being overthrown by the next, by the next, by the next. And, and now I have to identify myself by, by my own victimization.
You know, I have to. I, I have in being. In, in the identification of being a victim. I mean, it's just so dark.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: I saw an article the other day and I can't, I was trying to look it up, but I can't find it right now. So I'll just go off top of my head. It was like 40 some percent of Gen Z thought political violence was okay.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Right. Which I think ties in with what you're saying. And it came about because I think, I don't know his name, the guy that burned down that, that factory recently.
He, he invoked that Luigi guy that shot and killed the.
Was he the CEO of something or something of that. The health, health insurance place. Anyway, the point being they're, they're just making that everyone's like looking to that guy as like a hero because he took matters into his own hands and use violence. And now we're hearing that more and more. But 40 over 40% is kind of a startling figure. But if you always think you're in the oppressor class and that the only way to fix that is through violence, the only thing you're gonna listen to is violence, then that gives you freedom to commit violence. As long as you're doing it for that reason. Right. As long as it's, as long as it's tough to free yourself or others from that, then it's, then it's okay. But it's getting applied so broadly to so many things that it seemingly making violence okay on just about anything. If you Feel oppressed. And your response can be violence. And apparently a good number of people will support you, which, like you said, is dark and scary.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: And it goes the other way, too. So, I mean, this is. I don't know, it seems like things have cooled down a little bit, but, man, you just go back a few years and, and you had the Black Lives Matter riots, and then you had all of this sort of white nationalist response to that. And I guess that still is hanging around on Twitter and stuff, but it's like, hey, we want a race war. And then everyone's like, yeah, that's what we want, a race war.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: It's like, what
[00:23:28] Speaker A: I mean, the whole thing is if we start to define ourselves by our victimhood, it's like, this is the sort of modern anthropology is that we're consumed consumers. So I'm outwardly defined by what I consume, and I'm inwardly defined by what is consuming me. And it's just, it's a, It's. It's probably something like what Paul means when he says in Philippians, their God is their stomach. It's.
It's a, it's a. It's a. It's. It's not a human way to think about things. It's. It's like man is animal, you know?
[00:24:07] Speaker B: Which is a good plug for this book. Have you read this yet? I know I have it by Carl Truman.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: I have it hanging around.
[00:24:13] Speaker B: It's.
It's a really fantastic. Highly recommend it. I think it deals. Deals a lot with how did we get where we're at? And that it's not an issue of disenchantment, but we're constantly trying to desecrate man.
Right. Because God. Man is made in God's image. But anyways, everyone should check that out.
All right, here's a fun question for you.
Do you think you're smarter than the Pope?
So this is, this is a question.
Basically, she's been a Protestant her whole life.
Now she's Lutheran, and she has a good Roman Catholic friend who basically kind of says, who do you guys think you are? Do you think you're smarter than the Pope? Right.
Why? How can you lowly Brian Wolfmuller say that the Pope and Popes have gotten this wrong, and you sitting in your house there in Texas have gotten this right?
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Well, it's certainly not intelligence. I'm sure that, that the Pope is smarter than me. Well, I'm pretty sure if we took. I don't know how to measure it. We take IQ tests. I imagine the Pope comes out on top.
And he's probably taken it in five different languages, too, which is embarrassing for me. But it's. This is the problem is it's not like I'm going to go and follow the person with the highest iq.
There is a part of the question.
It reveals the very.
It reveals the great danger of the lie of papism.
In other words, while the. While the Church in Rome will be busy accusing us of following a man, Luther, they have institutionalized the following of a man.
What I would say, I think my response is going to be, is the Pope smarter than Peter or Paul or John or David or Isaiah or Moses who wrote the Scriptures?
Because if that, and really right there, it's not the question of who's smarter, but rather who is given the spiritual authority to teach.
Because the Pope claims that Paul and Peter and John were not teaching clearly and that his office is necessary to have clarity on the doctrine. And that's the claim I reject.
I don't mean to insult the Pope, but I don't want to let the Pope's insulting of the apostles and prophets stand. I don't think that I, as a Christian and a believer in the Lord Jesus and as a pastor in the Church, can let the Pope pop Pope's insult of the Scriptures stand without being questioned. And the whole claim of the Pope is that the Scriptures are unclear and insufficient, and that is rude to the apostles.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: What we want to say too, is, like you said, it's not an issue of intelligence per se, but biblically, wisdom is hearing the word of the Lord, right?
And striving to hearing the word of the Lord, believing it, right? You receive it, and then you're striving to live in accordance with it. That's wisdom in the Bible. And the fool is one who hears the word of the Lord, but does not have faith in it, doesn't trust it, and does what they want.
And biblically speaking, wisdom is way more important than intelligence. Like, you can ask someone who maybe on the IQ scale or whatever is rather low, but they hear the word of God, they believe it, they have faith in it, and they're striving to do what Jesus says. And the Bible would say that person's wise and you can have the person in the country with the highest IQ and they could reject God altogether, right?
But the Bible says they're a fool. So, I mean, part of it's. The whole question is premised on like, what, do you guys just think you're smarter than him? And like you said, it's not an issue of mere intelligence, whether he beats the smartest Lutheran or not. I don't know.
It's not really. That's not the issue.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah, we want to disconnect orthodoxy and intelligence, especially because we understand orthodoxy not as a human achievement, but rather as a gift from God.
And I have to rejoice in that because, I mean, part of our office as pastor is a call to be fool, especially if the Lord says it pleased God through the foolishness of the Word preached to save those who would believe.
So there's a particular foolishness that belongs to the office of pastor.
And I don't know, one of our downsides is we haven't been able to embrace that foolishness.
I mean, it's one of the things, you know, it's one of the risks, Pastor Packer, that you and I take standing up here on the YouTubes and talking, because there's so many of the people who watch this are smarter than us, and they can pick apart the things that we say, and it's an embarrassing thing to make mistakes or get things wrong or to be, you know, outwitted or whatever. But we, in some ways, we're called to just confess the simplicity of Christ. And if I was waiting to be the smartest one in the room to preach or teach, I would never.
I would never say anything. You might say a few things, but I would never say anything so that we cannot think that our orthodox confession is a human achievement or is something that's achieved by reason or intelligence or investigation or whatever. It has to be understood as a gift, the simplicity of Christ and holding on to what the Word says. And that's the problem with the Pope.
Is the Pope. I mean, here's the. Remember our critical question that we asked the Pope and all of the popists who come to us and say, what do you require me to believe that's not taught by the prophets and apostles? What do you require me to believe that is not written down in the Holy Scriptures?
And either there is an answer to the question, which is how you get into the manipulative slave theology of Romanism, or there's no answer and you've got solar Scripture, it's great.
Then you just start working your way towards being Lutheran. But that. That. That's that critical dividing question that we have to ask. And. And so that's. So it's. It's. It's not that I'm. It's certainly not a matter of intelligence. Boy, oh, boy, I hope nobody. I. I hope it's Obvious that, that we are not on here because we think that we're smarter than everyone. That's for sure.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: They have a follow up question.
If we end up in Purgatory, can we hang out?
Sure. So, yeah, there you go. Sure. There, you heard it here first. If we, if we're wrong and we all end up in purgatory together.
[00:31:32] Speaker A: Purgatory, you know, go find like Achilles and you know, who's going to be show up in, in purgatory is like Athena and all that. It's. It's such a pagan thing. Purgatory. Sheesh.
[00:31:46] Speaker B: All right, I think it's the last one for today since we're doing, doing five at a time.
[00:31:51] Speaker A: Oh, man. It seems like not enough.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: All right. If someone were to pray the Lord's Prayer and say, deliver us from evil, could that person be absolutely certain that no evil would befall them in the coming day?
[00:32:07] Speaker A: No, I mean, the, the whole point of being delivered from evil is that you're already experiencing it.
Right? So we live in this evil world. We're being assaulted by the evil one, and we have hanging about our neck an evil flesh.
So we're in the midst of evil, praying that the Lord would bring us out of it.
So that's why this prayer is answered at last, on the last day. I mean, in some ways it's chiefly. I remember one dear lady said to me, pastor, is it okay to pray that I would die? She was in the midst of so much suffering. And I said, you pray to die every day.
She says, no, I don't think I do. I said, yeah, you prayed the Lord's Prayer. That's what you're praying.
What do you think deliver us from evil means? I mean, you can't be like, how's the Lord going to deliver you from evil? Like, put you on the top of the mountain somewhere where there's.
And even if he puts you on the top of the mountain where you're all by yourself, you're there, you bring the evil with you in your sinful flesh.
So that prayer for the deliverance from evil is a prayer that the Lord answers first. Well, finally in death, and then finally, finally in the resurrection from the dead.
So that prayer for deliverance is in some ways an acknowledgment that the evil is surrounding us all over the place. Place. Now we know that that evil is tempered by God. And it's one of our great confidences that the devil only goes so far as the Lord lets him, and that the world only gets so far as the Lord lets him. And even our sinful flesh is constrained by the spirit so that the afflictions of this life and the evils of this life are.
We receive them from the hands of our heavenly Father who loves us. Like Job says, should I receive good from the Lord and not evil, so that we receive evil? And can you and I and I think of this. Like, here, the devil, like, crafts this beautiful plot. You know, all the camels are dead, all the animals are dead, all the children are dead.
And then the Lord, the Job, looks up and says, I'll take it, Lord. And the devil's like, I get no credit for that at all. Like, I. I just.
I just built this huge masterpiece of destruction, this huge demonstration of evil. And I get. And you give all the credit to God.
That's what the Lord teaches us through Job, that we receive evil even from the hands of God, who dishes it out with very particular limits.
So that even this is for our own benefit. Strength and faith and love and hope and all the other things that the Lord wants to strengthen us. So I don't think we would say that we would.
That we would have no evil that would befall us and have that confidence. We have the confidence that the Lord is bringing us through this evil world so that we at last arrive in the. In the safe haven of the new heaven and the new earth.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: I remember a number of years ago when Hans Feeney, Pastor Hans Feene, wrote that article for the Federalist after there was a shooting at that church in Texas. A number of them were killed while they were praying the Lord's Prayer. And he said that God answered their prayer to be delivered from evil. And he got all kinds of hate messages, and he even got phone calls and stuff from that. Like, people just hated on it for him saying that. But he was right. Right. If the Christian prays, deliver me from evil, and then you go to be with Jesus, you've been delivered ultimately from the ultimate evil. If you're. If you go to be with Jesus, you're not going to hell. Then you've been delivered from evil, and that's ultimately how it's fulfilled. And if we put.
I had a preschool teacher, too, that struggled with this, and this was at Pagosa Springs.
And with Luther's morning prayer about this. What if something happened to the kid overnight? Like, what if a kid comes and something awful happened to him the night before? How can they pray?
The Lord graciously kept them this night. And I said, well, if they were kept in the faith, Regardless of what happened then, the Lord's graciously kept them.
It doesn't mean that no evil thing ever happens to us because we live in a fallen and sinful world. It means that ultimately and finally we're delivered from evil. And even in those things, it could have been worse. Like God, you know, often keeps things from being as bad as they could be. When evil befalls us, he often protects us in various ways we never see or even acknowledge.
But that ultimately, if we go to be with Jesus or we're kept in the faith, then we can say we've been delivered from evil, which I think a lot of people miss. Right. The Christian martyrs who die were delivered from evil and they die confessing the faith. They're. They're rejoicing because why? Because they're with Jesus and don't fear the one who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Right. You don't have to fear him because he can't. He can't ultimately touch you in the way he thinks he's going to harm you. So the prayer is being answered all the time, whether we realize it or not.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: It's great. We. The. I would recommend to the questioner, well, and to everyone the Luther's introduction to the Lord's Prayer.
[00:37:13] Speaker B: I wonder if I have.
[00:37:14] Speaker A: I made that book that has the.
Has the video, the video notes of the Lord's Prayer anyway. But you just look up Luther's large catechism Introduction to the Lord's Prayer, and he talks about the command to pray, the promise of prayer, and then the need for prayer so that each petition of the Lord's Prayer is showing us what we desperately need so that to deliver us from evil, that's showing us our need first.
And it's also helpful to remember that every prayer starts as an unanswered prayer. I mean, if we were delivered from evil, we wouldn't be praying for it.
So every prayer starts unanswered, and it's up to the Lord how long he lets it stay unanswered.
And he knows best how to do that, too. So there's a couple of good reminders.
[00:37:59] Speaker B: All right. Do you have any final announcements for the day?
[00:38:01] Speaker A: Oh, I do, because the issues, et cetera. Well, yeah, that'll be the one issues, Etc. Coming up, June 12th and 13th. Have you changed your mind? Have you. Are you still boycotting in Chicago?
University of Chicago.
It's so good.
President Harrison speaking.
Molly Hemingway, I know, is going to be there. Will Wheaton's doing the hymn Sing. I've got the topic of Christian courage. So if any of you have any ideas about what I should say, you can send me that. I'm working on it.
Just hand me a note beforehand. That'll be great. We're going to do a Worldwide Bible Class reunion at lunch on Saturday, so if you're part of the Worldwide Bible Class Club or you want to be, that's there too. So issuesetc.org is the website for all the conference info. That's great. If you're picking one place, like one conference to go to this year, that'd be the one I would commend to you. So that'll be a lot of fun. Thanks, Pastor Packer, for the questions and for your thoughts, especially. Appreciate it. Thanks for all of you YouTube theologians for jumping in and sending questions. Keep them coming. Wolfmuller Co contact. You can sign up for the Wednesday Whatnot weekly newsletter there for free. That's where this ideology quote is hanging out and some other stuff as well. So that'll be great. And we'll see you. Lord willing, we'll see you next week.
