Female Pastor Says Jesus Is CRINGE?! | Pastor Reacts

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A female reverend at an Episcopal church says that Jesus is cringe? That the

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Jesus of the Bible is not the Jesus she prays to? Look at this. Jesus' treatment of the

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Seraphim woman is the last example of Christianity that I want. I mean, it is not a good look on Jesus.

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And I hate that it is supposed to be upheld as a scriptural example for us.

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I have all the questions. What is she talking about? Is she preaching from the scripture? What does the scripture really say?

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We're about to get into all of that, so let's get right into it. Welcome back to Wise Disciple.

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My name is Nate, and I'm helping you become the effective Christian that you are meant to be. Some people tend to think that I'm calling myself wise.

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That's not what the title is reaching for. There was a moment where Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 10, behold, I'm sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

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So be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Wise Disciple comes out of the ideal that Jesus sets for all of his disciples, including you.

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Before I did this ministry, I was a pastor and a Bible teacher and also a debate teacher. And if you think that's a little odd, so do

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I. But somehow it works. You know, God uses it all so that he gets the glory.

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Amen. Make sure to like, sub, and share this one around if it blesses you. So admittedly, as a millennial,

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I do not have cable anymore. So I never see commercials. Thanks be to God. Unfortunately, there are still times in this day and age where one has to watch commercials.

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Super Bowl being one of them, right? That's when they're actually good. And so I did watch the Super Bowl this year,

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I think. So for the purposes of this video, I'm going to set aside the whole notion of whether or not women can be pastors and preach.

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Okay. I have an answer to that question. By the way, I read your comments. I know where you stand with this, those of you that comment.

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Well, I want to sidestep that for now, because I want to zoom in on the teaching itself. Because in my mind, it could be a man standing there and saying the exact same things.

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And we need to evaluate what we're hearing, okay? Because let's face it. These kinds of shenanigans are taking place all over the country.

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Men and women are saying these kinds of ridiculous things. So let's focus on the content, because it's going to lead us to Scripture.

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And we'll be good Bereans today, and we'll see what God's Word actually says. It was a while ago.

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But I remember this one commercial that seemed to come up around a lot of sporting events. And it was really vague.

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But at the end of it, you realize it's this Christian commercial. It's talking about how much God loves you, or Jesus loves you, and it's all these kind people doing kind things.

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And it's clearly promoting Christianity. She's talking about that he gets this campaign. Fascinating.

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Fascinating. It sounds like she's got a problem with the he gets this campaign. I would not have guessed that.

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During the Super Bowl, on a commercial, they cost how much money? And those of us in Christian communication circles, we're just livid, because we know how much that ad costs.

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And any church that has enough money to spend on a Super Bowl ad should probably do something else with that money.

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Uh, look, I've already said my piece about the he gets this campaign. I'm not going to re -litigate it here.

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But here's what I'll say, because I've said this before with sermon reactions. Every preacher of God's Word starts somewhere.

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A lot of guys will begin with a story, or a newspaper headline, or a quotation. And I think, actually,

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I've done all of those things at the pulpit one time or another. I remember this one time, in one of my sermons,

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I read the 9 -11 commission report. It makes sense if you were there.

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The point is, she's following along the same track. What I'm noticing is, her sermon is only eight minutes long.

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So again, every good preaching pastor needs to answer three questions. You've heard me say this, right?

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What does the Bible say? What does the Bible mean? And how can we all live by it? Is she going to be able to do all of that in eight minutes?

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Let's find out. There are countless examples, and this is just one of them, where I see someone wearing the name of Christianity, and I cringe, because it does not look like the

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Christianity I want to be associated with. There are examples all of us have in our own lives.

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What's worse is when you get to actual stories in Scripture that make you go, oh, that's not quite the example of Jesus I want.

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And this is one of them. Ooh. So now think about that statement.

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That's very telling. That's not the example of Jesus that I want. Okay. So in other words,

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Jesus is acting in certain places in the Scripture in a manner that she doesn't like. Is that what she's getting at?

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And that causes her to cringe. Jesus and the Seraphim woman.

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And I name this because we often aren't given permission to say,

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I don't like that thing in Scripture, because it is such a sacred text. But it's a text that can handle some wrestling, okay?

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It has withstood centuries. So we can argue with it a little bit, okay?

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Jesus's treatment of the Seraphim woman is the last example of Christianity that I want.

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She is desperate. Her daughter— Sorry to keep pausing, but she used that phrase again.

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That's the last example of Jesus that I want. I mean, that can't be by accident, you know?

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She comes across to me like a thoughtful person, at least thoughtful enough to choose her words before she says them.

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But the question that she must ask is, why does Jesus need to be what you want?

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You know what I mean? Like, why not flip that paradigm around and be the type of person that God wants?

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And by that I mean, you know, to be in relationship with God and obey His word. That is what

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God wants of you. But see, when you flip the paradigm like that, it changes how you go to the

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Scripture and read it. Because instead of reading the Bible to get something out of it that you want, now you're reading it with the proper mindset, which is, not my will, but thy will be done, right?

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God, teach me what you want of me. I don't know, guys. Something tells me we're not going to get a sermon here at all.

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A sinner is suffering and comes to Jesus begging for help, and he basically says that she's less than a dog.

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I mean, it is not a good look on Jesus. And I hate that it is supposed to be upheld as a

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Scriptural example for us. Because that's not the Jesus I pray to. That is not the

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Jesus I know. We've also tried to encapsulate

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Jesus into this one unmovable, unchangeable thing. But Jesus didn't come just as full

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God walking around amongst us. Think about that statement for a moment.

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Jesus didn't come to be fully God, even though He was

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God fully in the flesh, hypostatic union, right? And He was fully man, you know?

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So this is the issue that I was seeing in the last video, you know what I mean? It's as if these folks are speaking in a vacuum, when they're not, actually.

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They act like there's no such history of the Church that has articulated the doctrine of the hypostatic union.

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And what that means is, Christians looked at the Scripture and inferred that Jesus was both fully

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God and fully man, from the Scripture. No division of 50 -50, or 70 -30, or 80 -20, or something like that.

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But this lady denies the hypostatic union, at least it sounds like she does, also hasn't opened the

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Scripture yet. I've got mine open, I'm ready to read from God's Word, you know?

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You know what I mean? We're actually going to look at Jesus with the Syrophoenician, the

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Canaanite woman, in a moment. Jesus came to be fully human. So I look to this

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Scripture, not for Jesus's divinity, but for His humanity. She's giving us all kinds of clues here, ladies and gentlemen.

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By the way, doesn't she sound an awful lot like Brandon Robertson, right? She probably is very familiar with him.

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Robertson famously said a couple of years ago that Jesus sinned because of that story that she's about to get into, the comment that Jesus makes to the

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Syrophoenician woman, the Canaanite woman. And why? Well, because these folks believe that Jesus was not fully

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God. This is why it is so important to understand what our brothers and sisters in the past have delineated and articulated for us, you know what

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I mean? So, when the Bible says this, this is Colossians 2, verse 9, For in Jesus the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.

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Already you see that there is a fullness of deity in the person of Jesus. Hebrews 1 says that Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature.

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But wait, He was a man too, right? Philippians 2 says that Jesus did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but an emptied himself and was found in human form, you know?

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That's how Hebrews 4 can say this, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

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Why? Because he is one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

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But see, Robertson and this lady, they don't really believe Hebrews 4. They believe that Jesus did sin, that He was racist, actually.

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And that's why I do these kinds of videos, you know? Because again, we need to be able to develop our hearing so that we can hear these folks through the lens of God's actual

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Word. Because these people are way off. It's the great gift of God incarnate amongst us that Jesus came fully human, perfect but human.

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It's the Holy Spirit. We need some more jazz. It's okay, it's usually the clergy persons whose phone is ringing during church, so.

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This is an example of Christ's humanity and of the relationship between God and humanity that we have been dancing through throughout the centuries.

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I had the great gift of partnering with a rabbi over the last several years, and he came to my last place and taught

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Jewish Bible study for Christians, which was so much fun. I probably had the most fun in the class, to be honest. But he illuminated for us how unpredictable humanity had been for God, right?

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Like, God does one thing, and then we go over here and do this. Did you hear that?

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I mean, we're off the rails now, man, you know? Or maybe we were never off the rails in the first place.

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So, humanity is unpredictable to God, ladies and gentlemen. Two problems with that.

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One is that God doesn't predict anything, and God is not caught by surprise. I mean, this is, what is this?

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This is open theism at this point. Like, God could not have predicted the countless ways in which we have been surprising.

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So much so that it was like, well, let's flood the earth and start again, right? Like, our free will has taken us on this incredible path, and we are continually wrestling with God, and God is wrestling with us.

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We are surprising and confounding beings, and God is constantly changing and evolving alongside with us.

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We have so many stories of it. And here is another one. A moment rooted in the time and place of Jesus, where Jesus in his full humanity and full divinity comes to be challenged and changed.

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The Seraphimician woman shows us what it is to live, live in faith that is not final or done, but with a

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God that is living amongst us and awake to the newness of our lives and experiences that cannot be fully encapsulated in scripture written thousands of years ago, but that can be made sense of with the lived experience of those before us to guide us where we are now.

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That sounds like a great sentence. Poetic, even. But where in the scripture is what she said even taught?

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God changes, huh? What do we make of this? Malachi 3 .6, For I the

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Lord do not what? Change. Or how about this one? James 1 .7,

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Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

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This is why Hebrews says that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

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God does not change. This is completely false. But what it's going to do is provide the basis for what she's going to claim next, which is we shouldn't follow the example of Jesus, right?

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I take it she's going to say we should only follow Jesus' example when he does something that we like.

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Jesus changes. We too can change. We too can name where we have been wrong in the past.

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Christianity has a few examples of those. Places where we can say we went down a wrong path, but we want to go down this one instead.

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The course correction that Jesus gives us permission to take is an extraordinary gift of this scripture.

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That we can continue to evolve and learn and grow and become better Christians, better versions of ourselves, more deeply loving of our neighbor than we were before.

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It's okay for us to have been wrong or for us to know better now. Completely misses the point of the text.

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Just goes right over her head. Golly. You know? And why?

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Well, it's because of her presuppositions that she brought to it in the first place. If she would have just recognized what

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I said at the outset, it's not about what she wants, you know, or what she likes.

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It's about the God of all creation who invites us to know him. Even when he does something that we don't initially understand, we are meant to lean in and trust him and chew on his word and abide in him.

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That's the invitation. Not, oh, well, that's a bad look.

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Therefore, Jesus was not fully God. And he also sinned. And he was a racist.

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Like, what a series of horrific theological conclusions to make simply because you start with what you want first.

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May we live by Christ's example. That we can grow and change and evolve. And God is still speaking and calling us to learn and grow to be the best versions of the followers of Christ that we can be.

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Thanks be to God that Christ could give us such an example of change and flexibility and growth. I don't know what that was.

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But that was not a sermon. That was not proclaiming God's word.

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The scripture was not even opened. There was no exegesis. She didn't even bother to answer any of the questions there.

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All right, look, let's get into the scripture and see what's really going on here. All right?

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Matthew chapter 15, it starts in verse 21. It says, Praise the

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Lord. Now, the only way that you're truly going to appreciate this passage is if you first recognize that it doesn't come out of nowhere.

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It's connected to what just happened prior to this. So when it says Jesus went away from there, where?

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You know what I mean? So that means you need to look above the passage, right? I would argue go all the way back to verse one here in the chapter and take a look at what's going on.

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Pay close attention. At the beginning of the chapter, the Pharisees, the scribes, right, they come to Jesus.

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They come all the way from Jerusalem to challenge Jesus. But why? What's the challenge? Jesus is not obeying the traditions of the elders.

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Now, just imagine that for a moment. You know, imagine God in human flesh is standing in front of these teachers of God's law, and they don't even recognize him.

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They cannot see God's activity right in front of their very eyes. Why? Because they are committed to their own traditions.

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And their pride in controlling and holding to those traditions has blinded them to the reality of the situation.

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That's why Jesus calls them blind guides and teaches them about the heart.

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You know, look at this, verse six. You hypocrites!

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Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

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In other words, in their commitment to tradition, they've missed the heart of God in his word. So for example, in Deuteronomy 15,

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God says to take care of the poor among you. But in Exodus chapter 20, God also says to rest on the

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Sabbath. Okay, now we've got two laws, two good things that God has commanded, but they appear to come into tension with each other in certain moments in time.

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So what happens, for example, when you encounter a poor person on Sabbath? Right?

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So the Jewish tradition was developed, and it would say, or what they called this was the halakhic regulation.

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It would say this. A poor person can come to your home, but cannot enter into your home.

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The homeowner can answer the door, right? Can give to the poor, but only by standing within their own doorway.

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And so if both the homeowner and the poor person extend their hands across the threshold or the doorway, but they don't step through it, there has been no violation of Sabbath.

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Now that example is actually written down in an ancient tractate, okay?

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But then Jesus points out, you know, that these regulations that the Pharisees and the scribes require, they have made void the

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Word of God. It's right there in verse 6. It misses the heart of what God is truly after.

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It's right there, if they had the eyes to see it. But they don't, because the heart of God is actually about going deeper.

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It's actually about an issue that is much deeper. It's about mercy. It's about forgiveness. It's about grace.

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It's about blessing the nations out of the overflow of obedience to Yahweh. And that's precisely the backdrop to the encounter with the

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Canaanite woman, this Gentile woman, a woman from the nations. She shows up, and she begs

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Jesus to exorcise a demon out of her daughter. Now, the problem is, there's something wrong.

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So before the woman arrives in verse 21, something is off, and it's right back here in verse 12.

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Look at this. These are the disciples talking to Jesus. Do you know that the

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Pharisees were offended when they heard this saying? And there's the problem. The problem is, the disciples hold the

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Pharisees in very high esteem. Even though Jesus has already been kind of introducing this problem, and he's been kind of touching on it previously with all these religious leaders, you know, this goes back to the

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Sermon on the Mount, right? Who was the contrast between the one who is the worker of the kingdom of God?

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It was the Pharisees. It was the scribes, the hypocrites, right? And the disciples have heard this, but they still—it's like they still need time to let it sink in.

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These folks are not reliable guides and teachers of God's word. As a matter of fact,

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Jesus goes on to make some specific statements in verses 13 and 14 here, and the disciples are probably even more thoroughly shocked, right?

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And that leads to a question that Jesus says right in verse 16. Are you also still without understanding?

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There's a lesson for the disciples that they're not getting in the moment. And then what happens next?

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They travel and they meet a Gentile. And it's not just any Gentile, all right?

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It's a Canaanite woman. I mean, that's wrong in multiple ways, according to the

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Jews. But this is no accident. Everything Jesus says and does to and for the

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Canaanite Syrophoenician woman is, in my opinion, connected to the previous conversation with the religious leaders.

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Now think about this. You have someone who, by Jewish tradition, should not be talking or hanging out with Jesus and his disciples.

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Shouldn't be there at all, by tradition. And yet, she is not only there, she's persistent.

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Which, by the way, God loves persistence. Amen? That's a video for another time. God loves chutzpah.

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But not only that, she also knows the scripture, guys. Look at how she addresses

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Jesus. She cries out, verse 22, Have mercy on me,

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O Lord, Son of David. So not only does she understand that Jesus has power, she recognizes

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Jesus as the Messiah. Because only the Messiah, the Son of David, could have the power to exorcise demons.

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That's what she asks Jesus. My daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. The implicit question is, can you exorcise the demon out of her?

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Only the Messiah can do that. That was an expectation of Jews in that period. Why? Well, because many people believe that David was an exorcist.

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I've actually talked about this in previous videos. The point is, this lady knows the Bible. A Canaanite, Syrophoenician, Gentile.

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And she's behaving in a manner that actually aligns with God's heart. If you can just sidestep the tradition, it's clear as day.

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You can see it. Look at her persistence. Does that actually not look a bit like Abraham?

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Right? When Abraham kept persisting and going to God over and over again about Sodom, finding righteous people in Sodom.

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Remember that? The problem is, the disciples aren't understanding this. So look at this, verse 23.

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The disciples come to Jesus and beg him. They don't just ask, they beg. Send her away, for she is crying out after us.

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So what is happening in this moment is, Jesus is using this scenario to teach his disciples a valuable lesson about the failure of the traditions of men.

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The disciples don't want any part of this violation of tradition, but Jesus wants to show them something.

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This woman knows the Bible. Watch this, verse 25. She came and knelt before Jesus, saying,

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Lord, help me. Persistent, look at that. And he answered, It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.

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She said, Yes, Lord. Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table.

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By the way, the word dog there is a reference to Gentiles. Does this sound like she's offended, ladies and gentlemen?

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Or does it sound like a woman who knows how to talk to a Jewish rabbi? She knows this is most likely a teachable moment.

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Why? Because every time a rabbi speaks, it's a teachable moment for somebody. And that's the point.

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Jesus is testing her, and he's teaching his disciples at the same time. The bread of God, that is, a

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Jew would understand this to be God's word, God's blessings, they are for the

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Jews. That comes from the Bible. But if you know the rest of your scripture, which she apparently does, then you know that the scripture also promises that the nations will be blessed by God through his people, the

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Jews. And that's why she responds that way. This was not offensive at all in the first century, friends.

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And the story, it ends with not only the valuable lesson to the disciples, but Jesus praises this woman for her faith.

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You know? I mean, golly, guys. This is not about Jesus being racist.

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It's not about cringing. Jesus knew what he was going to do before he even said a word. Why is that?

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Because that's what a rabbi would do. And this lady reverend and all these guys who say that Jesus sinned and it was a bad look on his part, they just do not appreciate how

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Jewish Jesus' teaching method really was. They read the scripture through the lens of their own 21st century lived experience instead of trying to understand it through the lens of the original audience.

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And that's the problem. All right. But here's the deal. So let me just say this.

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I get heated with stuff like this because I get upset when people twist the word of God and mislead others, all right?

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But the reality is this lady needs prayer. You know? She has time to turn her life around.

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And you know what's happened before, okay? Hey, I've said this many times. If God can change my heart from being an obnoxious atheist to the man that I am today, then he can do it again for this lady and anybody swayed by her teaching, all right?

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I believe that. I hope you believe that as well. So let's just pray for that. Let's pray for her. Amen? Well, now it's your turn.

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What did you think of this sermon? What did you actually think about Jesus' comments to the Canaanite woman?

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Let me know in the comments below. As always, if you made it this far, you need to join my Patreon community even just to read the Bible with me.

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