The Text is Clear

Grab a Bible, something to write with. We're gonna be back in the book of Exodus. Quick recap of the end of chapter 23 and then we'll get into 24.

The sounds of joy.

Prayer for Illumination and Opening to Exodus

Okay, let's pray. Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant us your Holy Spirit who writes the preached word into our hearts so that we may receive and believe it and be gladdened and comforted by it in eternity.

Glorify your word in our hearts. Make it so bright and warm that we may find pleasure in it and through your inspiration, think what is right by your power. Fulfill the word for the sake of Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord.

Amen. All right, we are working our way through the book of Exodus. Now, a little bit of a notice to where we're going here. There's a rhythm and a flow to the next part of Exodus and we're already seeing God giving commandments and over and again, the commandment against idolatry, which is the breaking of the first commandment.

In the sermon today, we noted that idolatry is a big deal and that that passage from Joshua that says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, that's in the context of not worshiping and serving other gods.

Now, were there any questions that came up as a result of the sermon? I mean, that doctrine, that pesky doctrine about the Lord's Supper was there and it's there for us all to feel uncomfortable, right?

The Real Presence in the Lord's Supper

But the reality of the situation is is that it provides deep comfort, really, truly deep comfort. Yesterday, somebody who is part of our Aletheia service who spent years in like the ultra charismatic movement, he made a comment about the sermon and about the Lord's Supper.

He said, when I was an evangelical, I wanted so badly for the Lord's Supper to be more than just a symbol. That was actually the yearning of his heart. And I said, I know exactly what you're talking about because it's so confusing.

Here Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood. And when I was an evangelical, I would say, I know Jesus said it, but that's not what he meant. What a strange way to read the Bible. I know it says it, but it doesn't mean that.

What does it mean?

I don't know, it just doesn't mean that.

That's a weird way to read the Bible.

And I used to do that a lot with a lot of biblical texts, especially in relations to baptism and the Lord's Supper. So yes, I was dragged into this kicking and screaming by God's word. Yeah, you know, literally.

I mean, that's how the After reading it and then interpreting it on your Yep, in the Greek. I'll tell the story kind of in brief. I know I've probably told it before, so that's okay. I repeat myself all the time.

The older I get, the more I repeat myself. It's kind of fun. Yeah, I sound like my grandparents. But when I, years and years ago, I, Barb and I actually got caught up in a very, very dangerous cult that was associated with what's known as the Latter Rain Movement.

So it's like the charismatic church on like Uber steroids. And we had a prophetess over us who told us how we were to spend our money. I mean, all of our decisions were controlled by this lady. And God graciously delivered us out of that.

That's a story in and of itself. And when we got out, Barb and I felt really betrayed. We were very angry and we were very upset, but we were upset at ourselves. How could we be so foolish? How could we be so deceived to fall into something like this?

And we had even gone to Christian high school. We had four years of Bible class. And we even had memory verses. And Barb would study really hard for them and I would never. So, and that's because I have a photographic memory.

I could literally look at a passage and just read it through in my mind a couple of times and I would know it. She would have to do this kind of thing. But, so coming out of that, we didn't know. So I told Barb, I said, I think the Bible's true, but I don't think we know what it says.

And so it was then that, by kind of a weird, securitous number of events, I used to work in downtown Seattle at 1111 3rd Avenue, and which, at a bank called Pacific Northwest Bank. And so Barb and I had been married for just a short amount of time.

And I would take the bus, I actually bought a Metro Pass so I can take the bus to work. And so one morning I'm riding the bus to get to work. And one of the regular clients at the bank, she was in the bus with me.

She was just a few seats up and she was reading the Watchtower Magazine by the Jehovah's Witnesses. And I knew enough that Jehovah's Witness equals bad. That's pretty much it, Jehovah's Witness equals bad.

And so when she came, when we got off the bus, I came up to her and I said, oh, are you a Jehovah's Witness? And she said, no, I'm studying to become one. And I said, I heard that they're a cult. And she says, really, I hadn't heard that.

And I said, yeah.

I said, if you wanna talk about it sometime, maybe we can get together and talk about it. She said, I'd really like to do that. Maybe we'd get together for lunch sometime. And it's like, yeah. It's like, now what am I gonna do?

Because she's, it's like she accepted the invite. So I kind of panicked. It's like, what am I gonna do? I don't know a thing about Jehovah's Witnesses. So I, on my lunch, I, you know, two blocks down from us is the Seattle Public Library.

And this is the days before computers and everything's on the Dewey's decimal system and you have those stupid cards, right?

So I had to hoof it.

You know, I don't have a very long lunch because I'm just a teller. You know, you get like 30 minutes.

It's like, I gotta run over there.

So looked up at the Seattle Public Library, found a couple of books on the Jehovah's Witnesses. Number one was the Jehovah the Watchtower by Walter Martin. And another one also written by Walter Martin called the Kingdom of the Cults.

And so it's like, okay. So checked them out, brought them home, and started reading. And that was the first time I'd ever been introduced to this idea of comparative doctrine, comparative theology. Now, at this point, we were attending, now, a Nazarene church because this is, you know, we went to high school and had a Nazarene church.

And we were attending a Nazarene church up in Aurora, up in northern suburb of Seattle. And so I would study at night, learn the differences between biblical Christianity and the Jehovah's Witnesses. And in downtown Seattle during rush hour, there was tons of Jehovah's Witnesses who were filling out their time cards in order to, you know, to put in the amount of hours necessary to survive the Battle of Armageddon because their whole salvation scheme is totally by works.

And so I would try out what I was reading on them. And it didn't go so well at first. No, I mean, seriously, these guys could, like, it was kind of like your kid brother trying to take a swing at you.

You know, you come hold, you know, hold his head as he's swinging all he wants. He ain't gonna touch you. That was what it was like. And I was doing the swing and they were just kind of laughing at me.

It's like, eh.

So I'd go back home, study some more, come back, same result, go back, study some more, go and talk to the Jehovah's Witnesses and eventually got to the point where I can kind of stand toe to toe with them.

Then it got to the point where my understanding of scripture began to actually make it so they couldn't stand toe to toe with me anymore. It was kind of getting to be an interesting conversation. And then it got to the point where they would see me coming and they would pack their stuff up and leave without talking to me.

And the first time that happened, I literally ran to the street corner. I said, I claim this corner in the name of Jesus. You know, I was young, right? And so I eventually did have that lunch conversation with the lady who was the client of our bank and was able to provide her with a lot of not only biblical comparative work, but also documentation that showed that the Watchtower Bible Track Society had predicted specific dates for the end of the world prophetically and they hadn't come to pass.

And she was a paralegal, so she was much into evidence. And so it turns out she never became a Jehovah's Witness, but I don't know if she ever became a Christian, which kind of still gnaws at me, you know, that she did hear the gospel, she heard the truth, but it was kind of a fascinating thing.

But what I found then is that it was, for me, this was like a subject that like made sense. It clicked. I loved getting in the scriptures, loved doing the comparative work. And so I actually joined a little network of people who would spend time speaking with and helping people come out of the cults.

And so I then started listening to, at the time, the radio program, The Bible Answer Man. Walter Martin was the fellow, Dr. Walter Martin. He was alive at the time and was nationally syndicated on Christian radio stations around the country.

Walter Martin, The Bible Answer Man program. And I started listening to that, and that was his forte. And I took to it like a fish to water and eventually reached out to Dr. Walter Martin. I said, Dr. Martin, I come out of the latter rain.

You know, my wife and I both, I'm now doing work where we're preaching the gospel to Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. And I said, I really want to study this formally.

What should I do?

And he says, well, pack your bags, move back to Southern California, and attend Christ College Irvine and study apologetics under Dr. Rod Rosenblatt. Well, if Walter Martin says to go to Christ College Irvine and study apologetics, you know what you do?

You go. So we packed our bags and moved back to Southern California. I applied at Christ College and was accepted and started going to school there. That was my first, at Christ College, that was my first exposure to Lutherans.

How Lutherans Forced a Reconsideration of Baptism and the Supper

And boy, I did not like them.

Like, not at all.

It's like, their pastors wore dresses, they baptized infants, you know, they believe that they're receiving the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper, and they sing these hymns that I've never heard before.

Who are these people? And then to make matters worse, Dr. Rod Rosenblatt, the best way I could describe him is that he is a man of the earth. Best way I could put it. I mean, if you were to look up man of the earth in the dictionary, there's his photograph right there with him smoking a cigarette, all right?

Now, as a Nazarene, we didn't smoke, we didn't chew, we didn't dance, we didn't play cards, we didn't go to movies rated higher than G, otherwise you can lose your salvation, and it's constantly, internally looking at yourself to see if your good works thermometer is warm enough to have some confidence that you might make it on the day of judgment.

That's how bad it was. So I'm running into these Lutherans, and then Dr. Rosenblatt, I mean, and in his apologetic classes, I like overloaded on them immediately. I was taking all of the classes that you're supposed to take after you've been there for a few years, I was taking those the first year.

And so there's Rosenblatt in class, and the thing he kept doing was saying, Jesus bled and died for all my sins and your sins. He had the saying that he would say that it's like going to the roulette wheel, which is a terrible illustration if you think about it.

And he says, I'm gonna bet all of my chips on Jesus. And he says, and I know that when that ball drops, it's on him, and I'm saved.

Terrible illustration, it's like,.

How can you call yourself a Christian and talk about Jesus in a roulette wheel in the same, ah, right? And I determined he's not going to heaven, he's not saved because he's not even trying. This is what I said.

Now, while all this is going on, now I've got my Lutheran schoolmates, which I'm besting in all of the classes. And believe me, when we attended college, it was a competition. It was always a competition on the grades because the way the grade system was done, you'd take a test, all the results were put up in order according to who scored the highest and stuff like this, okay?

Everybody knew what everybody was getting, and you knew at all times, not only what your grade was in the class, but how you stacked up against everybody else. The competition was fierce. And these guys didn't like me, and I was a jerk to boot, right?

And so they started ribbing me, and here's how they would rib me. Hey, Rose, bro, what? What's that baptism thing again? Baptism is the thing you do to show the world that you made a decision for Jesus.

This is what I was taught. They'd throw me a Greek New Testament. Show us, show us. And I'd throw it back. I'd say, it's in there.

Where?

Somewhere, okay? And then one of them would pull out a biblical text. Listen to what Peter says about baptism, Chris. Baptism is for the forgiveness of your sins. I know it says that, but it doesn't mean it.

What's it mean, Rose, bro? I don't know, but it doesn't mean that, okay?

Hated these guys.

They were constantly besting me with the Bible, and it really bugged me hard, and it should've. And then they would get into conversations with me about the Lord's Supper. Here's what it says, what Jesus said.

This is my body. What's it mean, Rose, bro? It means this is a symbol of my body. Where's the word symbol in the text, Rose, bro? That's what he meant. Well, if he meant that, why didn't he say it? I don't know.

Leave me alone. And this is the struggle I'm going through. And of course, the preaching I'm getting at my church, I have no assurance of my salvation. These Lutherans were smug, but they were really confident in the mercy of God.

And not only that, as somebody who has gone toe-to-toe with Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and name any cultists that you can think of, and knows how to use the Scripture to show that what they're believing isn't true, it bugged me that these guys were now playing that game against me, and I was losing and losing badly.

And this is in the context, then, of that little mini-story I always tell. I start to question, you know, I'm gonna get these guys. So I go up to Rosenblatt after class, and I say, Rosenblatt, if what you're saying is true and we're totally saved by what Jesus did, right, then you're saying you can do whatever you want.

Because I'm thinking, if we're totally saved by what Jesus has done, that means I can just sin like there's no tomorrow. And, of course, his answer was, of course, Chris, if Christ has set you free from slavery to sin, death, and the devil, what do you wanna do?

I couldn't get an edge on these guys, couldn't. And so finally, so it's my third year at Christ College, and I've taken two years of Greek already, so I'm now taking a third year of Greek, and it's just a readings course.

And if you know the Missouri Synod, a very, very famous professor at the Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, he's gone to glory now, was Louis Brighton. And Louis Brighton was an expert in the Book of Revelation.

His son taught at Christ College, and he was my Greek professor that third year. And I swear he did this on purpose, absolutely swear he did it on purpose. So we start off the first part of that quarter with we're translating through Titus.

It's not a very long book. So the homework, he'd assign five, six, 10 verses depending, and you'd go and you'd translate it, and then we'd sit in class and we'd discuss the translation and how it all worked and stuff like this.

And so it's late September, early October of that year, and I'm up doing my homework, because my wife will tell you that I procrastinate, like there's no tomorrow, right? And so I'm up at night, she's asleep, and I'm translating through Titus three.

And let me show you the text. Here's the text, and I do have the Greek highlighted, and I'll walk you through it. We, for we ourselves, we were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Now watch this passage, because this was like a twofer. This is like killing two stones with one bird. And I know I did that wrong, but you kind of get the idea.

But watch what this says.

But when the goodness and the loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, and watch the verbs,.

He saved us.

And it's so clear here. This is a third person singular aorist.

He saved us.

There's Rosenblatt's gospel right there. And watch what comes then. Not because of works done by us in righteousness. My salvation doesn't depend on me. I'm wrestling with this. But now comes like the hardest part.

But according to his own mercy, by, and then let me get the Greek a little bit bigger, so I don't want to walk you through the pieces of it. He saved us not by works, okay, but by,.

Where's my, here we go, dia.

Okay, let me point this out to you, dia luthro. So over here, that Greek word is dia. It's via the means of it. You can say by the means of, or via, or you talk, so this is always talking about the means.

So if I said I drove to Crookston via a farming tractor, okay, that would explain how I got there. So then the idea here is that he saved us via, through, and this word right here, luthro, washing. This is a special word.

This word has a specific meaning. This is not like baptizo, which can refer to a lot of different things. It could talk about washing. You could do your dishes by baptizing them and things like this. Lutron here is a ceremonial cleansing, and it can only refer to baptism as a religious rite.

So he saved us through the washing, and then this word right here, it's a little bit of a mouthful, palingenesias, regeneration. And this word only appears twice in the New Testament,.

Only two times.

Once in regards to us being regenerated, being raised from the dead, and the second time is actually the first time it appears in the Bible. It's in regards to Jesus talking about the new earth, that after the destruction of this current planet, he's going to regenerate the earth, and there'll be a new earth.

So he saved us through the washing, ceremonial washing, of regeneration. So I'm translating this, and I'm freaking out, because there's no way around it. He saved us, not by our works, we contributed nothing to it, and now to add insult to injury, he's done this through the washing of regeneration.

So I go and grab a different Greek lexicon. I'm thinking this word, lutron, it can't mean this. So I go grab a classical Greek lexicon, which was in my room at the time, so I had to do this, wake a barb up.

Come back, look it up, it means the same thing,.

There's no way around this.

And I was stuck. So now I've got a problem.

I'm either going to have to deny what this text says, and fight against it, or I'm gonna have to bend the knee and say, God, you're right, I'm wrong, on both counts. And my bending of the knee was not holy.

I literally let out a four-letter expletive, and I said, I'm a Lutheran. That's it, I give up.

I surrender.

I did not want to be this. But I couldn't get around what the text said. So Barb wakes up the next day, and I said, Barb, we're Lutherans,.

And she goes, oh, no, we are not.

Not on your life. It took her a lot longer. And I learned with her that I just had to walk through the biblical texts, and teach her the way I'm supposed to, as the husband in the family. So what we did is we would always have family Bible study.

And it was always when dinner was finished and before we took the dishes away. So in fact, we have our old Bible in our house somewhere, but it was the old Lutheran self-study Bible, the Bible that studies itself, it was weird.

But so every night, I'd pull the Bible out, and I just walked through whole story after story after story. And when she ran into texts that were saying the opposite of what she believed, she would throw a flag on the play, ask a question.

Sometimes she would be upset, and I would have to just say, this is what it says. And she would kind of like this. And eventually she came around, but I didn't do it. God's word did. Remember what Jesus said in our sermon today.

The flesh counts for nothing. The flesh cannot help you in this regard. This only comes through the spirit, and the words that Jesus speaks are spirit and life. And so this is actually one of the most freeing things ever because I used to think it was my job to convince people of the truth of the Bible.

No, my job is to preach the word. It is the job of God, God, the Holy Spirit, to take somebody's heart and flip it. I was brought into this by God's word. I was forced against the wall, and that was a pivotal moment.

Either I'm gonna become an outright liar and know I'm lying, or I'm gonna believe what scripture says. That was the only choice I had. But the text is just ridiculously clear. So that's how I was drug into this.

And I gotta tell you, one of the things I love is that I never have to take a biblical text and say, I know it says this, but it doesn't mean that. I never have to do it. And I used to do that all the time, all the time when I was a self-righteous punk pietist.

Assurance, Baptism, and the Gift of Salvation

Yeah.

Regarding my relationship with God, which is, I think, a good way to talk about it, I struggled to still believe that I was saved by what Jesus did. It took a long time for that to come off. I remember very distinctly, the second year that we were Lutherans, it was literally, for us, the first time we'd ever done Lent.

Because we came into it at a time where we kind of missed Lent. And so, it's our second year in Lutheranism, first time that we're doing the Lent thing. And I made a point of, I was going to go through the entire New Testament, I was gonna read the whole New Testament in Lent for the whole purpose of making sure that I somehow hadn't been deceived, that salvation was truly God's work, not mine.

And so, I cut the New Testament up into pieces, and I stuck to that plan for the whole time of Lent. And at the end of it, I basically said, why have I not seen this before? I was convinced that salvation was totally a gift, and that even James doesn't overthrow it.

In fact, James is beautiful because it protects us against the licentiousness of antinomianism. It's a beautiful epistle, I love James. But reading through the entire New Testament, I was floored by how much it's there.

But the other thing I was kind of floored by was how wet the New Testament is. And by wet, I mean how many texts literally keep referring back to baptism. I'd never seen it before. So that was a good thing for me to do, but I gotta tell you, I really applied myself to it, but still, it took about 10 years before I really could say, I have full confidence that Christ has me, he's forgiven me, and that I'm saved, and that it's totally a gift.

It took about 10 years.

Or transition.

Yeah.

It takes a long time of listening and letting your mind change to that perspective. Last weekend, the reason some people came.

Thousands of miles was because of that relief.

Yeah.

And the relief that takes place once that's transitioned.

I mean, we had a lady here all the way from New South Wales in Australia. She traveled all the way around the world to be here. And we were with her last year at the PCR conference in Sydney, and she was one of our first Elysians.

And she literally couldn't think of a better place.

That she could be.

Why do you wanna come to Oslo, Minnesota? It's in the middle of nowhere. She could think of no better place because here is where the gospel that set her free is preached. So, you know. And I think many people do not appreciate the sheer anxiety that is created by the false teaching that you have to somehow save yourself in part or in full.

If you have to save yourself even a little bit, you will have no assurance of your salvation.

None.

Because you're always gonna be constantly asking the question, have I done enough? And no, I haven't. The law is never satisfied. But not only that, the experience of sanctification is awful because it's a constant recognizing, oh my goodness, I am just not as good or holy as I ever thought I was.

The more you study God's law, the more you realize I'm just a complete turd. How on earth am I supposed to stand before God and hold up my paltry, sporadic, lame, weak good works and expect to be saved by them?

I don't know how I can do it. They're singing downstairs.

Yeah.

So that's how I came into it.

That's how.

I'm not sorry I.

Yeah.

Is that the first time I've really told the full story here? Probably, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah.

The insane thing is you second guess, huh?

Yeah.

But it is what it is. You have faith. And it's through the grace of God who forgives you.

Yep.

And because of that, of course you want to share the word with others. So then you do the works. And then you want to do good because you're mentoring others to do well.

Yeah, and it's only, by the way, you can't even begin to do a good work until you totally believe that you are saved by what Christ has done. Because if you're doing your good works in order to earn brownie points with God or to be saved, you're doing it for yourself.

They're not for the sake of your neighbor. They're for you.

Yeah.

And that's kind of the nasty bit of pietism and self-righteousness is that I can honestly say there were times when I did my good works not because I cared about anybody else. It was because I was trying to save my skin from the fires of hell.

So I'm going to be nice to you so that I don't have to burn. That's not a good work. That's something completely different. But not only that, that's a despising then of the gospel.

But you see other churches are so quick. Putting into the basket and it's all money.

Yeah.

You know, type of thing. I don't want to lose them in the parish here because we are above numbers here.

Yeah, I can't worry about the numbers.

I have to worry about preaching the word.

That was other churches. Now when I said here, that means because I was at another church. Here is different. We have to worry about hearing the word and do the job to us. But through the grace of God, that you're able to do that.

Yeah.

And I heard that before.

Yeah.

All right.

You have a question?

I'm not talking to God, but.

I know.

Follow the Bible when you speak about that.

Yeah.

Confession, Absolution, and the Freedom of the Gospel

One of the things that was the most freeing and also kind of frightening as far as the Lutheran church service was that, you know, and then we talked about this a little bit when we talked about the divine service, is that we begin by confessing our sins.

I cannot even begin to tell you how freeing that is because I used to come to church believing that I had to keep my act together and that if anybody asked me how I was doing, oh, I was growing in the Lord, my walk with Jesus, we're tight, you know, and he's working through other areas of my life and we're walking through the different rooms in my life and we're getting things in order and it's just improvement after improvement after improvement.

And it would have been a lie. And in fact, at times I said that it was a lie because the temptations we face as Christians are huge. The temptations that begin in our own sinful flesh because of our own sinful desires, we still have a sin nature.

And that sin nature wants to do things that are horrifyingly awful. I mean, and the list includes all of the 10 commandments. Don't just focus on the sexual immorality. You're gonna have to focus in on greed, murderous thoughts, slander and gossip and division and factions and all of this awful stuff.

Everything about that is me, me, me, me, me. And so the preaching in the pietistic churches would preach against that, but there was no gospel. So it's up to me to say, oh, I've applied the four steps the pastor gave and I'm starting to see some improvement in my life this week.

But I'm not because the internal struggle is terrible and you get to the point where you actually are denying the obvious and you feel like you have to deny it because in that church environment, if you let on that you're struggling, you're kicked to a second level.

All right, and the levels kind of go like this. You have your victorious Christians and you have your backslidden Christians. And so the backslidden Christian is the person who isn't trying to be victorious anymore.

And so, and I have come to learn that I think the backslidden Christians are the ones who are the most sane because it's that other group, the shiny ones, that they're not really shiny at all. For all their talk about how holy they are and how committed they are to Jesus, they are some of the rudest, most hate-filled, self-centered people on planet Earth.

And they are talking about how holy they are while they are treating other people like garbage and they don't see it. Unfortunately, I was part of the shiny group for a while. But the shine wasn't from the Holy Spirit.

The shine was a facade that I put over my own sin. So to be able to come to church and say these words, I confess that I am by nature sinful, unclean. And this week, today, already before I even got to church, I have sinned against God in thought, word, deed, things I've done, things I haven't done, name the whole list, to confess my utter weakness and saying, Lord, I am a complete screw-up.

And despite all of my efforts, I have yet to get my act together. But then to hear these words, which again, it's so offensive. I, as a called and ordained servant of the Word, instead, by the command of Christ, forgive you all of your sins.

And it's scandalous to some people.

They'll respond to your word.

It's not my word.

I'm not doing the forgiving.

Jesus is and he did all that on the cross. I'm just delivering what he accomplished on the cross to people's ears so that they can hear and have some comfort. If salvation is by grace through faith alone and it is not his will that any should perish, then it is his will that you hear that you are forgiven.

It's his will that you hear that despite the struggle, despite the failures, that Christ has bled and died for that and he still has you. And what does that do then? It starts to build this ridiculously great confidence and it's no longer a confidence in me.

I have zero confidence in me, like none at all. But that confidence grows and the confidence is in Jesus. The more I become small, the bigger he becomes to the point where I gotta tell you about that guy because he's done it all.

It's all gift. And so it never grows old for me to keep telling the story. And you're gonna know, I'm like a one-hit wonder. You know? I have got one song to sing. Thankfully, the Bible gives me many verses to sing the song from, but it's the same song.