Yom Kippur

All right, grab a Bible, something to write with. We're going to be in Leviticus 16, taking a look at the commandments regarding the

Day of Atonement. Day of Atonement. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, we come before you in humble awe. You are the one true

God. There is none other like you. In fact, there is no other God aside from you. Come, we pray, and bless our hearts and our minds as we study your word.

Send your Holy Spirit into our lives, that we may grow in love and grace and confidence in the revelation of your word, that we are forgiven in Jesus Christ, so that we may go forth into all the world and proclaim your gospel, so that others may learn of your saving grace.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Today in Leviticus, we are going to be taking a look at the commands related to the sacrifices for the

Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. And we'll note there's some strange stuff going on here.

And if you were here during our Holy Week observances, made reference to the fact that there's a funny thing that happens in Scripture, and that is in the types and the shadows, which the

Old Testament is, there are allusions to Christ and Barabbas.

And this is another one of those texts where you can see on how the real

Day of Atonement worked out. So the Day of Atonement in the Old Testament is type and shadow for the real

Day of Atonement, which is Good Friday. That's the Day of Atonement, because Christ's sacrifice is a once -for -all sacrifice for sins.

And as we've reviewed several times now in the book of Hebrews, the blood of goats and bulls could never forgive sins, and they never did forgive sins.

They always pointed to the once -for -all sacrifice of Christ. And you'll note that since this was something that had to be done yearly, that the sacrifices that had to be made were constant, and you were always on this treadmill of sacrifices, it was as if these sacrifices, only in the mind of those who were receiving the benefit of them, by word of the absolution proclaimed by the priest, your sins shall be forgiven, that it was just rolling it back, kind of rolling it back, just rolling it back, rolling it back, because you'd have to do it over and over and over and over again.

We, on the other hand, in the new covenant, we look to the once -for -all sacrifice of Christ, and we are reminded always and again of the benefits of His once -for -all sacrifice for our sins, and they are placarded before us week after week,

Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, so that we can be constantly assured of our right standing forgiveness and pardon that we have from God, because and on account of Christ.

This then gives us confidence of our right standing, that we have been adopted, and then in that confidence, we can then boldly tell others about Christ, we can boldly endure suffering and persecution for our faith, and things of that nature, but as we work our way through this, we'll see how this unfolds.

Now, if you remember earlier in Leviticus, two of the sons of Levi, of Aaron, they offered unauthorized fire.

They decided to basically worship God any old way they wanted to, and they paid the price for that heavily with their own life, so that's our reminder as we work our way into this text.

Leviticus 16, Yahweh spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the

Lord and they died, and Yahweh said to Moses, tell Aaron and your brother not to come at any time into the holy place inside the veil before the mercy seat that is on the ark, so that he may not die.

In other words, you come when God tells you to come, to offer these sacrifices and do things of that nature.

You don't come whenever you feel prompted, or you feel like you should come and do that, so where our worship is not dictated, their worship is not dictated by their feelings, but by what

God has prescribed. I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat, but in this way,

Aaron shall come into the holy place with a bull from the herd for a sin offering, and a ram for a burnt offering.

He shall put on the holy linen coat, shall have the linen undergarment on his body.

He shall tie the linen sash around his waist and wear the linen turban.

These are the holy garments, and he shall bathe his body in water and then put them on.

He shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering, one ram for a burnt offering.

Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself, and shall make atonement for himself and his house.

So in the Levitical priesthood then, before the priest could offer the sacrifice of the day of atonement, he had to first offer a sacrifice for his own sins.

He had to be absolved, and then he could do the duties on behalf of the people.

Then he shall take two goats and set them before Yahweh at the entrance of the tent of meeting. Okay. Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for Yahweh, the other lot for Azazel.

Anyone have a note on Azazel in their Bible? This is a tough one to tease out.

Marilyn, you got the Lutheran study Bible. What does it tell us about Azazel? Yeah, possibly a demon.

You know, there's quite the mystery regarding this Azazel. Lots of ink spilled over the millennia.

Did you find the note in the Lutheran study Bible, Marilyn? No? So it just leaves you in complete darkness?

Yeah, the scapegoat. So this is kind of fascinating.

We're not exactly sure how this plays out. One possible interpretation is, oh, you haven't found it?

Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Azazel, go to hell.

Is that weird? Yeah, if you were cussing in Hebrew, you know, you'd tell somebody to Azazel.

Yeah, yeah. So that's fascinating. So here's kind of the idea.

One is for the Lord, the other is for the devil. The one is for the

Lord, and the other is sent to hell. It's weird.

We're not exactly sure how it all works out. But isn't it fascinating? For the

Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, now you have two identical animals.

One is taken, the other is sent. One dies, the other is sent off to Azazel.

Kind of fascinating. Now let me remind you how this plays out then in our gospel narratives regarding Barabbas.

And let me get there. Matthew 27, starting at verse 11.

Jesus stood before the

Jews. Jesus said, you have said so. But when he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer.

So Pilate said to him, do you not hear how many things they testify against you? But he gave them no answer, not even to a single charge.

So the governor was greatly amazed. Now at the feast, the governor was accustomed to release for the crowd any one prisoner whom they wanted.

And they had then a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. Barabbas, it just means son of the father.

Fascinating word. Or do you want me to read this to you? Jesus, who's called the Christ. For he knew that it was out of envy that they had delivered him up.

Beside, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, his wife sent word to him, have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I've suffered much because of him today in a dream.

Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy

Jesus. The governor again said to them, which of the two do you want me to release for you?

And they said, Barabbas. Pilate said to them, then what shall I do with Jesus who's called

Christ? They all said, let him be crucified. And he said, why? What evil has he done?

But they shouted all the more, let him be crucified. So when

Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water, washed his hands before the crowd saying,

I'm innocent of this man's blood. I'm sorry, that water won't be able to make you innocent, Pilate. See to it yourselves.

So all the people answered, his blood be on us and on our children. Then he released for them

Barabbas, having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified. What a fascinating turn of events.

So let's read, continue reading Leviticus 16 in light of the fulfillment of it.

This is type and shadow in Leviticus 16. And the fulfillment is what we just read on the day of atonement on Good Friday.

And let me back up just a smidge. Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself, shall make atonement for himself in his house.

Then he shall take two goats, set them before Yahweh at the entrance of the tent of meeting.

Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for Yahweh, the other for Azazel.

Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering.

But the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before Yahweh to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.

Aaron shall present the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house.

And he shall kill the bull as a sin offering for himself. And he shall take a censer full of coals of fire from the altar before Yahweh and the two handfuls of sweet incense beaten small, and he shall bring it inside the veil and put the incense on the fire before Yahweh.

The cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is over the testimony so that he does not die.

And he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side.

And in the front of the mercy seat, he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.

And so you'll note then that this is a different type of sacrifice in this sense.

The daily sacrifices, where's the blood sprinkled? It's not on the mercy seat. It's sprinkled against the altar.

And the blood is smeared on the horns of the altar. But once a year, once a year, this sacrifice, its blood, is brought into the

Holy of Holies. And it is sprinkled on the mercy seat, which is a big deal.

This once a year for the mercy seat. Now Christ, he's taken his blood into the real temple and sprinkled it on the real mercy seat because the temple and the tabernacle were just copies.

They were just copies of the originals. Now that being the case, then you can kind of see how this is all playing out.

This is a big deal. And remember, when the high priest goes into the Holy of Holies, his uniform is unique among the other

Levites because he's wearing the full garb now of the high priest with the turban and all this stuff.

And on the bottom part of his robes, you have pomegranate jingle bells.

And so they would put a rope around his ankle. And while he was performing his duties, you can hear ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching.

And if you heard ka -ching and then it goes quiet, God killed him. You take the rope and drag him out.

You can't go in there, otherwise there'll be two bodies in there. So that's not going to be a good thing.

So keep that in mind. So then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil to do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat in front of the mercy seat.

Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel and because of their transgression, all their sins.

And so shall he do for the tent of meeting, which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness.

No one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the holy place until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel.

Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it and shall take some of the blood of the bull, some of the blood of the goat, put it on the horns of the altar all around, and he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, cleanse it, consecrate it from the uncleanness of the people of Israel.

And when he has made an end of atoning for the holy place in the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat.

Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel and all their transgressions, all their sins.

He shall put on them on the head of the goat, send it away into the wilderness by the hand of the man who is in readiness, and the goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.

Go free. We're going to send all of your sins to the devil. We're going to send all your sins to hell.

They've been taken off the people. The devil can have them. It's a fascinating thing.

And so, you know, with the two different goats, then it prefigures the releasing of Barabbas, who in a very real way is sent off to Azazel, whereas Christ, he makes atonement for the people.

And you'll notice that the first goat is not killed for the purpose of making atonement for the people.

The first goat is killed, and its blood is used to make atonement for the tabernacle, to make atonement for the holy places, because the tabernacle is dwelling among an unholy people, whereas Christ's sacrifice, his blood poured on the real mercy seat, was for the forgiveness of our sins.

It was for not to make the temple holy. It was in order to make the people holy, to make them forgiven.

So there's a little bit of a difference when you pay attention to how the details go. And so the sins of the people are laid on the goat that goes out to Azazel.

They are taken from them and put on that goat and sent to the devil. Like, what's the devil going to do with those, right?

You see the devil sitting there going, thanks, great, another yearly package of sin. That's right, return to center.

Leave the package unopened. Don't open that one. Yeah, yeah, you can have them back.

We don't want that. And so it's fascinating that in the type and shadows, the devil is given a yearly reminder.

Oh yeah, I'm taking the sins off the people, taking them off the people, sending them to Azazel. But when Christ comes,

God lays on Jesus the iniquity of us all, and he dies. So you notice the day of atonement typology is incomplete because the mercy seat, the altar, the implements in the temple, they're all atoned for and cleansed because they dwell in the midst of an unholy people.

The sins are sent away year after year, but this is an incomplete cycle now.

And so the day of atonement then comes when Christ comes. And rather than the sins of the people being laid on Barabbas, he's released, but the sins are laid on Christ.

And now he bleeds and dies for them, not for the temple. Very fascinating when you kind of, you know, you sit here and you have to pay attention.

You kind of have to go, all right, Jesus did these things, and you can see in the type and shadow it's related to Leviticus 16, but the details work differently.

They work very differently altogether. Any questions?

That may have been confusing, yeah. No, it doesn't mention the necessity to clean up the blood.

We do know they cleaned it up. We know from church history, we also know from the writings of men like Josephus and others, that at certain times of the year, and I mentioned this a few weeks ago, that because of the just ginormous number of sacrifices, there was a river of blood flowing from the temple complex.

And so they were constantly washing it and keeping it clean, but there really was a bona fide river of blood.

And leaving blood would have created a sanitary issue. So they did have to clean it up.

So does it stay on the mercy seat? That's the question. It's just a sprinkling on the mercy seat.

So yeah, what a mess though.

Okay. And all the demons came flying out of the building too,

I'm sure. So that was a good, copious amount of sprinkle.

Okay, well I would imagine that sprinkling a building would require a little bit more water than sprinkling a person.

But yeah, indeed. All right, we continue

Leviticus 16. So Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting, shall take off the linen garments that he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there.

He shall bathe his body in water in a holy place, and put on his garments, and come out and offer his burnt offering, and the burnt offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people, and the fat of the sin offering he shall burn on the altar.

And he who lets the goat go to Azazel shall wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and afterwards he may come into the camp.

So being in contact with a goat that has all the sins of the people on it requires a good washing.

Like another prefiguring of baptism a little bit here. So the bull for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought into the make atonement in the holy place, shall be carried outside the camp.

Their skin, their flesh, and their dung shall be burned up with fire. He who burns them shall wash his clothes, bathe his body in water, and afterwards he may come into the camp.

So you in contact with all that gore, and blood, and sacrifice, and stuff for sins, you gotta be baptized and cleaned up, and have that all washed away.

And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves, and shall do no work either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.

Now I may have mentioned this here before, what does it mean in this context when it says to afflict yourselves?

Do you know what that's referring to? No? All right.

Any guesses? All right.

Fasting. The way you afflict yourself is to fast.

If you don't believe me, try it. Now this command in conjunction with the day of atonement.

So year, after year, after year, after year. Seventh month, by the way, puts this in the fall.

Seventh month puts this pretty late in the fall because according to the way God initially set up the

Jewish calendar, the calendar for the Hebrews, Nisan was the first month, which is in the spring, and on the 15th is when you have the exodus.

You have the Passover. So you figure late March, early April, summer in there would be the beginning of the year for them.

Count seven months out, and now you're well past the harvest, and you're into the fall months.

So this is the reason why the day of atonement falls so late in the Jewish calendar, but you get the idea.

But you'll note then that in preparation for Yom Kippur, for the day of atonement, it is expected of the people of Israel that they are too fast.

They are to afflict themselves. Fast forward then into the new covenant. You know, the type and shadow gives way to the reality, and the church begins putting into place a practice that you are free to observe or not observe.

Lent is neither commanded nor forbidden, but what the church did is in preparation for Good Friday, the day of atonement, they set up a 40 -day season called

Lent for the purpose of preparing your hearts and minds for it, and Lent being a penitential season, along with it came fasting.

You know, days that you would choose that you would afflict yourself in preparation for, in anticipation of, you know, again, celebrating and observing the real day of atonement, which was the death of Christ.

And so you can see that the Lenten practices that the church picked up really early on, very, very early.

Lent is not a new practice. It comes up pretty early in the

Christian church, and you can see that they picked up some of the themes in preparation for the day of atonement from the book of Leviticus.

In fact, Leviticus as a book was highly studied by the early church.

Today's modern churches, post -modern churches, I mean, Leviticus is rarely ever touched, but it was an integral part of catechesis, and so you can see with this mindset of the types and shadows and the expectation of fasting in preparation for the day of atonement, how that then leads to the creation of the practices of Lent leading up to Holy Week and the death of Christ and his resurrection.

We continue. Now, you shall do no work either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.

So, you know, this is an extra Sabbath type of thing. For on this day shall atonement be made for you to cleanse you.

You shall be cleaned before Yahweh from all your sins. It's a Sabbath of solemn rest to you, and you shall afflict yourselves or you shall fast.

It is a statute forever, and the priest who is anointed and is consecrated as priest in his father's place shall make atonement wearing the holy linen garments.

He shall make atonement for the holy sanctuary. He shall make atonement for the tent of meeting and for the altar, and he shall make atonement for the priests and for all the people of the assembly, and this shall be a statute forever for you that atonement may be made for the people of Israel once in the year because of all of their sins.

And Aaron did as Yahweh commanded Moses. So, big high holy day once a year appearing in the holy of holies.

Chapter 17. Yes, ma 'am. Yeah, let's talk about that for a second.

So, Lent is still controversial among certain sectors of evangelicalism today, especially like the

Reformed Baptists and people like that, and I understand their dislike of Lent, and here's what they're bristling against is that Rome took this tradition that came up that we were free as Christians to participate in, and Rome dogmatized it and then attached the threat of mortal sins if you don't practice certain

Lenten practices. For instance, one of the practices that came up during the

Lenten season was the practice of eating fish on Fridays. Where did that come from?

Huh? No, it wasn't the fishermen. There was a theological theme behind it because one of the

Lenten themes that came up in some of the lectionary texts had to do with Christ walking on the water, which was a demonstration of his power over Leviathan.

And so, you demonstrate your ultimate power over Leviathan, this horrible sea creature that has demonic implications.

You demonstrate this as a church, and your confidence of Christ's victory over Leviathan by eating fish.

So the idea was, during Lent, we're gonna eat fish on Fridays, and it's gonna remind us of Christ's victory over Leviathan, which is a type and shadow picture of his defeat of the devil.

And so, with every scrumptious chew that we have a mouthful of fish that we'd put in our mouth, we'd sit there and go, ha, devil,

Jesus defeated you. And it's a great way of thinking about it. That was the meaning behind it initially. Then Rome comes along and says, if you don't eat fish on Friday, you've committed a mortal sin.

Well, that means if you die with an In -N -Out burger in your mouth on a Friday afternoon, you go straight to hell, okay?

Which is nuts. I mean, seriously, you're gonna send somebody to hell because they had In -N -Out burger on a

Friday rather than fish tacos from Cabo Tacos or something like that, right?

This is nonsense. This is utter nonsense. And so, funny enough, Rome over the past few decades has really loosened up on whether or not it's a mortal sin.

But the old guard, pre -Vatican II Roman Catholics, they are very strict in their observance of this practice.

But the idea then is, and then here's another piece of all of this, is that in the medieval period, and we have to understand this kind of culturally, in the medieval period, society was extremely well stratified and organized.

In America, in the present, somebody can grow up in the ghettos of Harlem and become a famous movie star and make millions and be lauded around the world.

They can go from literally the bottom to the very top of society. They can go from being a podunk

Arkansas person to being the president of the United States. But in the medieval period, this is not gonna happen.

Do you guys remember the show on PBS, Downton Abbey? So Downton Abbey depicts that time in our history where we transition from that well -stratified, well -organized, very strict, ruled society into the modern era that we live in.

And so the first episode of Downton Abbey begins right around the time of the sinking of the

Titanic. But everything was well organized, and that was the last gasps of this particular period in human history.

And then with the end of World War I, everything starts to loosen up. So come back then to this kind of mindset.

And so you are working, and you are a butler, or you are working as a cook, and you work for an earl or a duke, or you're a shepherd, or you live in a village, and you're a farmer or whatever like this.

You're down here, you're never gonna get up here, and here's what's going on in your life. You're lucky if you get a day off.

Forget the Sabbath. Forget the Sabbath. And so what would happen then is that as a way of kind of letting off steam for the pent -up just anxiety and stiffness of society at that time, they would have festival days like Mardi Gras or Christmas in the medieval period was celebrated in a very similar way that Mardi Gras was.

It was a day set aside when everybody could just blow off steam and celebrate together, and it didn't matter if you were from the upper class or the lower class.

None of that mattered, and it oftentimes turned into a little bit of a debauchery fest. And so leading into Lenten practices right before Ash Wednesday, you have what?

All right, Fat Tuesday, where gluttony and all kinds of sins, including drunkenness and other stuff like that, was practically sanctioned within medieval society.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, we're gonna let you guys have a couple days to just blow all your steam off so that you'll be better servants, you know, the day afterwards.

And we'll even give you a day to get over the hangover. Yeah, and these are practices that get pinned on Rome, but they wouldn't have existed apart from a particular ordering of society.

Does that make sense? And so there, in fact, the Puritans who came to the

United States, actually to the, you know, to Americas and planted the colonies which would become the states, when the

Puritans got here, they outlawed Christmas. And he's saying, who's going to outlaw Christmas?

I mean, wasn't it the white witch from Narnia that always made it winter but never Christmas? Who are these, you know, bah humbug people, these

Puritans? Well, they were reacting against what had become the debaucherous practices of Christmas, because Advent was a penitential season, and then

Christmas is a 12 -day long party. We celebrate

Christmas one day, but in the medieval period, oh man, it's a 12 -day long, let your hair down and let the wine flow and fizzy wig ale flow kind of thing.

Yeah, that's a loaded question.

I will say this, the practices of Christmas, many people try to pin it to the Saturnalia, and that doesn't quite work historically.

I'll just put it out there. There's a great article on the Steadfast Lutherans website about whether or not Christmas was pagan.

I will say this, that coming up with feast days that paralleled pagan holidays created some confusion, but the reality was is that as kind of nominal cultural

Catholicism settled in, and I mean that,

I mean, it's the same thing. We have the same thing here in Lutheranism. We have this nominal cultural Lutheranism.

The reason I'm Lutheran is because I grew up in a Lutheran culture.

We have catechism, we have confirmation, we have ludifice, and it's a cultural thing.

There was cultural Catholicism as well in the medieval period, where people really weren't, in any real sense of the word, applying themselves to discipleship in Jesus Christ.

They were just going through the motions, just going through the motions, and so part of the

Reformation is a reaction against that, a reaction against that, and Rome's explanation of how the sacraments work actually played a vital part in the creation of this weird nominal cultural

Catholicism. The sacraments work ex opera operato, they would say, by the working of the work.

So you just show up to Mass. You never hear the Word of God in your native language.

The Word of God is locked up in Latin. The liturgy is in Latin. You just know because you've grown up in this, you know when you're supposed to stand up, you know when you're supposed to sit down, you know when you're supposed to kneel, you know when you're supposed to cross yourself, you know when you're supposed to line up and go and receive the body of Christ, and your brain has been totally disengaged the whole time.

You have not heard the Word of God in any meaningful way where you have learned anything about Jesus Christ, the disciples, the prophets, a biblical text, or anything like this, and you are assured of your salvation because the sacrament's going to save you because it works by the working of the work.

You don't even have to have faith. It just does what it does because it does what it does when it does it because that's how it works, and if you're having guilt pangs, you can go visit a relic of, you know, the knuckle bone of St.

Teresa, and the Pope will give you a special, you know, indulgence for that.

In some places, yes. Now, you have to be careful, and this is where we have to be careful. Rome, just like evangelicalism, is not a monolithic thing.

It's not a unified thing. Within Rome, you have pockets of different theological groups, if you would, and sometimes it's by geography and other places, so there are actual places that you can go within Roman Catholicism where you're going to hear a priest preach the gospel, which is really weird, and there's certain places where the

Roman priests and the missionaries are going to hand out Luther's small catechism. That's strange. Okay, that's just nuts, and then you go to other places, and they still have anathematized

Luther, and if you preach the gospel, you know, then you're suspect, and it so you got to be careful in the sense you don't want.

Rome is not a monolith. They do have dogmas, but people seem to ignore and apply them, you know, liberally, and just like they do everywhere else, right?

So, what ends up happening is that there's kind of a folk

Catholicism that grows up in the midst of all of this, and this folk Catholicism now is, well,

I don't understand what I'm hearing at church. How do I know I'm saved? And there's always these depictions of Jesus on the clouds with the rainbow behind him, and he's coming in judgment, and he's got a scepter in his hand.

He's like, what are we going to do? So, the surefire way to go to heaven is you become a monk, or you become a nun, or you seek the priesthood, or you make a vow, or you make a

And so, what ends up happening is that amongst this comes this works -based religion with a whole bunch of works that are nowhere mentioned in Scripture, and this is the

Catholicism now that Luther grows up in. So, as he's traveling, you know, the lightning strikes a tree right near him in the middle of a thunderstorm, and he cries out to Saint Anne, and promises that he's going to go and become a monk rather than an attorney.

He can't figure out which is better, but... And so, he goes and cloisters up in a

Franciscan monastery, or is it Augustinian? Sorry, Augustinian monastery. And so, he thought that he was going to save himself in that way.

So, there is the constant fear. You have mortal venial sins, and then Luther, what was fascinating is that as an

Augustinian monk, he makes a trip to Rome. He walks from Germany to Rome on foot.

That's how he got there, and when he gets to Rome, what does he see? Brothels, and corruption, and debauchery, and he was asked to, you know, to say a

Mass, and, you know, in one of these cathedrals, in one of these churches, and the priests who are normally doing their

Masses there, could you step it up a little bit? We got 20 more of these we got to do. Come on, just get it out.

It's weird. And so, always and again, we have to remember that God's Word warns us.

It warns us of these different archetypes of false teacher.

One comes back to Cain. Cain, who has this religious activity.

He's culturally a believer in the one true God, but his heart, he has no faith at all, and this is a temptation that we all have.

It's in Lutheranism. It's in Catholicism. It's in Evangelicalism. You know, this idea, if I go through the motions, if I do the right things,

God will be pleased with me. It all works just because I've ticked the box.

I've done the thing, therefore, I'm good. No faith, no repentance, nothing, and that's a false teaching, and there's many forms of that.

And so, in the midst of all of this then, now coming back to what we were talking about, is that the question, it relates now to Lent.

So, there is a overreaction on the part of certain schools of thought within the broader

Reformation. And so, now we'll come into Calvinism, and the Reformed Baptists, and some of the

Anabaptists, and what they end up doing is that they swing over into the opposite ditch.

They swing over into the opposite ditch. They cut too deep. You know, if you were to think of Christianity, the church is like a ship.

It's been in the water so long, we've got to get the barnacles off. So, these guys take the superstructure out of the water, and they're shaving off not just the barnacles, now they're getting into the hole, and that's a dangerous thing to do.

And so, they cut a little too deep. And to this day, within the Reformed Baptists, in that whole camp, there is a huge, huge rhetoric.

So, like, you know, last year we had Phil Johnson here for the PCR conference, right? I just ignore him during Lent.

You know, J .D. Hall, you know, he's gonna go off on Lent, so I'm just not gonna tell him, yeah, we had

Ash Wednesday services last night, and we didn't do the Fat Tuesday thing. But, you know, but the idea here is that where they see

Rome's requirement to follow these Lenten practices, they stand in defiance and say, because you demand these things, and this is man -made, we're going to rebel against that, and righteously say, we refuse to celebrate.

Which is not wrong, let me put it that way, if that's your frame of mind. The Lutheran Reformation, though, is extremely conservative, very conservative.

And so, what happens is, is that the Lutheran Reformers, they take a look at not the dogma only, but also the practices, and then the question comes up, listen, we're going to have rites and rituals and traditions, no matter how you slice it, every church has them.

Now, the question is, which practices are consistent with and help teach sound doctrine in the gospel, and which are contrary to sound doctrine in the gospel?

And so, certain practices, then, are taken away from the Lutherans, while others are kept, and they're kept with an open hand.

They're kept with an open—nobody's required to observe Lent. Nobody's required to do that.

No one's required to go to Ash Wednesday. No one's required to fast during the 40 days of Lent.

It's a good practice. It's salutary and beneficial. It's not contrary to the gospel.

In fact, it is quite helpful in having, again, this time of the season for disciplined, a disciplined approach to considering repentance and things like this.

But as soon as you make it a requirement, and you attach a mortal sin to not observing it, well, now we've got something here.

That's a horse of a different color. So, you'll note, then, we observe Lent with an open hand.

Nobody's required to come to midweek services. None of those things. So, that's the idea.

So, the Lutherans, they kept certain things, and they got rid of others, you know. So, and funny enough,

Luther himself, he made a radical change in the

Eucharistic liturgy. Radical change that, to the untrained observer, they would have never seen it.

They would have never seen it. And so, one of the things, you know, because there's certain things.

Remember, everything a pastor does actually confesses something. So, the reason why your pastor wears a robe and an alb, you know, a stole and, you know, all the kind of, they all confess something.

So, I wear black to confess I'm a sinner. And so, when I'm preaching and doing the divine service, you know,

I'm wearing an alb, which is white, which shows I'm clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The stole itself is to make it so that visually

I'm yoked up. So, I'm the beast of burden rather than the super special guy. And that's the idea.

And then, you know, the other thing that I'll do is when I pass the altar,

I stop and, you know, just slightly bow, which is observing that Christ is present here.

And so, we generally say Christ, we'll just say if he's going to be anywhere present, it's going to be somewhere in the general altar vicinity.

That's, you know, where we would say he is. And so, when I'm passing by, I'm respecting the fact that Christ is truly present among us.

And so, we're going to locate him there visually. So, that confesses something. And then, when after I say the words of institution and the elements are still on the altar, when we pray the

Lord's prayer, I'm praying towards the elements because we believe what Christ says, that this is his body and this is his blood.

And so, I'm praying towards the elements because that says something. So, Luther made just a radical change.

But, you know, there were several tiny changes. He flipped part of the order of service to get away from this idea of the

Roman Catholic medieval concept that the Lord's Supper was a re -sacrifice of Christ.

Now, Rome doesn't teach this dogma the way they taught it during the medieval period. They've cleaned up their act a little bit, but they still talk in these ways.

But, that being the case, you know, there was pieces where after a certain point, you would hold the host above your head, which was basically me as the priest confessing, now

I've re -sacrificed Christ and I'm holding this sacrifice of Christ up to God to be received by God for the forgiveness of my sins.

And Lutherans all, no, you can't do that because that sends the wrong message.

And so, Lutherans, you know, they elevate about to here, but for everybody to see, not to be held up as a sacrifice for God to receive.

So, there's all these different things then when you consider that every church, again, has rites, every church has rituals.

The question is, what do those rituals convey? What do they say? What do they mean? And so, Lent itself, it's a good practice.

But as soon as you require it and threaten somebody with hell if they don't observe it, now that's, again, that becomes something that needs to be addressed.

So, long answer to a short question. I hope that answered it. Any other questions?

Well, just a comment. I got an email. Okay. And it was in Swedish.

And the subject was something to the effect, meet you at Valhalla.

Valhalla? Okay. And the, you know, and the message, you know, was

Happy Easter. Well, I had no idea what this meet you at Valhalla meant, so I looked it up.

And the Swedes currently, they celebrate the fact that they're asking you to go join the devil on this particular day.

Really? And the devil's hosting a party. And the children dress up. Interesting.

You know, and they dress up.

That's weird. Yeah.

Yeah. That, yeah, it just smacks of somebody trying to put a

Christian veneer on a pagan practice. And it just went full pagan.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's weird. That's just, yeah. Huh. Can't say

I'm an expert on Swedish cultural practices, but that one just stands out as bizarre. Yeah.

Yeah. In the Netherlands, they have this really, just culture.

Our American SJW liberals would just lose their minds if this was really brought to their attention.

There is a celebration once a year in the Netherlands where they, the white people of the

Netherlands put on blackface. And I forget how the actual celebration goes, but it's,

I was introduced to it when I was in the Netherlands last time and I just sat there and went, whoa. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that doesn't sound demonic at all.

Yeah. Yeah.

They never go away. They always just go underground. That's the thing is, is that that type of demonic occultism and those types of practices and beliefs, the devil always will hang on to a few people and they'll keep it under wraps.

They'll keep it under wraps, but they'll be, they'll be full bore into it. And this is part of the reason why even during that period, you have these different secret societies that are doing these things and so, because they know they can't practice it out in the open because it won't be accepted.

So in like the 16th century, so they put his ear to the ground to see if this was the people rustling underground.

You know, it was one side and he didn't hear the little people rustling. It was another side. I mean, the artwork that still exists over there and it's coming back shows what do they call the little people?

Gnomes. Yeah, like gnomes. Yeah, right. Yeah. That was all part of that culture.

We're like the middle, little people now. We represent. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The people up here in the woods. Okay. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. And the term, the term by the way, when you, when you, when you as an individual are holding two completely opposing worldviews and conflicts and conflicts like this.

So on the one hand you got the, the weird mystical, I would even say demonic, you know, lore of the fairies and the gnomes and all this kind of stuff and and then mixing that with Christianity, then you become what's called syncretistic.

Yeah, you're a syncretist. You're taking two things that are completely opposed to each other, cannot be rectified or, you know, resolved and you're holding them both, you're saying you're holding them both equally.

Always and again when you're doing these syncretistic things biblical real Christianity discipleship of Jesus falls away and the other thing grows.

They're not compatible. You cannot rectify and reconcile that mythological lore with, with biblical

Christianity and the reality of the world as it is because of what God has made it. So all right, good discussion, interesting.

We went off in a weird direction there, but that was fascinating. All right, we'll pick this up again in a couple weeks.