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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask that your Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what you have revealed there, so that we may rightly believe, confess, and do according to your word, we ask in Jesus' name.
Amen.
All right, as we continue our walk through the book of Jeremiah, we are now to the part where you have the prophecy of the new covenant. And you'll note that in this prophecy, this is another good, strong argument that the church does not replace Israel, but the church is grafted into Israel.
Because when you talk about a covenant, a covenant is like a contract. And so if Donald Trump has a contract with New York City to build a new skyscraper, right? Am I a part of that contract? I'm not party to it.
I'm not a member of the Trump family, thank God. And so I have no say or stake in this. And so if we're not grafted into Israel, we've got a problem, because the new covenant itself, it explains who is making the covenant and whom the covenant is with.
So behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. All right, and you'll note, the northern kingdom is already gone.
Judah is the tribe, primarily, to whom Jeremiah is prophesying. And so you'll note here, the important bit is, is that if we're not grafted into Israel, if we're not one of these parties, Israel or the tribe of Judah, we don't have a stake in the new covenant.
That's just how this works, okay? And the house of Judah, not like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares Yahweh, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh.
I will put my law within them, I will write it on their hearts, I will be their God, they shall be my people, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know Yahweh, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
I like to think of this as like the big, big, big promise of the new covenant. And you'll note the other bit is eschatological, because right now we have to teach people about the Lord. And otherwise, I don't know what I'm doing if we're not supposed to be doing that right now, because that's what I do, I'm a teacher.
But you'll note the big promises. I will forgive their iniquity, I will remember their sin no more. And I think here's a good place to review some of the basic concepts regarding a covenant. And again, Scripture interprets Scripture, and Scripture teaches us how covenant works, and how these things work.
And so when we talk about covenants, I always like to use as our model covenant, the noatic covenant. And so let me do this, I'm going to, I need an Old Testament text. And I think I want it closer to here, hang on a second here, I'm gonna switch this up.
I'm gonna switch to Hebrew, very good. And we are going to go to Genesis chapter nine. And so when they come off, Noah and his family, when they come off of the ark, okay? God is the one who establishes a covenant.
And here's, this is called the noatic covenant. God said to Noah and to his sons with him, behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.
It is for every beast of the earth. So no, everybody, this is humans and beasties and creepy crawly things and stuff like this. Everybody is in on this covenant. God has established this covenant with them.
And I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. So no, God is the one establishing the covenant.
And God is the one who is giving the, well, what the covenant is there to establish. God is making a promise. All right, I'm never going to destroy all of planet earth with a flood ever again. That doesn't mean that there will not be regional floods, but the entirety of the earth will never be destroyed by a flood and the idea to cut off all flesh.
And here's how biblical covenants work, is that there's always a sign. There's always some kind of a token chosen that will invoke the promises of the covenant or even the curses. So when we talk about this, then I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off.
And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloud. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.
When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I, this is God speaking, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
Now it's true that when you see a rainbow, you also remember this particular covenant. And you'll know, I always find it fascinating that little kids are keen to remember this. So there you are, you're driving with your family, maybe you're on a family trip on a cross country thing and you come through a stretch of weather and on the other side of the weather, there's a rainbow.
And one of your kids points out, look mommy, look daddy, there's a rainbow. God promises that he's never going to flood the entire world again with a flood. That's correct, honey, that's correct. Very good, right?
We can all relate to this. But note the text says God will remember. That's kind of sort of important. And this word, remember, zakar, this is important because this is behind a proper understanding of the Lord's Supper.
Because what does Christ say? Do this in remembrance of me, right? And the Greek equivalent here is gonna be anamnesis. But this is the Hebrew word zakar. And zakar is talking about the remembrance of the promises of the covenant.
So let me ask now a question by way of remembering. There's another covenant that's mentioned not long after this, it's called the Abrahamic covenant. What is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant? Circumcision, okay?
Circumcision is the sign of the Abrahamic covenant. Mosaic covenant, this one's a little tougher because it's a little more obscure. But according to the Torah, what is the sign of the Mosaic covenant?
The Mosaic covenant is a covenant that God made with the children of Israel. It's like a land lease agreement, all right? God's the landlord, you guys are the tenants, and you can stay in this land as long as you do particular things.
And there is a very specific sign of the Mosaic covenant. And Daniel Johnston online got it, it's the Sabbath. The Sabbath is the sign of the Mosaic covenant. Now the question comes up, what is the sign of the new covenant?
Answer, the body and blood of Christ. So if you think back to the words of institution, Christ, it says, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you.
Do this into the remembrance of me, is how the Greek reads. Do this into the remembrance of me. The Greek word amnesis is our remembrance word. And it is covenantal. So if you think back to Holy Week, when we observe what's called Maundy Thursday, the night that Christ is betrayed.
On the night that Christ is betrayed, he observes the Passover with his disciples, and it's there that he establishes the new covenant, and the signs of the new covenant, which are his body and his blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.
And you'll note that if you do not have the proper understanding of how the covenants work, and the idea of remembrance, as it relates to promises invoked in the covenant, then you're going to read Jesus saying, do this in remembrance of me, and you're going to intuitively think something that's incorrect, all right?
So, and this is a big problem. A lot of people say, okay, when we have the Lord's Supper, we gotta think, oh, Lord, that was terrible. You really had to suffer and die. We're remembering everything you went through.
That's not really the point. The point of remembrance is it's invoking the covenant. It's invoking the new covenant. So, every single time we have the Lord's Supper, without fail, we see the signs of the covenant, the bread and the wine, because we don't see the body and blood.
We recognize it there, and we trust that that's true by faith, because Christ says so. God, on the other hand, he sees the body and blood of Christ, and when he sees, God remembers, and when we come back then to the new covenant, the big promise is I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.
So, the big promise of the new covenant, and this is invoked every time we have the Lord's Supper, we can point to the elements the way kids point to the rainbow and say, look, God remembers to forget our sins.
God remembers to forgive us. God remembers to not destroy us. That's the deal here. So, when you take a look at the promises of the new covenant, and you rightly then understand what Christ was doing when he established the Lord's Supper, was he was establishing the new covenant, which is already laid out with its big promises, the forgiveness of our sins and God remembering to forget our sins, that when we, every time we have the Lord's Supper, we can point to those elements and say, you promised, God, you promised.
And here where I think it's really interesting is that Martin Luther, he actually kind of hypothesized. He says that if you stand before Christ and Christ says to you, no, off to hell with you, Martin Luther gives this advice.
He says, you are to stand your ground. And you say, if you send me to hell, you're a liar. You've broken the covenant. You've promised to forget my sins. You've promised to forgive me and to pardon me.
And I have my faith and trust in you and your promises. You have no right to send me to hell. If you do, you are a liar. And you, and your word says that God cannot lie. So you cannot send me to hell.
That's what faith does. Faith, even in the face of Christ seeming to reject you, stands its ground and hangs on to the promises. A good example of that is that woman, that woman who Jesus called a dog, right?
For all intents and purposes, it looked like Christ was rejecting this woman. But instead, he was teasing out for the whole purpose of holding up as an example, the great faith that she had.
Right?
You know, where she comes, Jesus, help me. My daughter is possessed by a demon. I only came for the lost children of Israel, right? And she doesn't, she doesn't care. She just comes right up and gets right in front of Jesus' face and kneels before him and says, Jesus, help me.
It's not right to take the bread of the children and throw it to the dogs. And her faith will not let go.
Fine.
I'm a dog.
Bow wow.
Now give me my crumbs.
Woof.
And that's the idea. So as we consider then the new covenant, this great promise, faith hangs on to this. And every time we have the Lord's Supper, which I'm really hoping in the near future is more often.
Okay?
Just saying.
I'm letting you know ahead of time, I have plans. I've got a cunning plan, right? Involves a turnip. If you know Blackadder, you know what I'm talking about. I've got a cunning plan. But the idea then is that every single time we have the Lord's Supper, you look at the elements the same way you look at the rainbow.
You look at that and you sit near it. There is a promise. I see the, this is the sign in the new covenant. I am forgiven. God will never remember my sins. And then of course, just for Luis, we have to point out the proper liturgical response is a Napoleon dynamite called, yes.
That's the proper liturgical response.
Okay.
So we continue.
Do you have a Baldrick? I should ask, what is the proper procedure. Should you step on a landmine? You know, you throw yourself 200 feet in the air and scatter yourself over a wide area.
So, just saying.
Yeah, again, you have to know Blackadder.
All right, let's see. Love that looking at the bread and wine as the rainbow. Exactly, Jen. That's exactly the idea. You keep looking at that. The sign of the new covenant is there on the altar. It's there in your table.
It's there in your home. And you see it for what it is. You point to it and say, God has promised not to destroy me.
So thus says Yahweh, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar. Yahweh, and again, I'm gonna point this out.
Savah is army. Savah in the Hebrew means army. Okay, Yahweh of armies is his name. If this fixed order departs from before me, declares Yahweh, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever.
So thus says Yahweh, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares Yahweh.
A little bit of a note here, a little cosmology. Have you guys been keeping track of the big kerfuffle that the James Webb telescope is causing within the astronomy community? The big bang didn't happen.
That's what they're finding out. So here's the issue, okay, and I want you to think about this for a second. I'm off topic, but since God put this all together, God did create and expand. The redshift is there, but the way the big bang explains things is not proper, and now they have scientific proof that the big bang didn't happen.
And the reason being is this, is that the deep field, look, that they're doing, I've read several science articles on this over the past few weeks, is the deep field, they see, importantly, they see galaxies fully formed in the deepest part of the deep field, and they're small.
Why is it that they're small is as important? The reason being is because if the big bang were true, there would be an optical illusion. They would look larger. But because that light is getting to us, and they all look smaller, and they're fully formed, they don't have any explanation for it.
Fully formed galaxy at the beginning of the universe doesn't make any sense and doesn't fit their cosmology. The big bang is to science as evolution is to science. It's an explanation that they try to come up with to kind of basically take God out of the equation, and now they've got a big problem.
The evidence shows the big bang didn't happen. God expanded the universe for sure, but when God expanded the universe, he didn't create galaxies one step at a time. He created galaxies fully formed. And the most interesting bit is that the way astronomers think about stars is if a star's color is primarily blue, they think that's a younger star.
And if a star is yellow or reddish, they think that's an older star. And here's the big problem they're finding. In these galaxies that are supposed to be at the beginning of the universe, they're finding yellow and red stars in them,.
Not just blue.
Oops.
Back to the drawing board.
We need another big lie.
So anyway, I just find it fascinating because right now the entire astronomy, cosmology community is in a big kerfuffle,.
Is the best way to put it.
And falling stars, right?
Yeah, and stars will eventually fall from the sky. Now, this is an interesting thing there, and this is what I'm wondering here, is that when you take a look at the theory of relativity and you plug it into travel, like if we were to, we cannot actually travel at the speed of light because Einstein's general theory of law of relativity states that if we were to approach, if we were to actually hit the speed of light, we would be turned into energy.
But the question comes up when you apply the actual equation itself, E equals MC squared, and you start applying it properly to like space travel and stuff like this. If you and I could travel near the speed of light, all right, and we can, so we would travel from here to a star that's like 40 light years away, right?
The question comes up, what would be the experience of time for us at that? Would it take us 40 years to get there? No, it would actually only take us four at near the speed of light, because time is relative.
That's the mind bender bit of all of this. So if time is relative, you can't actually say that the universe is 14 billion years old. You can't say that the light that's hitting us is actually that old because it's traveling at the speed of light.
So we got some general problems that are kind of a mess here, so.
There are stars that are missing now?
Yes, that's the other thing. If you can Google this and you can find the information on NASA. NASA is in the current process of recruiting amateur astronomers to help them find stars that have gone missing.
I'm not making this up. I kid you not. Google it, go to the NASA website. You can actually, if you're an amateur astronomer, you can offer your services for the purpose of helping them find stars. And if you're thinking, what stars have gone missing?
What NASA and astronomers did shortly after World War II with the technology that they had, the telescopes that they had, they basically took a comprehensive photograph of all the known stars at the time and put that together as one big montage, if you would, of photos.
And so somebody at NASA thought it'd be a good idea to go back and revisit that project from the 40s and kind of compare it to what we have now. And here's the issue. Thousands, not some, thousands of stars are missing and they do not have an explanation for it.
Kind of a weird thing.
Again, Google this, Google it, okay? So strange stuff. On another note, since we're talking about science. Okay, you guys familiar with the double slit test as it relates to light? This is a little bit of a mind bender, but there's cognition in the universe itself.
And if you were to think of it this way, if you are a gamer and you've ever played video games and what's that, Unreal Engine that people use for different video game platforms and stuff like that? When you're playing the video game, the Unreal Engine does not render the entire world all at once.
It only renders what you're visibly looking at, right? And otherwise, in order to conserve energy and to conserve CPU usage, the rest of the stuff remains unrendered until you're at that portion in the rendering and then it makes it so that you can see it, okay?
The universe does something very similar. And if I were to ask you, is light a particle or is light a wave? If you know anything about light, the answer should be yes. But here's the issue, it depends.
So light itself is fuzzy unless you're looking at it. And it's a wave when you're not looking at it. But when you are looking at it, it turns into a particle and all of light comes into sharp focus. The best way I can say this is that this is a repeatable test that takes place in science.
It's called the double slit test, where you can take light and you can actually run it through these two slits to see whether it's creating an interference pattern or if it's creating a pattern consistent with the individual protons.
And what makes the difference is whether or not you're looking at the light. And it's the weirdest thing. But recently, they did a study on this because this is something that's well established within quantum physics, this double slit test, that if you are trying to look at the light, it will become in the sharp focus and it will not be a wave, it'll be a particle.
But if you're not looking at it, it acts as a wave. So what they came up with this idea that they would basically run the experiment by shooting single protons, just single protons through these slits.
But when they did this, if they were observing the slit, if they were observing the proton, it would become a particle. If they were not observing it, it would become a wave. So they thought, here's what they were gonna do.
They were going to do this really interesting thing. They were gonna make sure that their observation equipment was turned on after the proton goes to the slit, okay? So think of it this way. You got a gun that shoots one single proton at a time.
And if you're looking at it, it creates a pattern that looks like particles. If you're not looking at it, it creates a wave pattern. It's fuzzy in its dimensions. But once the proton gets past the slit, it should be past the point of no return.
So what they did is they set up the observation equipment on the other side of the slit. And when the proton had passed through the slit, then they turned the observation equipment on and the weirdest thing happened.
It still behaved either like a wave or a particle depending on whether you observed it. Didn't matter if you observed it before it went through the slit or after it went through the slit, which means that protons have the ability cognitively to know ahead of time whether you're going to look at it or not.
The universe is alive, man. Okay, just, anyway, let's just, again, I nerd out on some of this stuff. Is that, oh, see, look at that. Sheldon has his hand up. Proton, photon, okay. Okay, hang on a second here.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, okay, hang on. So vicar 10 and a half saints, what would you like to say?
Let's see.
Can y 'all hear him?
I can't hear him.
You can hear him? Okay, hang on a second here. I'm having problems and it has to do with my output audio.
Hang on.
Yeah, there's my issue. I want to go to try that. All right, vicar 10 saints, try it again.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Do I sound nervous?
Sure, but anyway.
Yeah, it sounded something, but stop calling me Shirley.
Universal, it was lovely. I just wanted to let you know that, right?
Really?
You're gonna take class time to just torture me?
Just, wow.
Yeah, yeah, that's what I wanted to say. While studying with Pastor Hennessy, when I was doing my first sermon in John and I was speaking on the Lord's Supper and also doing my Christian dogmatics, the same thing came up on the word remembrance.
Yeah, anamnesis.
Right, we were discussing it, I think in his fellowship. Remembrance shouldn't mean three different things, three different points throughout Christian history. As in, we are remembering, but Hennessy put it this way that we are remembering something that's somewhat general, right?
Remembrance, but faith in something or the someone.
Yep.
So he pointed me to Moses, when Jesus was like to cross over, although the text was speaking on the Lord's Supper, he was saying that is one of the cases when Jesus says, you use the word remember, it is remembering also Jesus bringing them out of slavery.
And then crossing over the Red Sea and also crossing into promised land.
Uh-huh.
And it can be, okay, they're remembering that, and how do I, speaking to me, how do I transfer that to us now?
Okay, yeah, so you're dealing with the idea that the word anamnesis itself, anamneo, it can, there's three possible meanings. And the question then is how then do we tie this directly to the covenant, when it potentially could be a recalling of the great deeds that Christ has done, something to that effect.
And again, the context is going to be vital, covenant. And let's see here, I'm gonna do it in the Gospels, although I probably should do it in 1 Corinthians. Yeah, 1 Corinthians 11. So when we look at Paul's accounting of the words of Christ, this is my body which is for you, do this into the anamnesis of me, the remembrance of me.
In the same way also he took the cup after supper, and watch this, Sheldon, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. So the reason why we know that anamnesis is to be understood covenantally is because Christ himself makes that point, is that with the Lord's Supper and the establishing of it, the anamnesis is to be understood as a covenantal anamnesis, an invoking of the promises.
Also it does, in a very true sense, invoke what Christ has done for us, but just invoking his death and suffering on the cross is not enough in the proper remembering here, because his suffering and death is the vehicle by which the blood of the new covenant was shed.
And so we do remember that, but the anamnesis here, the remembrance, do this as often as you drink it into the remembrance of me, this is in the context then of covenant, and it's in the exact same sentence.
It's not even in the farther context, it's in the exact same sentence that he's invoking it. So that's how we know that we're dealing with a covenantal understanding of remembrance here. And then I'll show you something in the liturgy real quick, this is kind of interesting.
Give me a second,.
I'm gonna pull up the divine service liturgy, and that requires me to do this. And I'll show, oh, it's not in this one, it's really, hang on a second here. In divine service setting one and two, there is a very fascinating part of the liturgy.
Hang on a second, let me see if I can find this.
Divine service,.
I'm gonna say one,.
Yeah, there we go,.
This'll work.
Okay, all right. So if I go to divine service setting one, and I go to the communion liturgy, I'll kind of break this down a little bit for you.
Do I even have the communion liturgy in this one?
No, I don't.
I better do divine service. Two,.
That was the most recent.
Hang on a second here.
Two.
There we go. That will work. Okay, so when we go into the communion liturgy itself, so the Lord be with you. So here's your, the opening propers, then you got the proper preface after that, you've got the sanctus, then you got a prayer, you got the words of institution, and then, there's this part right here in divine service setting two.
So you have the words of institution, as often as we eat this bread and we drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Bless me, thank you. And then we say, amen, come Lord Jesus. And then this right here is called an anamnetic prayer.
It's a prayer of remembrance of the actual deeds that Christ accomplished, things that he did, and shedding his blood of the covenant. The Lord Jesus Christ, oh Lord Jesus Christ, only son of the Father, in giving us your body and blood to eat and to drink, you lead us to remember and to confess your holy cross, your passion, your blessed death, your rest in the tomb, your resurrection from the dead, your ascension into heaven, and your coming for the final judgment.
So note here in this remembrance here, we're remembering the deeds that Christ did and the deeds he promises to do in the future. Coming to the final judgment. And so we ask then, remember us in your kingdom and then teach us to pray.
And this is where we plug in the Lord's prayer. So you'll note that, like I said, anamnesis of proper remembrance, it is not sufficient to basically say, it's all about just remembering the things that Christ did.
That's part of it. But again, it's in the context of Christ himself establishing the new covenant. And so the remembrance has to be understood covenantally, which will invoke not only his deeds, but also his promises.
So you get the idea that the two go hand in hand. And where a lot of people err, and they do it ignorantly, where they err in this way, they only focus on the remembering Christ's deeds, but they do not understand it in a covenantal context.
And that's the problem. All right, let's keep moving on, shall we? So talking, I do use the occasion, about the fact that God made the stars in the heavens to talk about James Webb's telescope. Stay tuned, the Big Bang is in shatters.
So, in tatters.
All right, Jeremiah 31. Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when the city shall be rebuilt for Yahweh from the tower of Hananel to the corner gate. And the measuring line shall go out farther straight to the hill of Gerab, and shall then turn to Goa, the whole valley of the dead bodies and ashes and in the fields as far as the brook Kidron to the corner of the horse gate, toward the east shall be sacred to Yahweh, it shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore.
This is truly eschatological. And then you'll note here, if you want a good cross-reference on this, read the book of Ezekiel, all right? You know, where Ezekiel is commanded by God to go out with his angel and measure the temple and stuff like that, measure the city.
So this is invoking an eschatological view of Jerusalem. So the word that came to Jeremiah, now on to chapter 32. Things get a little interesting at this point. Let's just say that Jeremiah is about to suffer horrifically and that's the lot of prophets like him.
The word that came to Jeremiah from Yahweh in the 10th year of Zedekiah the king of Judah, which was the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar. At that time, the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem.
And Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of the guard that was in the palace of the king of Judah. So for all intents and purposes, Jeremiah is under arrest. And you're thinking, why is that?
This is the guy, well, Jeremiah is the one who's been prophesying, Nebuchadnezzar's coming. You need to surrender if you wanna live. And so the idea here is that the reason why Jeremiah is locked up is because the king and his officials and the guys in the military think that if Jeremiah is allowed to speak freely, that people are not going to fight.
They think that his message is gonna take the fight out of people and they'll surrender rather than defend. And so their solution is real simple, lock Jeremiah up. But here's the thing, is Jeremiah saying to surrender just because he feels like that's a good course of action, a military thing that makes sense?
No, he's doing that because God told him to say that. So they've got him locked up. Zedekiah, the king of Judah, had imprisoned him, saying, why do you prophesy in this and say, thus says Yahweh, behold, I'm giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon and he shall capture it.
Zedekiah, the king of,.
The reason why I'm prophesying that is because God told me to.
Right, it's kind of that simple. So Zedekiah, the king of Judah, shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans. Why do you say those words? But shall surely be given to the hand of the king of Babylon and shall speak with him face to face and see him eye to eye.
And then he shall take Zedekiah to Babylon and there he shall remain until I visit him, declares Yahweh, though you fight against the Chaldeans, you shall not succeed. Why do you say these words?
Dog, you're making it worse. Because it's the truth, right?
So Jeremiah said, the word of Yahweh came to me. Now that's an interesting way of talking, right? I want you to consider the implications. When prophets actually describe their encounters with God, they will describe the word of God in terms that the word of God appeared, the word of God came to me, and all of this is invoking language that makes sense when you consider that Jesus is the word of God.
Okay, Jesus is the word of God incarnate. And so when prophets talk like this, it's as if they had some kind of tangible encounter with God. Either they can truly see him to some degree or something like this.
There, it's never, well, I felt the Lord saying to my heart that this, that, or the other thing was gonna happen. No, no prophet ever talked like, the Lord laid this on my heart. No, the word of the Lord, it came to me.
Behold, Hanumel, the son of Shalom, your uncle, will come to you and say, by my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours. Then Hanumel, my cousin, came to me in the court of the guard in accordance with the word of Yahweh, and he said to me, by my field that is in Anathoth, in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours.
Buy it for yourself. And then I knew this was the word of Yahweh, and I bought the field at Anathoth from Hanumel, my cousin, and I weighed out the money to him, 17 shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, weighed the money on scales.
Then I took the sealed deed of purchase containing the terms and conditions and the open copy. I gave the deed of purchase to Baruch, the son of Nariah, the son of Messiah, in the presence of Hanumel, my cousin, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard, I charged Baruch in the presence saying, thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of armies, the God of Israel, take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware vessel that they may last for a long time.
For thus says Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel, houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land. There's been a, let's just say, the housing market in Judah has collapsed, right, as a result of King Nebuchadnezzar, and rightfully so, because 90-something percent of the people that were living there at that time were killed, right?
So, Karen, boy, that's an interesting question. Karen asked the question, is this the deed that Yahweh opens in Revelation? No, it's not a deed. So in the book of Revelation, Christ is the one. Remember, you know, that whole ordeal, they got the scroll, it's sealed with seven seals, right?
And nobody is found worthy to open up the scroll, and everyone's weeping and crying, and John is really down and despondent, and the angel comforts him and says, do not weep, the Lamb of God, you know, he's conquered, he's worthy to open up the scroll, right?
The scroll there is actually the sealed prophecy of Daniel. So remember when Daniel receives his prophecy and he's told by God to seal it up until the time of the end, and he seals his prophecy? So in the book of Revelation, when Christ is opening that scroll, that's the sealed up portion of the book of Daniel.
So that's the right way to look at that. And then when you sit there, you go, oh, yeah, of course, poof, you know, your brain explodes, right? So is that Caeli Sexton that I see there? I see Caeli Sexton.
Hey, good to see you, Caeli. All right, let's see here. Caeli says, can God speak to someone to tell them to go to a place, like a calling, be a missionary, specific country? I've struggled with the concept that God only speaks to the Bible.
Okay, so the best way to answer your question is yes, but. Okay, let me explain. So I am a pastor, all right? How did I become a pastor? Well, let's talk about it, okay? So we Lutherans, we absolutely believe that God still can call people to the ministry, and there is a sense in which he moves them to do so.
So years and years and years ago, this is decades ago, we were attending Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Hacienda Heights, California. Our pastor was Pastor Bill Swerla. And Bill recognized fairly early on that I had a teaching gift, and from time to time would allow me to teach the Sunday school class there, and which was really interesting.
And it was shortly after he started letting me do that that I asked to meet with him, and I sat him down, and I said, you know, I know this is gonna sound weird, but I legitimately feel, this is the only way I can put it, I feel like I'm being called into the pastoral office.
His immediate response was, knock that off, that feeling will go away. Okay, but it didn't, okay? So, and the reason why he did that is because there's a lot of guys who think they're called into pastoral ministry, they're not, okay?
And he proceeded to tell me just how difficult of a job being a pastor was. You know, and he would say things like this. If I ever hear anyone say, you know, the reason I wanna become a pastor is because I love being around people.
You've never been around people. You know, and so he would talk it all down. And so I went home kinda confused and despondent, going, okay, that was weird. And I thought, well, maybe he's right. Maybe it'll just go away.
Maybe I'm not really called to be a pastor, right? So the feeling didn't go away. It got worse. It got stronger. And the best way I can describe it is that God pretty much smashed every option possible to call me into the pastoral office.
And here's the thing. So we believe you can actually be called into it. And it may be a feeling, it may be just an intuition, a hunch, a strong desire. But here's the thing. It has to be confirmed then objectively.
So we make a difference between what we call the objective call and the subjective call. So I had a subjective call, but I need confirmation objectively that that's the case, right? So here's how this then works.
In order to have objective validation of a subjective call, you actually need a congregation to call you as their pastor. The call that you receive from an established congregation is the objective call that confirms the subjective so that the person isn't just following their heart, but there's actions that then are put in place that then validate whether that's the case.
So in my particular case, I began pursuing ordination. I began pursuing formal study, going to seminary and things like this. And there's a long story about all of that. And if you know a little bit of my history, I was, let's say I had a majority stake in bringing back the Issues Etc. radio program after they had been canceled by the Missouri Synod.
So if you don't know that history, back in Holy Week of 2008, the Missouri Synod canceled my favorite radio program, Issues Etc. And I vetoed that decision. That's why I can put, I uncanceled them. So, and it turns out there was quite some political intrigue behind the cancellation of Issues Etc.
And the president of the Missouri Synod at the time was a guy who was really overtly diving into kind of purpose-driven and seeker-driven theology. And let's just say that he didn't pull the trigger personally, but his general, one of his generals did.
And it is believed that the motivation behind it is because Issues Etc. was overtly confessional and very vocal in criticizing the seeker-driven movement and that methodology, that that may have been the political motivation behind canceling the radio program.
Neither here nor there, I just uncanceled them. I invested quite a bit of my own money. I wrote their business plan for them that they used to raise the additional funds. We started Pirate Christian Radio and had them as the centerpiece of our programming day.
And we brought them back. Well, if you know this about church, where two or more are gathered, there's politics. So what ended up happening is that my wife and I moved from Southern California to Indiana.
And I'm good friends with Brian Wolfmuller and Jonathan Fisk. And we were at the symposia in Fort Wayne, Indiana, at the seminary there one year. And we went out for Mexican food after some of the morning presentations.
We decided to go out to Mexican food for lunch. And we were complaining, kind of commiserating amongst each other, that one of the ways to ordination that the Missouri Synod had set up was kind of like a special way of not having to go to the seminary as a resident.
But they had another path to ordination. It was being abused by some people. And some guys who really shouldn't be ordained were being ordained. And so we came up with this idea that what we would do is we would use that particular path to ordination to put guys in place that should be ordained, right?
That guys who were laymen who really couldn't sell their homes and go and study at Fort Wayne or St. Louis for four years, because they have to pay, they've got to feed their wife and their kids and stuff like this.
And so, and they, both Jonathan and Brian Wolfmuller suggested that I take that path and seek ordination. And I said, sure, I'll do it. Our thinking was if we got a bunch of really good confessional guys going through that program, they'd close the loophole, because that's not what they were using it for.
So what I ended up doing is I applied. And there's an application process and there's an interview process. And I had to be interviewed by the Indiana District President of the Missouri Synod. I had to be interviewed by a kind of an ad hoc clergy commission of ministers in Indiana.
And then I had to also get a sign off from a fellow called the Circuit Visitor, okay? So that's kind of how the structure works. So I met with the clergy commission, they signed off on my paperwork. I met with the District President of the Indiana District of the Missouri Synod, he signed off on it.
And the last guy to, that I needed the signature from was the Circuit Visitor. And I couldn't get a straight answer from him as to whether or not he was gonna sign off on this thing. So finally he shows up at our church, the church we were attending in Greenfield, Indiana at the time, and asked to speak to me after the divine service.
So we were meeting in my pastor's office and he looked at me and he says, I'm not gonna sign your paperwork. And I said, why not? He says, because you have blood on your hands. And I said, what do you mean I have blood on my hands?
He said, you overturned the decision of a sitting president of the Missouri Synod by bringing the Issues Etc. radio program back. And I said, I thought Jerry Kieschnick said that he had nothing to do with that decision.
Do you know something about this that I don't know? And he said, that's beside the point. And he said, I believe that your presence on the clergy roster of the Missouri Synod would be disruptive, so I'm not going to sign your paperwork.
And I was furious. Just, it was absolute injustice, right? And so at that point I figured, well, maybe I'm not being called in the pastoral ministry after all. And then this guy named Don Mathson, okay?
And I kid you not, it was like really shortly after that. Okay, it was, we're not talking months, we're like talking days after this. He's passing through Indiana, wants to meet with me. He and Marilyn are traveling to go visit family on the other side of the country.
And so we're meeting in some diner in Indiana, and he says, yeah, our pastor's kind of getting old and getting up in age, and do you know anybody that would be interested in pastoring our congregation?
I said, yeah, me. And so that began the process of me seeking ordination and studying within the AALC, and then I got a formal call from Kongsvinger Lutheran Church after being cleared by the Clergy Commission of the AALC.
I got a call from Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, which then was the objective verification that I was being called to the pastoral office, because I received an actual call. And so when we talk about the objective and subjective calls, that's how that all works out.
That's how it worked out with me. So if you are a man and you're thinking you may be called to the pastoral ministry, my first advice to you is knock it off. Okay, the feeling will go away. But if it doesn't, come talk to me later, all right?
That's kind of how that works. So Kaylee, I don't know if that answers your question, but I think that's the idea here. So it's truly, it is absolutely biblical that God impresses things on people's hearts and things like this.
But you need some kind of objective validation on those types of things. You don't want to go running willy-nilly. All right, all right, Kaylee, let's get you unmuted.
I just wanted to say, yeah, I haven't been able to make it to these meetings, because I haven't had Wi-Fi in many, many, many months. But I was also attending Pastor David Weber's church.
Occasionally, I couldn't go often, because it was 40 minutes away, and gas got really crazy, like $5 a gallon in Arizona. But we did go for Easter, and we actually just celebrated with him his last day at Redeemer Church in Scottsdale.
And he got a call from Minnesota, where all his family lives. So he's now pastoring at the same church like his sons and family pastor at. So I thought that was really good to tell you that.
I'll have to look him up. Pastor Weber and I have good rapport with each other. I've enjoyed his company and some of his thoughts. So, yeah, that's good to know.
I started attending Wells Churches, and that was the one that was close by me. But I was really upset with some of the LCMS churches in Phoenix, because I think that district, the Phoenix district of LCMS, they, the church I went to, I brought my Baptist friends, and they offered them communion.
I'm like, oh, they're not Lutheran. They said, oh, we practice open communion here. I was really shocked.
Yeah, so a little bit of a history. I'll give you an explanation, and then we'll kind of wrap up here. So if you know the history of the Missouri Synod, that there were a group of liberal, I mean really liberal professors at the seminary in St. Louis.
And in the early 70s. And the president of the Missouri Synod really went after them hard. And they went on strike, so to speak. They kind of removed themselves. It was called Seminex, the seminary in exile.
And they left the seminary, and a lot of the guys, the liberals in the Missouri Synod, who left the seminary at that time, they ended up in Phoenix. They ended up in Arizona. And that particular district is just wackerdoodle.
There's a Missouri Synod pastor in the Phoenix area who dresses like he's a Jewish rabbi. I mean, it's just crazy stuff down there. So whenever somebody is asking me to find a good confessional Lutheran church around Phoenix at all, I have to send them to Pastor Weber's church because there is, or the outskirts on the east end of Phoenix also, there's a couple of good congregations way out there.
But the
Yeah, I was listening to Bert and Toby and all.
Yep, yep, and that's kind of the thing. So Missouri, there are not a lot of faithful churches in the Missouri Synod in the Phoenix area. You have to go outside of that area to find them. So, and that's the history behind it.
All right, we're gonna wrap up here today and we'll pick up from here where Jeremiah prays for understanding. We'll pick that up next week. Great to see you all. Lord willing, we'll see you next time.
Peace.
