F4F | Interview with Will Weedon

Fighting for the Faith

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Welcome to another installment of Fighting for the Faith. My name is Chris Roseborough, I am your servant in Jesus Christ.

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This is the channel that compares what people are saying in the name of God to the Word of God. Now, if you've been watching

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Fighting for the Faith for any amount of time, even if you're new and you've been binge -watching our videos, that seems to be a thing, then you'll note that oftentimes we get feedback from our viewers and from the listeners of the podcast who say things to the effect of, you know,

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I didn't realize how little I understood the Bible. What do I do next? What are next steps?

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So obviously part of your next steps, you need to consider finding a faithful church where they're properly handling

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God's Word, but I want you to know that there are also resources available to help you with an understanding of God's Word, and one of them is the website and the podcast,

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The Word of the Lord Endures Forever. So I've invited on to the program today Pastor Will Whedon of The Word of the

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Lord Endures Forever. Pastor Whedon, good to see you, sir, how are you? I'm great, Chris, it's good to be with you today.

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I'm glad to have you. So we're gonna talk about The Word of the Lord Endures Forever, and as I look through your podcast website, there are a lot of resources here.

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In fact, let me do this. I'm gonna whirl up my desktop, and here we are at the wordendures .org.

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This is a resource made available by Lutheran Public Radio, that's the folks who put together the

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Issues Etc. program, which by the way is just a great daily program dealing with politics and theology and kind of all the things that we have to deal with on a daily basis as Christians, and a good way to learn a biblical worldview in light of all the latest events going on in the world.

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But your program is, if I'm not mistaken, a 15 -minute daily podcast, and you just work through the biblical text exegetically, verse by verse by verse.

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Talk to me about your format and what it is that you are doing in this program. Sure. Well, it is such a joy to do.

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The program literally goes verse by verse through a book of the Bible, and as we go through the

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Bible, of course we're gonna pay attention to what does the Greek say, what does the Hebrew say, whatever.

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We're gonna look at the original text, but we're also going to sort of give our ear to what do the

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Church Fathers teach us about this, that, or the other, and the Reformation Fathers, and you know, all through the history of the

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Church. People have been living in this Word of God for a very long time, and they have some really good insights that the

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Spirit has given them that it's really great to check out and hear. And when you work your way through the through the

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Fathers like that, you realize, wow, they, number one, they do not belong to Rome.

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Number two, they do not belong to the Orthodox. I do, I do. And it's really important to get this.

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They belong to the whole Christian Church, and so they're part of that great heritage. And they say lots of things that wouldn't fly very well with the way

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Roman Catholics think today, by a long shot, or the Orthodox.

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So when you work your way through the Fathers, it's always great to listen to them, always recognizing the

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Church has a history of controversy on different doctrinal points, right? And so before a controversy fully erupts, a

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Father may speak what we would say imprecisely, because the language hadn't been honed down yet. It hasn't been clarified on that point.

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So you got to give them a little bit of slack. I mean, you can't say, well, look, there, he's clearly being

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Pelagian, before there was ever a Pelagius to be teaching that.

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So they're just wonderful insights into the Word of God, and the cool thing about all these men that we focus on is that they all sort of made the

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Word of God be their home. It was the place they lived, it was how they learned to understand themselves, the world, their place in it.

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So as we're going through the Scriptures, the Scriptures are the light to our path, you know? They are the ones that we will listen and ponder, but we will also then listen to those who have thought long and hard about them.

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All right, very good. So, and this is one of the things that I, like a major criticism

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I have of today's Christians, is that they do not have an understanding of Church history, and they kind of hold the

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Church Fathers suspect. You noted the fact that they don't belong to Rome, they don't, but they belong to the

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Church. But, you know, I remember years ago reading one of the Peanuts cartoons,

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Charles Schulz, and I think it was it was Charlie Brown's sister who was writing a term paper on Church history, and so, you know, she's got her cursive and she's writing out, and she says, my thesis on Church history.

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Church history. It all began when my pastor was born in February of 1929, and that's how evangelicals think.

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They have no concept of the fact that there have been Christians for two millennia, and because of the apostasy of Rome and the usurpation of the

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Bishop of Rome, they look at the Church Fathers suspiciously.

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So they've never read Gregory of Nazianzus, they've never read Eusebius or Polycarp or Augustine or Irenaeus or even

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Tertullian, and as a result of that, you know, it's almost like every generation of evangelicals has to reinvent the wheel theologically.

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It's this weird thing. So how then is a...what is a good way to look at the

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Church Fathers? Do we judge them by Scripture, or do we judge the Scriptures by them? Well, absolutely we are not going to judge the

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Scriptures by them. Now they're primary witnesses, though, to how the Scriptures were received.

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So when you're talking about the canon, like where did the Bible come from? Where does this book come from? They're witness to that.

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It's really important. They point to the authentic writings that were received in apostolic churches, right?

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You know, I mean, if Rome, if the Church in Rome vouches for the authenticity of the

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Epistle to the Romans, you got a really strong argument that, okay, this was written to the

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Romans, same Corinth or Ephesus, whatever. So yeah, I mean, they had that role, but their primary role for what, for my purposes, for my show, is in their witnessing to how the

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Word of God's teaching has been received and preserved throughout the centuries. So in other words, let's just take a real simple one.

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Christ is true God. Now, granted, in the fourth century, you've got

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Arius arising and saying, no he's not. He's basically a proto -Jehovah

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Witness dude, right? Right. You know, he's not really God. And then against this,

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God raises up someone like Athanasius in Alexandria, and his stuff's gold.

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I mean, it's just gold. And so Athanasius writing against Arius goes through the

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Scriptures and points passage after passage after passage. Now look, you can't end up saying

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Jesus is a creature if all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

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And if in him is life, and that life is the light of men, well then this man is true

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God, the Word, the eternal Word, who was with the Father and who is God.

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He's the one who became flesh. So, I mean, he just literally lays out the case, and the church just begins collecting and accumulating these arguments for laying forth the teaching of Scripture in a,

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I don't want to say systematic, because that's way too generous a term for back then. It was the

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Wild West back then, right? Yeah. They're still hammering out things like the deity of the

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Holy Spirit, the deity of Christ, and as they work through it, though, they always turn to the Scripture.

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In fact, Gregory of Nyssa, his famous line on this is, hey, he was dealing with the Unomians, he's like, you bring your teaching up to the bar of Scripture, we will let

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Scripture be the umpire here. It's going to decide who's teaching the truth. And like, for example, another great fourth century father,

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Cyril of Jerusalem, as he's teaching, he said, look, he's saying this to catechumens, so brand new people on the way to becoming

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Christians. He's like, don't you believe me just because I say it? You need to receive the proof of what I'm saying to you from the

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Word of God. And so this becomes the father's hallmark, is that they absolutely insist on the authority of Scripture and Scripture alone to determine the truth.

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I mean, you mentioned Augustine, one of the funniest exchanges that happened. Jerome was at the same time as Augustine, and Jerome was a little testy guy.

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And Augustine criticized something that he said, and Jerome just, you know, very not happy with that.

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And as a result, Augustine writes back and says, whoa, dude, not quite like that, but something like that.

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He's like, come on, I've learned that it's only the sacred

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Scriptures that I accept as perfectly true. I am free to disagree with absolutely anyone else, no matter what their holiness or sanctity or anything.

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The Scriptures are what determines the truth. So I mean, the fathers are just prime, prime, prime witness to that reality, which is,

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I think, part of their great value. It's not only, and I want to stress, they not only get that right about the

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Scriptures, that they're...well, you remember how St. Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5, test all things.

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Don't despise prophesies, but test them. How do you test them? Are they in congruence with what the

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Word of God declares? All of the fathers are united. That's exactly how you find it out. Yeah.

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So let me ask you this, is that one of the things I find fascinating is that what you've just said is absolutely true.

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In the writings of the Church Fathers, over and again when the heretics come up, they will marshal biblical texts.

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They don't go into Church tradition very much for that. And the closest thing you can make as an argument for that would be like Irenaeus in his

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Contra Heresies, where he talks about what's called the rule of faith, which really sounds like a...I

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like to argue it as like a rough draft of the Nicene Creed. A proto -Creed, right.

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Yeah, it's really...and he claims he got it from Polycarp, and Polycarp is the disciple of the

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Apostle John when he was Bishop of Ephesus. So you know, there's a good pedigree there.

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But what I find fascinating is that like when you talk with Roman Catholics today, and you quote

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Scripture to back up, you know, no, we're saved by grace apart from works, they'll say all the heretics always quote the

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Bible. You know, it's like... They don't want to deny it. It's true. They do.

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They absolutely do. But I mean, St. Irenaeus gave the best example of it. He said the heretics quote the

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Scripture as if you were to take a mosaic of a great king, and you were to rearrange all the stones into a picture of a fox.

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Yes. So Irenaeus' point is, you know you've got the Scriptures interpreted correctly when what emerges from them is the picture of the great king, when they're being read

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Christologically, so that they are like an icon to Jesus.

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You read the Scriptures, and you're learning all about Him. It's a real challenge.

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I mean, I remember on a previous radio show I used to do on The Word Called Thy Strong Word, I had a pastor who, he absolutely insisted on the air that, well, you know, the big thing is to ask what does this text mean to me?

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And I was like, no it isn't. There couldn't be a more irrelevant question.

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Who cares what it means to you? And he's like, you can't say that! And I said, I just did! It is absolutely silly, because they're not given primarily for you to find yourself in them.

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They are given—Jesus, what did He say of them? These are they that testify of me.

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And so if you're not getting Jesus out of your read, especially of the

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Old Testament, but it happens in the New too, right? Where people are able to read the New Testament and make it be nothing but, what do we call it, a law book, and they totally ignore that, hey, this document is documents.

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They're given so that you might see and believe and rejoice in your Savior! They're all about Him!

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Yep. It's what John says, you know, at the end of his gospel, these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you might have life in His name. So real quick, one of the things

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I talk about regularly on Fighting for the Faith is a phenomenon I call narcigesis.

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If you're familiar with isogesis, that's like reading things into the biblical text that are not there. Narcigesis is a narcissistic way of reading yourself into the biblical text, and so this is a phrase that we coined years ago on Fighting for the

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Faith. There was actually a listener who came up with the idea of naming it that, because I would just call it narcissistic isogesis, and they just said, just squish the two words together.

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That's great! But the way it works is that you read the story of David and Goliath, right, and there's

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David with his five smooth stones, and Goliath, you know, the giant who's taunting the armies of the living

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God, and narcigesis would basically say, so what's the Goliath in your life, and what are your five smooth stones so that you can slay your giant?

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What's wrong with that? It puts you in the place of David. Yeah. And that's totally missing, wait a minute, there's a son of David who goes in the place of David, and he knows how to get rid of that giant!

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Watch him, tell him! That's right. So Christologically, then, and this is what the church fathers do, like almost to a fault, they'll read biblical text, and they will find ways to tie it right back to Christ.

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Well, I mean, is it fair to say? I think it's totally fair to say. It's how the

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New Testament teaches you to read the Old Testament. I mean, think about it when

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St. Paul drops that bomb and says in 1 Corinthians 10, oh, and the rock that followed them was

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Christ. Yep. You're like, what? And he's like, no, no, that was really

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Jesus. It's all about Jesus. He's the one. And so, you know, or in Hebrews, Joshua.

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Joshua is actually going to be, you know, he's going to be this new

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Jesus, the new Joshua who leads you into the Promised Land. I mean, it's all there. Yep, and in fact,

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I noticed something here. Hang on a second here, I'm gonna go back to our desktop view. On your website, you've done an entire study on the book of Hebrews.

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Yes. And Hebrews is one of these books that, like, overtly, over and over and over again teaches us to look at the types and shadows of the

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Old Testament and to see them connecting to Christ. Give us some of the highlights from the book of Hebrews on that.

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Oh, man. Highlights? That's really hard. There's so much in that book.

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I gotta tell you, my all -time favorite passage in that, well, there's more than one, but the one that I always go to as helping most of all is in Hebrews 12, where he's dealing with, he contrasts what happened with Israel at Sinai with the experience of being in Christ, being

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Christians. And so he's like, you know, they had a mountain that burned with fire and a voice that scared the bejesus out of them so that, you know, they were like, please don't let us hear that anymore, we'll die.

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You're paraphrasing, Whedon, you're paraphrasing. Even Moses was terrified, right, you know?

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And then he goes, you've come, you have come. It's not present tense, it is not future tense, it is past tense.

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You have come to Mount Zion. You have come to the City of the Living God. You have come to the heavenly

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Jerusalem. You have come to this innumerable company of angels. You have come to the blood of sprinkling that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

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You have come. And so what is it to be the church, what is it to be in Christ?

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It's for all those realities that were pointed to in the Old Testament to be realized fully for you in Jesus, in his blood, which is not an idea, but a blood that's an actual gift, which he actually wants to put into you and literally cleanse you with it.

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So this becomes a great overwhelming joy in the book of Hebrews. The sacrifice of Christ, all the

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Hebrews makes Leviticus interesting. Yeah, no, you're right. All of a sudden you see, wait a minute,

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Jesus is the sacrifice. Jesus is the priest. Jesus, he's the new and better than Moses.

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I mean, in fact, the word on the book of Hebrews is better. So everything from the Old Testament is there, and it all gets ratcheted up and better, and all yours, all in him.

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Yep, yep, yep. I knew you'd knock that out of the park. I mean,

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I just love that book. Yeah, no, in fact, you cannot understand

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Leviticus apart from Hebrews. And so many people today, as Christians, they almost have a despising of the

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Old Testament, and think that it's somehow irrelevant, but you can't properly understand the

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New Testament apart from the Old, and you cannot properly understand the Old Testament apart from the

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New. It's this weird intermeshing of the two, that unless you let the voice of Scripture teach you how to understand the

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Old Testament, it's gonna be a locked book for you. Right, right. I mean, you remember the saying of St.

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Augustine, you know, the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed, the New Testament is in the

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Old Testament concealed. It's all there, because it's all Jesus. And so the witness to Christ from prophets and apostles, it ends up dancing together, and it fills your heart with joy when you really see it.

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I mean, the Scriptures become such a joyous place to live. I want to stress that. People sometimes picture

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Bible study as boring. I'm like, have you even read it? How could you possibly think that?

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I mean, you're reading a lot, and you're like saying, whoa, what do you mean, Benaiah killed a lion in a pit on the day when the snow fell?

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What is going on here? You know, it's like, oh, he's one of Jesus' mighty men. Well, haven't you killed your—what's your lion that you need to audaciously—sorry,

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I just had to do that. There is an actual book by a guy by the name of Mark Batterson where he narcogetes that text, and basically says, you know, you need to have the audacity of Benaiah and go and slay your lion in your snowy pit.

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It's like, oh. Oh my goodness. Crazy. I mean, once the

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Christological stuff really does start to gel, I mean, can I just get—I mean, this is—this may be pushing it, but this is pushing it like the fathers would push it.

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So you're in Genesis, and you're reading about the deception of Isaac, right?

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Yeah. So Rebecca actually dresses her younger son and the older son's clothes so that he smells to dad like the older son, and then he receives the older son's blessing, and the older son receives the younger son's curse.

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And you just stop and think about it, and you're like, oh, wow.

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The church, like our mother, actually wraps us up in Christ so that we smell to the father, like, who is willfully blind to all our sins, and then who absolutely then lays on us all of the blessings that belong to his only begotten, so that he can lay on his only begotten all of the price of our sin.

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I mean, that's just a little piece. I mean, let me give you one more.

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Think about Moses being thrown into the water. He's a child of slaves, born a child of slaves, sentenced to death, right?

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And then he's drawn out of the water, and he's in the royal house and family.

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And don't forget he was in an ark. And he was in an ark. He was in an ark. By the time you start putting it all together, you go, this is just absolutely amazing.

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And the key to realizing that, okay, we're not, we're not isageating here.

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We're recognizing that God is a poet. And as a poet, he definitely has what

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I, I don't know. I mean, do you do guitar? You do guitar, don't you? No, not anymore. I used to when

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I was young and in vain. My wife does guitar, though.

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She always played around with those things. What are they called? Harmonic? Harmonic? Yeah, yeah. When you get to hear,

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I mean, like, if it vibrates at a certain level, it rings higher up. They're sympathetic ringing, right?

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Scripture is full of those sympathetic ringings. You know, it starts at one spot, and it just calls out.

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Another way of putting it is it's antiphonal. It answers itself back and forth. So once you get drawn into the whole of it, and it becomes your home, well, then you're going to be equipped to actually be able to see whether or not you're being dealt with by a heretic who is simply, you know, cherry picking and ignoring, or whether or not you have the picture of the great king.

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Is the picture that's emerging from Scripture, the picture of the stupid fox? Or is it the picture of the great king?

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Yeah, no, that's a good way to put it. And I will say this is that we did a series on our

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YouTube channel, I call it a Pirate Christian's Guide to Understanding the Old Testament, where I introduce people to some of these types and shadows, but I do a lot more of this in my weekly teaching in the congregations that I serve.

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In fact, just this past week, I did a study on the rebellion of Absalom against David, and I've heard some terrible sermons about that particular portion of Scripture, by the way, and over and again it's only focuses on, well, this is what

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David got, because this was his punishment for sleeping with Bathsheba and murdering

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Uriah the Hittite, but there's more going on there that I think that a lot of people need to pay attention to, especially as it relates to the death of Absalom.

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Absalom was dead. In a tree! He was hanging in a tree, man! Okay, and somebody offered...

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Yeah, the son of David, and the text says he was suspended between heaven and earth, and it's like, oh wait a second,

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Galatians says something about, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree, and then you start connecting the details, and a

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Joab, the commander of the army, offered to have Absalom betrayed for pieces of silver, but the guy wouldn't give in, so eventually he dies by having a spear put into his heart, and it's like, do you not see the connections?

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It's like the types and shadows in reverse. Absalom becomes an Antichrist, the depiction of what it looks like when one dies for their own sins, rather than having

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Christ die for theirs. Right, right. I mean, that's so beautiful.

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I mean, I kind of, in that way of thinking about it, everybody in the end ends up being one of those two thieves on the cross, because you're going to go into death, you're either going to be railing at the uselessness of a

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God who can't get you out of this final predicament, or you're going to be saying to Jesus, hey

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Lord, I'm only getting what I deserved, but Lord, would you remember me when you come into your kingdom?

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And all of a sudden you realize, you know what, let Jesus come in between, and everything is enlightened.

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So I honestly think that is the great gift of the Fathers, and it's actually, like I said, the gift of the

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New Testament, and learning how to read the Old, and then once you do that, you take the Old Testament, you go back, and you realize, oh my goodness, it's so full of Jesus, and everything in the

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New Testament, all these types that are celebrated about Christ, he's the temple.

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I mean, there is no end to it. He's the temple, he's the sacrifice, he's the high priest, you know, it's like, wait a second, he's like, that means he's doing everything for us.

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Yeah, yeah, there is one of the, I think it's in the Jerusalem Bible, that they render the passage in Colossians, that Christ, he is all and in all, they render it, there is only

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Christ, and he is everything, and in everything. I love that!

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There is only Christ, that's what the scriptures teach. Yeah. So let's take a look at your website for a minute, here.

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Okay. And so I've got, it's been sitting open here, and if somebody wants to visit this, it's thewordindoors .org.

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I've noted already that however you want to do your podcast, you can do it on Spotify, you can do it on a iHeartRadio, you can do it on Apple Podcasts, and Google Play, and Podbean, and all this kind of stuff.

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You guys are a little farther ahead of me when it comes to, you know, making other channels of podcastage available, is the best way

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I can put it. But there is a truckload of biblical study already.

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You have gone through the entire Gospel of John, you've gone through the entire book of Hebrews, you've gone through the entire book of Romans, and as of today, when we're recording this episode of Fighting for the

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Faith, you are on part 120 of the book of Matthew, and you're not even, you're what, two -thirds of the way through?

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Well, we're in chapter... right now, I mean, I don't know what, I honestly don't know what the podcast is playing.

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I only know what I'm writing. So what I am writing right now is, I'm finishing up chapter 23.

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So yeah, we're beginning to come to the end, and by the way, I think our next one is going to be Hosea.

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And I will add, we've also done, if you go to our YouTube channel, you can also find videos where we discuss some of the questions that listeners send in, and our mutual friend

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Pete Slayton, he does, he did the videos for us, and he actually sort of emcees some of the questions, so they're there.

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Also on, I think on the website, you can find links to the videos that I did with Matt Whitman, which might also just be sort of helpful for people who are like,

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Lutheran? What the heck is a Lutheran thingy? You know, I get that. I mean, we're not the most well -known thingy.

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So... Well, I think that's our fault, by the way. I do too! Because here, this is,

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I gotta pick a, I gotta pick your brain on this. So I started off in,

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I was baptized Roman Catholic, and the only, my only exposure to Rome was through my grandparents.

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When I would visit my grandmother and my grandfather, they would take me to the Latin Mass. I didn't understand a word of it.

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All I did was make sure I looked left and right, and when people stood up, I stood up. When they sat down, they sat down.

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When they kneeled, I kneeled. I didn't understand a word of it. And so that was my exposure to Rome.

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But then my real exposure to Christian theology comes through the Three Methodists and then the

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Nazarenes. Very legalistic. And I didn't know anything about Lutherans.

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I thought Lutherans were just kind of failed Roman Catholics, you know, that, you know, because... Or a Roman Catholic light, yeah.

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Right, Roman Catholic light, because, you know, their pastors wear uniforms.

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Which is weird, because it was the Protestants who invented that uniform, you know. A lot of people do not know that.

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It's the Protestants who invented the uniform that Rome now wears. And so because we wear a uniform, that's bad, or because they have vestments, that's bad, or they have liturgical art, that's bad, and all this kind of stuff.

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And I didn't know any, really, any Lutherans. And the one thing I found out is after I was exposed to the proper distinction of law and gospel, and the

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Christological reading of the biblical text, and was defeated by the Word of God itself,

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I like to tell people, I came kicking and screaming into Lutheranism. God drug me into it.

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I'm here against my will, because I was defeated. But the one thing I found out is that Lutherans, confessional

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Lutherans, they don't talk to anybody except for themselves. It's the weirdest thing, man.

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Okay, so what ends up happening is that, I've had a friend of mine describe it as, is that if you can get into the mighty fortress, there's this beautiful cathedral inside of the mighty fortress, it has the most ornate artwork, and beautiful stained -glass windows, but there are no doors.

30:53

There are no doors. It's like the Hotel California, you can check out anytime, but you can never leave.

31:00

And so when I first made Pirate Christian Radio, the whole point was to drag

31:06

Lutheranism outside of the mighty fortress, and give people an alternative to the debate between, is it gonna be

31:14

Calvin, or is it gonna be Arminius? It's like, hello! There's a way different answer, and not only that, there are more

31:24

Lutherans than there are Calvinists, by a long shot. But good luck finding one.

31:30

The fun thing, when Matt Whitman came to our church, this was just,

31:37

I thought this was so incredibly exactly the way that we are. Pastor announced the week ahead of time, hey, we're gonna have a special guest next week, he's gonna be doing a little bit of surreptitious video, and during the service, and so what happened?

31:54

No one came to church! I mean like, we always have packed services, right?

32:00

You know? And nobody is there! I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? I told

32:05

Matt Whitman afterwards, I said, man, tells you everything you need to know about Lutherans right there. They are so shy, it's ridiculous!

32:14

You have a better chance of spotting a Sasquatch sometimes, man. That's crazy.

32:20

And you know what's really weird is that we've got the greatest news to share. I mean, just stop and think about, once you get like something like objective justification straight in your head, and you're like, no,

32:30

I'm not going out to tell people, if you do this, this, and if you repent and do XX or Y, then

32:35

God will forgive you. I'm going out to proclaim to the world, hey, in Jesus Christ the sins of the world have been wiped out!

32:42

Fair God! Dude, your sins are history! They have been all answered for entirely!

32:47

Your death has been destroyed! How can we not be excited about this good news? It's insane!

32:53

It's absolutely insane. Yeah, and we could even talk about all the passives as it relates to verbs regarding repentance, you know?

33:00

Oh my goodness. Yeah, but that's a whole other conversation. To give repentance to Israel, yes.

33:06

Right! You know, and I think about Peter, you know, so there he is, he's preaching to Cornelius, you know, the centurion, and it is a great neighborhood,

33:14

Caesarea Maritima, man, that's a good neighborhood on the Mediterranean, but anyway, so Cornelius, this whole household, they hear the gospel, they believe, they receive the

33:23

Holy Spirit, they're baptized, and in chapter 11 of Acts, the Judaizers, you know, the circumcision, you hate with us!

33:32

And so what does Peter do? He just lays out what happened, and their response was, ah, so God has granted repentance to even the

33:39

Gentiles. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and a little later in the fight at the council, it shows up too, where, remember, they were like, no, you have to tell them they must be circumcised, they have to be circumcised to keep the law of Moses.

33:55

And Peter comes back with the most fascinating answer to them. He says, no, no, no, no, no, we believe that we shall be saved by the grace of our

34:07

Lord Jesus Christ, even as they—the problem at the council was not that they thought the Gentiles needed to be circumcised, it was that they forgot that they were saved by grace and not by circumcision!

34:18

And so Peter yanks them back into grace. Yeah, yeah. Can't argue with that,

34:24

Exegesis, I completely agree. All right, so your podcast, is it a daily podcast?

34:31

Is it five days a week, seven days a week? How often are you guys putting out a podcast? Five days a week.

34:37

Five days a week, fifteen minutes a day. Most of the time.

34:44

I mean, there are times that there are texts that you just gotta go a longer on, and there are some times that I'm just actually a little shorter.

34:52

But, you know, the average clearly is about 15 minutes a day, yeah. Okay, so about 15 minutes a day.

34:59

And this is a great place, a good resource, to introduce you to more in -depth, verse -by -verse study, and then also get you in conversation with the

35:12

Church historically, you know, with the Church Fathers and others and how they've handled these texts.

35:18

And so you make a proper distinction between God's law and the Gospel, you bring to bear the writings of the

35:26

Church Fathers and how they've understood these things in a Christological reading rather than the narcissistic reading of even the

35:33

Old Testament passages. Real quick, if no one has, if somebody, this is the first time they've heard the phrase, proper distinction of law and Gospel, what do we mean by that?

35:44

Oh, that's such a great one, because the law and the Gospel are two different words that God gives.

35:50

They are both divine, they are both from Him, they both have promises, but they are very different, because the law is when

35:56

God tells you, you do this, and you don't do that.

36:02

And the Gospel is when God says to you, and this is what I have done for you. And so the

36:08

Gospel deals with God doing the verbs and doing the verbs of salvation for us, and the law deals with us obeying

36:17

God, us doing what He has told us to do, or more often than not, us not obeying

36:22

God. I mean, the law shows us, always shows us our sin, because no matter how well we, you know, you may think

36:30

I'm doing pretty well and obeying God here, but if you actually sit down with the law like Jesus does in the Sermon on the

36:35

Mount, you want to go back and read what we did or listen to what we did in Matthew 5, and by the time

36:41

Jesus is done with the Sermon on the Mount, well, Luther's phrase is, he out -Moses' Moses.

36:47

You know, by the time he's done, you're just like, I am so toast, I am so toast, there is no hope for me.

36:54

And of course that's where he wants you to be, so that you can be the poor in spirit to whom the kingdom of God is given.

37:00

Yeah, I think Jesus cheated a little bit. I think Walther has to acknowledge the fact that Christ front -loads his sermon with the

37:06

Gospel. He did, he did, he did. And of course,

37:12

I think it's fair to say that when we're dealing with law -Gospel distinction, we're not necessarily talking about chronologically, first this, then this, because, you know, the text don't,

37:24

I mean, especially if you're doing expository preaching, the texts don't always work that way. So I'm not,

37:30

I try not to end up bashing somebody with the law. I mean, it's always bashing myself,

37:36

I'm preaching to myself. But by the time, but there are certain texts, you know, as for those who do not want me to be king, bring them over here and torture them in front of me.

37:49

Make that a Gospel! Go ahead and try! You know, I mean, it's a clear word of law. Yeah, I always crack up, so you know, it's like, so there we are, it's a

37:58

Sunday morning, and you know, I'm reading out the biblical text for the day, and the Gospel text, there is no

38:03

Gospel in it. And always and again when I say, and this is the Gospel of the Lord, I feel like going,

38:10

I'm, I feel like I'm lying. I want to say, this is the law of the

38:15

Lord! You know, but you get the idea. That's one of the artifacts, if you would, of preaching through a lectionary, you know, that sometimes your

38:25

Gospel texts are all law, you know. And that's okay, because usually when that happens, your epistle texts are very much all

38:34

Gospel. So you know, it's like, you might finish from Romans and say, this is the

38:41

Gospel of the Lord, and you should be glad that you heard it today. I remember

38:46

C .S. Lewis said once, all the really scary things in Scripture are from Jesus' mouth. All the really comforting, hopeful things do mostly come from Paul.

38:55

Not that Jesus didn't say beautiful, comforting things. He did. Yeah, but here's the thing, I mean, nobody preached about hell more than Christ.

39:03

No! You wouldn't have known about hell if you didn't have Jesus clearly teaching on that. Yeah, you would have some recollection of it from the

39:11

Old Testament, from Isaiah, and a couple other places, but apart from that... Nothing clear. Not like that.

39:17

No. I mean, Jesus is the one who preaches on it, like, scarily. And He also is the one who reveals

39:22

Satan, like nobody else reveals Satan. I mean, He pulls the mask off and says, look guys, this is what you're really facing.

39:29

This is your enemy. Yeah. You know? It's really priceless. Yep. No, I just,

39:37

I love it. You know, I need to... Go ahead, sorry. No, that's okay. I'm interrupting you because I wanted to circle back on the

39:44

Church Fathers, but I can wait for a second. Well, I just wanted to add one more thing that, sort of, as a feature of Thy Strong Word, The Word of the

39:52

Lord Endures Forever. Thy Strong Word was the previous show I used to do. The Word of the Lord Endures Forever is that I try to also inform it from the

40:01

Church's worship life. Yeah. Because, I mean, that's sort of my gig, if you will. That's where I spent most of my life working on, is, you know, studying how we worship as the people of God.

40:12

And so there's an awful lot of hymnody from the ancient Church, or medieval Church, or the

40:17

Reformation Church, or Wesley, or whoever, that'll make it into the podcast.

40:25

And I think that that's actually a uniqueness of The Word of the

40:31

Lord Endures Forever. Yeah, and that is, say, that is a lost art.

40:37

And I gotta tell you, you know, if people can have a love for the

40:43

Scriptures, then the hymnody of the Church historic all of a sudden starts crackling to life, and you realize, where has this stuff been?

40:53

We've lost a treasure when we lose our hymnals. Oh my goodness, I can't even believe it.

40:59

You just wafted that soapbox right in the front of me. So I gotta get on it for just a second.

41:06

Go right ahead. I mean, compare this to, okay, I mean, like, back in the day,

41:12

I remember you would hear, Father, I adore you. Lay my life before you how

41:19

I love you. Jesus, I adore you. Lay my life before you how

41:24

I love you. I mean, it doesn't take long before you realize that's not about Father, Son, and Spirit. That song is about me, and what

41:31

I'm doing. And, you know, God, you're really, it's kind of really similar to, I mean, I'm gonna get people mad at me, but I mean,

41:37

I think it's similar to the Pharisee at the temple there saying, you know, I thank you, God, that I'm not like other people, that, you know, you've given me the grace to lay my life before you.

41:46

And that kind of an attitude that fills, I think, a lot of the music and words of a lot of what passes as Christian worship in these days, it does stand in stark contrast to when you're, okay,

42:02

I mean, let me just give you an example. I use this in my podcast that I was writing this morning. It's a modern hymn, so it's not an ancient one, but listen to these words.

42:14

In Adam, we have all been one, one huge, rebellious man. We all have fled that evening voice that sought us as we ran.

42:21

We fled thee, and in losing thee, we lost our brother too. Each singly sought and claimed his own.

42:29

Each man his brother slew. But thy strong love, it sent us, it sought us still, and sent thine only

42:37

Son, that we might hear his shepherd's voice, and hearing him be one.

42:42

O thou, who in we love thee not didst love and save us all, thou great good shepherd of mankind,

42:50

O hear us when we call. It just goes on, but I mean, the point is, it's all about Jesus! Yes, it is.

42:57

No, and I'll tell you this, is that there's a fellow in one of the congregations

43:02

I serve, and he's a convert to Christianity, and, you know, rough, rough life prior to that, and he works at our local

43:11

Walmart, and so I had the privilege of serving him and teaching him and catechizing him and then confirming him and bringing him into fellowship in our congregation, and that is one of his favorite hymns, you know,

43:24

In Adam we have all been one, one huge rebellious man.

43:30

So we sang that a few weeks ago, I wove that into our Advent service, and so he was, the other day, you know, this was just a couple weeks ago, he was at work, and he was singing that while he was, you know, packing the meat aisle at the local

43:45

Walmart, and as he was humming that tune, one of the patrons came in, you know, from another

43:51

Lutheran Church, and heard him singing that and joined him, and they were singing it together in the meat aisle at Walmart.

43:57

Oh, that is so cool! It's just a great story.

44:03

And the thing is, is that, I mean, that particular hymn, I mean, the melody is haunting, you know, to get it to go, it really is memorable, but his favorite hymn is

44:13

Thy Strong Word. I mean, you know, he asked me the other day, when are we gonna sing Thy Strong Word? It's like, yeah, well,

44:19

I think we might be able to work it in sometime in Epiphany, but— Another one of those from the same author.

44:27

And, I mean, so again, written in the mid -20th century, that one, of course, written about the logo of Concordia Seminary St.

44:35

Louis, but what I really love on that hymn, Thy Strong Word, is that fourth verse,

44:40

Thy Strong Word bespeaks us righteous, bright with thine own holiness.

44:46

It's not our achievement, it's God speaking it to us, saying, you are righteous.

44:53

And all of a sudden, you are! It's what he says. Yeah, glorious now, we press towards glory in our lives.

45:00

Our lives, our hopes confess. Yeah! Oh, it's glorious. I love that piece, too. Yeah, see, we're nerding out on hymns here.

45:09

We got on this, you know what, you'll put the soapbox there, I'm gonna climb the stairs. Next time I'll be sure to put it there earlier so we can extend the conversation.

45:19

All right, so I'm gonna put you on the spot on some... actually, I wanted to circle back on the Church Fathers for a second, because we were talking about, you know, again,

45:27

Church history and things like this, and a good way to think about the Church Fathers, I think about...

45:33

I think it was a 1948 translation of Athanasius' On the

45:38

Incarnation. There was a publishing house that put that together back in the in the late 40s, and they asked

45:44

C .S. Lewis to write the introduction to it. And in the introduction, C .S. Lewis wrote an essay, it's a very famous essay, you can find it still online if you google it, and the name of it was

45:54

On the Reading of Old Books. And C .S. Lewis made a compelling argument that as Christians, we should not be reading a whole lot of modern books, that instead we need to have a steady diet and a very healthy percentage of what we read, not from the latest and greatest and the brightest and the shiniest, but from the ancient

46:19

Church. And one of his arguments was that guys like Augustine and Irenaeus and Tertullian, they all made errors, but they made different errors than we're making today.

46:34

Bingo! And the errors that they... and the thing is, because they are in the grave, they are immune to the errors that we have today.

46:42

And so one of the things that I think is really a tragic thing that happens, especially in American evangelicalism, is that they seem to think that America is the center of everything.

46:54

And sometimes their theology and their eschatology oftentimes will center on the United States. But Augustine wasn't an

47:02

American, Tertullian wasn't an American, Luther wasn't an American.

47:08

Walther emigrated to America, but the America that he emigrated to is very different than the

47:15

America of today. And so when we talk... you mentioned the fact that people really think that Lutherans are like Roman Catholics lite, but we use a word, we do use the word

47:29

Catholic, but we don't mean the same thing as the way that Rome talks about. I think Roman Catholicism is an oxymoron, because Catholicism doesn't make any sense, because Catholic means universal.

47:41

Rome is a province in Italy. Roman Universalism. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Doesn't go, yeah.

47:47

So that being the case, I find in reading old theologians is it gets me out of the

47:55

American mindset, and gets to start to me to think more in line with the universal

48:01

Kingdom of Christ, and be in communication with and conversation with those who have gone before me, or those who are of a different culture, different political background.

48:11

I mean, Augustine never heard of Trump. You know what

48:18

I'm saying? Yeah, no, I mean, it's one of the most glorious things about these fathers, is you're reading them and all of a sudden, where they're wrong, they're going to be so manifestly wrong to you, it's going to be like, okay,

48:30

I'm not going to be in danger of falling into that. C .S. Lewis pointed that out. If they get something wrong, you're going to just, it's going to be like, nah, nah, nah.

48:38

But on the other hand, they're going to be saying some things that you are blind to, because you share the assumptions of the age.

48:45

And if you only live in your own age, well, how blind is that? Yeah. How beautiful it is to be able to expand our hearts and our minds to receive the witness to Christ of these people from across a variety of cultures.

48:59

I mean, like North Africans, and Syrians, and Germans, and, you know,

49:07

I mean, you just go down the line, all over the place. And I want to stress that North Africa, it's not just European.

49:14

I mean, you get this European -centric thing, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. If anything, the ancient church was

49:20

Asia -Africa -centric, right? Until Islam came along, yeah.

49:27

Right, right. And certainly the greatest mind outside of St. Paul is Augustine, in the history of the

49:32

Church, period. There's nobody that comes close, and he was an African. Yeah, and he spent a healthy amount of time as a heretic, too, man.

49:40

Oh man. Late have I loved thee. Sometimes it shows. So when we talk about the, you had mentioned the fact that with some

49:50

Church Fathers, they speak in ways that are not very precise, because a particular

49:57

Christological battle hadn't been fought. I think of Eusebius of Caesarea, for instance, in this particular regard.

50:05

Eusebius, I think, was very, I think he was, he considered guys like Athanasius to be quite extreme, and he wasn't as on board with their tight, precise language,

50:20

Christologically, and even his understanding of the hypostatic union seems to be quite underdeveloped.

50:29

But in the generation that follows him after Athanasius, everything gets locked down a lot harder, but it still takes a long time for Arianism to work its way out of the

50:41

Church. Oh, a long time! Yeah, no, I mean, stop and think about how, I mean, they're still fighting that toward the end of the 4th century, so it really did take a long time.

50:52

But the interesting thing is, like, who is it? Hillary, I think, that said, the heretics compel us to put into language things that should never have to be put into language.

51:04

And because of that, the language, I mean, when Athanasius yanked out that term homoousius, of one substance, and he put all of the weight on that.

51:15

It was a term that heretics had used the century before to actually teach something false, but he rasps the term and fills it with a true biblical

51:25

Orthodox meaning, and it took the Church a while to go, I'm not sure we really want to drink this down or not, you know,

51:33

I mean, is this absolutely the best way to put it? So you do have those kind of long, long discussions in the

51:42

Church about getting the language to carry the biblical weight. Yeah, and the reality is that then, after Athanasius, the dividing line for orthodoxy versus heresy is one iota.

51:58

One iota. I saw an iota subscript. Yeah, yeah, that's what we're talking about here.

52:05

We're talking about, yeah, that's not one iota! Yeah, well there you go, you know, that's the difference.

52:11

It's one letter. One letter is the difference between heresy or orthodoxy.

52:18

So I mean, the terms are, you know, so he's of the same substance as the father, the son is of the same substance as the father, or he is of a similar substance to the father.

52:29

And you get that from homo to homoi. You see the i there on the end, the iota there. So there it is.

52:34

So yeah, it's crazy. And the Church realized, though, no, if we say he's just, he's kind of like the father, you haven't said the truth that Scripture actually lays out.

52:45

That's not what he revealed. I and the father are one. Not, I'm kind of like him.

52:52

Yeah, indeed. All right, so I'm gonna put you on the spot, all right? Because we're getting to the point where we're gonna wind down our conversation, which is,

53:00

I think I can go a few more hours with you. I could do it with you. I love talking to you,

53:05

Chris. Okay, so off the top of your head, all right, so the charismatics today, the ones who claim that they can hear directly from God, and that we need to learn how to hear

53:18

God's voice in our hearts, or in the wind, or in the trees, or in the rocks, or whatever. There was a whole lot of people in the year 2020 who made all kinds of prophecies, and so in the year 2020, you had all the notable charismatic prophets prophesying that 2020 was going to be a year of breakthrough, of success, and all these kind of things, and no one saw

53:39

COVID coming. Shock, I know. Okay, and the things that they said would happen in 2020 didn't happen.

53:48

It was quite the opposite. And so there are a lot of charismatics out there who are trying to kind of navigate what they would consider a compromised position, and say, well, listen, surely those prophecies were not accurate, but that doesn't make them false prophets.

54:09

It's not what Deuteronomy says, is it? That's kind of what I'm thinking. What are your thoughts on this?

54:15

Is it possible for somebody to prophesy falsely, and say, thus saith the Lord, and then so their prophecy doesn't come true, but there's still a true prophet?

54:27

No, I mean, not only do you have the Deuteronomy 1821, if you say in your heart, how may we know that the word that the

54:34

Lord has spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the

54:42

Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.

54:49

And you can think about it, Jeremiah 23, where God's like, they're going around saying, thus saith the Lord. I did not send them.

54:55

I did not give them that word. Look, if you've got my word, speak my word. But if you don't have my word, and you're just sharing the dreams of your own heart, don't waste their time.

55:05

So, you know, it's very clearly the case that we need to be very cautious of this.

55:10

I mean, we talked earlier about 1 Thessalonians 5, where St. Paul said, test everything, hold fast what is good.

55:19

And then I also wanted to stress from 2 John verse 9, he says, everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide, live, stay in the teaching of Christ does not have

55:36

God. I mean, just stop right there. If you move beyond the teaching of Christ, the

55:43

Apostle John says, you don't have God. And if you stay with the teaching of Christ, you have both the

55:50

Father and the Son. Yep. So, I mean, I'm a pastor, but I've never had coffee with Jesus.

55:59

Jesus and I, we don't have a scheduled time when we meet together, and he gives me advice, and I never get to ask him, so what's on your mind,

56:08

Jesus? You know, what's on your heart today? We don't have those kinds of conversations, and yet I can honestly say that there isn't a single time where God has not spoken to me when

56:19

I've opened up the Scriptures. Absolutely. I mean, when we open up the Scriptures, well,

56:25

I mean, you remember how Jesus would say in John 14 that, if you love me, you're gonna keep my words.

56:31

Yes. And that word, keep, that's like... Actually, is that or the minute word?

56:40

I think it's the abiding word. I think it might be that one. So anyway, but his point is, it's you make it a home.

56:46

You make the Scriptures your home, he says, and when that happens, the Father and I make our home in you. And of course, does

56:52

God give us direction in our lives? Absolutely! Through the Word.

56:59

As the Word lives in you, and as you live in it, it most certainly does guide you, and it's shocking how many times in various circumstances, the

57:07

Holy Spirit will bring to your mind a passage of Scripture. You'll go like, oh, this is exactly what he said.

57:15

Right. And you know, and you're able then to speak a word of peace and of hope, and I think one of the things that's a real characteristic of the

57:21

Spirit's work through the Word is that it does bring peace and joy, as opposed to the kind of fear that many times so called prophecies tend to conjure up.

57:35

Yeah, no, I think you're right about that. And the other idea then here is that, you know,

57:40

Scripture talks about the importance of hiding God's Word in your heart, and that it's living and active, and there are people who accuse us of believing in a false trinity,

57:52

Father, Son, and Holy Bible. This is the way they speak about us. Or that somehow that we've locked

58:00

God in a box in the Bible, or all this kind of this weird way of talking. But the issue is that Paul writes and he describes

58:10

God's Word as theanoustos, which is an amazing word if you think about it. It's God breathed, right?

58:17

Right. And the author of Hebrews says that it's living and active, and so the work of the

58:25

Holy Spirit is intimately linked to these words that are written from us from the beginning of Genesis all the way to the end of Revelation.

58:34

And so as we read God's Word, the Spirit is speaking to us, instructing us, teaching us, equipping us, convicting us, and comforting us, all of these things that He does.

58:48

And so over and again, you know, somebody said, well what about this time, you know, I was out in public and there was some homeless person who looked like they needed help, and I just felt convicted, and I felt like the

58:57

Holy Spirit was telling me to go and help that person. Well, duh! The Scripture says to do that! The Word of God tells us to do that!

59:05

Right, right, right, right. You know, I really want to underline what

59:11

Jesus said in John 6, because I think this is a really important passage to keep in our minds. The words, plural, the words that I speak to you, they are anoima!

59:23

They are Spirit, and they are life. So the words of Jesus are not in some way alien to the

59:32

Holy Spirit, or different from the Holy Spirit. They literally are the...they carry the

59:37

Spirit to you, and the Spirit carries through those words faith into your heart.

59:44

So yeah, it all ties together. Yeah, indeed. Indeed. Well, listen, we, you know, like I said,

59:51

I could probably talk to you for a few more hours. We'll have to figure out how to have you back, but... Yeah, I'd love it.

59:57

Thank you for your time today, and again, the link to the website so that you can sign up for the podcast, get the podcast on Apple or Google Play or Spotify or all these things, you know, the website is the wordendures .org,

01:00:14

and we'll put the link to the, you know, to the resource down below, and if you're looking for a great

01:00:21

Christ -centered Bible verse -by -verse, it includes a look at how the

01:00:26

Church historically has read these texts, and be in conversation with Christians from across the millennia, this is the podcast for you so that you can go deeper into God's Word.

01:00:35

So thank you for the work that you are doing, Pastor Whedon, and I look forward to having a follow -up conversation with you sometime in the future.

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Thank you so much, Pastor Chris, it was a joy! Thank you. I'm gonna sign off here, and then we'll talk a little bit off -camera, but hang on a second here.

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So if you found this helpful, again, all the information on how you can share the video is down below, and the information on how you can get to the

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Word of the Lord endures forever, and their website is also in the description. So until next time, may

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God richly bless you in the grace and mercy won by Jesus Christ and His vicarious death on the cross for all of your sins.