Lecture Q&A

So, by the way, tomorrow's Divine Service is going to be a little longer than normal. We have, we legitimately have a lot of things to do. So one of the things that we're going to be doing tomorrow is that we have acquired a Paschal Candle, which is kind of a big deal.

And if you're not sure what a Paschal Candle is, think of it as like the granddaddy of all candles. Okay, good way to put it. But I need to share my screen. Hang on a second here. Let me do this.

All right.

In fact, I need to do it in two different ways. Hold on a second here. I'm going to go to screen mirroring and we're going to go to the great room. All right, and y 'all can see that. And then let me go to Zoom and see if I'm able to share.

I don't know if it'll let me. I am, I'm a participant. It doesn't allow me to do that. All right, hang on a second. We got to, you got to change my status to host. So I am now the host, which means I can share my screen.

All right.

Let me check. So as part of the service tomorrow, at the very beginning of the service, there's a, there's a little rite that normally takes place on the Easter Vigil. But since we're acquiring our Paschal candle outside of the Easter Vigil, and we'll use it until then, and we'll acquire a new one then, a Paschal candle basically is a large candle.

In fact, the one that we have looks exactly like this. What was that? It's three feet tall, two inches thick. And this is the one that we have, this is the one that we have, which is the Chi Rho symbol.

Oftentimes, we'll have a cross. And then along with it, they give you five nails to, you know, to put in the different parts of the cross itself. So since we don't have a cross, we'll put it, we'll make the sign of the cross with the nails.

And then the one, the one will be in the center, in the, in the symbol for the Trinity. So we will be putting that into, into rotation here. And so every single Sunday, then the Paschal candle will be lit as long, as well as our altar candles and, you know, kind of a big deal in the idea of visible representation of the, of the, the physical presence of the, the presence of Christ is a good way to think.

Of that.

So that will be the opening tomorrow. Then we're going to also be bringing Hannah Sylvester into membership tomorrow. And and then there's, there's one other thing planned. I don't know if I'm, I can talk about it.

I can't talk about it. There's one other thing planned. Just make sure everybody's here, best way I can describe it. So tomorrow will be a busy, busy service and plus Emmanuel Lutheran Church, which is the other physical congregation in Minnesota that I, that I pastor, they will be joining us.

Tomorrow.

So I won't have to leave in a rush, but you know, there's a really good chance we're going to have a very brief, if not a non-existent Bible study after the divine service departs. Depends on how long it takes us to get through everything.

So, and I might have to prepare three to four communion hymns, you know, just, just saying I might have to throw that in. And, and, and if you haven't noticed Nikki in preparing the kids, you know, in teaching them that particular hymn, that's our closing hymn tomorrow.

So, you know, so Nikki is really good at like reading minds and stuff. So how she pulled that out of thin air, it's just amazing. So, but anyway, so I let you know, the things that are coming up tomorrow will be a busy.

Day.

I'm still trying to figure out mentally how to get past karaoke tonight. So that I just decided I'm just going to go for it. That's all. That's all there is. I don't care how off key I sing. It's just going to be, it's going to be bad.

All right.

John 6 and the Meaning of Eating Christ’s Flesh and Drinking His Blood

So Bible Answer Man questions came up coming in, so you can submit your questions here. Jeff Kenny asks, can you explain John 6 verses 61 through 64 in relation to its context of Jesus doubling down about eating his flesh and drinking his blood?

Yeah, that's a, that's a good question. And you are allowed to ask questions regarding anything. But in the Gospel of John chapter six, I always like to refer to this, this chapter of the Gospel of John as the great church shrinkage chapter.

And the reason being is, is that at the end of this, there are a lot of people who no longer walk with Christ. And I use this in, throughout its history as a, as throughout my history of doing Christian apologetics as a proof text against the purpose driven and secret driven movements, which are all about numerical growth without any kind of qualitative understanding of the scriptures.

We're going to get it. We're going to grow a church to 10 ,000 people and every one of them will have this much knowledge of the scriptures. They found that you can attract people to come to church if you get rid of the scriptures and you get rid of hymns and you get rid of any kind of meaningful understanding of scripture.

Instead you teach pagans what they want to hear. They'll come to church, but then does it continue to be church? So in the Gospel of John, so let me, let me put this in context because I could see how somebody taking this out of context would somehow make it seem like Christ is not saying that he's somehow saying that the flesh doesn't, that doesn't avail anything and that this would somehow be an evacuation of what Christ says earlier.

So in the opening portion of John chapter six, Jesus feeds the 5 ,000. Pay attention to that miracle because aside from the resurrection of Christ, this is the only miracle that appears in all four Gospels and you have to know your Old Testament to understand the significance of it.

But the basic idea here is that you got, you got 5 ,000 Jews, these are men plus their wives and their kids, all present in this wilderness place and they are miraculously fed food. This invokes the exodus and invokes the wilderness wanderings of Egypt and in John's account of this miracle, what ends up happening is that they realized who Jesus was and so when the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, this is indeed the prophet who is coming into the world.

It's him, right? And then perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. And when evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, started across the sea to Capernaum.

It was now dark and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing and when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea. Have you ever wondered why was Jesus walking on the water?

It was not because he thought it was really cool, okay? He was not out there surfing going, hang 10, dude, none of that. The whole purpose of him walking on the water was to leave no footprints while he skedaddled because he didn't want them to make him king by force.

It was to throw them off his trail and, of course, there's a whole lot of other things going on here. And you'll note it's only the Gospel of Matthew that records that Peter then, when they saw Jesus, asked that, you know, if that's really you, then let me come and walk on the water.

So when this text comes up in the next few weeks, I will not be admonishing you all to become water walkers, okay? I just want to assure you that that seems like a crazy thing to do and a twisting of the text.

And so on the next day then, the crowd catches up with Jesus and, you know, he had crossed the sea and so it says in John 6, 25, when they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, Rabbi, when did you come here?

Because they can't figure out how he got there because normally that would require a boat and they knew that Jesus didn't get into the boat when his disciples got into theirs. Okay, hang on a second. All right, hang on.

So are we getting an echo? All right, all right, fixed.

Hang on.

Almost there. How's that? Is that better?

I got it.

All right.

So moving on then, it then says that when they found him, they said, Rabbi, when did you come here? And then Jesus at this point, he is going to say some things that are really hard. Don't make a lick of sense.

Truly, truly, I say to you, you're seeking me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate your fill of loaves. Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you, for on him God the Father has set his seal.

So then they said to him, what must we be doing to do the works of God?

Works plural.

Jesus answered that this is the work singular of God, that you believe in him whom he has.

Set.

So they said to him, well, then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, as it is written, gave them bread from heaven.

To eat.

And Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Say what?

Okay.

So the manna of the wilderness, that was bread coming down from heaven, and it is a type and shadow of Jesus, the true bread of God who comes down from heaven. And everyone's going, okay, well, sir, give us this bread always.

And then Jesus said, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me.

Whoever comes to me I will never cast out, for I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. I will raise him up on the last day. You can take that one to the bank, all right? I recently did a video where I took somebody to task for their misreading and their misunderstanding of the parable of the ten virgins, right?

If oil becomes the thing that is the difference between salvation and damnation, there is only one thing that that oil can represent, and that's faith in Christ. If you make it anything else, then you're creating a schema whereby you have salvation by works, right?

And Christ is clear. Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and Christ will raise him up on the last day. So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven.

What does that mean? So you'll know, they were confronted with a biblical concept that didn't make a lot of sense on the surface. This requires patience and working through and learning. So they said, is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?

How does he now say, I have come down from heaven? Jesus said to them, do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

In other lessons, I've dug deep into the Greek verb here, halkuo, literally means to drag something against its will. So no one can come to me unless the father drags him against his will into the kingdom.

That's exactly what happened to all of us. As it is written in the prophets, and they will be taught by God. Everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me. No one, not that anyone has seen the father except he was, who was from God.

He has seen the father. Truly I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. Again, take that to the bank. I am the bread of life. Now your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven.

He's pointing to himself. So that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Eww.

Right?

So the Jews then disputed among themselves, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? Now I've said it before, I'll continue to say it. Jesus doesn't sit there and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there guys.

That's crazy talk.

What I really, I'm talking symbolically here. Nobody can eat my flesh. That's just gross. Jesus doesn't do that. He doubles down. So Jesus said, truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day for my flesh is true food. My blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him.

Have you heard the concept of abiding in Christ? How does one do such a thing? I would note it has a lot to do with the Lord's supper, right? As the living father sent me and I live because of the father.

So whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. That's a good promise.

Every time we have the Lord's supper, those promises are there for you.

All right.

Now, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, this is a hard saying who can listen to it. In other words, we're out of here. We're done with this guy. Jesus, knowing himself that his disciples were rumbling about this, said to them, do you take offense at this?

Then what if you were to see the son of man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe.

For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him. And he said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the father.

And after this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the 12, do you want to go away as well? They just experienced a complete shrinkage of the disciples, right?

Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. And we believe that you have come and have come to know that you are the Holy one of God. Jesus answered, did I not choose you, the 12?

And yet one of you is a devil. Spoken of Judas Iscariot. So the question then is in here, in the midst of this 61 to 64, where Christ says it is the spirit who gives life. The flesh is no help at all.

That is not a denial of what Christ said previously in the other, in the just above this in this chapter. What he's talking about is how one understands the words of Christ. If God, the Holy Spirit does not assist you, you will never rightly understand the biblical texts, okay?

And that's the point he's saying. Do you take offense at this? Why have these people taken offense at the truth that Christ spoke? That unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you do not have life in you.

Answer, the reason they took offense at that is because the Holy Spirit hadn't given them the proper way to understand it. They were interpreting it basically using their own reasoning. And that's the point that Jesus is making.

And this is one we have to pay careful attention to. In the scriptures, there are things that seem contrary to reason. How many of you heard people say things like this? A miracle is a breaking of the laws of nature.

But we know that it is impossible to break the laws of nature. Therefore, ergo, miracles are not possible. As if there's some kind of a traffic cop, sitting right outside of Jesus's ministry meeting, right?

And as soon as Jesus performs a miracle,.

Pull over, right?

I'm citing you for breaking the laws of nature.

That's why it's called a miracle.

Right, okay.

But here's the thing. You're gonna note, the whole framework where a person denies that miracles are possible, that's them trying to understand things according to human reason and according to the flesh.

You need human reason to apprehend what the scriptures teach, for sure. But you cannot and must not use your human reason for the purpose of negating what the scripture says. And that's where so many people go wrong.

And they'll argue this way. They'll say things like this. Well, clearly it's not possible for Jesus to offer us his body and blood for us to consume in the Lord's Supper because, and they'll go like this.

In fact, if you've ever read the Marburg Colloquy, it's an absolute scream. Zwingli and Oculumpadius, they show up in order to debate with Luther regarding the Lord's Supper. And their big argument was, we know from experience that it's only possible for a human body to be at one place at one time.

Therefore, it's impossible because it says in scripture that Christ bodily ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. Therefore, it is impossible for his body and blood to be present in the Lord's Supper.

What's the problem here? They are using philosophical and logical and human reasoning to negate Jesus's words. What does Jesus say? This is my body. This is my blood, right? And Jesus said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you.

But human reason comes in kind of like, you know, from a Monty Python, you know, the Monty Python and the Holy Grail. You had that kid who's locked up in the tower and he wants to sing and dance and all of a sudden the music starts and his father stops and says,.

No, no, no, no, stop, stop, stop, stop that, right?

Same thing going on here. As soon as the pastor says the words of Christ,.

Everyone goes, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.

I know Jesus said that, but he didn't mean it. What did he mean? I don't know what he meant, but he didn't mean that, okay? He clearly meant to say this symbolizes my body, this symbolizes my blood, therefore that has to be what this means.

Well, then why did he use a predicate nominative construction in the Greek, which makes it absolutely impossible for this to mean anything other than that what Jesus is offering us is his actual body and blood?

How do you explain the grammar? I don't know, it just can't mean that. Yeah, because I say so, right? I heard that one from my parents many times. I asked way too many questions. I was a kid, but that's the thing.

We want to negate these things, and as soon as you start heading down this path, all right, we're gonna negate the words of Christ here in the Lord's Supper. What's next? Well, let's get rid of the global flood because that seems silly, right?

This idea that God had Noah build an ark and took him more than 100 years to construct this thing and that God saved all the animals and human beings and there was a global flood. That doesn't make any sense.

We'll get rid of that, too. And while we're at it, let's get rid of the crossing of the Red Sea. That didn't really happen. And while we're at it, let's get rid of Jesus walking on the water. While we're at it, too, Jesus didn't really raise anybody from the dead.

That's not possible. And of course, that would also mean that Jesus didn't rise from the dead either. So you spend all of your time using your flesh to negate the scriptures, and you are left with then stupid stories that are about as beneficial as Aesop's fables, right?

Everything has a moral to the story. You see, the reason why the rabbit lost to the tortoise is because slow and steady wins the race, right? And so we need to be slow and steady in our understanding of things.

So what's the purpose of the resurrection? It's to remind us that every year after winter, God causes the ground to produce again and the flowers come back and bloom. And so the purpose of the resurrection is to remind us of all the pretty flowers that we have every spring, to which I'm at this point resisting all of my gag reflexes, and I'm not purposely trying to vomit that I want to, right?

So the idea here is that this text is Jesus warning about not seeking the help of the Spirit to understand what he has said. So I don't, I'll be blunt. I have no clue how miracles are possible. I have no clue how Jesus offers us his body and blood given in shed for the forgiveness of our sins in each and every time we have the Lord's Supper.

I just know that he does. And quite frankly, there's a lot of things I don't understand. I drive a diesel truck and I couldn't tell you anything about how glow plugs work, okay? And how that engine operates and how the turbo turns on and why it turns on and does the things that it does when it does them.

Couldn't tell you.

I just know that when I get into my truck and I press the button, it turns on. I put it in drive and I go, okay? I don't need to know nothing about anything regarding about how diesels operate.

Not a thing, okay?

I just need to make sure that I take it in for its regular maintenance and that the people who understand all that stuff are able to look at it and make sure it's gonna do the thing that it's supposed to do, which I purchased it for, right?

You don't need to know.

How Christ makes this all possible. You just need to be assured that every time you have the Lord's Supper, it is exactly what Christ says it is and it's for the reason that Christ says it's for. And each and every time you have the Lord's Supper, you are receiving a personal absolution from Christ.

And all of the promises of John 6 are yours and you receive them in your mouth, period. And then when you let the spirit instruct you through the word, instead of saying, yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but, but, but this is, put the yeah buts away.

Be like a child and receive these things, right? That's the whole point, okay? So the idea is that, Louis says, basically you're left with the Thomas Jefferson Bible. Yeah, exactly, right? So that's what Christ is warning again.

So you get the idea.

All right.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah, okay, so the scriptures forbid cannibalism and scriptures also forbid the eating of blood, which is actually a very important thing because what Christ is doing, when you look at the Old Testament, always when you have the prohibitions against the eating of blood in specific, it says, here's the reason, the life is in the blood.

You cannot eat the blood because the life is in the blood. You cannot eat the blood because the life is in the blood, which then is fascinating because here's the thing. The other end of that is that every one of the sacrifices of the Old Testament, what happened to them?

They were consumed. They were eaten. What happened to the Passover lamb?

Everybody ate it.

Christ is our Passover lamb. What happened to the atonement sacrifices? They're consumed. They're eaten. Now, a portion of it is burned up, but a large portion of it is eaten. So that you have in the scriptures, you have this preparation for what Christ is doing.

So when you get to the time of the First Lord's Supper, those words that Christ says, take, drink, this is my blood of the new covenant, it stands out. And you're gonna know, Old Covenant forbids certain things.

So it forbids the eating of pork, which I cannot imagine a life without bacon. I mean, that is not a life worth living. It doesn't allow the eating of lobster and shellfish and things like this. And all of that had a function for catechizing people into thinking in terms of what is holy versus what is unholy, what is clean versus what is unclean.

That's all preparation. We're not under the Mosaic Covenant. So the Mosaic Covenant is a prep, then we get to Christ's words, take, drink, this is my blood. And you sit there and go,.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,.

You can't do that. Of course you can, we're under the new covenant. We're not under the old. And the Old Covenant was type and shadow teaching us and preparing us and instructing us to where we are now.

So there's not a new one coming, but I think the prohibitions of the Old Covenant are vital. Now, when it comes to cannibalism, cannibalism requires you to murder a neighbor before you barbecue them. And so that actually falls under the prohibition of thou shall not murder.

And you'll note that Christ truly is a murder victim, but he uses his murder for the purpose of giving us eternal life. Only he has that power to flip those things like that. But I don't care how good you taste on bread with mustard and stuff like that,.

I ain't eaten yet,.

So it ain't happening. Plus there's paperwork in a crime scene investigation and stuff like that, so yeah. All right, good question. All right, any other questions? Yes, okay, you're going to hate me.

Okay, where do I recommend going to read about the church fathers? I am going to give you a traditional work. If we go to amazon .com, there is... I know your pastor. All right, so there's a work called The History of the Christian Church, written by a fellow by the name of Philip Schaaf.

It's a multi-volume work. The best way I can put it is that if you were to just kind of go and read the church fathers by yourself without having some kind of a guide regarding the context of how the different people wrote, then you are legitimately risking becoming bored and confused.

So Philip Schaaf's work, and the reason I like Schaaf is he's dead, okay? Work with me on this. He's not impacted by the goofiness of today, okay? Many of the guys who write on patristics today, they're super liberal or they're Roman Catholic.

Not a good mix. Schaaf was neither and he tries very hard to be faithful to the Bible primarily, but gives us the history. So The History of the Christian Church is by Philip Schaaf. In fact, there's eight volumes in it and you can get it on Kindle for a buck 99.

The reason being is it's technically in the public domain, okay? So read it. And somebody recently told me that they had picked this up and they started reading it. And they said, do you know how long this is?

I said, yep. What are you doing to me? You'll thank me later, okay? And then you'll note then kind of compendium to this would be the apostolic, hang on a second here.

Let's see.

Anti-Nicene Fathers.

Okay, Schaaf is also the guy who's given us the Anti-Nicene Fathers and the actual writings of the church fathers. And that's a standard work and you can find those for free, by the way, on the internet.

So let me show you. If you go to ccel .org, the writings of the fathers down to 325 AD, all of these were put together by Schaaf,.

He hired different people.

To work on different translations of the stuff. And so if you actually want to read the extant writings of the church fathers for free, you can read them online, okay? Because they're all in the public domain.

I happen to have them all in my Lagos library. I picked them up decades ago now. But one of the things that I have made a practice of as part of my devotional reading, I'm constantly working through different portions of the writings of the church fathers.

Having read Schaaf in his eight volumes, it's a fantastic work. And then if you want to get a history of the Christian church written before Schaaf, then you have to read Eusebius. Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, that should be required reading for all Christians, is Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History.

And that will give you kind of everything up to the fourth, fifth century. So that's where I would go with this. But let me kind of put it this way. When you purchase a book like that, or you begin to read a project like that, you have to have it in your mind.

It's going to take you a couple of years. You have to allow yourself time to think of it as a project, not something that you're going to whip up in the microwave that's going to be ready. And by the time you work your way through the writings of the church fathers and you get to the sermons of Christostom, those are stellar.

But there's a few little weeds you have to work your way through at times. And again, I always say that Christ is in the details. And some of the works of the church fathers are actually going to give you ecclesiastical law, that they were depending on in the early part of the church.

In fact, in one of the volumes of the church fathers is an actual transcript of a heresy trial from a guy who was an Aryan heretic. And what a fascinating, you sit there and go, could you imagine if that happened today?

It would kind of be a game changer, but there's no way that's going to happen today. But there's such a wide variety of things that exist today from the writings of the church fathers. But the reality also is that Schaff will alert you to works that we know existed but we don't have anymore.

So that's the other, a lot of this stuff is lost. But that's the go. That's where I go, Schaff.

So, okay.

Question came in from John Paletta. Do you consider Jeff Durbin a good example of presuppositional apologetics? Yes, I consider Jeff Durbin kind of like a quintessential example of presuppositional apologetics.

A little bit of a note, John, and that is that historically when you read classic Lutheranism coming out of the 17th, 18th centuries, the dogmaticians of classical Lutheranism were also presuppositional.

The Calvinists stole that from us. And it was John Warwick Montgomery and his disciples that kind of drug confessional Lutheranism into a more evidential approach. If you don't know the difference between presuppositional apologetics and evidential apologetics, that is kind of a nuanced argument.

That's a nuanced study. But I personally was trained as an evidential apologist and I'm presuppositional now. But I do not look to the reform to help me in my presuppositional approaches because it is so ridiculously legalistic in the way they approach it.

There's no law, there's no gospel. They are wicked at using the law. I mean, they are great at tearing down, but because of their view that Christ's atonement is limited, they will only focus on the law for the purpose of tearing down and they can never preach the gospel to somebody.

In fact, Saiten Bruggenkate, who is a notable lay-level Christian apologist who's no longer in ministry, but he put out a video called Don't Answer the Fool. And it's a great primer on presuppositional apologetics, but I spoke at a conference with him a decade ago and I asked him straight up, I said, Sai, you're so skilled at using God's law to tear down bad arguments.

Why do you never preach the gospel to the people that you tear their worldview apart? He says, well, you know perfectly well why I can't, because I don't know who's of the elect and who isn't. So here's the difference, okay?

Evidential apologetics has kind of a presupposition, and it's a false one, that the reason why people don't believe in Christ is because they haven't been presented the evidence that substantiates Christ's claims.

But that's false. In Romans chapter one, it's very clear that the reason why everybody rejects Christ is number one, they all have a knowledge of God, but they suppress the truth and unrighteousness. So evidential apologetics generally works with this idea, if I sit down and I play chess with an atheist, then I show them the evidence, the evidence will be so compelling that they'll make a judgment in favor of Christ.

And so a great example of an evidential approach would be Josh McDowell's books, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, right? But here's the problem. If it's evidence that demands a verdict, are you legitimately trying to set an atheist up as the judge?