The Prophet Jeremiah Part 5

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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August 24, 2022

The Prophet Jeremiah Part 6

00:00: All right, let's get started. We're gonna pray and we'll take a look and see if there are any questions related to the sermon because I want everybody to know you are encouraged and welcome to ask questions.
00:12: I don't know what it is about certain pastors. You ask a question and their answer is, touch not,
00:18: God's anointed, you know. Usually the questions are like, why do you have a private jet?
00:23: Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess that would be a little intimidating if you ask the question, why do you have a private jet? So, you can ask me the question, why don't you have one?
00:33: Few do. So, let's pray and we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open up your word, we ask humbly through your
00:43: Holy Spirit that we may rightly understand what you have revealed there so that we may have confidence and assurance to enter the throne room of grace, so that we may have confidence and assurance that we have a new life in the world to come and an inheritance that cannot be defiled by sin or stolen or taken away from us and that we would bear fruit in keeping with repentance and encourage each other on and spur them on into good works, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
01:12: Okay, so let me grab my chat window. If you have questions about the sermon or questions about anything we're gonna be studying, this is the time to post them and then we'll get started.
01:23: If not, then, it's been a few weeks since we've been in the book of Jeremiah. And I noted that when we've been working our way through Jeremiah, this is a super relevant prophet in our times because he represents the prophet during the greatest time of apostasy in Judah.
01:45: And then, you'll note many of the themes that he covers are exactly the same kind of apostasy themes that we're dealing with in our day, yay!
01:54: So, you know, I do find it fascinating that if you have a copy of the Treasury of Daily Prayer and you read the readings that are in the treasury, that every
02:05: November, we read the book of Jeremiah together as part of the one -year lectionary, which is important.
02:12: And then, you'll note the prophet that we read during Advent, Isaiah, okay?
02:18: So, there's some interesting themes there. But what we're gonna do then, if I'm not seeing any questions and no one looks too puzzled,
02:25: I'm glad you guys weren't very alarmed by my nonchalant. I'm just not gonna take the end of the world all that seriously.
02:32: I've survived the end of the world like 23 times, by the way. And I'm talking about people actually legitimate and laking predictions.
02:40: The end of the world will be in February. Of course, you always remember Harold Camping. Yeah, that guy.
02:48: I've survived two ends of the world, and three because of him. So, three, all of them, those three go to him.
02:56: Heather says, I love the book of Jeremiah. It's the book I was reading when God opened my eyes to show me that I was following false teaching and false teachers.
03:03: And I think that's what it's for, Heather. And good to see your name in the list. Good to see you in the chat.
03:11: So, ah, I can see you. Hi. Do you have the family with you in worship today?
03:18: Yes, all right, great. So, we got the McDonald clan, yay. All right, I can't wait till Canada lets me back in.
03:25: I'm not vaccinated, so they won't let me back in. So, you know, and it's like I can look at it. It's just over there, but I can't go.
03:32: All right, one of these days. All right, so we are going to continue then with Jeremiah. Again, warning for this portion of Jeremiah.
03:43: Super graphic. Super blunt. And you're gonna note that God speaks with quite a bit of snark.
03:56: You know, basically saying to idolatrous Judah, in like no uncertain terms, wake up, this is just stupid.
04:05: Okay, and none of your logics makes any sense. So, God then asks in Jeremiah three, verse one, if a man divorces his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's wife, will he return to her?
04:20: Would not that land be greatly polluted? You have played the whore with many lovers.
04:28: And would you return to me, declares Yahweh? Lift up your eyes to the bare heights and see.
04:34: Where have you not been ravished? Uh -oh, who haven't you slept with?
04:40: Whoa, that's how strong this is. Yeah, you know, that's kind of how blunt. By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like an
04:49: Arab in the wilderness. You've polluted the land with your vile whoredom. Therefore the showers have been withheld and the spring rain has not come.
04:58: Yet you have the forehead of a whore and you refuse to be ashamed. Yeah, again,
05:03: I've made the point and I'll keep making it here. This is one of the major themes of the prophets of the Old Testament that idolatry is the spiritual equivalent to adultery.
05:16: That's how this works out. Don't let anybody in the ELCA hear you saying that.
05:23: They'll accuse me of being close -minded and unloving. But, sorry.
05:30: Anyway, have you not just now called to me? My father, you are the friend of my youth.
05:37: Will he be angry forever? Will he be indignant to the end? Behold, you have spoken, but you have done all the evil that you could.
05:44: Now, by the way, is there forgiveness and mercy for them? Yeah, there is. There absolutely is.
05:51: And so you'll note that even God understands the proper distinction of law and gospel. And God is taking
05:57: Jeremiah and he's using the words that he's given to Jeremiah and taking the law and just ramping it up to 11.
06:05: And taking away any of their self -righteousness. Now, a little bit of a note here.
06:13: And that is that you'll see this as Jeremiah unfolds.
06:20: We're way early in the game here. But God is going to be threatening throughout the prophet
06:26: Jeremiah's, his course, that God is going to send
06:31: Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar, that pagan king from Babylon, will be the instrument of God's judgment against Judah.
06:40: That's going to be the case. And here's what's going to end up happening, is that only those people who will listen to Jeremiah will be saved.
06:51: I want you to think of it this way. So ask the question, will God have mercy? Yes, he will have mercy on anyone who will repent and believe.
07:00: And so what'll happen is, is that Nebuchadnezzar comes knocking on the doors of Jerusalem.
07:05: And Jeremiah the prophet will be saying to the people of Judah, if you want to live, surrender.
07:13: Turn yourself in to Nebuchadnezzar and you will have your life as a prize of war.
07:19: God promises this. But in order to be saved out of those circumstances, that's going to require faith.
07:28: Do you believe that Yahweh is speaking the truth through Jeremiah?
07:36: Because I don't know about you guys, but I do think that turning yourself in to Nebuchadnezzar just doesn't seem like a safe thing.
07:47: You show up unarmed, I surrender, take me. And the
07:54: Babylonians weren't exactly known for their mercy. So I mean, this is gonna take faith.
08:00: But there's a sad statistic, if you would, given at the very end of Jeremiah's book.
08:07: There were three different waves, if you would, three different times in which
08:12: God offered total forgiveness and having your life, you can live rather than die if you turn yourself in to the
08:23: Babylonians. That comes in three different phases. And at the end of the day, how many
08:29: Jews do that? Answer, 4 ,300.
08:41: That's what we call a remnant, okay? Now, I remember in fourth grade, we called that a fraction.
08:48: Okay, and I was never good at fractions, but that's a small one. Because when you consider, one of the details we get throughout the histories of Judah and the
09:02: Northern Kingdom is that the army at that time numbers in the hundreds of thousands, which means the total population is in the millions.
09:15: And I want you to think about this. The apostasy is so deep, so entrenched, there is so little belief and trust in God that of millions of people, 4 ,300 survive.
09:35: Is it any wonder that Christ asked the question, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth? Remember what
09:42: Jesus said, false prophets, false apostles, false Christs, deceiving many, right?
09:50: So, if Jeremiah is to be seen as type and tribe and shadow for the great apostasy, which
09:58: I think he is, I just say that biblical Christianity is going to become rarer than dinner with a
10:09: Sasquatch. So, it's gonna become really hard to find.
10:14: So, keep that in mind. So, Yahweh said to me in the days of the kings of Josiah, have you seen what she did, that faithless one,
10:22: Israel? How she went up on every high hill and under every green tree, there she played the whore.
10:29: And I thought after she had done all of this, she will return to me, but she did not return and her treacherous sister,
10:34: Judah, saw it. She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one,
10:40: Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce, yet her treacherous sister, Judah, did not fear, but she too went and played the whore because she took her whoredom lightly.
10:51: She polluted the land, committing adultery with stone and with tree, yet for all of this, her treacherous sister,
10:58: Judah, did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, declares Yahweh.
11:04: Now, when God says returned in pretense, one of the things you'll see as a theme here in Jeremiah, especially in the later chapters, is that because they had taken the temple,
11:19: Solomon's temple, the place where God caused his name to dwell, and they set up incense altars to Baal, altars to the starry host of heaven, they put an
11:33: Asherah pole in the holy of holies, giving Yahweh a wife, and of course, we always keep pointing this out, they set up an actual brothel in the temple, and it was of a particular stripe.
11:47: It was a male cult prostitute brothel in the temple. What ended up happening is that people from all over the world, nations, came to worship in Jerusalem.
12:03: Have you noticed that in our day, I mean, the big move is to get rid of those meany, poopy heads who talk about the exclusivity of Christianity, salvation only in Christ, right?
12:15: The big move is to basically get Christians to say, listen, it doesn't matter which deity you worship,
12:22: God sees your heart, and so you get the idea that this is nonsense, right?
12:30: So that's the idea then, Judah only returned to the Lord in pretense because Yahweh was one of the deities that they worshiped at the temple in Jerusalem.
12:40: I mean, come on, Yahweh, I mean, we gotta give you equal time with other people. I noticed, somebody pointed this out to me this year, and I had seen it, but it didn't register with me until later, that, so I have,
12:55: I'm an Apple guy, so I use Macintosh computers, I have an iPhone, I have an iPad, and my calendars program, for years,
13:04: I have been subscribed to a calendar that Apple puts out that puts all the holidays on my calendar, all right?
13:14: So I can look ahead and go, oh, we got Veterans Day coming up, or we got Thanksgiving, it's gonna be on this day, or Christmas this year is gonna be on a
13:22: Saturday, you know, I can look ahead. But this year, holidays
13:28: I had never even heard of all of a sudden started showing up. One of them, Diwali, which is an
13:34: Indian, in, you know, it's the big Hindu holiday.
13:40: And it's like, excuse me, can we have a different holiday thing?
13:47: Holidays for, you know, Christian holidays, and, you know, governmental, I don't wanna be finding out when
13:53: Diwali is, that's, you know, I don't worship any of those false gods. But you're gonna know, that's the big move.
13:59: I mean, now, you know, so, name your religion, Apple's gonna make sure that when you have a calendar of holidays, you get the whole gambit, man.
14:09: Yeah. Microsoft does the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, Don Matson says Microsoft is doing the same thing.
14:16: We're doomed. Yeah, and here's the thing, if you complain about this, oh, you are so close -minded, you are a bigot.
14:27: I always love it when somebody says, you know, you gotta be careful of Pastor Rose, bro, he's very judgmental.
14:33: And I've actually told somebody, when somebody says that to him, say, so how is it that you're not being judgmental about his judgmentalism?
14:42: You know, just kinda, you know. And then watch their brain just spin.
14:48: Okay, you know. I always like to point out that the person who says that truth is relative, they're lying.
14:55: Okay, let's say, all truth is relative. You don't really believe that. Yes, I do. No, you don't. Well, how do you figure?
15:02: Because you believe that all truth is relative, right? Right, well, that's an absolute. That means that some truth is absolute.
15:09: So. Truth is relative. Punch him in the face if it is. Yeah. All right, let me check questions here real quick.
15:16: Stephen, I have an unrelated question. Oh, Stephen, what are you doing here? Are you filling in for Bruce Burns?
15:21: What's going on here? Okay, I have an unrelated question that could wait until next week if needed.
15:27: Oh, good, I have that option. With Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, part of our family tradition is to go worship together.
15:34: Well, now my eyes are open, and these are apostate churches.
15:39: I still want to worship with family, and at the very least, figure I shouldn't commune. What are your thoughts?
15:46: Okay, so, listen, I have no problem whatsoever.
15:52: Like, when my grandmother was buried, she, you know, you've heard the story about my grandmother's funeral.
15:58: They're my wife and I'm in a Roman Catholic church. I have no problem attending any building for any purpose.
16:06: I've been to Mormon churches. I've been to all kinds of different churches, but I never do anything while I'm there that would infer or make it tacitly look like that I am in fellowship with them.
16:22: And so, you know, I have no problem. If you want to be there with your family, you go there with your family.
16:27: And if you see a hymn you can't sing, don't sing it. You know, if you see a hymn you can sing, then sing it.
16:34: And if, you know, and, you know, so the idea here is that you are capable, you have freedom in this regard, but what you don't have freedom is to actually put on the pretense that you are participating.
16:47: And I'll give you an authority on this, by the way, so you don't think I'm just making this up. That's your opinion, Rose, bro. I know,
16:52: I have lots of those. But, let's see here. I'm gonna show you this. So, y 'all remember
16:58: Naaman, okay? Naaman, 2 Samuel chapter five, love this story.
17:06: There was a, how is it, 2 Kings, hang on a second. It might be 2 Kings, 2 Kings five.
17:12: Hang on a second here. That's the thing with my photographic memory. The photos are getting fuzzy. Okay, yeah, it's 2
17:20: Kings chapter five. 2 Kings chapter five. Remember this guy, Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria.
17:27: Was a great man, with his master in high favor because by him, Yahweh had given victory over Syria.
17:33: Let that one kind of sit in your crock pot for a little bit. You mean a pagan, an idolater? God gave him favor and gave him victory?
17:41: You betcha. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Christ is king of kings and lord of lords, and he uses all the kings of the earth for his purposes.
17:50: So, he was mighty, a mighty man of valor, oh, but he was a leper. So, we can all hear the music going, wah, wah, wah.
17:58: Okay, okay. Yeah, he's a minor inconvenience, and he was required, according to the
18:05: Mosaic Covenant, to social distance, but he's a pagan, okay. Yeah, if you read the
18:11: Mosaic Covenant, you complain about COVID restrictions. God is the one who instituted social distancing when it came to diseases because it took humanity a long time to figure out how diseases work.
18:25: So, if you had leprosy, you were required to use your hand as a mask, and you would mask up, and you would have to cry out to people, leper,
18:33: I'm a leper, leper over here. Beware of the leper. You were required to do that, so that was part of it.
18:43: But he's a pagan, so he's not quite sure how the social distancing rules work. Now, the
18:48: Syrians, on one of their raids, he carried off a little girl from the land of Israel. We have no idea who this girl is, but wow, this girl has faith.
18:55: She worked in the service of Naaman's wife. Now, by the way, if you find yourself in a situation where, oddly enough, you are captured and sold into slavery, what are you supposed to do?
19:05: Well, if you can find a way to escape and not die, that's an option, but option number two is be a great slave, okay?
19:15: I know it sounds weird, but you've been put in the vocation of slave, go for it. Just be the best one ever, okay?
19:21: You have that freedom in Christ. You can do good works even as a slave. So she said to her mistress, oh, would that my
19:28: Lord, we're with a prophet who's in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. Dang, this girl's got faith.
19:35: All right, all right. All right, so she recognizes that Elisha is a prophet, and that God is doing miracles to her, and so she just, in childlike faith, says, oh, just go to him.
19:48: So Naaman, high official in Syria, went and told his lord, thus and spoke the girl from the land of Israel, so the king of Syria said, go,
19:59: I'll send you a letter to the king of Israel. All right, now keep in mind, the northern kingdom, Israel and Syria, they don't get along, all right?
20:07: They're constantly having these border disputes and fighting and stuff like that, pretty much how it is today. And so Naaman shows up.
20:15: He went taking with him 10 talents of silver. By the way, that's a lot of silver. One talent is 100 pounds.
20:24: So I mean, I'm sure he didn't carry this in his pocket. So I mean, whoever's with him,
20:32: I mean, this is quite an impressive caravan, if you would. And I'm sure all of his camels have armor on them that are bulletproof.
20:44: And so he took 6 ,000 shekels of gold, 10 changes of clothing. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, when this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you
20:55: Naaman, my servant, so that you may cure him of his leprosy. And when, and by the way, the king of Israel, he's not a believer in Yahweh.
21:04: Okay, so this is awkward, okay? So when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, am
21:11: I God to kill and to make alive? And that this man sends word to me to cure a man of leprosy?
21:19: Only consider and see how he is seeking a quarrel with me. So the king of Israel, basically, his interpretation is that they're basically using this as a pretense for war.
21:29: So Syria's gonna attack into the northern kingdom of Israel because the king of Israel wasn't able to cure Naaman of his leprosy, okay?
21:36: And this is where one of those really awkward moments that happens only because somebody's a true prophet. Elisha, like two days earlier, had sent a
21:46: Western Union telegram to be opened on this occasion, because prophets can do that.
21:51: So when Elisha, the man of God, heard the king of Israel, he had torn his clothes, he sent to the king saying, why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me that he may know that there's a prophet in Israel.
22:00: All right, all right. So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, plural.
22:08: Remember, he's loaded here, all right? And he stood at the door of Elisha's house.
22:15: Now, Elisha is social distancing, okay? Cannot be in the presence of the leper without becoming unclean.
22:23: And becoming clean again after being in the presence of somebody unclean is more annoying than having to wait for 14 days in quarantine, it's a little bit more involved in the
22:33: Mosaic Covenant. So Elisha sent messenger to him saying, go and wash in the
22:40: Jordan seven times and your flesh will be restored and you shall be clean. We all know baptism is just a symbol,
22:52: God doesn't really work with water, what are you talking about? You'll note this is a type in shadow regarding baptism, all right, because this pagan guy is gonna go into the
23:02: Jordan eventually and he's gonna go in as a pagan. And so he's gonna come out, a believer in Yahweh.
23:09: So Naaman was angry and he went away. Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me, stand and call upon the name of Yahweh, his
23:20: God, wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. He was waiting for David Copperfield to take the stage.
23:30: Right? And so he's upset and it makes it clear he's really, really angry.
23:39: He's incensed, he feels like he's been dishonored, this is ridiculous, things are not going according to expectation.
23:48: So, and then he asked this question, are not the Abana and the Farpar rivers of Damascus better than all the waters of Israel?
23:55: Answer, yes. Yes. Yes, by a long shot, okay.
24:03: The Jordan River is a mud hole. It's, okay, don't believe me, just go.
24:11: I've seen the photos, it's a mud hole, okay. There is nothing impressive about the Jordan River, all right but here's the question
24:18: I always ask when I read this text. Where was the promise of God?
24:24: What was it attached to? Was it attached to the Abana? Was it attached to the
24:29: Farpar? Nope. If he had traveled up to England and dipped in the
24:36: Thames, would he have been healed? No. The promise of God was attached to the
24:42: Jordan River. Again, the type and shadow of baptism here, all right, the promises of God are attached to the waters of baptism but so he's now in a rage, all right and so could
24:54: I not wash in them and be clean? He asked the question, the answer is nope, not at all.
25:00: So he turned and he went away in a rage and then you can see his servants. Everyone's having that awkward moment.
25:06: The camel drivers are off smoking a cigarette going, oh, what are we gonna do? We came all this way for nothing, you know and so one of his servants came to him and said, my father, you know, it's a great word the prophet has spoken to you.
25:20: Will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, wash and be clean? And so he went down and dipped himself seven times in the
25:28: Jordan River according to the word of the man of God. Now, this is a part where I will admit it but I won't repent of it.
25:37: I always like to do a little eisegesis here, okay because the text says that he was in a rage and I know a thing or two about being really angry and when somebody prevails against you with wise words, it takes a while for you to settle down and so I always like to picture, it doesn't say this in the text so you don't have to believe this part but I like to picture
25:57: Naaman going down and going, fine, you know, I'll go down and dip in seven times in the river.
26:06: You just see him walking into the river and him dipping the first time and coming up and going, one, you know, two, still a leper, you know, you can just see that, right?
26:19: But then he dips himself the seventh time and he comes up and he looks at his arms and he looks at his hands and you can hear the visible gas, audible gas of the people gathered around going, huh, right?
26:35: Right. His flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean.
26:43: God made him clean and not only did God clean him physically he gave him faith and this is all in answer to your question,
26:50: Stephen. So then he returned to the man of God and all his company and he came and stood before him and he said, behold,
26:57: I know that there is no God in all the earth but in Israel so accept now the present from your servant. And he said, as Yahweh lives before whom
27:04: I stand, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it but he refused and Naaman said, if not, please let there be given to your servant two mule loads of earth for from now on your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any
27:21: God except for Yahweh. And in this matter, and here's the answer to your question, in this matter may
27:28: Yahweh pardon your servant when my master goes in the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon.
27:36: When I bow myself in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant in this matter and he said to him, go in peace.
27:42: So he had official duties which took him into a pagan temple and a God that he knew didn't exist.
27:48: And he asked that God would pardon him in this regard and Elisha said, don't you dare set foot in the house of Rimmon, all right.
27:57: Instead he said, you go in peace. And so the idea then as Christians, we have a lot of latitude, we can take the gospel to many places as long as in those places we are not giving the impression that we believe along with the people who are believing falsely, okay.
28:16: And so mom and dad have invited you to a church service where you know you're gonna hear stuff that isn't true.
28:23: And you go for their sake. I'm going here because I love you.
28:29: And the reality is that you might hear something that might give you the opportunity to have a conversation where you can open up the scriptures to what the truth is.
28:38: You never know. But I think we have a lot of latitude. Now when it comes to should we be attending churches where they're teaching heresy and heterodoxy on a regular basis, no, okay.
28:51: This is a one time thing, on the rarest of occasions. So I use this text to basically say you have some freedom and latitude and as long as you're not going against your conscience or inadvertently making it appear like you know, now you've become a
29:08: Roman Catholic or something. No one thought that by my wife and I attending my grandma's funeral that we had converted to Catholicism.
29:16: So you know, but I'm just glad there's not photos of it because otherwise Prash would have accused me of that.
29:22: That would be very interesting photos. Yeah, right. Yeah, play organ music now.
29:29: Okay, that's another story, okay, all right. Long story. Okay, my son hates the
29:34: Mac computer. I'll pray for him, Carmen. At his last job, he was the only one that was called to fix them.
29:41: Ha, ha, ha, that's called poetic justice. I see that's called, that's good.
29:46: Anybody who hates Macs should spend time in purgatory fixing only Macintosh computers, okay.
29:52: I don't know, better just using Vista. And Mac users, and Mac users who end up in hell will have to use
30:01: Vista for the rest of eternity. Okay, all right. Louie says, we have a global holiday calendar at work and we're all called to remember and respect all of them.
30:12: Define the word respect, okay. It exists, right? Yeah, yes,
30:18: I acknowledge that you've created a holiday. Good for you, all right. I figured out how to turn off the holidays on my
30:24: Samsung. All right, all right, so yoga and mindfulness is another thing that you are expected to join in.
30:35: Yoga and mindfulness, okay. Yeah, no, me and yoga don't get along on several reasons, but aside from the spiritual, if I do the downward dog,
30:48: I'm gonna be rolling around and it's gonna be hard for me to get back up off the floor, so, you know. They have to work on a new pose for me in yoga, it's called the beached whale.
31:02: So, working on that one. Okay, but it's just, yeah, no, I'm sorry, but yoga, especially if the person leading it is totally into the
31:13: Eastern philosophies that go along with that, as a Christian, I couldn't participate.
31:19: Now, if somebody's doing yoga and it's purely just exercise, we're gonna stretch and we're gonna work on your glutes and all this kind of stuff, and they haven't brought the spiritual aspect into it,
31:27: I think you can have some freedom there, but when they're, I don't know any yoga instructors that don't teach all of the mysticism that goes with it.
31:37: Do you know that each position they do represents a different god? Hmm, did not know that.
31:44: So, apparently each position in yoga, it's supposed to represent a different god. You can't separate them.
31:50: Yeah, it's, yeah, so, and Jen says namaste. Thanks, Jen.
31:59: Namaste. Okay. All right, so Tony says, it seems that we are increasingly in the same situation as the early church, attending synagogue services with non -believers while correctly applying their worship to the liturgical
32:13: Jewish service. Interesting, interesting. I would say that you'll note that Christianity's, all of Christianity's childhood diseases have come back in mass.
32:23: The church is more biblically illiterate than ever. I'm seriously thinking that peasants in Europe in the
32:32: Dark Ages knew more about the Bible and what it said than the people who live today who are awash in Bibles, because they just don't read them.
32:41: And, you know, it's just bizarre. They got their teaching from Christian art, which was very good. Yeah, yeah, the
32:47: Christian art, yeah, that's right. They did get their teaching from Christian art. Those stained glass reliefs, and even the
32:53: Stations of the Cross gave you some kind of an artistic depiction of what was going on in the Bible. Christian art nowadays is just bad.
33:01: Christian art nowadays, all I can think of are Bethel Church's destiny pants. So. What?
33:07: All I can think of is the church, like, they're, you know, God's not dead. Yeah, Google it if you have not seen it, okay?
33:15: They are, I'm sorry, I misspoke. They are prophetic destiny pants. Yeah. That basically one of the instructors at Hogwarts at Bethel, they, she came out with her own clothing line, they're yoga pants that all the designs on them is based on art that she's created that's supposed to be prophetic art.
33:42: And so just the mere act of wearing these things imparts anointings and stuff like that, so.
33:50: Restricted on the blood. Wow. Sorry, pants. Okay, yeah.
33:59: But I would note this then, yeah, that the same persecutions that we're suffering as Christians, the
34:06: Christians of the first century, now it's coming for us. And what's really interesting is when you get like the pagans, when
34:13: Christians start to talk about persecution, they say you're not persecuted, you can do whatever you want. No, we can't, okay?
34:19: Let me explain to you. And in fact, this is totally off topic, but we're off -roading.
34:28: Thanks, Stephen Elliott. He opened up the floodgates. But I went with it.
34:34: I could have practiced better classroom management, but why? So here's something
34:42: I want you guys to think about. You, those of you who work in the corporate world, nowadays, it is a deadly game that happens in corporations when your boss says something like this to you.
34:59: You need to respect the personal pronouns that your coworker has chosen, okay?
35:10: And I actually consider this as a hill worth dying on, and I'll explain why, because as a Christian, I can't.
35:16: All right, so if HR were to sit me down because I refuse to call her a them -they, right?
35:23: That's, you know, you sit there and go, well, what's wrong with that? They self -identify as them -they.
35:29: It's real simple. Scripture says God created a male and female. And so they're affirming that, what they are affirming is a form of gnosticism.
35:40: It's a form of bodily gnosticism. What I am has nothing to do with my physicality.
35:47: Well, you requiring me as a Christian to buy into their religious view, because it is a religious view, it's a gnostic view, that I can't do that.
35:57: So HR calls me in and says, Chris, we heard that you refuse to call they -them, they -them, and that you're calling they -them -she.
36:06: And I'll say, yep, that's right, that's a she. And they'll sit there and go, well, if you don't bend the knee and call they -them -they -them, then you're gonna lose your job.
36:19: And I'll basically say, well, then you're gonna have a lawsuit on your hands because you cannot discriminate based upon religious belief.
36:28: Stand your ground and you say these words. Scripture says, and I'm a Christian, that God created us male and female.
36:35: You're asking me to go against what God has said and what I believe.
36:40: This is a matter of religious belief. So if you want to fire me based on religious grounds, know then that you're gonna have a very long lawsuit and you're gonna be paying out millions at the end of this thing.
36:53: Besides all the science. Yeah. Did you see when
36:59: Ben Shapiro was with Bruce Jenner recently? And notice I didn't call Bruce Caitlyn.
37:06: Bruce Jenner threatened to bodily harm Ben Shapiro. That wasn't
37:13: Bruce Jenner that did that. That was some other individual years ago. Oh, no, no.
37:19: Are you sure? Yeah. Positive about that. I just recently saw it. And Shapiro was arguing not religion, but he was arguing genetics.
37:30: And Jenner basically said, yeah, you're not an expert in genetics, so you can't talk about this.
37:39: Okay. So as Christians, I think we just stand the line at the moment.
37:45: Because currently we still have freedom of religion. And there are laws in place that make it so that employers cannot discriminate based upon religious beliefs.
37:57: And everyone's talking about tolerance. So it's real simple. I'm a Christian. And I believe scripture says that God said
38:03: God created us male and female. I can't say they then, because it goes against my religious beliefs.
38:10: Stand your ground. Because you'll note what they're trying to get, they're chipping away at us in a way to kind of get us to bend the knee to the
38:20: Antichrist, if you ask me. And so this is an actual hard line that Christians should stand on and say, nope,
38:29: I won't say they then. Nope. It's he or she, whichever one
38:34: God assigned to them, and nothing else from me. And a friend of mine who lives in the
38:40: UK, we were talking about the movie
38:45: V for Vendetta and The Matrix. And I said, yeah, and I talked about the
38:52: Wachowski brothers. And he knows full well he can't say that out loud, where he lives in the
38:59: UK. You can't say the Wachowski brothers. So he calls them the Wachowski siblings because he can say that without compromise.
39:06: So, yeah. So it's one of those things. We've gotta be real careful nowadays because where the world is pushing, they are pushing in ways that are overtly basically getting us to deny what
39:23: God has said. And we don't have that freedom. Not as Christians. And so he said there, well,
39:30: I might lose my job. Yeah, it's gonna happen eventually anyway, so might as well get it over with now, right? And find a new employer.
39:37: You know, just saying. All right. But stand your ground on, but nope. You can't discriminate based upon religion and Christianity.
39:46: And the Bible says God created male and female. Okay? All right, so. Okay, Carmen, I'm not gonna answer your question out loud about the mask.
40:03: I would say this, is that you're mixing two different categories. Two different categories.
40:10: So, you know, one of those things. All right, definitely don't communion in the
40:16: ALCA church. Right, exactly. I can't, you know, and as an ordained pastor within the
40:23: ALC, I have the freedom to have the Lord's Supper in other ALC congregations and also in Missouri Synod congregations, and then also internationally with those congregations,
40:33: Lutheran churches that are part of the ILC. You know, so, you know, I have those freedoms.
40:40: Okay, that's my excuse too, Pastor Good. Carl, so what about being invited to share or preach at other churches?
40:49: Okay. That one, you might have a little more freedom than you know.
40:54: Okay. All right, so the question comes up, what about preaching or teaching at other churches?
41:00: So, I'm a confessional Lutheran. I've been a confessional Lutheran since the mid -90s.
41:06: Okay, it's weird to think that, you know, that 2050 is the same distance away as 1990, nevermind.
41:16: Yeah, that's, I know, wow. Anyway, all that being said, back in, oh, what was the year on this one?
41:26: So back in the, was it in the aughties? Yeah, it was in the aughties, early 2000s.
41:33: So my employer back in the early 2000s was a healthcare medical registry.
41:42: You know, they found a temporary nurses and people like that to put them to work in the California prison system.
41:48: And the owner of the business was a retired Baptist pastor. And he had a daily
41:55: Bible study that he held for the employees who wanted to attend.
42:01: And so we would meet 30 minutes before work began and we would have a daily Bible study.
42:08: And pretty quickly it got to the point where he said, you know, Chris, I think you should just take over and teach for me.
42:14: So I taught a daily Bible study at my corporate job for years.
42:20: And what ended up happening is that a while into it, you know, a couple of years into it, there was a new manager that they had hired who was on staff at one of the local evangelical churches.
42:36: And so he attended my Bible study and he basically said, you know, we have a need for a
42:43: Bible teacher at our church. Would you consider teaching, you know, the senior citizens at our church?
42:53: And I said, I need to get back with you. So it's like, so I called my pastor, had a conversation with him about it, sat down actually face to face with him, called my first Lutheran pastor, you know, the one
43:06: I looked up to pretty theologically the most, that was Bill Swirla, and talked to him about it.
43:12: And Swirla said, all right, so do you have the freedom to teach there? He said, yes, but, and he kind of laid out where the rails were.
43:22: He said, you need to have a conversation with him and say, you know, since you don't have a confession of faith that's really solid, that you need to understand that I'm a confessional
43:31: Lutheran. And that, you know, anytime I teach, it's gonna be with the understanding of how the, you know, what's in the
43:38: Book of Concord. And he said, that should give them all the reason to say no. So, you know, so I met with the leadership, sat down with them, and I said,
43:49: I'm open to do this. However, we don't see eye to eye theologically.
43:55: I said, I'm open to do this, as long as you understand I'm a Lutheran, and that I will be teaching in accord with the
44:01: Lutheran confessions in the Book of Concord. And they said, it's not a problem, we'll have you. So I went.
44:10: But the other part of this was then, is that Pastor Swerla rightly pointed out that if I'm teaching in a context like that, that it would eventually become hostile, and it did.
44:21: But it was necessary that myself and my family have sound biblical teaching, and that we receive the sacraments.
44:30: And so the other end of this was, is that in the mornings, we attended, and I taught there.
44:36: And in the evenings, we went to Faith Lutheran, and went to the Divine Service every week in the evening, and had the sacraments, and all that kind of stuff.
44:45: And they were aware of that. And I told them, I'm gonna continue worshiping at the
44:51: Lutheran church in the evenings, and they said, that's not a problem. And so I taught in a evangelical -ish church for several years, and then they moved over and became a
45:04: Baptist church. And after the leadership merged with this Baptist church, that's when things started to get interesting.
45:11: And let's just say that what I was preaching and teaching really got under their skin.
45:17: And the pastor of that church would oftentimes take swipes at me, in public, from the pulpit.
45:26: But I eventually resigned the position, partly because the church was dying, but also partly because the conflict that the leaders, they could not stop obsessing about what
45:40: I was preaching and teaching. That it created such an environment that it was better to move on.
45:50: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and that's the other bit. So it turns out that the people that I was teaching, it was the senior citizens of that church, and they were the ones who were the active donors.
46:02: And so basically, I was catechizing all their,
46:09: I was catechizing their wallet in sound biblical doctrine, and it was becoming a problem, so.
46:16: They would show up for Sunday school and immediately leave. Yeah, yeah, no, and that's right, that's exactly true.
46:23: It did get to the point where they would come for Sunday school to hear the word, and then they couldn't stand the sermon anymore, so they stopped going to the main service.
46:31: They weren't tight -knit anymore. So, yeah, yeah. So the idea then,
46:39: Carlos, is that, again, we do have some freedom, we have some latitude, as long as boundaries are set and expectations are, and I was always true to myself, true to the doctrine, too, and never hid anything.
46:55: Nothing was ever hidden. It was all out on the table ahead of time, and that helped, you know?
47:00: And I did tell them that there would probably be conflict at some point, and they said, nah, this isn't gonna be a problem, but I was right, and I'm not a prophet, so.
47:10: Yeah, yeah, you get the idea. So for instance, when it comes to conferences, I do not believe that a conference constitutes church unity.
47:21: So I speak at conferences, and I'm oftentimes invited to conferences that are put on by the Reformed, and what's really hilarious is that, you know, is that they keep inviting me, and people in the audience, they're overtly
47:35: Calvinists, or they're Reformed Baptists, and people will come up to me and say, you're our favorite
47:42: Lutheran. So, you know, so, you know, it's like, okay, cool.
47:48: And I remember one time, in public, J .D. Hull, if y 'all know J .D. Hull, he's like the super bad guy of Reformed Baptists.
47:55: He's a, man, he's a rough around the collar, man. He's got some rough edges, but I remember one time, in public, at a conference that I was speaking at, that he had invited me to, he told one of the most inappropriate stories about, in relation to me.
48:15: He, you know, he basically talked about the fact that, you know, his relatives who were in the
48:21: South, that, yeah, he admitted that they owned slaves, but that certain slaves were able to come into the family.
48:29: If they were, if a slave married into the family, then they were treated like family. And so, you know, and so, and so the way he described me as if I was an
48:42: African American slave, but I was their slave. So, which was really awkward.
48:50: I hope there's not a recording of that somewhere, but it was, I was sitting there going, what are you saying, why are you saying this?
49:00: Yeah, well, here's the thing, I have no problem, and that's the other bit, okay. In the sermon, you heard me say that dead people are totally free.
49:07: They are, just read Romans six, we're totally free. And if you, and stop trying to get to the top of some kind of hierarchy pyramid, quickly get to the bottom, because that's where all the fun freedom is, okay.
49:19: I am free to serve anybody except for the person who doesn't want to be served by me. And it's just hilarious, okay.
49:28: You know, like I get phone calls from guys who are independent fundamentalist Baptists, and you know, and I'll take their call.
49:37: I remember back in the summer, we were traveling and we had just gone to, we had just gone to Louisiana and we were coming back, we had visited
49:48: Stephen Elliott and we were up in Kentucky. So like the day after we had met Stephen Elliott, we were up in Kentucky, and somebody who was in the
49:56: IFB, most self -righteous, legalistic, you know,
50:02: King James only kind of guy, and he needed to talk to me. And so I was on the phone with him and he said,
50:09: Pastor Chris, I've been listening to what you say and how the Old Testament's all about Jesus. And I'm all, yeah, yeah, it really is.
50:14: And we went on for like an hour and a half. He goes, well, here's my problem. I started preaching that in my
50:19: IFB church and people are getting mad. He gave an example that was really great.
50:27: He said that, so the text that I preached on just a couple weeks ago was Genesis 22, the sacrifice of Isaac.
50:35: And I showed the connection between the sacrifice of Isaac and Jesus Christ, and how the ram caught in the thicket points to Jesus and all that kind of stuff.
50:44: And he said, afterwards, some of the ladies were really mad at me and they came up to me and said, we've never heard that text preached that way.
50:50: Where did you get that idea from? Yeah, so what
50:58: I told the fellow, as I said, when they excommunicate you, let me know. I can put you in touch with some people. Maybe you can become a
51:03: Lutheran pastor. But, you know, so coming back to all of this, use your freedom to be subversive.
51:14: And kind of in the way that Jesus says, a shrewd as a snake, innocent as a dove. Josh uses a term that I only recently heard about.
51:24: It's called malicious obedience. Malicious compliance, malicious compliance, okay?
51:31: So the idea here is that use your freedom to preach the gospel, to set captives free, to assure them of the forgiveness of their sins and instill with them sound doctrine.
51:42: And note that we have the freedom to do that. And, of course, you always have to do so in a way where you're overtly obeying the rules while at the same time you know you're disobeying them.
51:54: Because you're disobeying all the unwritten ones. And until the unwritten rules are put down in writing, break them all.
52:03: And then when they put them down in writing, then you have to figure out what your next course of action's gonna be. So it's malicious compliance.
52:10: Being the guy responsible for new rules being written. Yeah. Okay.
52:18: Should spouses go to different churches if one is charismatic and the other cannot accept the charismatic worship and teaching?
52:24: That's a tough one. And so Steve, let me say this.
52:30: If you met Mrs. Roseborough, Mrs. Roseborough I think is more Lutheran than I am. But it wasn't always this way.
52:37: So I discover the gospel. I hear the gospel through Dr. Rod Rosenblatt in my study at Christ College Irvine.
52:47: And so it's our third year there and I'm translating through the book of Titus in a Greek readings course.
52:53: And I realize, oh my goodness, the Lutherans are right. And so I become a Lutheran.
52:58: And we wake up the next morning and I say to my wife, we're Lutherans now. And she says, oh no, we're not.
53:05: Okay. Oh no, we're not. And Louise knows, you know my wife.
53:10: So you could just see her saying that. And I learned very quickly that if I were to push in a way that made it appear like I was controlling or manipulative, that I'd lose my wife.
53:24: I mean, not only would I lose her spiritually, I'd lose her as a wife. And so the one thing that we could agree on at that time was that the
53:33: Bible was true. And that my wife knew that it was my job to be the spiritual head of our house.
53:41: And so if somebody asks, where'd you learn how to teach the Bible? I learned it at the kitchen table. Because what we had then, in order to help my wife, but also myself and my kids, what we would do is every night after dinner, before we cleared the table,
53:57: I'd pull out the family Bible and we would read it. And I didn't read like one verse and then ask my kids what that meant to them.
54:05: We actually worked through whole sections of scripture, entire biblical stories. And there were times, and we worked through the epistles, we worked through the entirety of the
54:15: Bible, probably what, four or five times? Over the course of my kids' childhood.
54:25: But early on, like if I was reading through the book of Romans, or I was reading through the book of Galatians, I would read a section of it and my wife would say, and she would, no joke, without hesitation, without blushing, she'd say, you read that wrong.
54:39: And I said, no, I didn't read that wrong. It said what it said. Read it again. Okay, I'll read it again.
54:47: And I read it again. And she goes, hmm.
54:55: Because she was hearing in the scriptures doctrines that were contradicting what she believed. And I knew that I couldn't convince her, but I knew the scriptures could.
55:05: I knew that God can do it through the word. And so I, so there were years where the best way
55:14: I could put it is that our church attendance was less than ideal. And the goal was to let the word of God convince her.
55:26: And the word of God did. And when she made the switch, it was like instantaneous.
55:32: All right, we can go to Lutheran church now. We can? Yeah, we can. Okay. They're still wrong, but I think we can go.
55:42: Okay. Okay. So the idea then is that in a situation where you have spouses who are in conflict and they're theologically heading in different directions,
55:54: I would always remind the husband, he's to be the head. So if the husband is the one who is bought into what scripture says, that it is a good idea to take the slow road approach and be the spiritual head of your family and teach the scriptures.
56:09: You know, you're supposed to be doing that anyway. I'm just saying, you know. I don't know how it came about the pastors are supposed to do all the catechizing.
56:16: I can't, you know. In fact, if the parents aren't participating, it's gonna be a lost cause.
56:24: All right. So in that situation is that I would say that not knowing all of the nuances and the difficulties and the ups and the downs,
56:35: I couldn't give, I can't give a blanket saying here. I would say you're gonna have to, you know, you got several goals in mind here and it's ideal to get them on the same page and the word of God can do that.
56:50: And it's ideal for that marriage to stay together. So, Luis says, prophetic destiny pants, if you buy them, you're out $45.
57:00: That's the prophecy. Okay, yeah, you may burn in hell too, but okay.
57:09: That's the hidden cost. So they come up with the wackiest pronouns on a daily basis.
57:15: I heard a hilarious comic. He just mocked it and basically said, somebody asked me what my pronouns are.
57:22: My pronouns are your emperor or your majesty. Write that one down, yeah.
57:32: You can call me your majesty. Yeah, they're playing a game, so play it better than them sometimes.
57:41: All right, let's see. Jen says, okay, does it count?
57:47: Okay, Facebook will kick you off if you refer to him as Bruce. He's Bruce Jenner, okay?
57:55: He's the one who won the Olympic decathlon in 1976 in Montreal. Men's Olympic decathlon.
58:04: Yeah, so he has gender dysphoria. That's a mental illness, he's not a woman.
58:12: Okay, Victor says, sorry to pick knits, but nitpicking is so fun, but for accuracy's sake,
58:19: Ben Shapiro got into a spat with a transgender reporter. Okay, all right, yeah, I guess you're right. Okay, Zoe Tur, and then the
58:25: Drew Talk Panel Show. This was in November, got it, okay. We have an ELCA church 15 minutes from us, a woman at the pulpit.
58:34: Run away. So one of my mentors,
58:42: Ken Corby, the late Ken Corby, a Missouri Synod pastor and professor, and probably a force of nature, theologically is the best way
58:51: I can put it, is, I'll kind of give you an example. When I first met Ken Corby, I had invited him to speak at a campus event at Christ College Irvine.
59:02: I was in charge of a campus group there, and we invited him out, and he got off the plane.
59:08: I picked him up at the airport, and the jet that he flew in on was one of these regional jets, and he got off the plane, because it was on the runway, and they didn't even bring up one of those gate things, you know, it's the ladder coming out of the plane with the steps coming out.
59:23: He comes out, he's got snakeskin boots on, a cowboy hat, and he's smoking a cigarette. He lights the second he is outside of the cabin of this thing.
59:31: I'm thinking, what have I got myself into? But man, this guy can preach the gospel. And one time
59:38: I was at an event in Wisconsin that he had put together, and he was always really interesting to listen to.
59:47: And he was a chain smoker, and his mustache had a nicotine stain permanently where he would smoke.
59:55: And during one of the divine services at that event, I had never had a chalice shoved into my face that hard.
01:00:02: I thought I was gonna chip a tooth. Okay, but this is a fascinating guy.
01:00:08: That morning, they had had breakfast, we all had breakfast at Denny's, and he was sitting with the different pastors that had come to the event, and was having a time of encouragement.
01:00:20: And we were sitting at a booth just over away from him, and you could hear him encouraging these men to stand their line, to stay on the scriptures, to not kowtow to the liberals and stuff like this.
01:00:31: And then when the food came out, they put all the food around the table, and nobody touched their food.
01:00:39: And everyone looked at Ken Corby, and he says, gentlemen, it's time for us to ask God's blessing on our meal.
01:00:45: To a man, every one of the pastors stood up next to their chair, and they began to sing.
01:00:54: ♪ Feed your children God most holy ♪ ♪
01:00:59: Comfort sinners poor and lowly ♪ And we're like, what on earth?
01:01:07: I've never heard anything like this. Everybody, everybody in Denny's just stopped and listened, and they dare not clap at the end of it, because they knew it was holy.
01:01:15: It was just one of those moments, right? And so, I'm saying all of this because we're asking a question, right?
01:01:26: So, Ken Corby, when he got ill, I think he had a heart attack and then got cancer, and he languished for several years, but when he was finally in the hospital, getting ready to pass, he was, getting ready to die, he was in his hospital room, and in walks
01:01:47: ELCA female Pastrix, who was the chaplain of the hospital, okay?
01:01:55: And Ken Corby looks at her over his glasses, and he said to her,
01:02:02: Jesus didn't have any female apostles. Get out of my room and do not come back.
01:02:10: Amen. He only received LCMS pastors.
01:02:17: So, yeah, he considered that to be absolute grounds for disfellowship, so he was a very valiant fighter against the encroaching liberalism that is just taking over our societies.
01:02:31: So, all right, I'm gonna wrap up here. So, good to see you all. We didn't get too far in Jeremiah, but we had some good questions, so, yeah, that's all right.