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Sunday school from April 23rd, 2017
Let's pray, we'll get into it. Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Your Holy Word, we may be able to embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. Alright, it's been a couple weeks since we've had Sunday school. We did not have Sunday school before Easter Sunday. Good to see you, Janet. If you need to see me for an absolution, just let me know.
So we've been studying, we've been working our way through the book of Exodus. We are at Mount Sinai and we've slowed way down to take a walk through the Ten Commandments and really examine what's going on in them.
We are working on the second commandment, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And to help us understand what it means to take God's name in vain, we have been spending a wee bit of time in the epistle of Jude.
And we've worked our way through two of the three primary archetypes, if you would, of false teachers. They are those who walk in the way of Cain. And if you remember, what is Cain's big problem? He has religious activity, he has religious motion, but no faith in his heart, none whatsoever.
He sacrifices with no belief. The next one was Balaam. And we spent quite a bit of time drilling in on the error of Balaam. The error of Balaam, he is a prophet for profit. Notice the play on words there.
And he's also one of these fellows who we also learned taught, well, taught the king of Moab how to set a snare for Israel through sexual immorality. And that did not end well for the Israelites. Many people lost their lives as a result of their unfaithfulness.
So he taught them to eat food sacrifice to idols, to bow to idols, and to engage in sexual immorality, and God judged them accordingly. And so prophets for profit oftentimes along with them comes, how shall we put it, kind of obvious sins of the flesh.
And by nature, somebody who's a prophet for profit is an idolater. They're believing and worshiping in a different god. The third type, major type, that Jude gives us is the story of Korah. Let me read again Jude starting at verse 8.
In like manner, these people, these false teachers who have crept in among us, they are relying on their dreams, they defile the flesh, they reject authority, they blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing with the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but he said, the Lord rebuke you.
But these people, blaspheming all that they do not understand, they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them. They walk in the way of Cain, abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error, and perished in Korah's rebellion.
Now you'll note here then that Jude really kind of expects you to understand what the issue was with Cain, to get the idea of what was going wrong with Balaam, but also expects you to understand what the major error of Korah was.
And this is one that is quite important for our day today because there are many people in the visible church who are engaging to this day in Korah's rebellion. Now offhand, does anyone know what the major fault was of Korah?
No, the answer is no. We're going to fix that. We're going to be in Numbers chapter 16, where we read the story of Korah's rebellion. We're in the wilderness. The exodus has long ago happened at this point.
And the children of Israel are in their wilderness wanderings. And Korah rises up. It says, Now Korah, the son of Ishar, the son of Kohath, son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab and On, the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men.
They rose up before Moses with a number of the people of Israel, 250 chiefs of the congregation, chosen from the assembly well-known men. Let's pause there and consider what this is saying. These are not the nobodies of the children of Israel.
These are the clan leaders. These are the fellows that when they were in exodus, they would have been the family leaders over the different tribes of Israel. So these are not slouches. These would be like the mayors today or the congressmen today or the senators today.
These are, this is a pretty, well, highfalutin list. And we as people oftentimes think that if, well, if somebody has, you know, got a really fancy title or holds a particularly fancy office, that somehow that office has some say in how we conduct affairs here in the United States.
For instance, let me just give you a hypothetical. If the United States Congress were to decide that they are going to pass a law, despite what the Constitution says, pass a law that says that all churches, whether Christian or whatever, whatever faith, any church that is in the United States must, must be in favor of abortion, must ordain women and homosexuals, and must provide equal opportunities for employment and leadership for all people regardless of these types of things.
That would be quite the showdown, wouldn't it? Showdown between church and state. I guarantee you if something like that were to ever happen, there would be a whole segment of the population that would basically have this idea.
These are our representatives. We've elected them. They are members of Congress and the U .S. Senate. Therefore, they have say. Do they have any say?
None.
They have no authority here. None whatsoever.
Huh?
Well, I know. But if we got 51 of the population that wanted this and they put a Congress in place that was opposed to what Christianity stood for, for a large segment of the population, it's enough that our elected officials with congressmen, our senator after their name, it would be enough that they would basically say, these are our leaders, our representatives.
This is the U .S. government. The U .S. government is the best government in the whole world, and they say to you, church, you must do these things.
No.
We say, oh, well, that's nice. The church is visibly the kingdom of God here on earth. Our congregation is an embassy of a different kingdom altogether. And we obey our king, not the U .S. Congress. But you could see the showdown.
It's already here, by the way. It's already here. What we're saying is not exactly hypothetical. The thing that's different at the moment is the U .S. Congress is not the one driving it. Let's talk about a way in which it is being driven, and the way it's being driven is using the courts of the United States.
And here's how this works. That as a culture, we've become very liberal, and the liberal culture considers those who hang on to a biblical worldview to actually be an impediment to progress and a threat to the world that they're trying to create.
Since they cannot pass laws against us, there is a way that they can still force us to bow to their wishes. And here's how this works. You will obey the rules that we set up in society, although they're not laws, and if you disobey those rules, we're going to take you to court, and we're going to sue you.
Now, we may not win in court, but if you want to continue talking the way you're talking or acting the way you're acting, we're going to make sure that you have no financial resources to continue to operate.
It's like using the courts to basically push an agenda, and those who stand opposed, they will be made examples of. You think of that couple that owned the bakery in Oregon.
Right?
Yeah, literally forced them out. They're bankrupt. Yeah, all because they wouldn't bake a cake. Now, I find it funny that liberal cake bakers didn't want to bake any Trump cakes. You know, this inauguration came around.
Don't talk about the fact that they're hypocrites. That's a different story altogether. But you see how this works. Now, you have to understand that the greater culture, especially a non-Christian and pagan culture, is always going to be at odds with the church, and they're going to apply pressure to the church to cave to their wishes.
And this is an example of what's going on in Cora's Rebellion. And you'll note, then, that even within the visible church, then there are people who have one ear listening to the culture and then coming back to the church and saying, we've got to change.
We've got to change. What was the big reason given for the church to ordain women? What was the big reasons given for the church to ordain impenitent homosexuals? Well, it's more than that.
Okay.
No, that wasn't the reason. Those were ancillary reasons. You know the primary reason? The primary reason given for all of these radical changes was this. If we don't get with the times, the church will become irrelevant.
Yeah, so in order to stay relevant, we need to capitulate to the... We need to change the way the church operates in a changing world. Well, no, actually, those who are within the visible church who are sinning and opposing Christ and what His Word says, we are commanded to call them to repent.
We are commanded to say, you are off, you are wrong, you need to repent and you need to be forgiven. What you're doing is destructive, not helpful. Now I'm going to note something here. If the initial move by these liberals is that the church won't grow, the church will die, and it's always the chicken little scenario, the sky is falling, the sky is falling, the world we live in, a post-sexual revolution, we have to do these things, the sky is falling, the church will cease to exist.
If we keep being irrelevant and teaching people these backwards, antiquated things, which churches denominationally are the fastest shrinkers right now? The liberals, the liberal churches. Yeah, they're dying.
And do you know why they're dying? Well, it's because of their beliefs, because remember what I said in the sermon today, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of Christ. They're not hearing the Word.
Let me use kind of an anatomical concept here. If a husband and wife never share the same bed and consummate their marriage, will they have children?
If the wife gets pregnant and they haven't consummated the marriage, I assure you it's not the man that she's married to, it was the father. That's generally how this works. This being the case, how does the church grow?
Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of Christ. If I don't ever preach the gospel, preach law, gospel, sin, grace, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins, will the church grow?
That's like basically taking the Bride of Christ and putting her on birth control. And that's what they've done in these churches. They put the Bride of Christ on birth control. They made sure that there is no Word of God that will actually raise anybody from the dead, no gospel that will actually save anybody, and what happens when that happens?
It becomes like those people we talked about a few weeks ago, the Shakers, who husband and wife never got together and they, well, that movement just, they all got old and died. No kids. Yeah, so liberal churches, in the name of being relevant and growing the church, sterilize the church and the church doesn't grow.
And now you've got all this bad practice involved in this and we're going to take a look at how Korah's rebellion gives us the template biblically to understand what they're doing in part because it's doctrinal as well as ecclesiastical.
We'll explain this. So you'll note here then in the opening portion of this text, these are the bigwigs. This is the most important men in the children of Israel, the clan leaders, and Korah himself is of the tribe of Levi.
Good to note. So they assembled themselves together, listen to these words, against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, listen to these words, you have gone too far for all in the congregation are holy or everybody in the congregation of Israel is holy.
Every one of them, the Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? Full stop here for a second. Who called Moses to do his task? Who called Aaron and set Aaron and his sons into the priestly office?
God. Did Aaron or Moses exalt themselves?
Nope.
No, they didn't. We're not on that story right now. We're looking at their call and their placing into office, okay? So God's the one who called them and when it came to the priesthood, who established that institution and those offices that were to be filled by the Levites from generation to generation?
It was God. Were these men arrogant? Did they think they were better than everybody else? No, they didn't. So we got a problem here and that is that, well, I'm going to step on some toes. The children of Israel here in the wilderness were acting in a very Norwegian way.
I know. Let me be blunt. Culturally, Norwegian Lutherans are very, very much, well, opposed to the pastoral office. It's part of Norwegian pietism. It's a strange thing, but especially within the Hauge churches, they did not want the pastor being uppity.
And so as part of the culture, they would knock the pastoral office down. And I'll be blunt. I know some of you have heard these sermons from this congregation in the years past.
Uh-huh.
Now, let me ask the question. Who established the pastoral office? God did. Christ did. Who fills it? Sinners. Well, this is what goes without saying. Yes, I agree. I'm one of them too. But the Holy Spirit is the one who calls men into the office through a congregation.
What is the reason why we cover our pastor? Number one, he's a sinner. He needs to be covered up. And it's a visible emblem of the office itself so that I don't get uppity. Does that make sense? But, biblically, we're required to maintain a high moral life.
Yeah, and I'm going to be judged by a higher standard too. Now, if I was some kind of drunken womanizer who was cooking meth in my basement... Yeah, right, yeah. How high would my house fall off the foundation when that thing blew up?
But if I were doing that, then I'd actually be disqualified from the pastoral office. As a Christian, I could be forgiven for such sins, but I would no longer be qualified to be a pastor. Pastors are expected to live a life that is exemplary of the fruit of the Spirit.
Does that make sense? So that's kind of the idea here. But have I exalted myself above you all?
One of the reasons why I continue to wear this is because this is a visible representation that I am the congregation's slave. And there are men in the pastoral office who got this backwards, and they literally rule and reign with a tight fist and a twisting of God's Word over Christ's sheep, whom they are called to serve, not rule and reign.
Mennonites.
Well, it's not just Mennonites. I hate to say this, but regardless of denomination, this happens in every Christian organization. Every denomination, you will get men who are very ambitious, who it's all about them, and what they end up doing is ruling, reigning with a tight fist and controlling people and manipulating God's Word.
It becomes very cult-like. And that's a problem. Now, that's not what Moses and Aaron are doing, though. They're not doing that at all. Now, they are using the offices that God has put them in to dispense the duties that God has given them to do.
And the immediate reaction from the children of Israel is, you've exalted yourself. And notice their argument. Everybody in the congregation is holy, and you're making it look like you're more holy than we are, and you're not.
But is that what Moses and Aaron were doing? So you're going to note here, then, that the problem is going to lie in their interpretation of what God has done. They're perceiving that because now that Aaron is wearing the holy ephod, now that Moses has ascended to Mount Sinai and come down with the Ten Commandments, and for many days afterwards, his face was glowing with the glory of God, that somehow they're interpreting these things in light of how the world thinks.
Because we in the world, we think in terms of power and glory and honor for myself, kind of satanically. So they're interpreting what God has done in serving them as somehow being the way Pharaoh and the world works for glory and honor of the person in the office.
But God put these men not in ruling and reigning offices in the real sense, but in serving offices. Even kings in Israel were servants. You see the difference? So they're interpreting all of these things that have happened to these men as them somehow seeking honor and glory for themselves.
They're misbelieving that they're uppity. And they're saying, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, when they weren't. Does that make sense? So it continues. So you've gone too far. All of the congregation is holy.
Every one of them. The Lord is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord? Which they didn't. Moses, when he heard it, he fell on his face and he said to Korah and all his company, in the morning Yahweh will show who is His, who is holy, and will bring Him near to Him.
The one whom He chooses, He will bring near to Him. Do this, take censers, Korah and all his company, put fire in them and put incense on them before the Lord tomorrow. The man whom the Lord chooses shall be the holy one.
You have gone too far, sons of Levi. And Moses said to Korah, hear now, you sons of Levi, is it too small of a thing for you that the God of Israel has separated you from the congregation of Israel to bring you near to Himself to do service in the tabernacle of the Lord and to stand before the congregation to minister to them?
And He has brought you near to Him and all your brothers, the sons of Levi, with you, and would you seek the priesthood also? Therefore, it is against the Lord that you and all your company have gathered together.
What is, Aaron, that you grumble against Him? So Moses sent to call Dathan and Abram, the sons of Eliab, and they said, we will not come up. Is it a small thing that you have brought us up out of a land flowing with milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness, that you must also make yourself a prince over us?
Was Moses making himself a prince over them?
Not at all. Not at all. In fact, if you remember, when they first came out of Egypt, one of the things that Moses did before his father-in-law came was he would sit and hear the cases that were coming up and judge between them.
What did he do?
His father-in-law says, oh, this is ridiculous. Delegate it out. Train these men up and delegate that power and then you will only have to deal with the hard cases. Moses wasn't a prince over them. He was established by God to do these things and then he took what he did, trained other men to do the things he was doing, and so the children of Israel were being served by him.
But they've interpreted what's going on as you have made yourself a prince over us, which is not what he has done. Right, okay. You have to make a distinction here. They are interpreting Moses as almost a pharaoh and Moses is not being at all like pharaoh.
Right, yeah. Right.
And there's a sense in which we do look up to those whom God has put in authority over us. But with this understanding, those whom God has put in authority over us, He's put them in authority over us to serve us, not to rule us.
There's a difference. There's the difference.
Yeah. Yeah.
Even in his office, Moses is a minister. And I mean minister in the sense where he's actually serving the people of Israel. They're interpreting his actions in the office that he's in as if he's a pharaoh, he's a king, he's a prince.
And that's not what he is at all. Big difference. Yeah. Well, the text just says your argument really is against God. Now, in order to answer your question, I want you to think through the Ten Commandments for a minute and ask yourself this question.
Which of the Ten Commandments is being broken here? It's not coveting. So there may be coveting going on of Moses' stature and office. That clearly is in play. What other commandment is in play here? And it's one you wouldn't probably think of, but when you see it, you'll kind of get it.
The answer is the Fourth Commandment. Honor your father and mother. It's the Fourth Commandment that's in play here. And the idea here is this. The command to honor your father and mother presupposes several things.
Number one, that God has established a hierarchy within a family and that the family unit is the basic unit of society and that fathers together are the ones who create the jobs, create the government, disperse the different labor tasks of protecting, feeding, and caring for the people of their community or nation.
And as a result of that, when we rebel against our boss or we rebel against the government, we're rebelling against God Himself. And it goes all the way down then when you get to the epistles in the New Testament where those who don't even own themselves, maybe they were captured by the Romans in Gaul and enslaved against their will and they didn't even own themselves.
What do you do in a situation like that? What does Scripture say? Slaves, obey your masters. And that obeying your master is obeying Christ Himself. You see, the idea then is that God is a God of order and this is not anarchy.
Government and church are institutions that God has set up. And government and church being institutions created by God, each of these institutions have offices and they have office holders. And those office holders have duties and they have qualifications.
And the men put into those offices, they are serving the people on behalf of whom? God. God has established this all. Numbers is not like two days after the Exodus. We're a long time since the crossing of the Red Sea at this point.
The receiving of the Torah, the establishing of the priesthood, the building of the tabernacle. And God is the one who has established all of this and these guys are saying, we never took a vote. Who made you king over us?
As if they weren't paying attention to who's been in charge the entire time. So we continue. All right, Moses called to Dathan, we will not come up. Is it a small thing that you've brought us out of a land flowing with milk and honey?
Like that was what Egypt was. I just have to be snarky there because right. You were enslaved. It was not a land flowing with milk and honey. It had a whip. To kill us in the wilderness, you must also make yourself a prince over us.
Moreover, you have not brought us into a land flowing with milk and honey nor given us inheritance of fields and vineyards. Will you put out the eyes of these men? We will not come up. So Moses was very angry and he said to Yahweh, do not respect their offering.
I have not taken one donkey from them and I have not harmed one of them. I have yet to receive payment in donkeys for anything I've ever done.
Just saying.
No, I really wouldn't know what to do with that. And I don't think my house is zoned for donkeys. So Moses said to Korah, present, be present, you and all of your company before Yahweh, you and they and Aaron tomorrow and let every one of you take his censer, put incense on it and every one of you bring before the Lord his censer, 250 censers, you also and Aaron each his censer.
So every man took his censer, put fire in them, laid incense on them, took and stood at the entrance of the tent of meeting with Moses and Aaron. Then Korah assembled all the congregation against them at the entrance of the tent of meeting.
And the glory of the Lord appeared to all the congregation. And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, separate yourselves from among this congregation that I may consume them in a moment. And they fell on their faces and said, Oh God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, shall one man sin and you be angry with all the congregation?
And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, say to the congregation, get away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. So you're going to notice that these men's rebellion is going to cost them their life.
And it costs them their life as an example for us to pay close attention and learn the lesson of their sin. So Moses rose and went to Dathan and Abiram and the elders of Israel followed him. And he spoke to the congregation saying, Depart, please, from the tents of these wicked men.
Touch nothing of theirs lest you be swept away with all of their sins. So they got away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan and Abiram. And Dathan and Abiram came out and stood at the door of their tents together with their wives, their sons and their little ones.
And Moses said, Hereby you shall know that Yahweh has sent me to do all these works and that it has not been of my own accord. If these men die, as all men die, or if they are visited by the fate of all mankind, then Yahweh has not sent me.
But if the Lord, Yahweh, creates something new and the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them and they go down alive into Sheol, then you shall know that these men have despised Yahweh.
And as soon as he had finished speaking,.
All these words, the ground under them split apart, the earth opened its mouth, swallowed them up with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and their goods, so that they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol.
And the earth closed over them and they perished from the midst of the assembly. And all of Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, lest the earth swallows us up. Fire came out from Yahweh and consumed the 250 men offering the incense.
These are all the chiefs of Israel. And then Yahweh spoke to Moses and said, Tell Eliezer, the son of Aaron, the priest, to take up the censers out of the blaze, then scatter the fire far and wide, for they have become holy.
As for the censers of these men who have sinned at the cost of their lives, let them be made into hammered plates as a covering for the altar, for they offered them before Yahweh and they became holy, thus they shall be assigned to the people of Israel.
You'll note here that their censers are holy, but they weren't. God accepts their censers, but killed them. That's very stern. So Eliezer, the priest, took the bronze censers which those who were burned had offered and they were hammered out of a covering for the altar to be a reminder to the people of Israel, so that no outsider who is not of the descendants of Aaron should draw near to burn incense before Yahweh, lest he become like Korah and his company, as the Lord said to him through Moses.
So, that's the story of Korah's rebellion. The rebellion didn't last very long, and Korah waged his rebellion at the cost of his life, and the cost of his wife, and the cost of his children, and all of his supporters.
God said, no way. So coming back then to Jude, no, what he did was rebel against Moses as if Moses had set himself as a prince, when God is the one who established Moses in the office that he held, as well as Aaron.
Well, the whole idea behind the incense was that was the way to let everybody know whom God had chosen. Remember, when they first rebelled, Moses and Aaron fall on their face, and they say, tomorrow appear before the Lord at the tent of meeting and bring an incense thing with you, and the one whom the Lord chooses, everybody will know who's holy.
And God chose Moses and Aaron, and he killed all the other people who rebelled. And the question is, what was the rebellion about? It was a despising and a rejecting of the offices that God had instituted and the men whom God put into those offices.
Basically saying, I know better than God. We know better than God. We don't like this arrangement. You've exalted yourself. Accusing Moses and Aaron of pride and sin when they are not the ones who called themselves, chose themselves, or did any of this.
God is the one who called them, chose them, installed them into the offices that He created. All of the people who participated in Korah's rebellion died. And Moses warned them that God was going to judge them, and if they didn't want to die, they needed to get away from them.
God made a distinction. And so we're fast forwarding now, coming back then. Listen to the false teachers that Jude is warning us about in the New Testament. They walk in the way of Cain, they abandon themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's heir, and they perished in Korah's rebellion.
Korah's rebellion continues to this day. Let me give you a tangible way in which Korah's rebellion takes place. Korah's rebellion takes place when a denomination uses their voting power to say that we are now going to ordain women and impenitent homosexuals.
When God's Word clearly states that only men can hold the pastoral office, and that somebody who is sexually immoral and impenitently so is not qualified to be a pastor. He is to be the husband of one wife.
You see?
But what has happened? Church bodies have gotten together, and they have said, no, we reject the pastoral office as revealed in the written Word of God. So we're going to put people into this office who we want.
Who are they fighting against? God. That's a visible manifestation of Korah's rebellion today.
It's visible.
Yeah.
Oh, real simple. So let's say I decide I'm going to cook meth in my basement. I don't know why I would do that, but let's say I decide to do it, and the police arrest me. What does Kongsvinger do? It's not fire.
Okay?
Now, keep in mind, you're close but just a little off. You're in the right ballpark. How do you uninstall an installed pastor? You have to defrock him. You bring him up on charges. There's an actual procedure for doing this in our Constitution.
And note this. It has to be biblical. You have to have biblical grounds to remove somebody from this office. In the same way, there has to be constitutional grounds to remove the President of the United States from office.
You can't just sit there and say, I don't like you, so I'm going to impeach you. No. There's charges that have to be brought. There's a trial. There's due diligence. And let's just say for a second that despite the fact that I was caught red-handed cooking meth in my basement, that I decide I'm going to dig in.
No, I'm still the pastor here. As terrible as that would be, you would have to do the due diligence to defrock me, to remove me from office. Recognizing this, it's not about me. It's about the office and who's to fill it.
Does that make sense? The office is given by God. And Christ is the one through the Holy Spirit and through the call of the church places people into that office. And they must be removed properly. You don't invoke the nuclear option, if you would, and just say,.
We just fired you.
No, no.
You go through the proper procedure to defrock a pastor. And what are the grounds then, biblically, for defrocking a pastor? We all know the moral grounds. Moral grounds being adultery or lying or drunkard, name the list.
But there's a second piece of that and that's the doctrinal grounds. So if I ever just started saying, you know what, I really think that God will bless you if you write me a check. And I start teaching false doctrine, you bring me up on charges then too.
That's correct. And see, here's the other thing you've got to keep in mind. I've seen this happen before. Do you know what happens when men who were not properly removed from office end up slinking out of a church?
They start their own church somewhere else.
I mean, do the due diligence. It's important stuff. I'll tell you a story that is well known in the evangelical circles, but Dwayne had his hand up. Yeah, the whole purpose of church discipline is redemption.
Okay, so here's the idea. I make no bones about it. I'm a sinner just like y 'all. That goes without saying, hence the black. You get the idea here. That being the case, when a pastor grievously falls in sin in a way that basically disqualifies him from the pastoral office, there's kind of two things in play.
Number one, we must defrock him for the sake of the office and call a pastor to replace him because we have a congregation here who needs to be fed God's Word, to hear the words of the absolution, to receive the Lord's Supper, and all of these things because those duties that have to be dispensed so that Christ can continue to care for this congregation.
But on the other end of it, the pastor then who is disciplined and removed from office, he's removed so that he will repent and be forgiven. Where then does he end up after defrocking? He's still part of the priesthood of all believers.
So if he's penitent, he's welcome in church to hear the Word, to be absolved of his sins, to receive the Lord's Supper, and he can pray for people and he can even out there outside of the church tell people about Jesus and His forgiveness and mercy.
You see what I'm saying? So it's not that he ceases to be a Christian, he ceases to be a pastor. The idea then is that the office set up by Christ, not everyone who is a Christian is qualified to hold that office.
Certain men are. And you have to study, show yourself approved. You must be examined, have your life examined, your doctrine examined before you're placed into that office. And as you're in that office, remember when I was placed in office, I had vows that I gave.
I promised to do certain things. Just like in a marriage ceremony. Husbands and wives, when they go to the altar before God and the community, they promise to do certain things. They promise to love, honor, cherish, to only be faithful to you until death do us part.
And when somebody breaks their wedding vows, oftentimes the breaking of their vows will lead to the destroying of their marriage. But in the same way, and this is where the church has become very lax today, is that remember my vows.
And if you don't know what they are, I will gladly give you a copy of them. And here's the idea. From time to time, without any warning, pull these vows out and ask, is Pastor Rosebro being faithful to the vows that he took to be our pastor?
And if I'm not, you need to get rid of me for your sake and mine. Because there are many men who get into the pastoral office and then they realize, whew, this is a tough gig. This is a lot harder than I thought.
Or, their lives get very difficult and they start to stumble in their own faith. And when they stumble in their own faith, it starts to creep into their sermons. And now they start to wander from the faith in preaching the Word correctly.
And you know what oftentimes happens, because we're all polite and we're politically correct and we don't want to rock the boat, the congregation somehow starts making excuses for what they know are slippages in what he's saying and what he's preaching.
Yes, it is.
It is an ordeal and it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be an ordeal.
But I'm going to also note something else here. The reticence to call pastors on the carpet and to hold them accountable to the Word of God and their vows and the duties of the office, the reticence to do that then bleeds over into the reticence to actually confront our brothers and sisters who are impenitent.
And we're not helping them when we don't.
Steven.
Reticence, hesitancy.
Okay. Huh? Yeah.
So the idea is that, let's say that among us, one of the members of our congregation, that he decides he's going to cheat on his wife and he leaves his wife, totally abandons his children and moves in with his honey.
And now he's living in sin. How then would this go down in this congregation? I'll tell you what I think would happen. Nobody would say nothing. Okay, here's the question I have for you. In this situation, how many people in this congregation would say, we've got a problem.
We have a brother who is in egregious, open, public, impenitent sin. We need to confront him with his sin, invoke Matthew 18 here, and begin the process of church discipline. Even if that means having him excommunicated at the end of it.
How many are up for that?
Oh yeah.
That's what you just said is right.
You said behind their back, you would say something. And I'm just going to ask the question. How does that help him? It doesn't.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
Of course.
In fact, I promise you, you go to him, it's going to go horribly bad.
He's going to yell. He's going to spit at you. He's going to seethe and swear and basically say you're nothing but a bunch of church biddies and you're backwards and all this. It's all just going to come vomiting out of him.
Now granted, the behind your back thing, here's the issue though. The behind the back thing is actually forbidden by scripture. That's called gossip. Right.
That's wrong too.
Well, yes, all sins are sins.
Let me just show of hands. Who here since Easter Sunday until right this minute hasn't sinned this week? No hands.
How many of you heard that your sins were forgiven at the beginning of our church service today? Mine included. See, the difference between us and other people is not that we're not sinners. That's not the thing that distinguishes us.
We hear the message of Christ, which is repentance and the forgiveness of sins. We acknowledge daily that we fall short terribly and that we deserve God's wrath and we ask Christ to forgive us and we are forgiven and walk in repentance, desiring to do better and battling our sinful flesh from day to day.
So is gossip as murder?
Oh, it absolutely is. In fact, I would say that gossip is the coward's murder because I don't have the guts to stick a knife into your chest. So you know what I'm going to do, the next best thing? I'm going to take your name and I'm going to smear it all over the place and you may as well be dead because when I'm done with it, no one's going to like you, talk to you, and everyone's going to hate your guts.
So you may as well be dead. It's murder by words. And it's awful. I've been on the receiving end of that. It's just terrible.
Go ahead, Mike.
I'm understanding this, you know, your sin was not...
The Supreme Court said...
So where do we... We have a higher authority...
This is a great question.
How do we practice that?
This is a fantastic question. I would like you to turn to Romans 13. Romans 13. This is going to touch on what we need to understand as the doctrine of the two kingdoms. I don't know if you've ever heard of the right-hand kingdom and the left-hand kingdom.
So let me start by asking a question. I'm going to talk about two different institutions. I'm going to talk about the church, and I'm going to talk about the government. Which of the two did God establish?
Both. Both.
What is the charter of government? What do they exist to do? So, Mike, you said it. Punish evildoers. I want you to pay attention to the charter of governments established by God. Romans 13. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.
There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Now, I'm going to be blunt here. Are socialist nations established by God? Yes or no?
Yes.
Are capitalistic nations set up by God? Are monarchies set up by God? Are democracies set up by God? Okay, so notice the implications here. All of these different governments have been established by God.
Now, ideologically, we can talk about the shortcomings of both capitalism and communism and socialism and all these different isms. But ultimately, at the end of the day, each of these governments, regardless of their monetary ideology, still has a task.
There is no authority except from God. Those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. Those who resist will incur judgment, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.
Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what's good and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.
Therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing.
Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Now, kind of walk this through then, our relationship to the government.
I promise you that every government official, leader, magistrate, regardless of office, that every one of them are sinners too. We don't have a problem recognizing that. So, when somebody who is in an office established by God starts to encroach on authority, use their authority to encroach on power that they do not have.
Yeah, that guy. Yeah. Right? What is the church to do? The church has also been instituted by God. Now remember, today we saw in our text the ordination of the apostles, the creation of the church. What were the apostles sent with the authority to do?
Forgive and retain sins. So here's the idea. You have two institutions set up by God. Not one, two. They each have different charters. The church exists for the purpose of making disciples of all nations, baptizing, teaching all that Christ has commanded, proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins which includes forgiving and retaining sins.
Forgiving the sins of the penitent and retaining the sins of those who persist in impenitence. This is our authority, our charter. So when the government says, you, church, must ordain women and homosexuals.
We say, no, government. You have overstepped your God-given charter. You do not have the authority to speak to this institution in that way. So we're going to exercise our God-given authority to you and tell you to repent.
It is wicked and evil what you are doing and you've been tasked by God to punish evildoers, not punish those who are speaking the truth. You need to turn around, repent, and bear fruit in keeping with repentance because Christ has bled and died for these sins.
You government ministers have gone too far. That's your critique? Is that how you use the word minister?
Cut me to the heart, man. Cut me to the heart. What were you saying, Kathy?
Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Right, so in our country, we have the profound separation of church and state. Travel to Europe. They don't. They have a different problem. Go to Norway. What's the problem? Church and state? One. They're squished together.
How? Does that work out well?
Yeah, Germany's the same way. Does it work out well? No. State-run churches?
Okay, a little bit of a side note here. I don't know if you've noticed, we have some traffic on our website from time to time, and we do actually have comments that come in from time to time regarding the fact that on our altar, there's a U .S. flag.
No, the altar is the whole area.
Now, and here's the idea, is that some who are very sensitive about these things, they say, that shouldn't be there. Oh, no, no, no, joke. No, no, hold on, hold on.
There's a whole group of people who say, well, it's always been there. But the reality is, it hasn't always been there. When did those flags start appearing in the altars of Lutheran churches, historically?
Wrong.
Good guess, though. Thanks for playing along. I have some wonderful parting gifts for you.
After one of the wars?
Uh-huh, which one? One. World War I. Lutheran churches are considered to be what type of ethnic churches?
German.
And so what ended up happening in World War I, German Americans were considered, well, with suspicion. Lutheran Germans, well, with suspicion. If you had the word Lutheran, you were assumed to be somehow Germanic.
And so as part of a way to visibly say, no, we're not German, we're not with the Kaiser, or the Nazis, which later came up, they ended up moving the flag from the entrance of the church to the altar. Interesting.
Right.
Now, those churches that are keen on these things and think about the message that could be inadvertently sent, they've moved the flags back to a particular place. And that place is just inside before you come into the sanctuary.
And it's a visible representation that once you now enter this door, you're no longer in America, you're in the kingdom of God. Okay, so many churches in the past few decades have moved the flags to the front before you come in, for this very reason.
Because it visibly says that now that you enter into our sanctuary, you're leaving America, and now you're on soil that belongs to the kingdom of God. That basically takes church and state and squishes them together.
But we don't think that way, we just think, well, we're Americans, of course that should go there, we're American Christians. But what's funny is that we have a lot of traffic on our website and our Facebook from all over the world.
And so what happens is our non-American Lutheran brothers and sisters sit there and go, that's weird, why would you do that? America is such a screwed up nation, why would you want a symbol of that on your altar?
It's still the God's kingdom in the United States.
The United States and God's kingdom, two different things.
It is, right?
Well, this is where we're going to make a distinction. Left-hand kingdom, the kingdom of government, is established for the punishing of evildoers. But that's your left. Yeah, right? I used to work at Disneyland, I was trained to do this.
So if I talk about the right-hand kingdom, you're seeing it as your right, correct? You got it, okay?
This is how this works.
So the left-hand kingdom is not the kingdom of God, the left-hand kingdom is the kingdom of the earth, kingdoms of the earth for the purpose of basically punishing the evildoer. Which, when the governments do their job, then create peace and tranquility, which then becomes really the environment for which the gospel spreads.
And we can raise our children in the faith and things like that. The right-hand kingdom is the kingdom of God.
So this building,.
When we're in the sanctuary, in this building, we're not in the States. Sorry, we are in the kingdom of God. This is an embassy. The same way if I were to visit the British Consulate in Washington, D .C.
Once I step onto their property, I am no longer in the United States.
That was the idea. What did they call it? They called it sanctuary.
Right. Uh-huh.
Exactly. And so if somebody who was a political refugee, they would come to a church and say, Sanctuary, sanctuary! And you'd pull them in, and the government couldn't touch them. Because this ground is holy ground.
The United States begins as soon as you exit that door right there.
So on the Internet, it has paperback.
Oh, yeah.
And we're allowed to go where we shouldn't have.
On the correct site.
So here's the funny thing. Now that we have an international group of people paying attention to Kongsvinger, they're sitting there going, why are you guys doing that? And so here's the thing.
We're totally oblivious to it.
We don't even think in these terms. But the Internet has kind of brought us all together. And now we're having conversations with people...
We're not changing it.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
I will leave that conversation for the powers that be. I'm just the disciple. I don't even have a vote on the church council. Anyway, just keep in mind, it does send a message. And you do want to think about what message it sends.
All right.
Totally different.
That's a different topic. We'll end here. And we'll finish up on the second commandment next week.