March 5, 2019 Show with Brian Kachelmeier on “Reading Isaiah With Luther”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host Chris Arnton. Good afternoon

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnton, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this fifth day of March 2019.

I'm delighted to have as a first -time guest today Pastor Brian Ketchelmeyer.

He received his BA in religious studies from the University of New Mexico, his

Master of Divinity from Concordia Theological Seminary and he is the first pastor of Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church, a congregation in the

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He's a lecturer on the global broadcast

Redeemer Theological Academy, a frequent guest on issues, etc., and Old Testament teacher for the

Wittenberg Academy. Today he's going to be addressing his new book with Concordia Publishing House, Reading Isaiah with Luther and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor Brian Ketchelmeyer.

Well hey Chris, it's great to be here. It's great to have you and I'm going to give our email address out right away for anybody who wants to ask a question either on Isaiah or Luther or something about Pastor Ketchelmeyer's own testimony, whatever you want to ask on in those realms.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. And Pastor Ketchelmeyer, before we go on to what

I normally have first -time guests do, which is give a summary of your personal testimony of salvation and what kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life to draw you to himself and save you. And of course if you were raised in a

Christian home and some of our guests cannot remember ever being an unbeliever, we will ask you to give an account of what were the providential circumstances that made a change in your passion for Christ, his gospel, and even led you into the ministry.

But before we do that, why don't you tell our listeners something about Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

Los Alamos, New Mexico, of course, is a world famous for nuclear research.

This is Manhattan Project, where they developed the atomic bomb. So Los Alamos is a very unique place in all of the world and a very unique place in the state of New Mexico, which of course is the land of enchantment.

And so what we did here in Los Alamos is we planted a Lutheran Church Missouri Synod congregation.

And what I mean by that is we did not have a Missouri Synod congregation, which is a conservative

Lutheran denomination here in Los Alamos, so we planted it. But Los Alamos is a very small city.

It's not a growing city, so we did things a little bit different than what normally happens in a mission plant situation.

Usually people look for a big city, they look for the suburban area where it's growing and expanding, and then they plant a church and kind of ride the wave of the population growth.

Well, we actually planted a church here because there was a number of people who were committed to the

Lutheran doctrine of justification, that we are, of course, justified by faith alone because of the person and work of Christ alone, and that this is that before God we are deemed righteous because we have the righteousness of Christ that is given to us and it's received by faith.

And we had a number of people who wanted to have that central teaching here in Los Alamos tied to the historic faith of the

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod proclaimed in a church, in a congregation, in a small setting.

And so I came out here to start this congregation. I graduated from seminary in 2005, the seminary being a

Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and then in 2008 we became a congregation of the

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and then in 2011 we built our first building.

So we are in a building now before we were kind of wandering from school gymnasiums and community buildings and different sites until we finally arrived at a permanent place.

It's kind of like the tabernacle in the wilderness until we get to Jerusalem and build a temple, right? Well, I think it might be wise because of the fact that I have contact with people from all different backgrounds within the pale of evangelicalism.

A number of folks, when I tell them I might be interviewing a

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod guest, if they are unfamiliar with Lutheranism, very often there are two responses.

They'll be like, what? Those liberal churches that ordain women and homosexuals and believe in same -sex marriage and pro -abortion and on and on and on.

Sometimes they deny the essentials of the faith, the trinity, the deity of Christ, the bodily resurrection, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.

And sometimes they'll say, oh, you mean those churches that are just like the Catholic Church? And they may think because of the more liturgical appearance, you know, the vestments and things like that, they may think automatically, oh, it's just like the

Church of Rome. Well, if you could correct our listeners on those two very wrong notions that they may have in their head.

Well, yeah, definitely, to be clear up front, we are not the ELCA. That's the liberal, mainline

Protestant group that's always in the news. That's the one with the pushing the gay and a lesbian agenda. That's the one that ordains women pastors.

That's the one that calls into question the efficacy, or I should say, really the inspiration, the infallibility, and inerrancy of the

Scripture itself. That's the ELCA. We are not of the ELCA. We are of the Lutheran Church of Missouri Senate, which would put us in the more

American, conservative, Christian, Protestant, evangelical type of background and understanding, so that we have that, that we proclaim the

Scripture as God's Word, whereas the ELCA would say it merely contains God's Word, and then when it contains

God's Word, well, somebody's got to find God's Word for you, and ironically, it's the word that those people like to hear happens to be

God's Word, and that's what they say is God's Word. But we don't hold to that shenanigans.

Instead, we hold to the Scripture as God's Word, clear, the clear

Word that God gives to us, the sure Word that God gives to us about the knowledge of salvation, and that knowledge of salvation, of course, is about the person and work of Jesus Christ, our only

Savior, that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone. And so here in the

Missouri Senate, we would hold to the inerrancy of Scripture, the infallibility of Scripture, that this is inspired by the

Holy Spirit, and we would also hold something that might be a little bit different to some of your listeners, though, if we have this word, efficacious, that the

Word of God is efficacious. It affects things. It's powerful. It does things. The gospel is the power of God for salvation for those who believe.

So we have this emphasis on God's Word being spoken and heard and doing things.

It opens eyes to see. It opens ears to hear. It opens hearts to believe. It's the

Word of God that said, let there be life, and there was life. It's the Word of God where Jesus speaks to Lazarus in the tomb and says, come out, and he comes out alive, or he tells a person with the withered hand, stretch out your hand, and it is so.

So we do hold to the inerrancy, infallibility, the inspiration of Scripture, but we also hold to something, the efficacy of Scripture, and that might be a little bit different terminology or wording that some of your listeners might not be familiar with.

Well, I think that my Calvinist listeners will be familiar with it because Calvinists do believe in that as well.

We believe without question that the Word of God proclaimed has power and that God uses it not only to raise

Lazarus from his tomb, but dead sinners into life, eternal life. And so I am, as a

Calvinist, I'm 100 % on the same page with you there. And also,

I want to give a caveat here. I don't want to unnecessarily insult some of my dear sisters who

I think are in serious error when it comes to the ordination of women, but there are Bible -believing evangelical born -again

Christians out there who accept the ordination of women, and they may be women pastors themselves. Although I am in serious disagreement,

I don't want to lump you in the same block or bunch with those who

I would consider apostate in some of the mainline liberal denominations. And I know that the

United Methodist Church, although we heard some good news about the liberals losing a vote in regard to biblical morality when it comes to sexual ethics and heterosexuality and monogamy and an opposition to same -sex marriage and all that kind of thing, there are

United Methodist pastors who actually deny the deity of Christ in the Trinity.

Has the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America gone that far as well? Again, just to clarify, when you say

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, that's what we would call ELCA or ELCA, which is not Missouri Synod.

Right, right, right, right, yeah. And I would say you definitely see that in some in the ELCA, and even more than you would expect, especially with the pastors, the clergy, the so -called theologians, you'll see such things.

I mean, the whole concept of being liberal and progressing is you're always changing.

And so instead of allowing God's Word to change your mind, you're always in this mode as a progressive that you're always trying to change

God's Word to be in line with your mind, that you want God's Word to say what you want it to say, so you tweak it, you massage it into something else.

Because God's Word is powerful, and so when God speaks law and gospel, I mean, these are two powerful things.

That law comes in and it exposes our sin, and it shows us that need we have for a

Savior, but it's the gospel that comes in sweetly and proclaims the Savior, that in Jesus alone is there the forgiveness of sins.

But sometimes what you do see in these mainline liberal denominations is they're taking apart

God's Word from a rationalistic point of view, that they wanted to say what they want to say, and it becomes a molding and making

God in your own image. And I think later on in the show we will be able to talk a little bit more about this, is that's really at the base of what idolatry is.

The idolatry that was in the Old Testament was not statue worship in and of itself, but it was molding and making

God into the image of fallen creation. And you see this with a lot of the mainline

Protestant, you see this in the ELCA, ELCA, where they're constantly caving into the culture, and whatever the voice that they like to hear, that's the voice they gravitate toward, and that becomes the voice that they claim is

God's voice, which is something that is in opposition to the written Word.

We have that written Word for a reason, so that we can be certain and sure that we're listening to God's voice and not a doctrine of demons.

Amen. And by the way, I was having a conversation with somebody just the other day.

One of the things that's confusing for us, and might even be confusing for Lutherans, is when you distinguish the different synods, you have the notorious

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that we were just talking about, the liberal, even apostate, denomination, and then you have folks in solid, biblically faithful churches that are in the

Missouri Synod, or perhaps the Wisconsin Synod, or some of the other conservative denominations within Lutheranism, that still will have in their name, such as your congregation,

Redeemer, Evangelical Lutheran Church. Now, people might automatically think, oh, that's an ELCA church, because you have three of the letters of ELCA in there, you have

Evangelical Lutheran Church. But if you want to comment, why is that very common, where Evangelical will be in the name, even knowing that there could be confusion with ELCA?

Right, right, right. Being a Lutheran, we take our historical identity very seriously.

And so we want to take our identity back before there even was an America. So we go back to the land of Luther, we go back to Saxony, to Wittenberg, we go back to this area of the time of the

Reformation. And it's at the time of the Reformation that the Lutherans were labeled

Evangelical by the loyalists to the Pope, the Papists. So it became a term that the

Papists used to denote that they were not loyal to the Bishop of Rome, that they were

Evangelical, that they were all concerned about the Gospel, but not concerned about the

Church itself, the institution, and being under the supervision of the

Pontiff in Rome. And so you go back historically, and the original Evangelicals were the

Lutherans. In fact, even historically, the original Protestants, the

Protestants were the Lutheran princes who were protesting when the Emperor Charles V demanded that Luther be handed over, because Luther was excommunicated from the

Church, and he's an outlaw of the Empire, and Charles V demands that Luther be handed over, and all of Luther's teachings and his writings be destroyed, and the

Lutheran princes protested, so they were known as Protestants, or Protestants. So originally, that term

Protestant, the term Evangelical, was a term specifically for those who were embracing the

Reformation and the doctrine of Luther that centered on the Evangelical, the

Gospel itself, the good news, the good word from God, that there is forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus, that all the prophets, all the apostles, the early

Church proclaimed that there is no other name under heaven whereby we must be saved. In his name alone, we have the forgiveness of sins.

Amen. And although I have, and you may have met Missouri Synod Lutheran ministers who do not like to be called

Protestants, they... Yeah, right, right, right, right, right, right, right. Because this is what happens, is that historically, again, we were the first Evangelicals, we were the first Protestants, but then we're kind of Johnny -come -lately to the party here in America.

We come here in America, these names have already been staked out over here.

So this is why it becomes very confusing. So even, like, when we will say that we are Catholic with a little c, people get confused, they say, oh,

Roman Catholic, no, no, no, no. Or we say we're Orthodox with a little o, people say, oh, Eastern Orthodox, no, no, no.

Or if we say we're Evangelical, people think that we're non -denominational or something from the

South. Of course, if we said Evangelical, everybody would assume right away that we're from America, an

American Evangelical. So we're in this strange game here in America, and we've kind of been out of sorts over here.

We were Johnny -come -latelys. Even the Missouri Synod itself, we don't really immigrate over here into America until the mid -to -early 1800s.

I mean, so you're, like, in the mid -1800s, where you have these German Saxons coming over here because of the desire for the freedom and the liberty to confess and to believe the faith that they have received that's centered on Christ, and the forgiveness of sins that are found in Him alone.

And so when we came over here, we come over as the Saxon immigrants, and there's

Lutherans that were here, but they were more of your Scandinavian Lutherans. I mean, they were more of your

Finns and your Norwegians, your Swedes, but we were these German Lutherans leaving the land of Saxony because we were being oppressed over there.

We were being persecuted over there and not allowed to freely believe the faith that we held dearly that was given to us in the

Scripture about Jesus. So when we come over here, we're very, shall

I say, a German, and in that German kind of hard -headedness that we are who we are, we have an identity, so we came over here not to water down our identity and to change it, whereas the

Lutherans on the scene, they constantly were always merging. So you had the Swedes and the

Finns and the Norwegians, they're always merging together, but every time you merge together, you have to agree to disagree, you water down doctrine and practice, and that's what you see in the

ELCA right now, is constantly these smaller synods were being joined together, but every time you join together, they say, well, what about this?

Well, it's like, well, you can believe whatever you want, but then the organization keeps getting bigger and bigger and watered down more and more.

So again, I think that helps some of your listeners understand that difference between the ELCA, the

E -L -C -A, who also has the term evangelical, because that's that old Lutheran term.

It's a Lutheran term. You might even find sometimes here in America where you have an EV free church, an evangelical free church, has a history going back into Europe where they are not part of the state church, but they're trying to be free from the state church, independent from the state church, so that they would be free in their conscience to hold to Jesus and the word that they've been given.

By the way, I don't know if you've ever seen this hilarious episode of Cheers when

Woody comes strolling into the bar all depressed, and he's supposed to be on his honeymoon, and he is asked why he is so sad, and he said he just found out during his honeymoon that his wife is of a different religion than he is, and Frazier says to him,

I thought you were both Lutheran, and he says, well, that's what I thought, but I'm Missouri Synod, and she's

Lutheran Church of America, and the whole episode was about this like huge difference.

It was hilarious, but anyway, I urge you folks to go on YouTube and google that scene, and it's very funny.

Before we go into your own testimony, what are the

Lutheran synods that you recommend? Of course, you recommend the

Missouri Synod, but other than that, so if our listeners are from a Lutheran background, they say

I'm sick of this liberalism in the congregation that I'm in. It's neither evangelical nor Lutheran, and they want to find a

Lutheran church that's faithful to the scriptures. What are the denominations or the synods within Lutheranism that you could recommend with a good conscience?

Well, of course, I would recommend the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. You'd recommend the

Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the Wells. I mean, they also have evangelical in their name.

There's the ELS, which is the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, which is basically the little

Norwegians. These were the remnant of the larger group of the

Norwegian Lutherans who ended up going into the ELCA. This was that remnant that kind of stayed behind.

You have the AALC, the Association of American Lutheran Congregations, which is a remnant of the old

ALC, which was the American Lutheran Church. And for some of your readers, your listeners,

I should say, your listeners, all these letters, it's like alphabet soup. I mean, it's just part of the

Lutheran identity that we have. Everybody has an L and an E or an A or a

C or something in their name. But definitely the Wells, the W -E -L -S or the

E -L -S or the AALC, LCMS Missouri Synod. How Lutheran are the

Lutheran Brethren? I know they're not liberal, but they don't seem to be quite as liturgical,

I don't believe, as the Missouri Synod or the Wisconsin Synod and some of the other denominations you mentioned.

Yeah, and so some of the background of the Lutheran Church, the historical background, is that as the

Lutheran Church was emerging on the scene at the time of the Reformation, right off the bat you had a controversy between Zwingli and Luther.

And you have this controversy over the Lord's Supper, and you have a split division there. And then you start to see all these different splinter groups of all the different Anabaptist groups, and you start to see what would be kind of similar.

Really, a lot of these Anabaptists, these radical Anabaptist groups, are much more like a kind of a charismatic group that we have in our day.

I mean, these were the kind that were going around, everybody was having visions, everybody was speaking to God personally, and everybody knew things that were outside the

Scripture, everybody's looking for an extra biblical revelation. I mean, so you have all of this happening there, and then of course the

Calvinists come along, and the Lutherans and the Calvinists are a little bit different, right?

I mean, the biggest issue is going to be on the Lord's Supper. And when the Lutherans are trying to establish their identity, it's a confessional identity.

So it's an identity of, this is what we confess, what we teach, and what we believe to be true, based upon the

Scriptures. And this Lutheran confessional identity has always been tied to a historic

Catholic identity. And when you have a historic Catholic identity, you have a liturgical identity, because this is the history of the

Church. So that when Luther comes on the scene, he says he's not trying to start a new Church, he's trying to reform the

Church that has become deformed without the Gospel of Jesus. And so for Luther and the

Lutheran Reformers, they go to the city of Augsburg, and this is where you start to see these confessional documents come out, the

Augsburg Confession, where they go before the Emperor Charles V, and say that we're not any one of these other groups that are just constantly spawning off these different radical, extra -biblical visions, and everybody's their own leader, and everybody has their own direct pipeline to God, and they all teach different things.

That we're trying to reform the Church, and here's the problem with practice and theology that's become deformed, that we have seen that the

Church is no longer giving the proper glory and honor to Jesus, that glory and honor is being robbed from Jesus, and it's being given to the saints, somebody else.

Or we would also say that the consciences are not being comforted by the teaching of the

Church in the scholastic medieval times, instead the consciences are being overburdened.

And that's part of the reason why we were going to talk about the conscience in the book of Isaiah, because for Luther this was very important, that the issue of the

Christian faith is twofold. Number one, giving the proper honor and glory to Jesus, as the

Scripture tells us to do, and then number two, giving comfort to a terrified conscience because of sin, that only in Jesus is there assurance of the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation in Him alone.

And so that was really that confessional statement at the city of Augsburg, where we start to say, this is who we are, we confess these things.

So the whole Reformation was a very doctrinal Reformation, it was a liturgical

Reformation in the sense that Luther took things out in the old medieval

Liturgy of the Mass, in which Mary was prayed to instead of Jesus.

So the idea is you would pray to Mary as like a co -mediator, instead of looking to Jesus as the only mediator.

And so instead of looking to Jesus as the high priest, the one who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that that Liturgy in the

Middle Ages was more focused on the person and work of the saints and the person and work of Mary.

So Luther, he reforms that, but he keeps that Liturgy. And so you have

Luther's Reform of the Mass that starts being used, and one of the things that Luther starts to do in this Reform of the

Mass is he starts to include congregational singing, singing that would be in the vernacular of the people, in addition to the

Latin liturgical songs that we have, like the Song of Mary, the Song of Simeon, that come straight out of the

Bible, the Song of Zechariah, these songs that are coming right out of Luke's Gospel.

And so Luther will keep these in the Latin, but that 1530, that confessional statement, that becomes the standard for what it means to be evangelical in the empire in that time, in the 16th century.

So that you eventually get to an agreement with Charles V, the emperor, that in a territory, if the

Lutheran prince wants to be Lutheran, I mean, if he's converted from the

Catholic understanding of emphasis on Mary and the saints, instead of the

Lutheran evangelical emphasis on the personal work of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins, the comfort of the conscience, well, that prince, if he's

Lutheran, his territory becomes Lutheran. It becomes evangelical. And one of the keys to making the distinction between a

Catholic territory and an evangelical territory is if they hold to that Augsburg Confession of 1530.

And so that kind of becomes the touchstone of what it means to be evangelical, or what it means to be

Lutheran. And this is where you start to get things in the mix with Calvinism, when

John Calvin rises up, and he starts saying, yes, I too hold to the

Augsburg Confession. Well, what had happened is, over the years, there was a variety of different versions of the

Augsburg Confession, and so yes, John Calvin would say, we hold to the Augsburg Confession, but it wasn't the original one, it was variations that Philip Melanchthon himself would make.

And so the Lutherans become a very confessional, looking back at that 1530 document, and by the time you get to 1580, you're going to codify, if you will, all of these documents that establish what

Lutherans have held since the time of 1530 at Augsburg, and this becomes what we call the

Lutheran Confessions, or the Book of Concord, and in that you include documents like the

Large Catechism of Martin Luther, the Small Catechism of Martin Luther, the Apology to the

Augsburg Confession, which is not saying that we're sorry, but giving the rational reason, the logia, the logical reason for the defense of what we're confessing to be true, all based in Jesus.

You have the small called articles, you have the power and primacy of the Pope, to what extent does he really have jurisdiction here on earth?

We as Lutherans, of course, reject the idea that by divine right, he's God's vicar on earth. We reject that, so that document talks about it.

And then we have in this confessional, Book of Concord in 1580, what we call the

Formula of Concord. And it's that Formula of Concord that really defines and differentiates between Calvinism and Lutheranism.

And it's over the years, there were different groups of Calvinists or Lutherans who would hold to different numbers of documents in this

Book of Concord from 1580. So when you get to a group like the Lutheran Brethren, the

Lutheran Brethren would hold to something like the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran Brethren would hold to a small catechism that's written by Luther, and the large catechism that's written by Luther, but they kind of don't necessarily hold to all these other documents, and they kind of become less and less identifying themselves with the historic

Catholic Church and the liturgical Church. So like you said, it's going to be a less liturgical, because the

Lutheran Brethren will come out of this movement that's called pietism, that really starts at the very end of the 1700s into the 1800s.

And in pietism, the idea is doctrine's not as significant. Instead, what is more significant is your life as a

Christian. So it's the piety of the Christian that becomes emphasized in pietism, and then you start to make rules and regulations.

You know, you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't play cards, you don't chew, and you don't date those girls who do.

You know, you start making up rules and regulations of what you're going to follow to live the pious life.

So Lutheran Brethren have more of that pietistic tendency to downplay doctrine, downplay the liturgy, downplay the historicity of the

Lutheran Church, and it's more of a personal piety of how you live out your faith and day -to -day living.

And just to wrap this up, as far as the differences between liberals and Romanists, we haven't really—well, you have mentioned some of the major elements of why you're different from Romanism, but to just set it here in stone and the understanding of our important, the gospel of the conservative, biblically faithful Lutheran synods like the

Missouri Synod is not the gospel of the Roman Catholic Church. You believe in the pillars of the

Reformation, the watchwords, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, the glory of God alone, and you're under the authority of the scriptures alone.

Yeah, I mean, so this is going to be all Lutheran, evangelical pillars, as you call them, of the

Reformation. I mean, this is what Luther wanted to found everything on. This was the focus. This was the emphasis.

This is what the Church is about, is proclaiming these things, believing these things, teaching these things.

And so that's the understanding of all these solas, the sola fide. I mean, this is—that whole sola fide, the justification through faith alone,

I mean, this is as Lutheran as you can get. I mean, this is straight from Luther and his teachings, and I mean, that's the emphasis, is that it's not your works, it's not your efforts, it's not a 50 -50, it's not like you put in your half,

God does the rest. It's solely, completely, by grace alone, through faith alone.

Yeah. And to just clarify, when I said, under the authority of the scriptures alone, obviously there are other authorities that we have, but the scriptures are only infallible and inerrant authorities.

Correct. Correct. And so the idea is, for Luther and the early

Orthodox evangelical Lutherans, the understanding is that your mind is to be under the learning of God through his work.

I mean, for the Holy Spirit is the teacher, and the Holy Spirit teaches with the written word. So Lutherans are always—when you're talking sola scriptura,

I mean, this scripture alone, this is Luther as Luther gets, right? And the idea is, we're not going to look for an extra -biblical vision that's going to teach us something different, something new, as if the revelation of the gospel is incomplete, and the salvation by Jesus is not complete yet, and we're waiting for a new word, a different word, that the scripture alone is that it's in the scripture that God has revealed everything that we need to know for salvation.

There's no secret hidden knowledge somewhere that some guru on some mountain, he alone knows this, because he alone has a direct link to God.

But yeah, it's the scripture alone that becomes that authority, so we don't look for an extra -biblical vision or revelation or something.

And this is where Luther was interacting with these prophets, the Zwickau prophets who come to town in Wittenberg, and they start saying, the

Holy Spirit told us this, the Holy Spirit told us that, and Luther says, well, I don't care if you swallowed the

Holy Spirit feathers at all, if what you say disagrees with the written word,

I'm not going to listen to you because it's not of the Holy Spirit. By the way, I want to let you know something.

I don't know if you're familiar with my very dear friend of many years, going back to 1995,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. He is a Reformed Baptist, a theologian,

Calvinist, and Baptist. But he, during the 500th anniversary of the nailing of the 95

Theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, he preached from Luther's pulpit.

You can see it on YouTube, and it was such a profound sight to see my friend up there.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I know of him, but I never had the honor of knowing him personally or meeting him.

Yeah, just thought I'd let you know that. And you should check it out on YouTube. We're going to our first break right now, and when we return, we're going to have a summary of our guest's salvation testimony, and then we'll move right into his book, which is the main theme today.

The book that we are addressing today, published by Concordia Publishing House, Reading Isaiah with Luther.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, send us an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal private matter. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Pastor Brian Keschelmeyer and Reading Isaiah with Luther.

Hi, I'm Stephan Limblad, Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas.

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We are now back with Brian Kutchelmeyer who is the pastor of Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church in Los Alamos, New Mexico, lecturer on the global broadcast

Redeemer Theological Academy and a very frequent guest on Issues Etc and also the

Old Testament teacher for the Wittenberg Academy. We are addressing his book

Reading Isaiah with Luther, a new publication or recent publication of Concordia Publishing House.

Our email address if you have a question is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Before we go to any of our listener questions, Pastor Brian, if you could now give us a summary of your salvation testimony, what kind of providential circumstances were raised in your life by our sovereign

God that drew you to himself and saved you even before that, so what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, were you raised in, and what led you into the

Lutheran ministry? This is a great question and I'm going to give you a long answer, but I'm going to give you the short version of the longer.

It's a long pilgrimage, right? It's a long pilgrimage, and it begins as I grew up in a

Roman Catholic family, okay? So I grew up in a Roman Catholic family. I was baptized as an infant in a

Roman Catholic family. Ironically, I grew up here in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Roman Catholic.

I graduated from high school here in Los Alamos, Roman Catholic, but I never did attend confirmation classes, so I was never confirmed in the

Roman Catholic church at all. So I never did that. At about the time

I was in high school, Roman Catholic, I stopped going to these confirmation classes, but we as a family really stopped attending church services on a weekly, regular basis.

So that became kind of like our life, really, thinking about God, trying to live your life for Jesus.

None of this was anywhere close to kind of my daily thinking or daily living at about that time.

I go off to college, and it was at the University of New Mexico, which is in Albuquerque, and it's about two hours away, and I'm at the

University of New Mexico. I'm walking across campus, and I can remember in particular, I bump into a guy from Los Alamos, okay?

And this guy from Los Alamos is a classmate of mine who graduated at the same time I did from the high school here in Los Alamos, and he just comes up to me and he says, hey,

I was in the Marines! And he goes, and I found out that God is real! And then he walks away, and I was going, what does that even mean, you know?

I found out God is real, and it's about this time that all these things were happening to me at college.

I know that a lot of bad things can happen to somebody at college, especially with a lot of the liberal kind of think that goes on there, the liberal agenda that's pushed to make you think a certain way, kind of brainwash you, but you also do have an opportunity to hear different voices and different people come up to you and make you think.

And so this individual made me think. Another individual that, of course, made me think was my wife.

Now, of course, when I met her, she wasn't my wife, right? So I meet her, and she attends church service every week, okay?

And so I start to attend weekly church service with her. So I have that going.

I also have, at UNM, you get one of these guys who knocks on your dorm door and says, you know,

I'm from a campus ministry. I won't say which one, but I'm from a campus ministry, and if you die tonight, do you know if you're going to heaven?

And again, it kind of gets you to think this stuff through. Like, well, what do you mean? Nobody's ever put this question before me.

And I grew up Roman Catholic. Again, I thought I was a pretty decent guy.

I mean, I wasn't perfect. And so when the guy said, would you know if you're going to heaven? And I said, well, yeah, why not?

And then he goes, well, 100 % certainty? And I said, well, you know, not 100, maybe 90 -something.

You know, I was pretty certain, but I didn't know for sure. And he said, well, would you like to know for sure?

And I said, well, yeah. And then he said to me, all you've got to do is make

Jesus your Lord and Savior. And so if you just tell Him to be your Lord and Savior in your heart, then you're saved.

And there's nothing that could ever take you out of salvation. You don't have to do anything at all.

And I can remember him telling me this, Chris, and I was going, wow, this is a pretty good deal, because I haven't been going to church in high school.

Now I'm at college, and now this guy at my door says I don't ever have to go to church again. I'm going, this is a pretty sweet deal.

And so I said, well, what do I need to do? And he goes, all you have to do is say that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.

And I said, Jesus is my Lord and Savior. He said, all right. He goes, well, do you know for 100 % now?

And I said, yes, because you just told me so. And then he walked away, and I never saw the guy again.

Never. He never followed up with me or anything. But this was the kind of atmosphere that I had at UNM, this

University of New Mexico. And you talk about divine providence, that God is working through earthly instruments, bringing people into your life.

The Holy Spirit is working to stir up your heart and what's going on, and of course, faith comes through hearing

God's Word. Well, I started attending this weekly church service with my wife.

And so, again, she wasn't my wife then. She was my girlfriend. But I started attending with her, and it was a

Baptist church, and I won't say what kind. But every week, we would go in, and they would say, we're a

Baptist, and we take the Bible literally. And I said, okay, well, that makes sense, because I'm still trying to figure out what a

Baptist is, what a Protestant is. I mean, you had this question before, what's an evangelical, what's a Protestant? I had no idea.

All I knew is I grew up Roman Catholic, and I go to this Baptist church, and there's an American flag in the sanctuary, and I just thought that maybe

Baptists were more patriotic. Because you never see that in a

Roman Catholic church, right? And I think it was like Fourth of July weekend or Memorial Day weekend, because we were singing all the, you know,

God bless America kind of patriotic hymns. So I thought that it was just, that's an

American Protestant is very American. Well, I start going to this church weekly, and every week,

I'm, you know, I'm starting to learn a little. I'm hearing the Word of God. I get my own Bible. I start reading the

Word of God. I have this hunger for God's Word. I want to know what God says. I want to know what

His Word reveals. I want to learn, and as I learn, I love to learn something from God's Word and tell somebody what

I've learned, so that I'm going out telling people what I've learned. And so I'm reading, I'm listening,

I'm learning, I'm teaching, I'm telling, I'm proclaiming what I know, and every week

I'm coming in, and the preacher is saying that, well, what makes Baptists right is we interpret the

Bible literally. Well, then it was on one Sunday, Chris, and this is where you're going to see a difference between a

Lutheran perspective and a Baptist perspective. And of course, there is more than one Baptist perspective. We have a wide spectrum.

I mean, for crying out loud, Bill Clinton was a Baptist. Far cry from a

Reformed Baptist, but anyway, I'm sorry. Well, but so we're talking about the Lord's Supper, okay?

So we start to talk about the Lord's Supper, and I had been going there week after week, and the mantra was, we interpret the

Bible literally, and that's why we get it right. Then we get to the Lord's Supper, and he said, he kind of begins this whole thing by saying, okay, now we don't interpret this literally.

And I'm going, wait a minute, time out. To me, it was, you know, I'm learning, I'm trying to grow in my understanding of God's Word.

He's already led me down this path that you take God's Word at face value, and you say yes and amen, but now all of a sudden

He's going to put on the brakes and says, but not here, not at this text. And I started to wonder, well, why is it not at this text?

And so I went and I met with him, you know, privately, separately, just in his office, later on I scheduled an appointment, and I wanted to ask about this.

And here's the thing that happened, Chris, is in the conversation with the pastor, who is trying to teach me how to hear the voice of God in the

Word of God, all he did was just laugh at the concept that I had, the concept, the thought to actually take the

Lord's Supper literally. What I mean by that is when Jesus says, this is my body, this is my blood, to take it at face value and say, yes,

Jesus, amen, I believe what you say. And so he thought that was corny and silly, and I'll tell you what, he didn't even bother to open up his

Bible. He didn't even bother to explain to me why he would take it symbolically and not literally.

Instead, he was laughing me, mocked me, and he said, if you actually think it is the body, like Jesus says, then

I have a bridge to sell you in Florida. So I really was not impressed with this.

This was the guy who was supposed to be the preacher, the teacher of the Scripture, but yet he was unable to actually open up the

Scripture and go through it with... started this whole journey and pilgrimage, looking into the

Scripture and understanding a difference between taking the words of Jesus at face value and saying, yes and amen, when

Jesus says, this is my body, you say, yes, or you say, no, it's not the body of Jesus, the symbol, and that becomes the opposite of what the text itself is saying.

And that led me on that whole path, and I'm looking at the different things that were being taught in that church, and it was always an emphasis on what you do.

I mean, the idea was that you're doing something for Jesus, that baptism is your commitment for Jesus, that the

Lord's Supper is you doing this for Jesus, because Jesus tells you to, the altar call is you're doing this for Jesus, even though there's no altar call in the

Scripture. But it's always this idea, you're the one who has to make Jesus your Lord, you're the one who has to make

Jesus your Savior. And at that time, I'm trying to figure out, well, what's going on here? And I had also changed my degree from pre -architecture to religious studies, and I wanted to really figure out, why are there so many different churches?

It seems so simple when this preacher was telling me that we're right because we interpret the

Bible literally. But then this whole train wreck happened when I realized that, well, it's a case -by -case literal, but not necessarily always.

And so I'm trying to just digest this. I changed my degree to religious studies.

I start taking Reformation history, and that's where I really became intrigued with the historical beginnings of each one of these church bodies.

I mean, we have so many different Baptist churches, like you said, so many different Lutheran churches, like we've said, and just wondering, well, where did they start?

Where did they come from? What's their history? What's the background? How did they get to where they are today?

And I was really intrigued with looking at these different churches, trying to figure this all out. And every week

I would study religious studies courses, as much as I could take it in. Granted, Chris, this was a liberal institution, a state institution, but thankfully

I did have professors who were kind of more of the traditional liberal in the idea that I had this one professor who taught the scriptures who would say that,

I'm feeding you a fish dinner, but I'm not requiring you to eat the bones. I mean, so that was very helpful that I didn't have any of these kind of aggressive liberals with this agenda to totally destroy the

Bible. So I didn't have that, which was good. But I'm trying to figure this all out.

I'm looking at the history. Every Sunday we're going to a different church. We're going to Calvinist churches, we're going to Lutheran churches, we're going to Anglican churches, you know,

Presbyterian, Methodist, I mean, we're going to all these different types of churches, trying to figure out what do they believe and why, and why based on the scripture?

Why based on the scripture? And it was in this study of the history where I come back to the beginning of the

Protestants, the Protestants, the original evangelicals with Luther, and I understand this emphasis on God's grace.

Not the emphasis on what you do for Jesus, but the emphasis on what Jesus has done for you.

So instead of you making Jesus your Savior, Jesus is your Savior. That's why he died on the cross.

He did this for you. Instead of making Jesus your Lord, all of a sudden I realized that this idea of a

Lord, the way that Luther will talk about Lord, is like a prince who is defending you and protecting you.

A Lord who goes out to battle and he rescues you because you've been captured by the enemy, and he takes you, and he brings you back to his kingdom.

That's the idea of a Lord, the one who's out there to protect you, not one who's a taskmaster, always demanding that you do more and more for him, and it's never satisfied.

And so this whole grace language of Luther, the faith language that you are receiving all of these gifts of God, the promise by faith alone, it's not what you do.

In fact, faith is not the act of your will, but the faith is a gift of the

Holy Spirit that comes through hearing God's Word. And so the more I'm hearing God's Word, the more that my faith is being strengthened in the person and work of Jesus.

But however, and I told you this is the short, long answer, but however, I did have kind of a bad taste in my mouth from this

Baptist church of thinking that anything that was conservative or fundamentalist must be wrong.

And by knee -jerk reaction, although I was intrigued with Luther, I had this tendency to go toward the liberal

Lutherans of the ELCA or the ELCA, that mainline Protestant group. And so I ended up in an

ELCA church, I'm married at this time, I become the youth director there. And then

I purchased this book called the Book of Concord that we talked about earlier from 1580, which has these confessional statements, these doctrines of the

Lutheran church, and I went to a Borders bookstore and I had to special order it because they didn't have it on their shelf, and I purchased this book and I just start reading through it and saying, what is it that this historical

Lutheran faith teaches, believes, and confesses? What is this? And this is where I began to see the differences with the

ELCA. I mean, like the ELCA, of course, embraces such things as, like, evolution,

ELCA embraces the gay and lesbian agenda, ELCA embraces the women pastors, and all of this was not in accord with the historic church.

And I'm looking through this and this Book of Concord, and then I understand that there's a major difference, that the

ELCA has a conditional subscription to these confessional documents.

And what I mean by conditional is, if it agrees with what they believe, then they believe it.

And then, of course, that conditional subscription is also based upon their understanding that the

Bible contains the Word of God. The Bible's not the Word of God, it contains it.

So again, you have kind of this man -made process where you hold to the documents that you want to personally confess because you like them, and then you go back to the

Scripture, and you hold to the things that you like to hear, and you say, that's what God said. But if you don't like to hear it, it was just the opinion of Paul, who was a

Melchovenist, or the opinion of Moses, or whoever it may be, but it's not really God.

I mean, that's what I was learning, that's the ELCA. And then I'm looking at the Missouri Synod and trying to figure out, well, okay, this is totally different.

The Missouri Synod has an unconditional subscription to that Book of Concord, saying that this is what we hold to.

Not because we just pick and choose what we like to hold to, but we hold to this because it's based on the

Word of God. And then you go back to the Word of God, the Scripture, and as a Missouri Synod, we say it is

God's Word. So you can be certain and sure of your salvation, you can be certain and sure of the good word, the good news, the person -work of Jesus, who is atoned for our sin and the vicarious satisfaction on the cross, satisfying the demands of the law, paying the price for our eternal life.

And all of this emphasis was on the work of Jesus. And that work of Jesus, of course, is giving all the glory to Jesus, the glory that's due

His name, that this is all grace alone, and then it's that comforting, that conscience, the conscience that's always wondering, well, what about this sin?

What about this? I know that I've done wrong, I know I'm not perfect, but it's that Gospel that's always bringing comfort to that troubled conscience, and assuring you that because of the person -work of Jesus, who died for all of your sins, even that one sin that's troubling you, that that's what brings joy to your conscience, knowing that you have peace with God because of Jesus.

Because we're justified by faith, we now have peace with God through Jesus Christ.

I mean, so this is kind of, that's the whole, that's the shorter version of the long story.

Well, one of these days, perhaps we can have some kind of a friendly debate on the Lord's Supper, and in fact, you might not be aware of this, but there are differences even amongst very conservative and Reformed Baptists, some who take a more memorialist view, but there are those that take more of a view and align with Calvin of a real presence, a spiritual presence, that still would probably disagree with the historic

Lutheran view, which I know that not all Lutherans like the term consubstantiation, because they like to leave more of it to the realm of mystery, if I'm guessing, if I'm getting this right.

But when we come back from the break, we have to go to our elongated break right now, because Grace Life Radio in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle, because they run their own commercials and public service announcements to localize

Iron Sherp and Zion Radio to Lake City, Florida. So during this elongated break, please use it wisely, use this time wisely, not only by writing down questions for Brian Ketchelmeyer, but by writing down the information provided by our advertisers, so that you can more successfully and more frequently patronize them, because we depend upon our advertisers to exist, because of the money provided by their advertising sponsorship, and therefore, the more frequently you patronize them, the more likely they are going to remain our advertisers, which means more likely that we are going to remain on the air.

So please, not only write down questions for Pastor Brian, but write down information provided by our advertisers.

Don't go away, we'll be back after these messages from our sponsors. My name is

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S's in the middle. I hope to hear from you soon. God bless you. Chris Orensen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

I want to tell you about a man I have personally known for many years. His name is Dan Buttafuoco.

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That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned to SEND today, our guest for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Brian Ketchelmeyer, who is the pastor of Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church, a congregation within the

Lutheran Church Missouri Synod in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and we are discussing his book,

Reading Isaiah with Luther, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Before I return to Pastor Brian, I just have some announcements for special events that I have to make, and first of all, this

Friday, March 8th from 4 to 6 p .m., our guest once again on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio will be

Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministry, who returns after a long absence.

I'm so looking forward to this interview with my dear friend and brother, Dr. James R.

White. He is going to be addressing the recent document signed by both

Pope Francis and a world -renowned Muslim imam, and we're going to be discussing the real meaning behind this, what the ramifications truly are, does this really have any bearing on either the

Church of Rome or Islam, and so on. So we hope that you tune in for that conversation this

Friday, March 8th, 4 to 6 p .m. Eastern Time, with Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries.

Coming up March 15th and 16th, the Sanctification Through Suffering Conference is being held.

This is a conference of striving for eternity ministries. The speakers include

Justin Peters, Frank Mullis, Joe Suozzo, and Colleen Sharp. This is going to be held in Freehold, New Jersey, and if you'd like to attend this

Sanctification Through Suffering Conference, you can go to strivingforeternity .org.

I hope that my listeners in the Freehold, New Jersey area, even if you have to take a train, plane, or automobile to get there, we hope that you attend, if at all possible, to the

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Iron Sharpens Iron radio. Also, coming up May 28th through the 30th,

God willing, I will be in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania for the Banner of Truth East Coast Ministers Conference on the theme,

I Believe in the Holy Spirit. The speakers include Jeff Kingswood, Terry Johnston, David Vaughan, who is a

Reformed Baptist missionary in France, Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, who is the

President of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries, Michael Morales, and Chad Vegas.

That's the East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth, May 28th through the 30th in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the

Elizabethtown College. If you'd like to register for this conference, go to banneroftruth .org. Banneroftruth .org.

Click on events and then click on East Coast Ministers Conference. Of course, you can click on any of the conferences that they are having because some of them are on the

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Rev. Jeff Thomas, who is a phenomenal retired pastor from Wales. He is really extraordinary.

I really urge you to go hear him wherever he may be speaking. Richard Caldwell Jr., Rev.

Armin Tomassian, who I think is going to be a household name within the next 10 years globally amongst

Christians, especially theologically Reformed Christians. Andrew Quigley and Paul Washer has just recently been added to the roster, which makes this event even more exciting and something that you should attend if you can.

And remember, this is a small venue in Manhattan. It only seats about 200 people. So please, if you want to go,

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And now we are back with our guest, Brian Kitchelmeyer, in our discussion on reading

Isaiah with Luther. The email address, again, for your questions is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And Brian, I think that it would be wise for you, just before you go into the theme of the book, to compare and contrast what you were saying about the

Eucharist, about the Lord's Supper, about communion, about it being really Jesus.

How would that be different from the concept of the Roman Catholic Mass that involves transubstantiation, where the elements are actually, in their minds and in their belief system, transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ?

And also, in regard to the perpetuatory sacrifice of the Mass, which they believe is a repetition, every time it's performed, of Christ's sacrifice in an unbloody manner.

And also, in regard to the worship of the elements that the

Church of Rome is involved in. Those three things, if you could compare and contrast that with the historic

Lutheran understanding of that. Yeah, and when you go back to history, I mean, this is where we always want to figure out, why are we where we're at now?

Why is there a difference between this idea of transubstantiation and what we as Lutherans would say? Well, this goes back to the

Reformation, where Luther is going against the Aristotelian philosophical logic of rationally trying to make sense of the

Lord's Supper. So transubstantiation is more in the line of Greek philosophy, rather than in the

Scripture and hearing the Word of God. So the idea of transubstantiation, which we as Lutherans, Missouri Synod, we do not hold to, is that the priest has this indelible character, and he has the ability to change the bread into the body of Jesus.

Now again, we as Lutherans do not hold to that at all. Instead, what we would say is that it's the Word of God that's efficacious.

It's the Word of God that effects things. And so it's the Word that's spoken that gives to us this wonderful gift.

When Jesus says, this is my body, it is. So it's not in the power of the priest or the pastor or the preacher who says that word.

He doesn't make it so. So that's a Roman Catholic transubstantiation thing. Instead, all of the power goes back to the

Word of Jesus. It's the voice of Jesus that's heard, and it does things. So that we would say in the

Lord's Supper, it's no different than the Word of God with ink on a paper that is just yet another form of the

Word of God that the Holy Spirit uses to work the forgiveness of sins.

So that when you have the Lord's Supper, it's a visible Word of God, just like in baptism we would say that's a visible

Word of God with the water. So when you have the bread and the wine and the Word of God, then you have what

God says. No different than when you have the ink and the paper in a Bible that it is the

Word of God, and it does these great things because the Holy Spirit works through it in the heart. So this

Roman Catholic understanding of transubstantiation, of course, is a rationalistic way of trying to make sense of things.

That in Roman Catholic thinking, the idea is that it tastes like bread, it looks like bread, it smells like bread, but it's not bread.

It's changed, it's been transformed. The substantia, the substance, is something different.

By the way, I just want to let you know that when I was raised Roman Catholic, as were you, you would probably agree with me that the substance they used for the

Lord's Supper did not look or taste or feel like bread. Well, fair enough, yeah.

It doesn't look like the bread at the grocery store, that's true. Or even unleavened bread, it looks like something totally foreign to anything edible.

Right, right. But it's this Aristotelian logic that you have the substance and the accident.

So the idea of a substance is what it is, it's essence, it's isness. That's a word, which it's not, but it's a cool way to say it.

But it's substance, it's isness, what it is, is they say that it's the body, but it doesn't look like the body.

The body is the accident. And so this is the way that the Greek philosophers would talk about things like, for instance, if you had a chair, a chair is a chair by its substance or essence, that's what it is.

No matter if it's pink or purple or orange or fluffy or wood or whatever it is, it's still, the essence is chair.

But it's the outward accidents that you see is the color or whatever the material is.

So that's what they're trying to do to explain God's Word. So we as Lutherans, we say, we don't need to explain

God's Word. We just take it at face value. If Jesus says, this is my body, we say, all right.

If you say so, it is. Thank you and amen. We believe your promise that it's for the forgiveness of sins.

You know, when he says, this is my body given for you, this is the blood of the New Testament that has been shed for you for the forgiveness of sins, that that promise of the

Gospel, the death of Jesus, the atoning sacrifice, is now being given to us in a very unique way in the

Lord's Supper. In the Word of God, when you read it with ink and paper, that vicarious atonement, the satisfaction of Jesus on the cross is being given to you then, the forgiveness of sins, what

Christ has won for you. So he won it for you on the cross back then, but now he distributes it to you through what we would call means of grace.

And I think as a Calvinist, you would resonate with that term means of grace, means through which

God's favor is bestowed on us. Even preaching, the preaching of the Gospel is a means of grace.

Yeah, yeah. So that when you hear the proclamation of the good news, the evangelical message that Christ died for your sins, that he rose again for your justification, it is a declaration that you are now not guilty because of Jesus.

You have a favor with God, all for the sake of Jesus, and he's won that for you on the cross, and now it's being declared to be your own.

So your wickedness was imputed, reckoned, and counted to him on the cross, but his righteousness is now being reckoned, imputed, counted to you, and you receive it by faith, and you say yes and amen.

This is a wonderful promise of God. And so we as Lutherans would see the Lord's Supper as one of these means of grace, that justifying

Word of God that is absolving us of all of our sins, removing our sins, because Jesus is the

Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And in Roman Catholicism, when they talk about transubstantiation, the power is in the priest to do it, not the

Word. The Word is there through the mouth of the priest, but it's really the priest doing it.

And then that bread now has been transformed, the substance has been changed to the body of Jesus.

And then what they do is they have the leftover, the remains of communion that they put in like a glass frame that you would go before, and this is where you have the idea of taking this and parading it around at a

Corpus Christi kind of a parade and festival. That now you're taking this and going around it, it becomes rather superstitious.

So we as Lutherans would say that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was for the use in a communion service where it's distributed.

You would take and you would eat, you would take and you would drink, and you would remember. That's trusting in the promise of who

Jesus is and what He's done and what He's doing right now. He's giving you the forgiveness of sin. So we don't parade it around.

You'll see that in Roman Catholicism, that monstrous, if you remember that, Chris. And genuflecting when you go into the

Church is because of the fact that Christ is physically present on the altar. Well, yeah, it would depend if there's a tabernacle and the lights on, so if the lights on it tells you that the remains that has been changed, because that's the idea, that it's been changed and it can't be changed back.

And so you then have the body of Christ there, what they would call a tabernacle, and the lights on saying that there's

Christ here, and then you would have people with a devotion who would go and pray before it. Now, we don't do any of that.

We haven't done that, you know, since the time of the Reformation. You don't... the whole point of the

Lord's Supper is that it's something that Jesus is doing for you, that He's giving you this gift. So we don't do that, and then when you talk about the sacrifice of the

Mass, we reject that also, insofar as how the Roman Catholics are saying it.

And what they're meaning, let me explain what they mean by that sacrifice of the Mass, is that it's the work of the priest offering up that bread and wine to appease the wrath of God.

So again, the emphasis is on the work of the priest rather than on the work of Jesus. So it's not focusing on the person and work of Christ for your salvation.

Instead, it's focusing on the personal work of the priest who has this indelible character that they would say, by ordination.

And so he's offering this up. That's why they call it the sacrifice of the Mass, because they would think that, like, the

Levitical priest of the Old Testament had a sacrifice, so the New Testament priests have to have a sacrifice like that.

Well, even in the book itself, Chris, I got a chapter where I'm talking about the difference between a

Eucharistic sacrifice and a propitiatory sacrifice. And I know those might be some strange words, and even the word

Eucharistic itself gets a little convoluted, because as we began this conversation, you called it the

Eucharist. Historically, the Church has referred to the Lord's Supper as the Eucharist, because that divine service, that Mass, the liturgy, was framing the delivering of these gifts of the body and blood of Christ for your life and salvation, the forgiveness of sins, the assurance, the promise that for the personal work of Christ on the cross, you now are at peace with God.

You are being declared righteous, you're being justified before God, atoned for all of your sins, because of Christ.

And that Eucharist really is coming from this Greek word, Eucharisteo, which is,

I give thanks. And so, traditionally, what Luther would do in the

Lutheran Church, traditionally is we make a distinction between a Eucharistic sacrifice, and I have to explain that, a

Eucharistic sacrifice is a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. I mean, it sounds strange because of that word,

Eucharistic, but what it means is it's proclaiming what Jesus has done in prayers, in singing, in rejoicing.

That's a Eucharistic sacrifice. It's a praising Christ for his personal work, but it does not earn the forgiveness of sins, it does not merit salvation.

On the other hand, you have the propitiatory sacrifice, and that does earn salvation, but only

Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. We have an advocate with the

Father, and he is the righteous one, the propitiation for our sins. So he alone earns and merits a salvation, eternal life, and our peace with God.

Amen. And although the term propitiatory sacrifice might be foreign to many of our listeners, certainly not to those who are

Calvinists for any reasonable period of time, because one of the reasons we believe in definite atonement is because we believe

Christ's death on the cross was a propitiatory sacrifice, therefore no one for whom Christ died will be in hell.

But obviously that's one of the differences that we have with our Lutheran friends, but that will have to be a subject for a different time, because we only have less than a half hour left,

I mean, when I get into your book. We are going into the final break right now. This will be a shorter break than the last one, and if you have questions, and I apologize to those who have been waiting to have their questions asked and answered, we will get to you as quickly as possible.

But if you have a question and you haven't written it in yet, send it in immediately, because we're running out of time. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, and this is the last 20 minutes or so of our show today with Brian Ketchelmeyer.

We are discussing his book, Reading Isaiah with Luther, and if you'd like to join us now is the time to do it before we run out of time with an email at chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

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Pastor Brian, this book, Reading Isaiah with Luther, I know that you take a different approach than most of that which has been written about the book of Isaiah and about Isaiah himself and regarding to commentaries and so on.

This has to do with the conscience, and tell us about this unique perspective, and also how it has a relationship with Martin Luther, the great reformer.

Yeah, I think that, Chris, in our day and age, we need to come to a better understanding of the conscience in the church.

We need to bring back this language. It seems like the language of the conscience has kind of gone to the wayside, and the secular society has taken advantage of this, and instead of having the conscience being formed by God's word, the conscience is being cultivated by the culture, and that's not a good thing.

The conscience, of course, is a gift from God, and that conscience is what God gives us. Everybody has this, the understanding of the natural law, the basic understanding of right and wrong.

Every one of us has this, but as time goes on, what happens in the conscience is it starts to become conforming to what others around you are saying.

So there's always these external experiences and other voices that tweak your conscience, that make your conscience either uneasy or easy.

Comforting your conscience, at least a pretend false comfort that seems like it's a comfort, but in reality it's not, and it's just, it's a temporary comfort, because what you do is you ignore the sound of your conscience.

So this whole language of a conscience in right or wrong, the understanding of feeling guilt, that when you're going against God's word, when you are rebelling against God, you know, as in one of your commercials there, he's talking about, you were talking about going to a church, a local congregation, where you gather with God's people to hear

God's word and to grow and encourage one another in the Christian faith, that this is your conscience when it is in rebellion against God, it alarms you.

It tells you that something's not right with you and God. But however, in this fallen world, though, you can kind of feed your conscience some bad food.

It's just like the idea of eating junk food. You can feed your conscience with the wrong things, and you think you're right with God just because your conscience is now at ease.

I mean, we know this is, as little kids, when they're toddlers, they have a very tender conscience, and all it takes is the parent to walk in the room, and the toddler might get startled because the toddler is reaching into the cookie jar or something like that.

Just hearing the presence of a parent kind of startles the child, because the child knows something's wrong, or it just, when a parent is upset with the child because the child did something wrong, the child immediately starts crying, even because,

I mean, even if there's no punishment yet, but just the idea that this child has done something that is, it is estranged, this rapport with their parents.

I mean, so all of us have this idea of a conscience, but in our society, we are being fed a bunch of junk food that's distorting our conscience.

It's breaking our conscience. It's numbing our conscience. It's not working properly, and I would say,

Chris, that this is what we see a lot in the political realm, when you hear these very loud voices for, like, the gay and lesbian agenda or abortion.

I mean, really what's at core here is people are trying to silence their consciences, because they know in their heart of hearts that this is wrong, but if you keep saying the mantra that it's okay, and you're okay if you're doing it, you're trying to silence that alarm of your conscience.

So this whole topic of the conscience, I think, is very important for us to, once again, bring back into the conversation of the

Church, and with Luther in particular. I mean, Luther's whole existence goes back to that time in 1505, when he is studying at the

University of Erfurt, and he's going to be a lawyer, but he gets caught in that lightning storm, that thunderstorm, and he gets this pang in his conscience, because now he is coming to the realization that he is mortal, and he's about to meet his maker, and he's going to be judged, and he's going to die, and it concerns him.

He becomes terrified, he becomes troubled, and this is where everything starts to change for him in his own life.

He goes off to the monastery, and he's trying to take this conscience that he has that's uneasy now, and he's trying to settle it, but the more work that he tries to do to assure his conscience that he has favor with God, the more that he realizes he hasn't done enough.

So he's always trying to do more and more work, because how are you going to stand before the judgment seat of God, knowing that you will fall short?

You will fall short of the glory of God. Even to the point of torturing himself, and flagellating himself, and also going to receive the sacrament of penance, so -called, and spending long hours until the priest said to chase him out of the confessional booth.

Well, and see, this has to do with the conscience, right? You go to the confessional booth, and what would happen with Luther is the idea at that time was that you have to articulate every single thing you did since the last time you were in the confessional booth, or it doesn't get absolved.

I mean, it doesn't count. So you are just trying to wrap your brain around, did

I remember to say everything that I've done wrong? And so it becomes a very stressful time.

It becomes a time of great agony. And then, so Luther would spend all this time in this confessional booth, and then as soon as he's done, then he would, he still wouldn't feel okay, because then he would have to apologize for taking so much time.

He could never appease the conscience that just always troubled.

This turmoil is always being felt. So he becomes a priest, he becomes a professor, and he starts teaching at the

University of Wittenberg, where he's teaching on Paul's letter to the Romans in 1515.

And I'm giving you these dates on purpose, because again, I'm real big about the history, so we understand how this all works.

It's in 1517, where he knells those 95 theses on the door. And we know that last year we were celebrating the 500th anniversary of the

Reformation. But I want you to understand that this issue of the indulgences, this is an issue of pastoral care.

Right. So he's concerned because he has parishioners who's coming to him, because he's also a priest, a pastor, a preacher in the church there in Wittenberg, St.

Mary's, and you have individuals coming to him saying, hey, I have a piece of paper that I paid for.

It's a plenary indulgence, and it says, I never need to come back to confession again. I'm good with God. And he's going, what?

And they have a false comfort. And so this is where he's going, that's just a piece of paper.

I mean, there's no promise from God. This is a man -made method to make you feel all right in your own conscience.

And so this is where it becomes an issue of these indulgences are tricking the people into thinking that they're okay with God.

And so that whole Reformation, I would argue, is about pastoral care and the conscience.

And so it's later on in 1521 where he's excommunicated. And we know that this is where he stands before Charles the

Fifth, the emperor, you know, that famous diet where he gathers and he says,

I cannot, I will not recant. Here I stand, you know, so help me God. I cannot, because it's not good to go against the conscience.

I mean, this is the whole idea. My conscience is captive to the Word of God, because it's the

Word of God alone that can correctly form your conscience before God.

Any other way is a mis -forming or a de -forming of your conscience.

And so this is why I see, when you look at these dates, that's 1521. Well, in his lectures on Isaiah, it's 1527, and in those lectures, he's talking about the conscience, and about this conscience that can only be comforted because of the person -work of Christ.

And when he sees Isaiah as a prophet, he sees Isaiah speaking out against all of the man -made methods of holiness.

That's what all the idolatry is. It's not a worship of statues in and of itself.

It is a man -made method of trying to mold God into your own image, and trying to worship the

God that pleases you by the things that please you. And so Luther sees

Isaiah addressing this issue of a false way to bring this false comfort to a conscience, and the only true comfort comes in the message of the

Messiah, that you have this, of course, in Isaiah 7, that, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, his name shall be

Emmanuel, which is God with us. And of course, Isaiah 53, which is really the gospel of Saint Isaiah, if you will, proclaiming the passion of the

Christ, who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So it's in his lectures in Isaiah 1527 where he wants to give all glory to Jesus, his work alone on the cross atones for sin, and that promise is received by faith that because of him we now have peace with God.

His work, his actions, he's our one mediator, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And that message alone can bring true comfort to a troubled and terrified conscience before God.

So that becomes his message in these lectures on Isaiah as he's preparing men to go into pastoral ministry.

I mean, this is a university there in Wittenberg, and these men are being ready to be out in the pulpit.

They're going to preach Jesus and him crucified. And then it's in 1530, that's that diet in Augsburg where we talked earlier, that Augsburg Confession, where Philip Melanchthon goes before the emperor.

At that time, Luther can't because he's an outlaw, but Philip Melanchthon goes forth, and it's in that document where you have this understanding that we want to reform the church because the church in the

Middle Ages has robbed Christ of his glory and has robbed the conscience of true comfort.

Well, we have a listener, Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who has a question for you. Martin Luther once said of the book of Isaiah, ought to be written on parchment of gold and lettered in diamonds.

Please share your thoughts on why Luther would make such a bold statement about this particular book of the Old Testament.

Yes, so Luther is very fond of using this idea of writing in gold, the idea that these words are golden and they are to be treasured.

So he'll take these nuggets, I mean, we'll even use that language in our own idiom, these nuggets from God's Word, these passages that we want to meditate upon, we want to memorize, we want to reflect upon, the promises of God with us,

Emmanuel. And so Luther's very fond of writing these words on your heart so that when you are uncertain, you can be certain, and your certainty can be found in Christ alone.

And so when Isaiah sees Luther, I'm sorry, when Luther sees Isaiah the other way around, when

Luther sees Isaiah, he sees Isaiah as a prophet, as a preacher, as a man who's working with people who have been tricked.

They've been deluded and they've been deceived by the religious teachers of his day.

I mean, not just merely the secular society and those outside of the church building, right, but the ones who are supposed to be the professors, the pastors, the preachers, the ones that are supposed to be teaching

God's Word. So Isaiah becomes kind of the whole epitome of the entire Old Testament, trying to bring our attention back to the promises of the

Messiah, the seed that would crush the serpent's head. Because all of these delusions and doubts are all behind, or all of this is, the devil himself is behind this.

He's the serpent who's the deceiver, who's the one who's bringing these lies to us, he's the father of lies, always trying to bring us doubt.

So Isaiah is seen as kind of, I mean, 66 books, and it is in Isaiah that just these clear, wonderful passages about Jesus, I mean, these wonderful passages in like chapter 40, where you have the voice crying out in the wilderness, or chapter 42, behold my servant, this is the one

I'm well -pleased in, this is my chosen one, or 61, where Jesus says, the

Spirit of the Lord is upon me, or you get into 65 and 66 that talk about this new heaven and new earth.

So kind of that whole book of Isaiah becomes kind of the totality of the Old Testament predicted promises of the prophets about Jesus.

Kind of like when Luther looks at the New Testament, he'll say, read the Gospel according to Saint John, read the letter to the

Romans. Those are two main books in the New Testament that Luther would say are worth their weight in gold.

Well, Gordy, you have won a free copy of the book that we have been discussing. Reading Isaiah with Luther, please make sure we have your full mailing address in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and I'm going to give you,

Pastor Brian, about one and a half minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners right now.

Jesus, that's it. The image of Jesus, the image of Jesus crucified for you, that's what

I want etched upon your hearts, that it is the work of Christ who has come for you, to win for you the forgiveness of sins.

And it's that message, that Gospel message, that is to be placed in your heart and in your conscience, so that when you become uncertain and unsure,

I mean, things happen day to day. We are sinners. We are repentant, believing sinners, but we still are sinners that have this inclination to sin.

We still want to rebel against God, and the Holy Spirit is working to renew our minds so that we are beginning to walk in newness of life.

But it's always that assurance that for the sake of Jesus, our only High Priest, our only

Mediator, we now stand before God with peace in our hearts because of what

Jesus has won for us. Amen. And we will have, God willing,

Pastor Brian Kitchelmeyer back on the program to continue on his discussion on his book,

Reading Isaiah with Luther, and we'll spend the majority of the two hours next time highlighting that book and the contents of that book.

So everybody who is waiting, that has been waiting patiently to have your questions asked and answered, I will bring up your questions the next time that Pastor Kitchelmeyer is on the show,

God willing. And I want to make sure that you all have his website for Redeemer Evangelical Lutheran Church of Los Alamos, New Mexico, it is

RedeemerLosAlamos .org, RedeemerLosAlamos .org. If you want more information about the book,

Reading Isaiah with Luther, you could go to Concordia Publishing House's website, cph .org,

cph .org. And Pastor Kitchelmeyer, if you could hang on the line there just for a moment so I can give you a proper goodbye when we go off the air.

And I want to thank everybody who listened today. I want to thank, obviously, Pastor Kitchelmeyer for being our guest today.

I want to thank those of you who were patiently waiting with questions and especially those who didn't have the chance to have your questions heard on the air.

As I said, the next time our guest returns, we'll bring up your questions. And I want all of you to always remember for the