#5: Did Pope Francis change Jesus' words?

On episode 5, Tim reacts to the passing of Pope Francis. He discusses controversial statements by the Pope and wonders if people made the pope an idol.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome into episode five of Bring Heaven Down. My name
is Tim. Thank you for making this podcast part of
your day or I pray and hope that through this podcast,
the Holy Spirit reveals more and more about our Lord
and Savior, Jesus Christ. Hit that follow button wherever you're

(00:25):
currently listening to this podcast, so this daily devotional podcast
shows up in your week Monday through Friday. As far
as this podcast goes, it's mostly going to be about
scripture and is also going to be about topical subjects

(00:46):
world events, and a big world event that happened over
the last few days is that Pope Francis, the leader
of the Roman Catholic Church, passed away on Easter Sunday.
And it wasn't unexpected because his health has been a

(01:08):
top subject in the news for at least several weeks,
if not months, and he passed away on Resurrection Sunday. Now,
I'm going to be completely, one hundred percent honest and
say I am not a Catholic and I do not
fully comprehend or understand everything that the Pope is responsible

(01:36):
for doing. I grew up in a Lutheran church and
right now I attend a Baptist church. In Minnesota. I
do know that there have been occurrences where the Pope
has said or done different things that have been controversial.

(02:00):
For example, I know that one controversial inaccurate statement the
Pope once said is that all religions are pathed to God,
which is completely inaccurate, and based on what I have researched,

(02:26):
it appeared that the Pope has corrected himself or tried
to explain himself and said that there is only one God,
but there's different religions that can reveal more about God.
Something along those lines. Another article that I read is
that the Pope changed the Lord's prayer. The Lord's Prayer

(02:53):
goes our Father, whard in heaven, how it would be
thy name, Thy Kingdom, Come, Thy will be done on
earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day
our daily bred, and forgive us our trespasses, as we
forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is

(03:16):
the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
I have the Lord's Prayer memorized. My wife and I
say the Lord's Prayer every night because that's how Jesus
taught us to pray, and Pope Francis approve changes to
the part where it says lead us not into temptation,

(03:38):
and he corrected it to say do not let us
fall into temptation. And on its surface, the changes Pope
Francis approved of make complete sense because God does not
lead people into temptation. It clearly says in the Bible

(04:02):
God does not tempt, but he does test, which there
is a difference between those two. But you look at
what the Pope is doing in the circumstance and correct
me if I'm wrong. But is he not submitting to

(04:23):
the authority of Jesus's words. Jesus taught us how to pray,
and these are Jesus's words. So when Pope Francis is
changing what the lord's prayer is, is he not changing

(04:45):
what Jesus said and how Jesus taught us to pray.
And I found this interesting article on Desiringgod dot org.
It's an article written by pastor John hyper who's been
a pastor for a long time. He's got like over
a million followers on acts if you're interested in checking

(05:08):
out his account, and he writes this, who says what
fathers do. Right side up, we would say, the Bible
teaches that God does such and such. Therefore we should
seek to discover the wisdom and goodness of why he
would act that way. But standing on our heads, we

(05:31):
would say, we already know that it is wise and
good before the Bible tells us. So if this text
tells us God acts contrary to what we know, we
will conclude that the text can't mean that, or it's mistaken.
Daring progressive Christians say the text is mistaken. Less daring

(05:53):
progressives claim to hold fast to biblical authority while changing
the meaning to fit their price of God. In either case,
authority has shifted from heaven to earth. The Pope says,
a father doesn't lead his children into temptation. A father
helps you get up immediately. It's Satan who leads us

(06:16):
into temptation. That's his department. This is upside down. God
is a good father to his children, a perfect father,
and since he is God and not a mere human,
his perfection should not be forced into the mold of
our fallible views of what good fathers do. Having perfect
wisdom and knowing all things, our heavenly father does things

(06:38):
no human father should do. For example, no human father
should take the life of his child as a sacrifice
for others, but that is what God did to his
one and only divine son, who was perfectly pleasing to him.
No human father should take the life of his child
to spare that very child a worse fate and namely hell,

(07:01):
but that is what God does sometimes. No human father
should take the life of his child's children to prove
the faithfulness of his child, but that is what God
did to Job's children. No human father should send a
famine on his children's land, and no human father should
send one of his children into slavery to be the

(07:23):
means of saving his brothers. But God did both of these.
My point in here is not whether God leads us
into temptation. My point is we should learn whether he
does or not from scripture, not from our prior notions
of what good fathers do. Our notions are finite and
distorted by sin and culture. We must continually refine them

(07:46):
by what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that we
should pray our Father lead us not into temptation. It
really does mean lead into or bring into, which may
mean Father since a man's steps are from the Lord forbid.

(08:06):
We pray that any temptation we encounter by your leading
would trap us and suck us in with no way
of escape. For you are faithful, and you have promised
that with every temptation you will provide the way of
escape that we may be able to endure it. Do
for us, dear Father, what you did for Jesus, when

(08:26):
you led him by the spirit into the wilderness to
be tempted by the devil. You filled him with the
word of God. And though he was led to the
crisis of temptation by your spirit, he did not get
sucked into sin, but triumphed by your word. For this
same grace in all your leadings, we earnestly pray, Amen.

(08:47):
So the interpretation of our Father lead us not into temptation,
is provide a way out of the temptation, and fill
us with the Word of God. So, with all of
these things being said, it appears that Pope Francis was

(09:11):
an outspoken Christian that stood on biblical principles for the
most part. But it also appears that he took scripture
and decided that his own discernment was more valuable than

(09:37):
the discernment of Jesus, who taught us the words to pray,
lead us not into temptation. And I'm really trying hard
not to be offensive here. But what is more offensive
changing Jesus's words into scripture or being a little critical

(10:05):
of the pope because he changed the words in scripture.
I guess I'll let you choose. I saw a tweet

(10:26):
by Joe Biden, former President of the United States of America,
and I saw this tweet, and I was intrigued by
the tweet. He said this about Pope Francis. It is
with great sin is that Jill and I have learned

(10:47):
of the passing of his holiness, Pope Francis. That's the
first sentence of his tweet. And I see that, and
he capitalized his and holiness, which in my opinion, takes

(11:12):
the Pope and puts him on a level that he wasn't.
I have great respect for the position of the head
of the Roman Catholic Church, even though I don't fully
understand it, But I have greater respect for God. And

(11:35):
I think sometimes what we do is we create idols
out of people, sports athletes, sports teams, our parents, our
loved ones, our kids, and we can sometimes put them
in place of God. And when I look at the

(11:58):
way the Pope is being viewed, I wonder if some
people are doing the exact same thing. So I looked
up what it means to be holy? Is being holy
even possible? Since only God is holy? And here's what
I found. Holiness is not only a possibility for the

(12:19):
Christian holiness is a requirement. Without holiness, no one will
see the Lord. As it says in Hebrews twelve fourteen,
the difference between God and us is that He is
inherently holy, while we, on the other hand, only become
holy in relationship to Christ, and we only increase in
practical holiness as we mature spiritually. The New Testament emphasizes

(12:44):
the pursuit of holiness in this world and the final
attainment of holiness in the world to come. So when
I read that we don't become fully holy until the
day we die and are in the Kingdom of Heaven,
we are basically partial holy, as we can increase in

(13:07):
practical holiness as we mansure spiritually, as we set aside sin,
as we become more sanctified, but we are not completely
holy until we die and are with Jesus in Heaven.
It says the pursuit of holiness does not end when

(13:28):
we come to Christ. In fact, it just begins. There
is a positional holiness that we inherit at regeneration, and
a practical holiness which we must actively pursue. God expects
us to cultivate a lifestyle of holiness and commands us
to cleanse ourselves of all the filement of flesh and spirit,

(13:48):
perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Bringing holiness to
perfection means that we should be increasing in spiritual fruitfulness
every day. We are to consider ourselves dead to sin,
refusing to revert back to our former selves. In this way,
we cleanse ourselves from what is dishonorable, becoming vessels for
honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the Master

(14:09):
for every good work. Holiness is the mark of every
true Christian. There will be a day when we will
be free from all sin and all effects of sin.
But right now we turn our eyes to the holy
of holies, and that is Jesus. Every day we should

(14:32):
be pursuing holiness, and we should be pursuing the will
that God has for our lives. But I don't know
about you, but I sin every day and I have
not perfected holiness. Nobody has. So the fact that Joe

(14:54):
Biden referred to Pope Francis by his holiness makes me
wonder where Joe Biden places the Pope in terms of
ranking him and putting him in a place of worship

(15:20):
and idolizing. When I read that the Pope Francis was
the people's pope and he had a heart of compassion
and love for others, I'm sure that's all true and
I'm not questioning that. However, what I do know is
that Jesus is number one and everybody else is a

(15:41):
sinful human being until the enter the Kingdom of Heaven
where they are free from sin and the effects of sin.
So until that day happens for everybody that's a follower
of Jesus, we all fall short and we all are
in need of a savior. These are just my thoughts.

(16:05):
If you have a question or a thought on them,
you can email the show Bring Heaven Down seven at
gmail dot com. Bring Heavendown the Number seven at gmail
dot com. Thank you for making this podcast part of
your day, and thank you for going on this journey

(16:26):
where the Holy Spirit is going to reveal more and
more about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.