July 23, 2025 • 49 mins
They’re back. The Schlie twins return for Round 2—diving even deeper into the clichés shaping modern ministry. In this week’s episode of Christendom and the World, they unpack the risks of relying on familiar preaching formulas, like “Law then Gospel,” and explore how good theology can lose its weight when it becomes routine. From performative pulpits to the fear of failure in ministry, this conversation is a challenge to preach with clarity, conviction, and real faithfulness.
The Didymus Podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/6gxSfIqYXAYdpNAiub9XJI?si=ce9f444d66fc4712
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Give me some examples.
It was like only Methodist hymns from the 1900s.
Yeah.
Like, boy, we're in trouble.
Yesterday when I was sitting here, the only book I could keep staring at by your head wasGay as Not Gay.
Yeah, I know.
you can see it.
If you watch my podcast, you can see it.
It's strategically placed there.
I'm pretty sure that it's there.
(00:23):
Like she just posted.
books are not in the other library, right?
No, you can't see, Gay is not good.
Yeah, because there's no camera on you.
Oh.
Yeah, but you can see it.
there you go.
I'm sorry.
It was inspiring me.
They are part of the library.
(00:43):
I was looking for some book from one of my kids and I was like, bet it's in this thing, inthat over there.
Yeah, there's uh...
These are the good books.
by W.
Terry's um...
That's the most Concordia pulpit I've ever seen catalogued.
Do you have all of the Green Heritage series?
(01:04):
The uh...
Here we've got those ones over land skis they're like I saw oh
like a leash does the one there like a minor Yeah, those are good.
Yeah those
awesome and I was like the one password I work with has all of them and I was like wheredo you get all these
Yeah, those are really good.
I have two like Leish, I think was his name.
(01:26):
He did Lamentations.
No, Jeremiah and Lamentations.
And he also did the Minor Prophets.
I think that's the one where your grandpa has the one on uh inspiration in this series.
Oh yeah, that's like the- I know what you're talking about there.
that's- Yeah, this- Yes!
Yeah, he has all of them.
ones.
I didn't even know there were that many of them.
(01:47):
There's a lot of them.
I was thinking of these ones.
oh
ones that were, I guess aren't Luke.
Yeah.
So this guy Jeremiah and Lamentations, think and then the Minor Prophets I did I Did aBible study and used the Minor Prophets that oh, it's awesome.
(02:07):
It's so good He doesn't get bogged down on all the the textual notes.
It's not like a you know, like you ever do you ever read?
Is it Kyle and day lich?
It's actually on Bible Hub, which is nice.
And it's good, but it's like they so bogged down with so many of the textual.
(02:27):
some it does become sometimes too where it's like you gotta know your audience and some ofthese commentaries that like we're putting on a very like niche Lutheran markets like they
don't have to be like you don't to explain everything to get to the Lutheran applicationfor basic stuff just like
you know, the people reading it already have that pre-synposition, so you don't have toexplain it, like, see the thing.
(02:51):
Like, you can make the, you can draw a line of baptism if you want to really quick withouthaving to explain much of it, and I won't really care.
Yeah.
Can I read Fritzman?
Yeah.
He's helpful.
can't sometimes he's not very helpful, sometimes he just sometimes he just like repeatslike.
Reads as exactly what it is.
(03:11):
It's like I'm looking for like, who is this guy though?
Like, this state?
Like, why is he saying this?
It's like a sermon from a certain era of Lutheran pastor where they're first I'll justread say the whole text.
Yeah, and then they'll make two points at the end.
Yeah, that's the before that's like Kretzman's commentary.
Yeah, sometimes I'm just hunting for I've been doing this thing on obscure Old Testamentpassages and I'm just kind of like what does he even say that was happening in the
(03:36):
narrative like sometimes you'll be like I don't even know what this means is taking placein the text and Kretzman will be like, oh, yeah, this means that you know, all right.
Well, at that's an idea.
Yeah, you know
No, that's right.
He's really good to start off with, uh to get you going.
I've had people I don't know when this was a thing but lots of members that mind thechurch I used to serve at had Volumes like in their home of all the four volumes set of
(04:00):
pretzment.
Yeah, so and I don't see that nowadays.
It's not like anybody has a set of It is the people's commentary they got those other onesthe people's Bible commentary that CPH made.
Yeah, those are really good They're not bad.
It depends on who wrote which one but like overall I've seen lots of churches that havethose
I'll use those.
(04:21):
I haven't done this in a while, but I'll use those for like after I do my more in-depthstudy for Bible class.
Um, and then I'm just kind of like way up here and to read that really helps just kind ofbring it down and show the main points.
So recording.
Can you hear us?
Okay.
(04:42):
Nice.
Does this tablecloth was this do?
So can you hear this?
It brightens up the blondness of your hair.
I mean it sounded like yesterday when you would touch the table it was like boom boom Oh,bah that's not acceptable.
(05:09):
Yeah.
Are you going to comb through all that and then like try to like use audacity and likesmash it out?
I know.
I didn't, but...
Yeah.
Oh, not saying you have to do that.
I'm just saying like sometimes I do that with the stuff that we'll do and Jesse will saysomething stupid and I'll be like, let's see if I can go in there and take this I edited
one of our podcasts and I took out all the things I didn't like that I said and kept allof Joe's stuff.
(05:33):
And then the next time he edited one and he did the reverse to me, he kept throwing youknow, it's just like barely anything left.
Yeah, exactly right.
I took out all the grammatical mistakes, all the wrong uses of an adverb.
I yeah, yeah, I only let's see.
No, I didn't hear a grammatical mistake.
I just heard you pronounce a word that I Wouldn't pronounce that way.
(05:56):
That's okay.
Not a big deal Well, it was no
He kept saying thesis?
Thesis?
Instead of thesis, he kept saying thesis.
I'll never learn.
They can't say it right.
It's okay, it's okay.
You got marbles in your mouth.
So no, I'm just kidding.
think too, like, the picking of our podcast title doesn't make any sense because I don'tthink I could actually say it clearly if I wanted to.
(06:20):
Which maybe makes it little bit better.
No, it was, you said air instead of er.
But that's, you whatever, not a big deal.
Have I heard?
em
Do you say er or er?
Do you say neither and either?
say either of those things.
I'm not pretentious, come on.
(06:43):
Never mind, we promised we wouldn't talk about our wives.
I wasn't saying my wife says neither, think.
anyway.
Okay, so we're back.
ah We're in the middle of Camp Trinity Academy week.
And so this should be airing probably the week after Camp Trinity Academy.
here with the Schlie brothers on Christendom and the World.
(07:05):
They are the hosts of a podcast called Didymus Podcast.
Is that right?
Okay.
And uh so one great thing that's going on today is that I currently as we speak, it'sraining, it's been raining and it's supposed to stop like right before five.
And do know what that means?
(07:27):
Softball is going to be awesome.
I told him about the...how it Now that you went home and got more clothes that you don'tneed one pair of clothes to sleep in and work out in.
Yeah, I got shoes.
It's gonna be awesome.
Are you gonna come to softball?
We need pictures.
that's them.
And tonight is the night.
(07:47):
When they fall down, they fall down hard.
Going to first base trying to stop and they all, one after another, just boom on theground.
Sometimes with some of those kids when they fall hard it just there's a little bitsatisfaction to it.
I'm just saying I'm just kidding I've never says but Man I can't fall down like I used tobe able to Oh, it's gonna be awesome.
(08:13):
It's gonna be awesome.
All right.
So anyway, so what's the next cliche that you guys want to talk about?
When we were talking about uh Lutheran preaching cliches yesterday, did uh preachingshould be a conversation and should be, you should preach the gospel, not about the
gospel.
It was yesterday.
Yeah.
We had two more on the list.
(08:33):
We didn't get to, and those were, yeah.
So we were talking about Walther's final theses in his lectures on the gospel.
oh
so easy.
Thesis is singular, theses is plural.
He's a he's a he's a people's preacher, you know, this is how they would say it.
(08:58):
She's the yeah the the salt of the earth.
That's right.
Make it relatable.
like to preach conversationally.
All right, so the last the last the last All right uh
That the gospel should predominate Generally but I think people say usually is that itshould predominate which is slightly different than it generally
(09:31):
Okay, whatever.
Alright, go ahead.
I'll listen, so what's your point?
How does it get used?
Okay, I'll say that um and how does it use?
Positively it's like well Walter said it so I should think about it positively becausehe's a brilliant In the gospel is
(09:52):
where sin abounded, grace abounded.
it is the objective of preaching to proclaim the gospel to people for the forgiveness oftheir sins and the salvation of their soul.
So that is the end result always, the aim.
But sometimes it does become that it's the only.
The only.
Go ahead, yeah.
It's the same back to what we were saying yesterday about the five-fold use of Scripture.
(10:17):
While we'll argue that teaching in the sermon is the
one that should happen the most, he does say that the purpose of comforting the conscienceis the ultimate aim.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's, think, what the thesis is about is that ultimately the goal of the sermonshouldn't be to just instruct them about something, but it should be to comfort the
(10:41):
conscience that's troubled by its sin.
Yeah, well, that's the purpose of instruction.
We talked about this yesterday about how when you instruct and you make things, youclarify things, it lifts, you know, kind of almost like the inflammation, like causes the
inflammation to go down in the conscience when you're able to have things explained toyou.
(11:03):
So here I think, okay, maybe I could take a shot at this of where this goes wrong.
I is that so the gospel must predominate.
First, this is what I'll say.
I'll say, I'll give uh positive thesis.
uh What this means is that we should, we must teach clearly the role of the gospel and theplace of the gospel.
(11:29):
And in light of what Paul says, that the ministry of death, the glory of the ministry ofdeath is passing away.
Now, it hasn't totally passed away because we're still in the flesh, right?
So we still need to have that stern instruction and driving of the law.
ah But to just be taught, to make it clear that the glory of the law, the ministry ofdeath, the Old Covenant is passing away, and the glory of the Gospel,
(11:59):
is greater and is going and and and we can unpack about you know the the law being theeternal will of God okay sure but just in that talking about law and gospel in that sense
that if you explain to them and make it clear that where sin abounds grace abounds all themore and then of course you know we don't sin so that the grace may abound but that you
(12:23):
simply clearly teach that the gospel is the predominant
teaching of scripture.
I think where it goes wrong, where it becomes sort of a caricature or almost cartoonish orcliche is the idea then that you need to make sure that you do like a word count.
(12:43):
Exactly.
You know, and say that, OK, like 95 % of the time or 55, at least 55 % of the time, youare, everything you're saying is can be categorized as gospel.
And that's wrongheaded because it misses the point.
that the purpose is to instruct so that you might console and provide that certainty forthe conscience.
(13:10):
Because you can have a sermon that is just all like 70 % gospel statements, but you're notexplaining anything and it ends up not really benefiting as much as it could if you were
to connect dots and you know, instruct.
And the fact of the matter is when it comes to instruction, instructing has to do withrefuting, has to do with correcting, and those are functions of the law, at least from our
(13:42):
perspective.
um So maybe that's kind of where you're getting.
And the other part of it would be, I feel like I've heard it used incorrectly when you geta text that you're preaching on from the lectionary and instead of saying what the text is
saying, you run to some kind of other text for your main point because you've kind of...
(14:05):
misapplied the idea that the gospel should predominate.
And that means that if this is a text where Jesus is talking about something you should doin the sermon, you don't really talk that much about something you should do because
that's law.
But you want to have the gospel predominate.
So you actually talk about something else.
uh
and this is a very common one is the in Luke 16 I can't remember which Sunday in Trinitythis is which Sunday after Trinity this is in the one-year lectionary but the the unjust
(14:31):
steward right is that that's Luke 16 right yeah yeah and so because it's the same it'sit's right I think right after right before before the Lazarus and the rich man so
you know, make friends by means of unrighteous mammon and he gives the parable of anunrighteous steward who is uh commended for his shrewdness, right?
(14:52):
And it's one that, it's a curveball, it's the one parable that probably is the most peoplehave the hardest time with, but it's actually pretty simple.
Jesus is teaching about stewardship.
He's teaching to use
the gifts, use the material goods that you have for the sake of the Gospel and the body ofChrist.
(15:17):
And the result of that is that when all these material things are gone, what are you goingto have?
You're to have Christian friends.
You're going to have like, you know, your children rising up and calling you blessed andsinging hymns, gospel hymns around the table, you know, around your deathbed, you know,
while you're dying.
And you're going to have a pastor giving you the Lord's Supper because you were, you know,instead of uh focusing on all these other earthly things, you were using the earthly
(15:44):
things um to serve
the gospel and to prioritize the hearing of the gospel and the preaching of the gospel.
So it's really simple.
in it's like what Paul says, if you sow sparingly, will reap sparingly.
If you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully, as he says in first Corinthians.
(16:06):
Is that first Corinthians?
Yeah, chapter.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he says something similar in second Corinthians.
But at any rate, it's that simple.
Now,
what people often do with that text is they'll say, well, the real unrighteous mammon isthe righteousness of faith because it's freely given to us and it's not righteous.
(16:28):
It's unrighteous from the perspective of human reason because Jesus is condemned.
He's an innocent man and he gives himself for sinners and that is not justice in the eyesof human reason.
Now that's all true and according to the analogy of faith, but is that really
Do it.
(16:48):
Is it really beneficial to to turn the text into that when it's not what the text.
that you can preach the narrow gospel.
more and ignore the wider point that Jesus is making.
Exactly.
Isn't that the Seminex, like, you know, formal immaterial principles being confused andthen the same concept?
(17:09):
uh
that the material, yeah.
And you know, you have similar things going on, similar tendencies going on with anover-allegorizing, like in the early church, you know, where you don't, you know, one of
the things that Luther kind of came back to, you know, was the historic grammatical senseof scripture.
(17:29):
Like, let the scriptures, like, let the scriptures are actually communicating something tous and we should pay attention.
And
That requires us to sit and listen.
one thing that I find amazing is when the people of Israel gather around and they listen,like in the book of Ezra, he reads the law to them and they all listen.
(17:56):
I mean, they're sitting there listening to the Torah, they're listening to the books ofMoses.
And that's a lot.
That's a long time.
Like we were talking, I think yesterday about Luther saying like, well, for the next.
Luther's sermons are longer.
I preached a long sermon once, 20 minutes, not long.
somebody, I guess it was ironic.
(18:18):
He wasn't trying to say anything by it, but he sent me an image of, I guess Luther hadlike, what are those?
Sandis?
Yeah, the sandisle thing that was like in the back of the church or something that hewould have somebody turn over and he would watch it during the sermon.
So he'd know how long he went because it was over an hour.
Luther is preaching longer than that.
anyway, go ahead.
(18:38):
.
mean that's kind of my point is that we need to be able to, we need patience, we need tolearn to hear the Word of God.
And you know, the service is a training ground for the rest of your life, for the rest ofyour week.
(19:00):
and, so I think that the, you know, the idea that, so I think like the idea that thegospel should predominate is absolutely true.
It's totally true.
I mean, it's, it's, it's demonstrably true from scripture.
Grace abounds all the more, right?
It's the greater, like the ministry of life is greater, right?
Um, this is the mystery made known at the fullness of time.
(19:21):
Um, and the old has passed away.
Uh, this is the new wine.
Uh, okay.
But.
The problem, to get to the kind of core of the problem, the problem seems to be, reallyI'm convinced, uh an inability or unwillingness to learn and teach the full council.
(19:47):
I just going to say the same thing.
If you can't use the statement, the gospel should predominate as like a club to stoppeople from saying all the things that the Bible says, which is how it's a lot of times
used.
If you preach on some topic that's kind of a hot button thing, but it's in the Bible andthey haven't heard a sermon on it before and someone didn't really like what they heard,
(20:07):
if they know kind of these Lutheran cliches, they might say the pastor, pastor, the gospeldidn't predominate that sermon.
But the fact that you didn't like what the Bible said,
on that topic that what he preached on doesn't mean the gospel didn't predominate.
Yeah, when like you were saying...
uh
the other day about, you know, Paul says, I determined to know nothing among you, butChrist in him crucified.
(20:30):
He says this in the beginning of first Corinthians.
And then he goes on to talk about all sorts of things like marriage and, you know,lawsuits, you know, like the body of Christ and the different gifts of the spirit and love
and all this stuff and the resurrection of the body.
And uh so that same Paul who says, I determined to know nothing among you, but Christ inhim crucified.
(20:52):
He's the same Paul who says,
to the Ephesian bishops, I am innocent of any of your blood because I did not hold backfrom declaring to you the full counsel of God.
So sorry, Joe, you were saying.
I just had an anecdote for it because I remember preaching a sermon over the summer onceand it was I think it was about the demoniacs and it was I preached a lot about What kind
(21:19):
of demonic attacks look like in our society today?
I like what would this look like for us?
People who are under oppression of the devil, which is gonna be a lot of hot-button kindof cultural things and It was but it didn't not rightly divide law and gospel.
I mean I
talked about how Christ sets us free from these things, how he is the only hope of thosewho suffer from these things.
(21:42):
That was the end goal and result anyway.
But I did get a comment from someone that they're like, there just wasn't much gospel inthe sermon.
And I was like, there was.
And the whole purpose of it was to proclaim the freedom that Christ brings in the gospelto those who suffer from these things.
But yeah, I did spend, you know, if you were to put a stopwatch on it, probably a lot moretime talking about the specific types of
(22:06):
oppression that are occurring so that to articulate it so people knew what it meant yeahyeah but again as I was saying because you don't feel a certain way when you walk away
from the sermon doesn't mean the gospel wasn't preached that's right and that's theproblem
a comfort.
It's a comfort to know that.
It's what I was trying to articulate this morning in the sermon that was voiced upon me onMatthew 17 of being free.
(22:34):
You the sons are free, as Jesus says to Peter.
That this is a statement, you the son sets you free, you are free indeed.
This is his solemn oath, you are free.
And it doesn't feel like that.
It often doesn't feel that way.
And it's nice to know that even when it doesn't feel
that way, it's true.
this is the object, this gets to, know, doctrine, like, certainty of salvation is pairedalso with doctrinal certainty.
(23:01):
And with that, that the whole counsel of God is being proclaimed is, it is, uh it shouldbe a great comfort.
Like, Paul takes comfort in the fact that the whole counsel of God has been entrusted tohim and he and God has his sufficiency, of course, is in God, but, you know, he can boast
in the
(23:21):
proclaiming the whole counsel of God because he's not boasting himself.
He's boasting in the work that God gave him to do in the Word.
And to rob people of the Word because there's one particular part of the Word that is moreapocalyptic or something.
I mean, what you were just saying reminded me of an anecdote for myself years ago.
(23:44):
um I don't know how many years ago, probably eight years ago or so.
uh
This guy came out of church on the first Sunday in Advent and I preached on, you know, thetriumphal entry.
And I preached on Christ coming in weakness, coming to us in His word, in sacraments.
(24:04):
He came to us in the flesh.
He's going to come on the last day.
And He comes to us in meekness.
He comes to us not with uh the worldly pomp, um but drawing us to Himself.
And it was very much, ah very heavily that gentle gospel kind of sermon.
(24:25):
because that's what the theme was, you know, that's Advent one, you know?
And so this guy came up to me and he said, wow, well, this is, he said something like, itwas nice to hear a gentler sermon from, know, much gentler than like the last few weeks or
(24:49):
something like that.
And I said,
Yeah, that's because the last three weeks were the last three Sundays of the church year.
oh You got like the goats and the sheep, you know, got slamming the door and saying like,never knew.
You know, like, stay awake, you know, neither the day nor the hour.
mean, that's the point of like Jesus tells us it's like Aesop's fables, you know, givingus the moral.
(25:10):
Jesus tells us the point of his parable.
Stay awake.
You know, many are called, but few are chosen.
That kind of, you know, that sort of language.
um needs to be emphasized because Jesus is emphasizing it so of course now was I preachingthe gospel those last three sons of the church here yeah of course I was I mean some
(25:31):
people I guess don't but yes I was I certainly was um but the emphasis was very what wasmore on um the the theme of those days was just to
You know, don't fall into foolishness, stay awake, have a sober mind, Christ is coming.
(25:54):
know, and you know, I think sometimes also what happens is that you get these kinds ofguilt driven versions of preaching the law that people are bombarded with.
And then they react so much against that, that when you actually do preach the law or theadmonition to stay awake and, know,
(26:16):
look for the coming of Christ.
ah
that even when you preach that with the gospel, like rightly applied in that, you know,that Christ actually, you know, has has given you faith that he promises by his Holy
Spirit to keep you in the faith and that you can have certainty that you're he's going totake you through the storm and all that all that stuff.
(26:36):
But nonetheless, if you preach on these hard things like the last day, the world is veryevil, that kind of stuff, then it's it's it's it's like that.
predominates and I think that people are not trained well to know when they don't knowwhat it means for the gospel to predominate.
and they think it's simply like some kind of calculator or like a...
(27:01):
you know, like you have...
So by our own human reason, we kind of weigh whether the gospel had more airtime than thelaw.
That sets them up to just despair.
And it's actually a false view of the gospel.
know?
I mean, think of the woman, the Canaanite woman, who hears like a tiny smidge of thegospel in the midst of Jesus calling,
(27:26):
or a dog, and yet she hears the gospel because that's what faith does.
And the gospel predominated Jesus' sermon.
And so did it in Peter's sermon on Pentecost.
The whole thing is like, yeah, remember how all those people did all that bad stuff?
This is your family history and how then you did this too?
The whole sermon is long until the end where he just says, when they're like, what do doto be saved?
(27:46):
He's like, repent and believe the gospel, be baptized.
Peter has a very gospel phenomenon sermon too, where he goes through and says, you knowhow all these prophets were rejected by your father?
Same kind of thing.
And then he says, you stiff neck people.
And then they stone him.
And his sermon isn't done yet.
(28:07):
And while they're stoning him, says, Lord, do not hold this.
But they're plugging their ears.
Yeah, this can't happen to people like if you're trying to walk them through a particulararticle of our faith and you're going like think of I'm thinking of some of Walther's
sermons on like the hardening of the heart and of duracy and he'll preach like You know ifit's a 45 minute sermon 30 minutes of it are gonna be like here's what this state is and
(28:32):
here's how you fall into it and it's yeah, it's heavy stuff the last part he is going togive a lot of comfort, but if you
Refuse to listen to what the Bible says in the law.
You just don't make it so that even that part in the sermon
Yeah, yeah, so that's why it takes endurance like it's there is that's why it's atraining, you know It's it's you know, like my wife and I are training for this bicycle
(28:55):
ride Hannah just gave me a look you don't think we're gonna make it I just talk about toomuch
It's not, it's not bad.
We can rest whenever we want.
We'll be fine.
Anyway, but we're training, you know?
You have to be somewhat in shape to do it.
But that's how that, we have to be trained to be able to endure through not just thepreaching of the law, like we're just hearing fire and brimstone, but just explaining.
(29:27):
what marriage is, explaining, you know, what the table of duties are, explaining what puredoctrine is and why it's important or the efficacy of the word.
All of such things certainly relate to the gospel.
uh So, so anyway, yeah, go ahead.
(29:47):
the other one we were thinking about, which is kind of a cousin to the gospel shouldpredominate in the false sense in which it's used, not in the true sense, would be that
every sermon has to end on gospel and narrowly defined.
So like if you were to end a sermon with exhortation, that that would be somehow amisapplication of law and gospel or not a very faithful Lutheran sermon.
(30:14):
And, you know, so we were thinking about that one because
There's a lot of times in the scripture where, you know, St.
Paul's going to end a certain book with exhortation, not the narrow gospel.
But I think a lot of Lutheran pastors get to the end of their sermons, you know, ifthey're writing manuscripts and they're like, should I end this way or would this be an
injustice if I ended on exhortation as opposed to the narrow gospel?
(30:38):
So where does that idea come from and what would be the criticism of it?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's really interesting because, like, okay, so again, I think thatsimilar to what I was saying before about people reacting against this sort of uh
legalistic, uh frantic preaching of, you know, like, Jesus is coming back, look busy, kindof, kind of stuff.
(31:02):
You have something similar than with what you're talking about where uh
you do get this kind of canned version and this was very
This was very common and nauseating for a lot of people for a long time.
(31:26):
uh My dad called them lettuce sermons, so they're just making a salad.
So the lettuce sermons are like, okay, now the last part of the sermon is now, now let usdo this, let us do this, let us do this.
it becomes just, rhetorically it sends the message that the main point
(31:47):
the main purpose, the main goal is for you to just behave.
And that really isn't, I mean, unless we talk about the obedience to the word, right, theobedience of faith, which of course would include this other kinds of obedience, but
But I think that's what happens when the law is seen as, so you talk about like thegospel, like narrowly defined, has to be the gospel narrowly defined.
(32:14):
It's helpful, like Article 4 of the Formula of Concord, when it talks about the gospel isnarrowly defined as like the preaching of the forgiveness that sends eternal life and
salvation, Jesus Christ.
And then broadly defined as the whole teaching of Christ, which includes, of course,admonition, repentance, stuff like that.
ah But also the law is narrowly defined as commandments that drive you to repentance.
(32:42):
But then it's also broadly defined, which includes promises and shadows and stuff likethat.
uh So so again, I think that this gets to not understanding doctrine, but just the natureof doctrine.
And one of the things is the body of doctrine,
Horpus Doctrinei, right?
That at the center of this body, the heart of it, is the justification of the sinnerbefore God through faith and the count of Christ.
(33:05):
But all these parts of the body of doctrine are held together.
And that if people aren't thinking in those terms and they're just thinking very narrowly,
Then, you know, then and then they they they they they they're used to hearing thesesermons that just get very nauseating where it's like, OK, now let us out of thankful
(33:26):
response, do these good things and serve the Lord with gladness, which is all true.
You know, and then they get frustrated because they're like, well, they're quoting theBible.
So, you know, I guess.
But it but it's it's it's almost like like the Gospels almost like siphoned away.
But then they sort of like soften up the law, you know, like third use of the law becomeslike, well, now we get to do
(33:47):
all this stuff, you know?
And that, it's just not as helpful.
I mean, it's not like it's false either, you know?
And that's, I think, another reason why people don't want, like, it's not like they cansay, you said something wrong, because they know that, okay, you, I think that they know
(34:09):
people, Christians know that they need encouragement, they need comfort, they needsomething.
They need to learn how to be able to articulate what they need.
know, and that what they need is the full counsel of God.
They need the gospel at the heart of it to predominate in their conscience.
(34:30):
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, rule your hearts and minds, right?
Guard your hearts and minds.
ah They need that, but they need to know what doctrine is.
And I really think that that is at the crux of the problem.
that doctrine is sort of like, it reminds me of Isaiah 28, where says, my words would belife to you, you know, like have, like find rest for your souls.
(34:58):
But my word became to you line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there alittle.
And this is the way that, what our old Adam does and what the world does, is it takesGod's word and it turns it into just a bunch of rules.
And we see this with catechism class where it's just the right answers on the test.
(35:20):
we're trying, as teachers, as pastors, we're trying to avoid that view of catechesis, thatyou're just here to answer these yes or no questions or these, not necessarily yes or no
questions, but just answer these correct, give these correct answers on the exam and thenkind of move on.
(35:41):
But no, we want to give them a call.
of the body of doctrine, we want to give them a mindset, a culture that cultivates intheir hearts and in their lives so that they can always find comfort no matter what
they're doing.
um And so, again, I think that that's the issue, that we lack a uh clear understanding ofwhat doctrine is, what Christian doctrine is.
(36:08):
I remember going up, uh going to the microphone.
the 2016 Synod Convention uh to speak in favor of a resolution that would uh call on thePresidium, the President of Synod, and his posse, I guess, I don't know, to uh supervise,
(36:34):
to have visits of the Concordias, of the schools, to supervise the doctrine, make surethat everything is being taught correctly.
And some people opposed it and were like, well, I don't want people breathing down myneck.
And so I went up to the microphone and I said, this is the only reason why this sinexists.
It's for our doctrine to be kept pure, for us to agree on doctrine, to be able to providepastors who actually agree on this and to be able to, you know, hold one another
(37:02):
accountable to our confessions.
And I said doctrine, that sounds like a uh mean kind of cold stodgy word, but doctrine is,as my grandpa would
I would always say that he learned this from a parishioner of his who actually said it inNorwegian Doctrine is life, you know, and and and I and so I said that the microphone I
(37:25):
said doctrine saves Well, where do I get that from?
First Timothy 416.
Yeah, you're right I said doctrine saves and then my cousin-in-law who was a delegate
Later on told me he said the guy next to him said said to him, did he just say doctrinesaves?
(37:49):
I thought Jesus saved.
That's probably what he was doing.
Like Faith Saves.
that on the list of the cliches.
Yeah, that's like the Jesus saves not baptism saves on the Bible says but going back tothe preaching thing Like with ending the sermons on the law Because it seemed like you
were saying that you've heard people do that, but they just don't do it rightly anywayYeah, and that's your criticism of the lettuce.
(38:13):
Yeah, yeah, I think the impulse to do that though is actually not that bad of an impulsein the catechism the second explanation the second article where with his holy
precious blood, innocent suffering and death.
What does it say at the end?
So that what?
And it be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlastingrighteousness, innocence and blessedness.
So obviously you should understand that the goal of the preaching of the atonement inaddition to delivering the forgiveness of sins to them is also so that through that
(38:43):
forgiveness they would what?
Live a godly life.
of course.
So saying at the end of the sermon, you know, this means, yeah, this is what we're goingto do.
Yeah.
It's not a wrong impulse.
Yeah.
And most of the time, though, I think the way that I have heard the you shouldn't end yoursermon with law is because people assume that the only function of the law is to show sins
(39:07):
and not to guide and works at all.
So you're just going to it only accuses.
Right.
Even though it always does accuse.
But since
They're kind of taking the angle that it only accuses, but you can't end your sermon ontelling him to do something because of the other things you've talked about, because
that'll just put him back under the law.
Yeah, and also, think we should be willing to say that the law gives clarity, right?
(39:32):
That the law even inspires, in the sense that, be careful with that, that the law isinspiring to the new man and that it's wisdom, right?
It's not inspiring for salvation, you know, ah but it does give that clarity.
And I think this is a problem in our midst, where the clarity of Scripture
(39:55):
is undermined.
And when you undermine the clarity of Scripture, you undermine the authority of Scripture.
Because like if you never understand what your dad is saying, you can just kind of writehim off.
Like, yeah, he's talking about something or other, whatever.
And then just kind of make up your own explanation and you can twist it and all thatstuff.
Now people are going to say like, yeah, okay, the gospel is clear.
(40:16):
And thanks be to God that people at least say that.
um But that's the problem though, is that
when the law isn't clear.
like for example,
good news is that news that that
well, like, for example, I mean, one of my one of the axes that I've been grinding mywhole ministry because I just spent and even since I was a seminary because I just can't
(40:38):
believe it.
Here we have a church body, a synod that rejects women's ordination.
Thanks be to God, they do that.
And yet they have like women reading the lessons in church and the divine service.
they like the CTCR in 1985 just says, well, there's no ceremonial law that says you can'tdo that.
(40:59):
it's a book.
You just obscure scripture.
It says so clearly as day because they should not do that.
was legalism.
There's no rule that says this.
Yeah, but why can't women be pastors?
Precisely because they can't be lectors.
That's the point.
(41:19):
Right?
this is where, like, who was I talking to about this that, uh I've probably one of mybrothers or someone was saying, uh, that you should just, I just tell these guys who have
women lecturers, Hey, why don't you let your women pastors preach?
You know, these guys who have women lecturers in their congregations.
(41:41):
Why don't you let your, you have women pastors.
Why don't you let them preach?
Are some kind of chauvinist?
You should let them preach in the pulpit.
You let them preach in the lectern.
Why don't you let them preach in the pulpit?
And that's what, it's like, I women pastors.
Yes, you do.
You do have women pastors.
I think women can read the lessons.
You are in favor of women's ordination.
This is what I've said to guys when they argue for women lecters.
(42:04):
They can't make that all they can do is obscure scripture that the arguments they make areare total uh higher criticism.
uh and I say, OK, explain to me why women can't be pastors.
That's why explaining to why women can't be pastors.
OK, well, because it says here, no.
The does not say.
(42:26):
Women can't be pastors.
It doesn't say anywhere in the scriptures that women cannot be ordained into the holyoffice of the holy ministry.
No, it says that women can't publicly speak in church, teach in church, and have a th**yover a mid** in the church.
That's what it says.
And you guys want to obscure this so that you don't have to face the ire of your LWML onLWML Sunday.
(42:53):
That is pathetic.
And this kind of
this obscuring of the law passages of scripture does end up affecting the obscuring of thegospel passages.
So anyway, but this gets to my issue.
(43:16):
This is why I would always get annoyed when I would hear this kind of manby-pamby sort oflike lettuce moralism, this kind of soft moralism.
Because sometimes I hear it from those who don't preach clearly on the actual issues ofthe day.
You know, the actual issues that are affecting people, that are leading people away fromthe truth, they're avoiding that.
(43:41):
And then they're going to say, but let us serve the Lord and love one and all this stuff.
And it's like, well, come on.
of it's true there, but the lettuce salad that they're given at the end has got like nocroutons and bacon bits in it.
It's just like it's bland because it wasn't filled in with the actual doctrine Yeah,Walter impends quite a bit of his sermons with Mae-Wi.
Sure.
Something like that.
Which is basically a cousin of lettuce.
(44:02):
It's just not.
That's what my brother Christian said this years ago when we were in seminary.
said, because we were talking about all this like sanctification, know, weak on, rememberthe whole weak on sanctification stuff.
And there was a reaction against that kind of soft moralism.
That's what it was.
And Christian said, he said, the problem with all this, like this kind of preaching thatthey're reacting against is not that they preach too much sanctification.
(44:27):
It's that
They're really like wimpy about it, you know?
They don't preach it well.
And I think he's exactly right.
They're not thoroughly teaching what sanctification is.
Now, again, some of them may be more than others, you know?
They're different types of preachers and all that stuff.
But again, this is kind of my hobby horse, I guess.
(44:51):
We need to teach doctrine.
And doctrine is not line upon line, rule upon rule, precept upon precept, you're a littlethere a little, follow this until, know, so that you make sure that your, your, your I's
are dotted and your T's are crossed so that we can say that we're Orthodox.
No, it is so that we guard the deposit of the gospel that is, that is flowing in and in.
(45:16):
and out of all these things and in and out of the gospel, the doctrine of justification atthe center.
And this is where like the reform don't understand this.
So the reform, they'll be like a conservative reform guy, will be all for like puredoctrine.
But then when it comes to like, you know, the Lord's Supper, well, why, you know, theydon't believe it's the Bible of Jesus.
I mean, why don't you commune me?
(45:38):
Because for them it is they are treating it like it's just sort of like a bunch ofprecepts, right?
It's a bunch of ordinances.
And we see it as like, no, no, no, doctrine.
All of these articles are centered in on the gospel.
If I give this up, I'm affecting the very heart of the gospel.
And I think that's what people need to know.
They need to be able to see Christ, you know, be able to see how this all flows intoChrist and your salvation found in him.
(46:06):
And if we do that, then, then we certainly can have our...
We can have more salads, know, we can have but robust salads like not just like the thethe iceberg lettuce, you know, like Romaine lettuce and the you know, kale and all that
good stuff, you know, balsamic vinaigrette, you know.
The criticism that you shouldn't end the sermon with law probably still is missing thepoint also with respect to the fact that you...
(46:34):
They probably are coming at it from like that first, you should preach the law inaccusatory way, then you should preach the narrow gospel, and then it's like either you
say amen or you add these other things.
I still think that whole idea of looking at the sermon just in that way probably stillmisses the mark anyway.
you should be...
I think there's a paper from Fritz
(46:56):
the guy who wrote the pastoral theology that they use the seminaries in like the 40s, 50smaybe or 60s.
Fritz was like a hundred years ago.
Yeah, but he's got a great article on law and gospel in preaching.
That's how they used to talk about it.
Not law and gospel preaching where it was like, it almost again becomes kind of a rulething.
Like first you tell them they don't do things, then you tell them just die for them, andthen what do do at the end?
(47:19):
It's this very formulaic way of talking where it actually cripples your ability to preachthe whole counsel of God.
But you can still preach the law and the gospel in the sermon.
It's just not, you know, here's this, here's that, here's this.
So,
Responding it on law would be a breach of the formula which is why people would be likethat wasn't a good But adding another part to another formula is still the wrong thing.
(47:42):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah
Well, yeah, so what you get is you get a formula that the formula itself predominates.
Yes.
And then and so and so then you have a sermon that's like all about like the ascension,for example, and just like there's that is the gospel.
I mean, you got to preach a gospel sermon on the ascension.
But then you hear an ascension sermon where it's like, now, Jesus, he ascends into heavenso that he can work through you and accomplish all this through you.
(48:10):
And it's all about evangelism, but not.
much evangel, you know?
And a lot of that, I mean, that's very prominent still in a lot of preaching.
Like my brother John, this is his impression of a...
not to pick on the wells, but I'm gonna pick on the wells.
And this is true in lot of Missouri Synod preaching too.
But ah John said this is a well sermon.
(48:32):
And there are also very good well sermons.
So, to my wells friends.
But this is my brother John's impression of a well sermon.
It goes like this.
There's three parts.
It goes...
Law.
Law.
Second part.
Gospel.
(48:52):
Gospel.
Third part.
And that's always the, you know, the theme.
Like it's always the formula.
And then what ends up happening then is, okay, what you end with does matter, you know,and it's going to have some weight.
(49:12):
But what ends up happening then is when you follow this strict formula, whether it is thatkind of law gospel share or law gospel law.
Lord gospel sacraments.
oh
know, law, atonement, everyone knows that, sacraments, you know, and whatever it might be,what you're what you end up doing is you, you you you're going to inevitably you might
(49:36):
preach some fantastic sermons with with if you stick to that one formula.
But if you're not looking at the scope of scripture and the text itself in light of the uhthe analogy of faith.
You won't appreciate the mold that counts.
not going to preach the whole counsel of God.
Yeah, and you're going to end up emphasizing something that doesn't really, is not reallyemphasized as much.
(49:59):
uh
it's kind of the example I often use when I'm talking with other pastors about this is,have you ever preached a sermon where you explain to the people why we baptize babies?
And they might think about it and say, I've talked about infant baptism before.
And I always kind of be like, no, have you ever preached a sermon where do you explain whywe do that?
Because if it's a law gospel sermon in that paradigmatic way, how do you preach theaccusatory law in a sermon where you're trying to explain here's why we baptize?
(50:29):
Like you're just as bad as the Baptist yeah, I've had babies.
Yeah, sometimes you do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have this attitude towards sometime
Sometimes we
So you end up actually not preaching on the topic of the Bible that you need to talkabout.
Same with the Ascension, right?
In that sermon on the Ascension, where in the sermon do they spend all this time, as theyshould, explaining what happened when Jesus ascended?
(50:54):
They're not going to do that, but then their people don't know.
We're almost out of time.
gotta go eat dinner.
give some final thoughts and then we'll wrap this up.
So I feel like I said, I don't know, we'll talk about it later.
Cause I still don't know if you, if you are agreeing with me or not about that last clichestatement, whether or not it's okay to or not.
(51:18):
And maybe you're critiquing a certain group that I'm not thinking of that group inparticular.
I'm saying that, yeah, I don't entirely… I think that um it's silly to hold someone to auniversal principle when it comes to the formula of the sermon, when it comes to the
beginning, middle, end.
So, how you end a sermon, it matters.
(51:41):
Okay, it speaks a lot.
With that said, that doesn't mean that you can't end a sermon with the law.
um
and you're speaking to the Christian conscience.
So that's all I would say about that.
to get into a debate of what your last sentence should be, I
up.
The end of your sermon should summarize your sermon.
(52:02):
That's what I mean.
It's just about the cliche of the idea that if you were to do something like that, itwould be bad.
like, the sermon could be really good.
So that shouldn't ultimately make it bad.
What should make it good is whether or not it was a good
exactly.
know because then what you get is like a 40 minute sermon where like 30 minutes of it or35 minutes of it was just like stories about, you know, walking your dog or something like
(52:27):
that.
And then you end up hearing the gospel in this kind of canned way for a few minutes.
And then you hear, amen.
You're like, well, I guess I can't complain because I did hear the gospel.
that's.
Yeah, it does by definition predominate.
So but.
uh
Yeah, we pray that God's word would not be bound though in the head free course.
(52:49):
Well, thanks guys.
I'm looking forward to beating you again um in softball.
Actually, I kind of hope you win.
It'd be fun.
It'd be good for me to be humbled, right?
um
It's always fun talking to you guys.
uh You've been listening to Christendom and the World.
Please like and subscribe and share and also uh check out their podcast, the SchlieBrothers, uh in the Didymus podcast.
(53:13):
The description will be uh under this video.
So join us next time for another episode of Christendom and the World.
Give me some examples.
It was like only Methodist hymns from the 1900s.
Yeah.
Like, boy, we're in trouble.
Yesterday when I was sitting here, the only book I could keep staring at by your head wasGay as Not Gay.
Yeah, I know.
you can see it.
If you watch my podcast, you can see it.
It's strategically placed there.
I'm pretty sure that it's there.
(00:23):
Like she just posted.
books are not in the other library, right?
No, you can't see, Gay is not good.
Yeah, because there's no camera on you.
Oh.
Yeah, but you can see it.
there you go.
I'm sorry.
It was inspiring me.
They are part of the library.
(00:43):
I was looking for some book from one of my kids and I was like, bet it's in this thing, inthat over there.
Yeah, there's uh...
These are the good books.
by W.
Terry's um...
That's the most Concordia pulpit I've ever seen catalogued.
Do you have all of the Green Heritage series?
(01:04):
The uh...
Here we've got those ones over land skis they're like I saw oh
like a leash does the one there like a minor Yeah, those are good.
Yeah those
awesome and I was like the one password I work with has all of them and I was like wheredo you get all these
Yeah, those are really good.
I have two like Leish, I think was his name.
(01:26):
He did Lamentations.
No, Jeremiah and Lamentations.
And he also did the Minor Prophets.
I think that's the one where your grandpa has the one on uh inspiration in this series.
Oh yeah, that's like the- I know what you're talking about there.
that's- Yeah, this- Yes!
Yeah, he has all of them.
ones.
I didn't even know there were that many of them.
(01:47):
There's a lot of them.
I was thinking of these ones.
oh
ones that were, I guess aren't Luke.
Yeah.
So this guy Jeremiah and Lamentations, think and then the Minor Prophets I did I Did aBible study and used the Minor Prophets that oh, it's awesome.
(02:07):
It's so good He doesn't get bogged down on all the the textual notes.
It's not like a you know, like you ever do you ever read?
Is it Kyle and day lich?
It's actually on Bible Hub, which is nice.
And it's good, but it's like they so bogged down with so many of the textual.
(02:27):
some it does become sometimes too where it's like you gotta know your audience and some ofthese commentaries that like we're putting on a very like niche Lutheran markets like they
don't have to be like you don't to explain everything to get to the Lutheran applicationfor basic stuff just like
you know, the people reading it already have that pre-synposition, so you don't have toexplain it, like, see the thing.
(02:51):
Like, you can make the, you can draw a line of baptism if you want to really quick withouthaving to explain much of it, and I won't really care.
Yeah.
Can I read Fritzman?
Yeah.
He's helpful.
can't sometimes he's not very helpful, sometimes he just sometimes he just like repeatslike.
Reads as exactly what it is.
(03:11):
It's like I'm looking for like, who is this guy though?
Like, this state?
Like, why is he saying this?
It's like a sermon from a certain era of Lutheran pastor where they're first I'll justread say the whole text.
Yeah, and then they'll make two points at the end.
Yeah, that's the before that's like Kretzman's commentary.
Yeah, sometimes I'm just hunting for I've been doing this thing on obscure Old Testamentpassages and I'm just kind of like what does he even say that was happening in the
(03:36):
narrative like sometimes you'll be like I don't even know what this means is taking placein the text and Kretzman will be like, oh, yeah, this means that you know, all right.
Well, at that's an idea.
Yeah, you know
No, that's right.
He's really good to start off with, uh to get you going.
I've had people I don't know when this was a thing but lots of members that mind thechurch I used to serve at had Volumes like in their home of all the four volumes set of
(04:00):
pretzment.
Yeah, so and I don't see that nowadays.
It's not like anybody has a set of It is the people's commentary they got those other onesthe people's Bible commentary that CPH made.
Yeah, those are really good They're not bad.
It depends on who wrote which one but like overall I've seen lots of churches that havethose
I'll use those.
(04:21):
I haven't done this in a while, but I'll use those for like after I do my more in-depthstudy for Bible class.
Um, and then I'm just kind of like way up here and to read that really helps just kind ofbring it down and show the main points.
So recording.
Can you hear us?
Okay.
(04:42):
Nice.
Does this tablecloth was this do?
So can you hear this?
It brightens up the blondness of your hair.
I mean it sounded like yesterday when you would touch the table it was like boom boom Oh,bah that's not acceptable.
(05:09):
Yeah.
Are you going to comb through all that and then like try to like use audacity and likesmash it out?
I know.
I didn't, but...
Yeah.
Oh, not saying you have to do that.
I'm just saying like sometimes I do that with the stuff that we'll do and Jesse will saysomething stupid and I'll be like, let's see if I can go in there and take this I edited
one of our podcasts and I took out all the things I didn't like that I said and kept allof Joe's stuff.
(05:33):
And then the next time he edited one and he did the reverse to me, he kept throwing youknow, it's just like barely anything left.
Yeah, exactly right.
I took out all the grammatical mistakes, all the wrong uses of an adverb.
I yeah, yeah, I only let's see.
No, I didn't hear a grammatical mistake.
I just heard you pronounce a word that I Wouldn't pronounce that way.
(05:56):
That's okay.
Not a big deal Well, it was no
He kept saying thesis?
Thesis?
Instead of thesis, he kept saying thesis.
I'll never learn.
They can't say it right.
It's okay, it's okay.
You got marbles in your mouth.
So no, I'm just kidding.
think too, like, the picking of our podcast title doesn't make any sense because I don'tthink I could actually say it clearly if I wanted to.
(06:20):
Which maybe makes it little bit better.
No, it was, you said air instead of er.
But that's, you whatever, not a big deal.
Have I heard?
em
Do you say er or er?
Do you say neither and either?
say either of those things.
I'm not pretentious, come on.
(06:43):
Never mind, we promised we wouldn't talk about our wives.
I wasn't saying my wife says neither, think.
anyway.
Okay, so we're back.
ah We're in the middle of Camp Trinity Academy week.
And so this should be airing probably the week after Camp Trinity Academy.
here with the Schlie brothers on Christendom and the World.
(07:05):
They are the hosts of a podcast called Didymus Podcast.
Is that right?
Okay.
And uh so one great thing that's going on today is that I currently as we speak, it'sraining, it's been raining and it's supposed to stop like right before five.
And do know what that means?
(07:27):
Softball is going to be awesome.
I told him about the...how it Now that you went home and got more clothes that you don'tneed one pair of clothes to sleep in and work out in.
Yeah, I got shoes.
It's gonna be awesome.
Are you gonna come to softball?
We need pictures.
that's them.
And tonight is the night.
(07:47):
When they fall down, they fall down hard.
Going to first base trying to stop and they all, one after another, just boom on theground.
Sometimes with some of those kids when they fall hard it just there's a little bitsatisfaction to it.
I'm just saying I'm just kidding I've never says but Man I can't fall down like I used tobe able to Oh, it's gonna be awesome.
(08:13):
It's gonna be awesome.
All right.
So anyway, so what's the next cliche that you guys want to talk about?
When we were talking about uh Lutheran preaching cliches yesterday, did uh preachingshould be a conversation and should be, you should preach the gospel, not about the
gospel.
It was yesterday.
Yeah.
We had two more on the list.
(08:33):
We didn't get to, and those were, yeah.
So we were talking about Walther's final theses in his lectures on the gospel.
oh
so easy.
Thesis is singular, theses is plural.
He's a he's a he's a people's preacher, you know, this is how they would say it.
(08:58):
She's the yeah the the salt of the earth.
That's right.
Make it relatable.
like to preach conversationally.
All right, so the last the last the last All right uh
That the gospel should predominate Generally but I think people say usually is that itshould predominate which is slightly different than it generally
(09:31):
Okay, whatever.
Alright, go ahead.
I'll listen, so what's your point?
How does it get used?
Okay, I'll say that um and how does it use?
Positively it's like well Walter said it so I should think about it positively becausehe's a brilliant In the gospel is
(09:52):
where sin abounded, grace abounded.
it is the objective of preaching to proclaim the gospel to people for the forgiveness oftheir sins and the salvation of their soul.
So that is the end result always, the aim.
But sometimes it does become that it's the only.
The only.
Go ahead, yeah.
It's the same back to what we were saying yesterday about the five-fold use of Scripture.
(10:17):
While we'll argue that teaching in the sermon is the
one that should happen the most, he does say that the purpose of comforting the conscienceis the ultimate aim.
Yeah.
Right.
And that's, think, what the thesis is about is that ultimately the goal of the sermonshouldn't be to just instruct them about something, but it should be to comfort the
(10:41):
conscience that's troubled by its sin.
Yeah, well, that's the purpose of instruction.
We talked about this yesterday about how when you instruct and you make things, youclarify things, it lifts, you know, kind of almost like the inflammation, like causes the
inflammation to go down in the conscience when you're able to have things explained toyou.
(11:03):
So here I think, okay, maybe I could take a shot at this of where this goes wrong.
I is that so the gospel must predominate.
First, this is what I'll say.
I'll say, I'll give uh positive thesis.
uh What this means is that we should, we must teach clearly the role of the gospel and theplace of the gospel.
(11:29):
And in light of what Paul says, that the ministry of death, the glory of the ministry ofdeath is passing away.
Now, it hasn't totally passed away because we're still in the flesh, right?
So we still need to have that stern instruction and driving of the law.
ah But to just be taught, to make it clear that the glory of the law, the ministry ofdeath, the Old Covenant is passing away, and the glory of the Gospel,
(11:59):
is greater and is going and and and we can unpack about you know the the law being theeternal will of God okay sure but just in that talking about law and gospel in that sense
that if you explain to them and make it clear that where sin abounds grace abounds all themore and then of course you know we don't sin so that the grace may abound but that you
(12:23):
simply clearly teach that the gospel is the predominant
teaching of scripture.
I think where it goes wrong, where it becomes sort of a caricature or almost cartoonish orcliche is the idea then that you need to make sure that you do like a word count.
(12:43):
Exactly.
You know, and say that, OK, like 95 % of the time or 55, at least 55 % of the time, youare, everything you're saying is can be categorized as gospel.
And that's wrongheaded because it misses the point.
that the purpose is to instruct so that you might console and provide that certainty forthe conscience.
(13:10):
Because you can have a sermon that is just all like 70 % gospel statements, but you're notexplaining anything and it ends up not really benefiting as much as it could if you were
to connect dots and you know, instruct.
And the fact of the matter is when it comes to instruction, instructing has to do withrefuting, has to do with correcting, and those are functions of the law, at least from our
(13:42):
perspective.
um So maybe that's kind of where you're getting.
And the other part of it would be, I feel like I've heard it used incorrectly when you geta text that you're preaching on from the lectionary and instead of saying what the text is
saying, you run to some kind of other text for your main point because you've kind of...
(14:05):
misapplied the idea that the gospel should predominate.
And that means that if this is a text where Jesus is talking about something you should doin the sermon, you don't really talk that much about something you should do because
that's law.
But you want to have the gospel predominate.
So you actually talk about something else.
uh
and this is a very common one is the in Luke 16 I can't remember which Sunday in Trinitythis is which Sunday after Trinity this is in the one-year lectionary but the the unjust
(14:31):
steward right is that that's Luke 16 right yeah yeah and so because it's the same it'sit's right I think right after right before before the Lazarus and the rich man so
you know, make friends by means of unrighteous mammon and he gives the parable of anunrighteous steward who is uh commended for his shrewdness, right?
(14:52):
And it's one that, it's a curveball, it's the one parable that probably is the most peoplehave the hardest time with, but it's actually pretty simple.
Jesus is teaching about stewardship.
He's teaching to use
the gifts, use the material goods that you have for the sake of the Gospel and the body ofChrist.
(15:17):
And the result of that is that when all these material things are gone, what are you goingto have?
You're to have Christian friends.
You're going to have like, you know, your children rising up and calling you blessed andsinging hymns, gospel hymns around the table, you know, around your deathbed, you know,
while you're dying.
And you're going to have a pastor giving you the Lord's Supper because you were, you know,instead of uh focusing on all these other earthly things, you were using the earthly
(15:44):
things um to serve
the gospel and to prioritize the hearing of the gospel and the preaching of the gospel.
So it's really simple.
in it's like what Paul says, if you sow sparingly, will reap sparingly.
If you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully, as he says in first Corinthians.
(16:06):
Is that first Corinthians?
Yeah, chapter.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, he says something similar in second Corinthians.
But at any rate, it's that simple.
Now,
what people often do with that text is they'll say, well, the real unrighteous mammon isthe righteousness of faith because it's freely given to us and it's not righteous.
(16:28):
It's unrighteous from the perspective of human reason because Jesus is condemned.
He's an innocent man and he gives himself for sinners and that is not justice in the eyesof human reason.
Now that's all true and according to the analogy of faith, but is that really
Do it.
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Is it really beneficial to to turn the text into that when it's not what the text.
that you can preach the narrow gospel.
more and ignore the wider point that Jesus is making.
Exactly.
Isn't that the Seminex, like, you know, formal immaterial principles being confused andthen the same concept?
(17:09):
uh
that the material, yeah.
And you know, you have similar things going on, similar tendencies going on with anover-allegorizing, like in the early church, you know, where you don't, you know, one of
the things that Luther kind of came back to, you know, was the historic grammatical senseof scripture.
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Like, let the scriptures, like, let the scriptures are actually communicating something tous and we should pay attention.
And
That requires us to sit and listen.
one thing that I find amazing is when the people of Israel gather around and they listen,like in the book of Ezra, he reads the law to them and they all listen.
(17:56):
I mean, they're sitting there listening to the Torah, they're listening to the books ofMoses.
And that's a lot.
That's a long time.
Like we were talking, I think yesterday about Luther saying like, well, for the next.
Luther's sermons are longer.
I preached a long sermon once, 20 minutes, not long.
somebody, I guess it was ironic.
(18:18):
He wasn't trying to say anything by it, but he sent me an image of, I guess Luther hadlike, what are those?
Sandis?
Yeah, the sandisle thing that was like in the back of the church or something that hewould have somebody turn over and he would watch it during the sermon.
So he'd know how long he went because it was over an hour.
Luther is preaching longer than that.
anyway, go ahead.
(18:38):
.
mean that's kind of my point is that we need to be able to, we need patience, we need tolearn to hear the Word of God.
And you know, the service is a training ground for the rest of your life, for the rest ofyour week.
(19:00):
and, so I think that the, you know, the idea that, so I think like the idea that thegospel should predominate is absolutely true.
It's totally true.
I mean, it's, it's, it's demonstrably true from scripture.
Grace abounds all the more, right?
It's the greater, like the ministry of life is greater, right?
Um, this is the mystery made known at the fullness of time.
(19:21):
Um, and the old has passed away.
Uh, this is the new wine.
Uh, okay.
But.
The problem, to get to the kind of core of the problem, the problem seems to be, reallyI'm convinced, uh an inability or unwillingness to learn and teach the full council.
(19:47):
I just going to say the same thing.
If you can't use the statement, the gospel should predominate as like a club to stoppeople from saying all the things that the Bible says, which is how it's a lot of times
used.
If you preach on some topic that's kind of a hot button thing, but it's in the Bible andthey haven't heard a sermon on it before and someone didn't really like what they heard,
(20:07):
if they know kind of these Lutheran cliches, they might say the pastor, pastor, the gospeldidn't predominate that sermon.
But the fact that you didn't like what the Bible said,
on that topic that what he preached on doesn't mean the gospel didn't predominate.
Yeah, when like you were saying...
uh
the other day about, you know, Paul says, I determined to know nothing among you, butChrist in him crucified.
(20:30):
He says this in the beginning of first Corinthians.
And then he goes on to talk about all sorts of things like marriage and, you know,lawsuits, you know, like the body of Christ and the different gifts of the spirit and love
and all this stuff and the resurrection of the body.
And uh so that same Paul who says, I determined to know nothing among you, but Christ inhim crucified.
(20:52):
He's the same Paul who says,
to the Ephesian bishops, I am innocent of any of your blood because I did not hold backfrom declaring to you the full counsel of God.
So sorry, Joe, you were saying.
I just had an anecdote for it because I remember preaching a sermon over the summer onceand it was I think it was about the demoniacs and it was I preached a lot about What kind
(21:19):
of demonic attacks look like in our society today?
I like what would this look like for us?
People who are under oppression of the devil, which is gonna be a lot of hot-button kindof cultural things and It was but it didn't not rightly divide law and gospel.
I mean I
talked about how Christ sets us free from these things, how he is the only hope of thosewho suffer from these things.
(21:42):
That was the end goal and result anyway.
But I did get a comment from someone that they're like, there just wasn't much gospel inthe sermon.
And I was like, there was.
And the whole purpose of it was to proclaim the freedom that Christ brings in the gospelto those who suffer from these things.
But yeah, I did spend, you know, if you were to put a stopwatch on it, probably a lot moretime talking about the specific types of
(22:06):
oppression that are occurring so that to articulate it so people knew what it meant yeahyeah but again as I was saying because you don't feel a certain way when you walk away
from the sermon doesn't mean the gospel wasn't preached that's right and that's theproblem
a comfort.
It's a comfort to know that.
It's what I was trying to articulate this morning in the sermon that was voiced upon me onMatthew 17 of being free.
(22:34):
You the sons are free, as Jesus says to Peter.
That this is a statement, you the son sets you free, you are free indeed.
This is his solemn oath, you are free.
And it doesn't feel like that.
It often doesn't feel that way.
And it's nice to know that even when it doesn't feel
that way, it's true.
this is the object, this gets to, know, doctrine, like, certainty of salvation is pairedalso with doctrinal certainty.
(23:01):
And with that, that the whole counsel of God is being proclaimed is, it is, uh it shouldbe a great comfort.
Like, Paul takes comfort in the fact that the whole counsel of God has been entrusted tohim and he and God has his sufficiency, of course, is in God, but, you know, he can boast
in the
(23:21):
proclaiming the whole counsel of God because he's not boasting himself.
He's boasting in the work that God gave him to do in the Word.
And to rob people of the Word because there's one particular part of the Word that is moreapocalyptic or something.
I mean, what you were just saying reminded me of an anecdote for myself years ago.
(23:44):
um I don't know how many years ago, probably eight years ago or so.
uh
This guy came out of church on the first Sunday in Advent and I preached on, you know, thetriumphal entry.
And I preached on Christ coming in weakness, coming to us in His word, in sacraments.
(24:04):
He came to us in the flesh.
He's going to come on the last day.
And He comes to us in meekness.
He comes to us not with uh the worldly pomp, um but drawing us to Himself.
And it was very much, ah very heavily that gentle gospel kind of sermon.
(24:25):
because that's what the theme was, you know, that's Advent one, you know?
And so this guy came up to me and he said, wow, well, this is, he said something like, itwas nice to hear a gentler sermon from, know, much gentler than like the last few weeks or
(24:49):
something like that.
And I said,
Yeah, that's because the last three weeks were the last three Sundays of the church year.
oh You got like the goats and the sheep, you know, got slamming the door and saying like,never knew.
You know, like, stay awake, you know, neither the day nor the hour.
mean, that's the point of like Jesus tells us it's like Aesop's fables, you know, givingus the moral.
(25:10):
Jesus tells us the point of his parable.
Stay awake.
You know, many are called, but few are chosen.
That kind of, you know, that sort of language.
um needs to be emphasized because Jesus is emphasizing it so of course now was I preachingthe gospel those last three sons of the church here yeah of course I was I mean some
(25:31):
people I guess don't but yes I was I certainly was um but the emphasis was very what wasmore on um the the theme of those days was just to
You know, don't fall into foolishness, stay awake, have a sober mind, Christ is coming.
(25:54):
know, and you know, I think sometimes also what happens is that you get these kinds ofguilt driven versions of preaching the law that people are bombarded with.
And then they react so much against that, that when you actually do preach the law or theadmonition to stay awake and, know,
(26:16):
look for the coming of Christ.
ah
that even when you preach that with the gospel, like rightly applied in that, you know,that Christ actually, you know, has has given you faith that he promises by his Holy
Spirit to keep you in the faith and that you can have certainty that you're he's going totake you through the storm and all that all that stuff.
(26:36):
But nonetheless, if you preach on these hard things like the last day, the world is veryevil, that kind of stuff, then it's it's it's it's like that.
predominates and I think that people are not trained well to know when they don't knowwhat it means for the gospel to predominate.
and they think it's simply like some kind of calculator or like a...
(27:01):
you know, like you have...
So by our own human reason, we kind of weigh whether the gospel had more airtime than thelaw.
That sets them up to just despair.
And it's actually a false view of the gospel.
know?
I mean, think of the woman, the Canaanite woman, who hears like a tiny smidge of thegospel in the midst of Jesus calling,
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or a dog, and yet she hears the gospel because that's what faith does.
And the gospel predominated Jesus' sermon.
And so did it in Peter's sermon on Pentecost.
The whole thing is like, yeah, remember how all those people did all that bad stuff?
This is your family history and how then you did this too?
The whole sermon is long until the end where he just says, when they're like, what do doto be saved?
(27:46):
He's like, repent and believe the gospel, be baptized.
Peter has a very gospel phenomenon sermon too, where he goes through and says, you knowhow all these prophets were rejected by your father?
Same kind of thing.
And then he says, you stiff neck people.
And then they stone him.
And his sermon isn't done yet.
(28:07):
And while they're stoning him, says, Lord, do not hold this.
But they're plugging their ears.
Yeah, this can't happen to people like if you're trying to walk them through a particulararticle of our faith and you're going like think of I'm thinking of some of Walther's
sermons on like the hardening of the heart and of duracy and he'll preach like You know ifit's a 45 minute sermon 30 minutes of it are gonna be like here's what this state is and
(28:32):
here's how you fall into it and it's yeah, it's heavy stuff the last part he is going togive a lot of comfort, but if you
Refuse to listen to what the Bible says in the law.
You just don't make it so that even that part in the sermon
Yeah, yeah, so that's why it takes endurance like it's there is that's why it's atraining, you know It's it's you know, like my wife and I are training for this bicycle
(28:55):
ride Hannah just gave me a look you don't think we're gonna make it I just talk about toomuch
It's not, it's not bad.
We can rest whenever we want.
We'll be fine.
Anyway, but we're training, you know?
You have to be somewhat in shape to do it.
But that's how that, we have to be trained to be able to endure through not just thepreaching of the law, like we're just hearing fire and brimstone, but just explaining.
(29:27):
what marriage is, explaining, you know, what the table of duties are, explaining what puredoctrine is and why it's important or the efficacy of the word.
All of such things certainly relate to the gospel.
uh So, so anyway, yeah, go ahead.
(29:47):
the other one we were thinking about, which is kind of a cousin to the gospel shouldpredominate in the false sense in which it's used, not in the true sense, would be that
every sermon has to end on gospel and narrowly defined.
So like if you were to end a sermon with exhortation, that that would be somehow amisapplication of law and gospel or not a very faithful Lutheran sermon.
(30:14):
And, you know, so we were thinking about that one because
There's a lot of times in the scripture where, you know, St.
Paul's going to end a certain book with exhortation, not the narrow gospel.
But I think a lot of Lutheran pastors get to the end of their sermons, you know, ifthey're writing manuscripts and they're like, should I end this way or would this be an
injustice if I ended on exhortation as opposed to the narrow gospel?
(30:38):
So where does that idea come from and what would be the criticism of it?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's really interesting because, like, okay, so again, I think thatsimilar to what I was saying before about people reacting against this sort of uh
legalistic, uh frantic preaching of, you know, like, Jesus is coming back, look busy, kindof, kind of stuff.
(31:02):
You have something similar than with what you're talking about where uh
you do get this kind of canned version and this was very
This was very common and nauseating for a lot of people for a long time.
(31:26):
uh My dad called them lettuce sermons, so they're just making a salad.
So the lettuce sermons are like, okay, now the last part of the sermon is now, now let usdo this, let us do this, let us do this.
it becomes just, rhetorically it sends the message that the main point
(31:47):
the main purpose, the main goal is for you to just behave.
And that really isn't, I mean, unless we talk about the obedience to the word, right, theobedience of faith, which of course would include this other kinds of obedience, but
But I think that's what happens when the law is seen as, so you talk about like thegospel, like narrowly defined, has to be the gospel narrowly defined.
(32:14):
It's helpful, like Article 4 of the Formula of Concord, when it talks about the gospel isnarrowly defined as like the preaching of the forgiveness that sends eternal life and
salvation, Jesus Christ.
And then broadly defined as the whole teaching of Christ, which includes, of course,admonition, repentance, stuff like that.
ah But also the law is narrowly defined as commandments that drive you to repentance.
(32:42):
But then it's also broadly defined, which includes promises and shadows and stuff likethat.
uh So so again, I think that this gets to not understanding doctrine, but just the natureof doctrine.
And one of the things is the body of doctrine,
Horpus Doctrinei, right?
That at the center of this body, the heart of it, is the justification of the sinnerbefore God through faith and the count of Christ.
(33:05):
But all these parts of the body of doctrine are held together.
And that if people aren't thinking in those terms and they're just thinking very narrowly,
Then, you know, then and then they they they they they they're used to hearing thesesermons that just get very nauseating where it's like, OK, now let us out of thankful
(33:26):
response, do these good things and serve the Lord with gladness, which is all true.
You know, and then they get frustrated because they're like, well, they're quoting theBible.
So, you know, I guess.
But it but it's it's it's almost like like the Gospels almost like siphoned away.
But then they sort of like soften up the law, you know, like third use of the law becomeslike, well, now we get to do
(33:47):
all this stuff, you know?
And that, it's just not as helpful.
I mean, it's not like it's false either, you know?
And that's, I think, another reason why people don't want, like, it's not like they cansay, you said something wrong, because they know that, okay, you, I think that they know
(34:09):
people, Christians know that they need encouragement, they need comfort, they needsomething.
They need to learn how to be able to articulate what they need.
know, and that what they need is the full counsel of God.
They need the gospel at the heart of it to predominate in their conscience.
(34:30):
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, rule your hearts and minds, right?
Guard your hearts and minds.
ah They need that, but they need to know what doctrine is.
And I really think that that is at the crux of the problem.
that doctrine is sort of like, it reminds me of Isaiah 28, where says, my words would belife to you, you know, like have, like find rest for your souls.
(34:58):
But my word became to you line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there alittle.
And this is the way that, what our old Adam does and what the world does, is it takesGod's word and it turns it into just a bunch of rules.
And we see this with catechism class where it's just the right answers on the test.
(35:20):
we're trying, as teachers, as pastors, we're trying to avoid that view of catechesis, thatyou're just here to answer these yes or no questions or these, not necessarily yes or no
questions, but just answer these correct, give these correct answers on the exam and thenkind of move on.
(35:41):
But no, we want to give them a call.
of the body of doctrine, we want to give them a mindset, a culture that cultivates intheir hearts and in their lives so that they can always find comfort no matter what
they're doing.
um And so, again, I think that that's the issue, that we lack a uh clear understanding ofwhat doctrine is, what Christian doctrine is.
(36:08):
I remember going up, uh going to the microphone.
the 2016 Synod Convention uh to speak in favor of a resolution that would uh call on thePresidium, the President of Synod, and his posse, I guess, I don't know, to uh supervise,
(36:34):
to have visits of the Concordias, of the schools, to supervise the doctrine, make surethat everything is being taught correctly.
And some people opposed it and were like, well, I don't want people breathing down myneck.
And so I went up to the microphone and I said, this is the only reason why this sinexists.
It's for our doctrine to be kept pure, for us to agree on doctrine, to be able to providepastors who actually agree on this and to be able to, you know, hold one another
(37:02):
accountable to our confessions.
And I said doctrine, that sounds like a uh mean kind of cold stodgy word, but doctrine is,as my grandpa would
I would always say that he learned this from a parishioner of his who actually said it inNorwegian Doctrine is life, you know, and and and I and so I said that the microphone I
(37:25):
said doctrine saves Well, where do I get that from?
First Timothy 416.
Yeah, you're right I said doctrine saves and then my cousin-in-law who was a delegate
Later on told me he said the guy next to him said said to him, did he just say doctrinesaves?
(37:49):
I thought Jesus saved.
That's probably what he was doing.
Like Faith Saves.
that on the list of the cliches.
Yeah, that's like the Jesus saves not baptism saves on the Bible says but going back tothe preaching thing Like with ending the sermons on the law Because it seemed like you
were saying that you've heard people do that, but they just don't do it rightly anywayYeah, and that's your criticism of the lettuce.
(38:13):
Yeah, yeah, I think the impulse to do that though is actually not that bad of an impulsein the catechism the second explanation the second article where with his holy
precious blood, innocent suffering and death.
What does it say at the end?
So that what?
And it be his own and live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlastingrighteousness, innocence and blessedness.
So obviously you should understand that the goal of the preaching of the atonement inaddition to delivering the forgiveness of sins to them is also so that through that
(38:43):
forgiveness they would what?
Live a godly life.
of course.
So saying at the end of the sermon, you know, this means, yeah, this is what we're goingto do.
Yeah.
It's not a wrong impulse.
Yeah.
And most of the time, though, I think the way that I have heard the you shouldn't end yoursermon with law is because people assume that the only function of the law is to show sins
(39:07):
and not to guide and works at all.
So you're just going to it only accuses.
Right.
Even though it always does accuse.
But since
They're kind of taking the angle that it only accuses, but you can't end your sermon ontelling him to do something because of the other things you've talked about, because
that'll just put him back under the law.
Yeah, and also, think we should be willing to say that the law gives clarity, right?
(39:32):
That the law even inspires, in the sense that, be careful with that, that the law isinspiring to the new man and that it's wisdom, right?
It's not inspiring for salvation, you know, ah but it does give that clarity.
And I think this is a problem in our midst, where the clarity of Scripture
(39:55):
is undermined.
And when you undermine the clarity of Scripture, you undermine the authority of Scripture.
Because like if you never understand what your dad is saying, you can just kind of writehim off.
Like, yeah, he's talking about something or other, whatever.
And then just kind of make up your own explanation and you can twist it and all thatstuff.
Now people are going to say like, yeah, okay, the gospel is clear.
(40:16):
And thanks be to God that people at least say that.
um But that's the problem though, is that
when the law isn't clear.
like for example,
good news is that news that that
well, like, for example, I mean, one of my one of the axes that I've been grinding mywhole ministry because I just spent and even since I was a seminary because I just can't
(40:38):
believe it.
Here we have a church body, a synod that rejects women's ordination.
Thanks be to God, they do that.
And yet they have like women reading the lessons in church and the divine service.
they like the CTCR in 1985 just says, well, there's no ceremonial law that says you can'tdo that.
(40:59):
it's a book.
You just obscure scripture.
It says so clearly as day because they should not do that.
was legalism.
There's no rule that says this.
Yeah, but why can't women be pastors?
Precisely because they can't be lectors.
That's the point.
(41:19):
Right?
this is where, like, who was I talking to about this that, uh I've probably one of mybrothers or someone was saying, uh, that you should just, I just tell these guys who have
women lecturers, Hey, why don't you let your women pastors preach?
You know, these guys who have women lecturers in their congregations.
(41:41):
Why don't you let your, you have women pastors.
Why don't you let them preach?
Are some kind of chauvinist?
You should let them preach in the pulpit.
You let them preach in the lectern.
Why don't you let them preach in the pulpit?
And that's what, it's like, I women pastors.
Yes, you do.
You do have women pastors.
I think women can read the lessons.
You are in favor of women's ordination.
This is what I've said to guys when they argue for women lecters.
(42:04):
They can't make that all they can do is obscure scripture that the arguments they make areare total uh higher criticism.
uh and I say, OK, explain to me why women can't be pastors.
That's why explaining to why women can't be pastors.
OK, well, because it says here, no.
The does not say.
(42:26):
Women can't be pastors.
It doesn't say anywhere in the scriptures that women cannot be ordained into the holyoffice of the holy ministry.
No, it says that women can't publicly speak in church, teach in church, and have a th**yover a mid** in the church.
That's what it says.
And you guys want to obscure this so that you don't have to face the ire of your LWML onLWML Sunday.
(42:53):
That is pathetic.
And this kind of
this obscuring of the law passages of scripture does end up affecting the obscuring of thegospel passages.
So anyway, but this gets to my issue.
(43:16):
This is why I would always get annoyed when I would hear this kind of manby-pamby sort oflike lettuce moralism, this kind of soft moralism.
Because sometimes I hear it from those who don't preach clearly on the actual issues ofthe day.
You know, the actual issues that are affecting people, that are leading people away fromthe truth, they're avoiding that.
(43:41):
And then they're going to say, but let us serve the Lord and love one and all this stuff.
And it's like, well, come on.
of it's true there, but the lettuce salad that they're given at the end has got like nocroutons and bacon bits in it.
It's just like it's bland because it wasn't filled in with the actual doctrine Yeah,Walter impends quite a bit of his sermons with Mae-Wi.
Sure.
Something like that.
Which is basically a cousin of lettuce.
(44:02):
It's just not.
That's what my brother Christian said this years ago when we were in seminary.
said, because we were talking about all this like sanctification, know, weak on, rememberthe whole weak on sanctification stuff.
And there was a reaction against that kind of soft moralism.
That's what it was.
And Christian said, he said, the problem with all this, like this kind of preaching thatthey're reacting against is not that they preach too much sanctification.
(44:27):
It's that
They're really like wimpy about it, you know?
They don't preach it well.
And I think he's exactly right.
They're not thoroughly teaching what sanctification is.
Now, again, some of them may be more than others, you know?
They're different types of preachers and all that stuff.
But again, this is kind of my hobby horse, I guess.
(44:51):
We need to teach doctrine.
And doctrine is not line upon line, rule upon rule, precept upon precept, you're a littlethere a little, follow this until, know, so that you make sure that your, your, your I's
are dotted and your T's are crossed so that we can say that we're Orthodox.
No, it is so that we guard the deposit of the gospel that is, that is flowing in and in.
(45:16):
and out of all these things and in and out of the gospel, the doctrine of justification atthe center.
And this is where like the reform don't understand this.
So the reform, they'll be like a conservative reform guy, will be all for like puredoctrine.
But then when it comes to like, you know, the Lord's Supper, well, why, you know, theydon't believe it's the Bible of Jesus.
I mean, why don't you commune me?
(45:38):
Because for them it is they are treating it like it's just sort of like a bunch ofprecepts, right?
It's a bunch of ordinances.
And we see it as like, no, no, no, doctrine.
All of these articles are centered in on the gospel.
If I give this up, I'm affecting the very heart of the gospel.
And I think that's what people need to know.
They need to be able to see Christ, you know, be able to see how this all flows intoChrist and your salvation found in him.
(46:06):
And if we do that, then, then we certainly can have our...
We can have more salads, know, we can have but robust salads like not just like the thethe iceberg lettuce, you know, like Romaine lettuce and the you know, kale and all that
good stuff, you know, balsamic vinaigrette, you know.
The criticism that you shouldn't end the sermon with law probably still is missing thepoint also with respect to the fact that you...
(46:34):
They probably are coming at it from like that first, you should preach the law inaccusatory way, then you should preach the narrow gospel, and then it's like either you
say amen or you add these other things.
I still think that whole idea of looking at the sermon just in that way probably stillmisses the mark anyway.
you should be...
I think there's a paper from Fritz
(46:56):
the guy who wrote the pastoral theology that they use the seminaries in like the 40s, 50smaybe or 60s.
Fritz was like a hundred years ago.
Yeah, but he's got a great article on law and gospel in preaching.
That's how they used to talk about it.
Not law and gospel preaching where it was like, it almost again becomes kind of a rulething.
Like first you tell them they don't do things, then you tell them just die for them, andthen what do do at the end?
(47:19):
It's this very formulaic way of talking where it actually cripples your ability to preachthe whole counsel of God.
But you can still preach the law and the gospel in the sermon.
It's just not, you know, here's this, here's that, here's this.
So,
Responding it on law would be a breach of the formula which is why people would be likethat wasn't a good But adding another part to another formula is still the wrong thing.
(47:42):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah
Well, yeah, so what you get is you get a formula that the formula itself predominates.
Yes.
And then and so and so then you have a sermon that's like all about like the ascension,for example, and just like there's that is the gospel.
I mean, you got to preach a gospel sermon on the ascension.
But then you hear an ascension sermon where it's like, now, Jesus, he ascends into heavenso that he can work through you and accomplish all this through you.
(48:10):
And it's all about evangelism, but not.
much evangel, you know?
And a lot of that, I mean, that's very prominent still in a lot of preaching.
Like my brother John, this is his impression of a...
not to pick on the wells, but I'm gonna pick on the wells.
And this is true in lot of Missouri Synod preaching too.
But ah John said this is a well sermon.
(48:32):
And there are also very good well sermons.
So, to my wells friends.
But this is my brother John's impression of a well sermon.
It goes like this.
There's three parts.
It goes...
Law.
Law.
Second part.
Gospel.
(48:52):
Gospel.
Third part.
And that's always the, you know, the theme.
Like it's always the formula.
And then what ends up happening then is, okay, what you end with does matter, you know,and it's going to have some weight.
(49:12):
But what ends up happening then is when you follow this strict formula, whether it is thatkind of law gospel share or law gospel law.
Lord gospel sacraments.
oh
know, law, atonement, everyone knows that, sacraments, you know, and whatever it might be,what you're what you end up doing is you, you you you're going to inevitably you might
(49:36):
preach some fantastic sermons with with if you stick to that one formula.
But if you're not looking at the scope of scripture and the text itself in light of the uhthe analogy of faith.
You won't appreciate the mold that counts.
not going to preach the whole counsel of God.
Yeah, and you're going to end up emphasizing something that doesn't really, is not reallyemphasized as much.
(49:59):
uh
it's kind of the example I often use when I'm talking with other pastors about this is,have you ever preached a sermon where you explain to the people why we baptize babies?
And they might think about it and say, I've talked about infant baptism before.
And I always kind of be like, no, have you ever preached a sermon where do you explain whywe do that?
Because if it's a law gospel sermon in that paradigmatic way, how do you preach theaccusatory law in a sermon where you're trying to explain here's why we baptize?
(50:29):
Like you're just as bad as the Baptist yeah, I've had babies.
Yeah, sometimes you do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have this attitude towards sometime
Sometimes we
So you end up actually not preaching on the topic of the Bible that you need to talkabout.
Same with the Ascension, right?
In that sermon on the Ascension, where in the sermon do they spend all this time, as theyshould, explaining what happened when Jesus ascended?
(50:54):
They're not going to do that, but then their people don't know.
We're almost out of time.
gotta go eat dinner.
give some final thoughts and then we'll wrap this up.
So I feel like I said, I don't know, we'll talk about it later.
Cause I still don't know if you, if you are agreeing with me or not about that last clichestatement, whether or not it's okay to or not.
(51:18):
And maybe you're critiquing a certain group that I'm not thinking of that group inparticular.
I'm saying that, yeah, I don't entirely… I think that um it's silly to hold someone to auniversal principle when it comes to the formula of the sermon, when it comes to the
beginning, middle, end.
So, how you end a sermon, it matters.
(51:41):
Okay, it speaks a lot.
With that said, that doesn't mean that you can't end a sermon with the law.
um
and you're speaking to the Christian conscience.
So that's all I would say about that.
to get into a debate of what your last sentence should be, I
up.
The end of your sermon should summarize your sermon.
(52:02):
That's what I mean.
It's just about the cliche of the idea that if you were to do something like that, itwould be bad.
like, the sermon could be really good.
So that shouldn't ultimately make it bad.
What should make it good is whether or not it was a good
exactly.
know because then what you get is like a 40 minute sermon where like 30 minutes of it or35 minutes of it was just like stories about, you know, walking your dog or something like
(52:27):
that.
And then you end up hearing the gospel in this kind of canned way for a few minutes.
And then you hear, amen.
You're like, well, I guess I can't complain because I did hear the gospel.
that's.
Yeah, it does by definition predominate.
So but.
uh
Yeah, we pray that God's word would not be bound though in the head free course.
(52:49):
Well, thanks guys.
I'm looking forward to beating you again um in softball.
Actually, I kind of hope you win.
It'd be fun.
It'd be good for me to be humbled, right?
um
It's always fun talking to you guys.
uh You've been listening to Christendom and the World.
Please like and subscribe and share and also uh check out their podcast, the SchlieBrothers, uh in the Didymus podcast.
(53:13):
The description will be uh under this video.
So join us next time for another episode of Christendom and the World.
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