Wolves, Shepherds, and Soft Power: Who Leads the Flock?

In this week’s episode of Christendom and the World, Pastor Andrew Preus takes a hard look at the state of leadership in today’s church. As cultural narratives continue to reshape how people view authority, masculinity, and order, many Christians are left wondering: who is truly leading the flock? Pastor Preus unpacks the influence of the Red Pill movement, the feminization of church culture, and the growing reliance on emotional appeal and soft power within both liberal and evangelical circles. He explores the consequences of abandoning normative, biblical authority and considers why so many young men are turning to more “traditional” expressions of Christianity in search of structure and truth. Are churches forming faithful shepherds — or leaving space for wolves to enter unnoticed?

 

https://youtu.be/quZR6VSKMDw?si=XpsCA_tbJ9ENA72E

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Welcome back to Christendom and the World, brought to you by Christian News.
This is Pastor Andrew Price.
uh Thank you for those of you who have been listening.
We've been running this podcast for the last few months and it's still getting going inits early stages, but we're hoping that more people would listen to it.
We ask that you would like and subscribe and share it with your friends.

(00:29):
We're always
uh trying to make it better and make it go more smoothly with the sound and my deliveryand all that good stuff.
Hannah has been doing a lot of work with all of that.
Today, I'd like to talk about a couple things.
In our first segment here, I want to talk about the feminization of the church andnormative authority.

(00:57):
Now in the last probably, I don't know, 10 years or so,
I have noticed, and maybe you have noticed as well, this movement called the Red PillMovement.
And I don't know, have you ever heard of that movement, Hannah?
No, you've never heard of that movement.
So basically this is what has happened.

(01:19):
A bunch of kids about my age, well I guess I'm not a kid anymore, but a bunch of guys myage and younger, you know, they grew up going to school.
And just little things would, you know, the boys were always uh sort of chided in a waywhere, uh you know, they were always told to, uh their masculinity, their boyness was

(01:48):
often kind of put down.
And so I'll just give you some examples, uh you know, with TV shows, for example.
Do you remember, did you ever watch the show Home Improvement?
No.
No, that's before your time.
So when I was a kid, there's show called Home Improvement.

(02:09):
And Tim Allen, he's the, har har har, kind of uh masculine guy.
But his wife uh is Jill, and she's a total feminist.
Just complete feminist.
And of course she's portrayed as smarter than her husband.
more competent than her husband, more sensible and all that kind of stuff.

(02:30):
And it was always, it was always portraying the relationship as, you know, uh, Tim beingthis rugged guy who likes to work on cars and his wife being really the one who wears the
pants.
And it was, it was meant to appeal actually to people like your dad who has a hot rodshop, like a guy has a hot rod shop, right?

(02:55):
But.
It wouldn't appeal to your dad because your dad is the head of his home.
Now, of course, your mom is opinionated and is not afraid to say what's on her mind, whichis good.
But see, they're trying to portray that, you know, like a woman who can speak for herself,which who's going to argue against that.
But they would always portray it as if she's like the head of the home.

(03:19):
Right.
And, you know, Family Matters did the same thing.
I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid.
TGIF.
Right.
Uh, so, you know, you had, remember I asked my mom when I was a kid, cause I watched theshow salute your shorts and, and it was on Nickelodeon and, the, the, the one, one of the
campers, you know, it takes place at the summer camp.

(03:42):
Uh, he puts a, he puts a stuffed animal on top of the guy's head and he says, you're awuss and this is your wuss hat.
Uh, and so I, I didn't know what a wuss was.
think I was like six, seven years old.
And I went to my mom and I asked, mom, what's a wuss?
And my mom said, a wuss is a man who lets his wife boss him around.

(04:03):
And I thought, so like Carl Winslow, and she said, from Family Matters.
And she said, yeah.
And then of course I, you know, I'd watch Home Improvement say, yeah, he's a wuss, right?
So I grew up with a family that was more tuned into this stuff and resisting this, thispeddling of feminism that was all around us.
But of course in the public school system,

(04:23):
You have it, sometimes you have it very blatantly, uh, you know, pushed and other timesit's more subtly pushed.
And so what happened in the last 10 years or so, and I think this especially blew upduring COVID because people were able to see what was being taught in the public school
system.
And of course, not every public school district is going to be the same, but you know,it's, uh, it, they're all breathing in the same air, uh, to some, to some degree.

(04:53):
And.
And so you had these guys who just, they finally discovered that, a second, there's such athing as being a man and being the leader and being the head.
And some of them would go way too far and they follow, you know, this guy named uh AndrewTate.
maybe you've heard of him.

(05:13):
You haven't, you're not tuned into this stuff.
That's okay.
That's great.
You're innocent as a dove, Hannah.
Um, you know, and he's this Muslim.
you know, converted to Islam because it's supposedly more masculine.
And he's very extreme version of that.
Now you've had other guys who have, they have, they have been like red pill.
Red pill means that it goes back to that movie, the matrix.

(05:36):
Have you seen that movie?
No, you haven't seen that.
That's great.
I love it.
So the matrix was really huge when I was a kid.
And so what happens is you have a Keanu Reeves.
is brought before this guy who shows him like a blue pill and a red pill.
And he says, if you take the blue pill, everything's going to be, you're going to go onwith life.

(05:56):
You're going to forget this ever happened.
And if you take the red pill, then you're going to see what things are really like.
And in reality, what you see is not really reality.
It's really everyone's just in these little cubes.
and there's a virtual reality that they are living in, right?
So he chooses the red pill, then he sees how things really are.
So the red pill movement is really describing how, you know, these men have realized, waita second, I've been lied to in all sorts of different ways, but mainly on that kind of

(06:29):
masculinity uh issue.
So they've been told like any kind of expression of being a man and even being a boy, likejust going and...
doing what boys do, being a little bit rambunctious is looked at as toxic and it needs tobe tamed.
And so you have this movement called the men's rights movement, which really, from what Isaw, resembled a lot more the feminist movement because they really were doing the same

(06:57):
things that the feminists do where they just say, well, these are all the problems thatwomen go through and they can name all sorts of problems, which are true to a large
extent.
but their solutions are always political.
Their solutions are always now, what this means then is we need to like shift the power,know, destroy the patriarchy, which really means destroy like the father's rule and

(07:20):
ultimately destroy the family.
And so women need to have like be independent and be sexually autonomous and all that kindof nonsense.
Well, so then the red pill man would often...
they would often make similar arguments except for men.
They talk about men's rights.
Like men commit suicide more often, men have harder jobs, you know, and, you know, andthere's a lot of truth in that.

(07:42):
Now, recently there's this guy who I listen to sometimes.
I come across videos of his, uh his name is Andrew Wilson.
And uh he is, most of what he says, I find myself agreeing with, although he, he cusses alot.
And so I don't, uh
I can't recommend them just as a pastor.

(08:04):
can't recommend them because I don't want to recommend like, you know, something that hasprofanity.
he's, you he talks to, he'll often talk to these feminist women who have bought into thisidea that you can just live your independent life and this idea that a man really, really

(08:27):
cares about how much money you make.
and he'll just dispel that and say, no, that's not true.
know, things like that.
like, you know, if you go and get like a really, really successful career and you'remaking six figures, uh a man doesn't care as much about that as as you would if if if uh
if your man made six figures, right?

(08:49):
uh A man would rather be with he would he would rather marry a girl who works at a coffeeshop.
who's sweet, who's cute, who is respectful and has good principles and wants to have afamily.
And so he'll point that out to these women and he's totally right.
He's 100 % right.

(09:10):
And these women can't handle it.
And so it has this entertainment factor to it.
And so he's just one representative here.
But what has happened a lot too in the church,
is that a lot of men, just like they realized that in public school, they were being soldthis kind of home improvement view of husband and wife, men and women, uh that is very,

(09:40):
very much effeminate and emasculating to men.
They've also noticed that this is the case in their churches.
So you have your liberal churches like UCC, ELCA, uh
Presbyterian USA, Episcopalian, where they started ordaining women many years ago beforeyou and I were born.

(10:05):
um But then they were embracing homosexuality and they just hop on whatever kind ofbandwagon of the left.
And it's all just like rank feminism and it's very ends up being very toxic to men.
So that anytime men do anything um that is manly, that's just toxic.
And this includes then making assertions, right?

(10:29):
Standing on authority saying, no, this is the truth.
I don't care what the truth means to you, right?
It doesn't matter what your truth is.
This is the truth, right?
So this has been uh
uh This has been a dialogue in our culture for a while.
So famously, anyone who follows like political uh commentaries, especially on the right uhside of the spectrum, you might be familiar with, you might not know who uh Ben Shapiro

(11:03):
is.
uh Yeah, you know who he is.
Yeah, he's the Jewish guy.
But he's famous for saying to people who...
When he argues with like transgender people, he'll say, facts don't care about yourfeelings.
Have you heard that phrase before?
Yeah, well, that's a pretty well, you know, it's pretty pithy phrase.
And, you know, it's true.

(11:23):
It doesn't explain everything.
I would say that God does care about your feelings.
God, who is the truth, cares about your feelings.
But his point still stands that how you feel about the truth doesn't change the truth.
It might change how you receive it and how you benefit from it, certainly, but it's notgoing to change what is objectively true.

(11:45):
So to make assertions, to say, this is true, men are men, women are women, there's adifference.
That's what the kids these days call based.
um As my friend, Robbie Rojas and I,
used to call it hashtag arrogance, when you say something that sounds arrogant, but it'strue.
And so I don't care.

(12:06):
I'm just going to say it anyway.
um Things that your grandpa would do a lot, right.
He just write it and let it drop.
Right.
So, so, and those kinds of things are masculine to do, right.
They're, seen as masculine and they are.
kind of put down as sort of like a toxic masculinity.
And this ends up affecting how we see truth, how we see scriptural truth, how we seenatural law.

(12:31):
And when you're always having to apologize for everything that you say because it'shurting someone's feelings, know, a lot of men and women, but especially young men, have
realized that, wait, that's effeminate, right?
So you have your...
you know, radically left wing liberal Protestant or, you know, churches like the ELCA,UCC, Episcopalians who are Dane women and, are all, all wacky.

(13:00):
But what you also have is in evangelical circles in your mega churches, in yournon-denominational circles, there's a lot of the same kind of spirit that seeps in.
Right, so one example would be you throw out the liturgy and this order of service thathas been passed down to you by your fathers, right, that people actually uh bled and died

(13:29):
to preserve.
And instead you bring in this kind of pop rock, Phil Collins-esque sort of, you know, kindof entertainment.
And usually there's some, there's some chick up there.
right, who's a worship leader.
so she's leading the service.

(13:50):
And they're singing songs that are, you know, they're really, they make you feel like agirl when you sing them, right?
And so a lot of people have realized, wait, this is ridiculous.
ah So I want like a normal traditional church because this other stuff makes me feeleffeminate.
uh because it's not assertive, it's often very vague.

(14:11):
Just listen to Christian rock, most Christian rock.
There's some good Christian rock, I'll admit, but most of it is just very vague, vapidkind of lyrics that are really depending upon the moving music that is uh conforming to
the sort of uh popular culture sort of music that's popular today.

(14:35):
uh
And so anyway, so guys are waking up to that and they're saying, wait a second, I want analtar, I want pulpit, I want a priest, I want tradition, I want something that has
history.
Because they see that, and rightly so, they see that as more uh respectable for a man,right?

(14:57):
And of course, if it's respectable for a man, then it's also respectable for a woman.
Right?
so, these things are starting to connect for them.
But what's going on here then is that a lot of guys are leaving these evangelical,American evangelical churches.

(15:19):
But where are they going?
What churches are they going to?
Can you guess?
Take a guess.
Don't be shy.
What churches are they going to?
They want a traditional church, a historical church, right?
So, what kind of churches are they going to?
Catholic churches, yeah, or Eastern Orthodox churches, right?
Because they offer you something that has the ancient ceremonies, the ancient liturgy.

(15:45):
And I understand where they're coming from.
What they're looking for is a normative authority.
And so I mentioned this Andrew Wilson fellow who, besides uh his cussing, um I mostly like
what he has to say.
I think he has a lot of really good points.

(16:06):
But I recently came across an uh interview, a sit down interview that he had uh with a guynamed Gerald whose name I always forget.
just know that he's, uh I think they call him Gerald B or something.
He's from Louder with Crowder.
And uh it's a comedy show that's also.

(16:27):
uh
cultural and political, they'll address cultural and political issues from a moreconservative point of view.
they also can, Gerald is actually, he is the cleanest and most, and probably uh he sticksout as.
as I think the one most gentleman of all of them.

(16:49):
uh But again, it might not be your cup of tea.
At any rate, he has this show called Gerald Apologizes where he does apologetics.
And God bless Gerald.
He's a Protestant.
I don't know what kind of Protestant he is.
um But he does, I think he does overall a pretty good job of defending the Christianfaith.
He certainly does this research.

(17:10):
And he had a sit down with Andrew Wilson because, you know, they have some
common ground, where they see they both, so what they're talking about, they're talkingabout how feminism has infiltrated the church.
And they're not just talking again about, they're not just talking about the left-wingliberal Protestant churches that you really shouldn't be a part of.
I mean, I guess I can kind of commend this redeemed Zoomer guy for wanting to stay in thePresbyterian USA because he thinks he can reform it, but I just, I would not recommend

(17:42):
that.
I mean, would tell my obviously I would tell everyone to join a confessional LutheranChurch, right?
ah But but at any rate, they both they both recognize that this is this is happeningwithin these evangelical churches.
And it's clear that this is where Andrew Wilson, he talks about this early on.
This is where he grew up with this, right?
He grew up.
This is his background.

(18:04):
He came out of Protestantism.
So for him, Protestantism is this very subjective, very personal
based kind of religion where, okay, well, we're going to read the Bible and, you know,it's going to say something and then you're going to say, well, what does this mean to
you?
And I'm to tell you what it means to me.

(18:27):
And I know exactly what he's talking about here.
When I was in college, I joined the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which I would notrecommend doing.
And the reason why I did it was not because I wanted to, you know,
participate in some kind of unionism.
I was very conscientious against unionism.

(18:49):
That is joining with those who teach contrary to the true word of God as an, an acting asif you all agree.
In fact, I went, I joined it for the exact opposite reason because I was trying toinfiltrate it.
And what they would do is they'd give you a Bible class.
So they'd say, go join the, uh, the university of Christian fellowship, and then theywill, they'll say, well, what kind of Bible class do you want to do?

(19:14):
And so what, what I did was I talked to my pastor about it and I, and, and, and I askedfor, for, you know, his counsel on it.
And I said to him, Hey, I'm not going to teach so much.
I'm just going to read Romans.
We're just going to read Romans together.
But I.
But what I'm gonna do is uh try to, uh well of course I was gonna teach that, was gonnalead the discussion, but then like keep it on topic and not just make it, turn it into

(19:43):
this, what does this mean to you?
Eventually I quit because people didn't like my style.
They wanted it to be more of a, well, this is what it means to me and I want to talk aboutmyself and feel like I'm talking about the word of God.
And unfortunately, that's how most Protestantism is.

(20:04):
And in fact, I walked in on an IVCF Bible study uh one day and they were reading Romanschapter six.
And so I sat down and said, well, you guys, where are you guys at?
And they said, oh, we're in Romans chapter six.
And it says, we're buried with Christ through baptism into death.
And they're like, oh, so what do think that means?

(20:26):
What does that mean to you?
And people are like, well, I feel like I have a connection.
Like, I really have a connection to Jesus.
And someone else says something like, you know, baptism symbolizes this, you know.
And I said, well, it means what it says.
that we in baptism, we are actually united to Jesus's death and resurrection.

(20:49):
And that's why Peter says over here, baptism saves.
And so I brought them over to Peter.
So what I was doing there was I was using the tools that I had been taught uh from goingto Bible study, growing up going to Bible study and listening to my dad preach that you
let the scripture interpret the scriptures.

(21:12):
So what has happened though is that people have been surrounded by this kind of verysubjective based interpretation of scripture where you just say, well, everyone just has
the Holy Spirit and so the spirit will move you in whatever kind of way.
And so what you end up losing is that

(21:34):
objective truth of the scriptures and what the scriptures actually say.
And so that's why what people have done is they've gone to the Roman Catholic Church orthey've gone to Eastern Orthodoxy.
And usually the way it goes is they check out the Roman Catholic Church and then theyrealize, I don't like the Pope.
And maybe he's, you know, he's too liberal or something like that.
I don't know.

(21:55):
Or they, for whatever reason, they don't like the Pope.
So then they go to Eastern Orthodoxy.
And, you know, there's this appeal because it claims to give you this long history.
Now, I'm not going to go into a whole lot of details about Eastern Orthodoxy and RomanCatholicism, but I'll speak of them more generally.

(22:15):
But what I'd like to do is show a clip, it's a few minutes long, of Andrew Wilson andGerald talking.
And this is right in the middle of their conversation.
What they have been talking about is feminism in the church and why he went and AndrewWilson joined the Eastern Orthodox Church.

(22:40):
And so then they get into a discussion about, uh you know,
about normative authority.
So how can you read the scriptures?
And of course, the Eastern Orthodox Church as well as the Roman Catholic Church are goingto, they're going to say the normative authority is not just the scriptures alone.
You need to have, for the Roman Catholics, you need to have this magisterium from thechurch and the councils.

(23:03):
And for the Eastern Orthodox, it's going to be, you know, the church fathers and thetradition that has been passed down.
And Gerald is trying to make the case for
Scripture alone that the scriptures alone are the normative authority ah But let's just goahead and listen just to it just for a few minutes here And we'll have the link to the

(23:25):
full interview at the at bottom of this if you want to listen to the whole thing But justthese few minutes give us a little bit of a taste of their discussion.
So So let's go ahead and listen completely understand that but then what about the Sermonon the Mount in Matthew where he says if your enemy
right?
Slaps your cheek, give me your other one.

(23:48):
And it was a demand for a call.
And you should pray.
You should pray for your enemy.
Because he keeps calls on his head.
Right.
You should.
And I mean, these are there's more to the story than just that.
agree.
There's more to the story.
But these are actually pretty fundamental ideas.
Just the idea there are whole denominations of Christians which are pacifists because ofthe teachings of Jesus Christ and the misconstruing of them.

(24:10):
And you say, I agree with you, by the way, that Christians can defend themselves.
Of course, they can defend themselves.
My point.
Some people don't.
Yeah, exactly.
Right.
And that's why you need a normative authority.
You have to have a normative authority of a church and the rigors and customs of alltraditional Christianity.
Otherwise, you end up with that.
You end up with um with or polygamy.

(24:31):
Right.
Polygamy.
With polygamy.
That's that.
Well, that's an easy one.
We point to we point to Paul.
Right.
And we say, OK, so Paul says.
You know to take a wife of you if you can't control, know, your loss take a wife We putthat and say well to see that's monogamy, right?
But polygamist will point to The parables of Jesus Christ at the wedding where he says,you know, he's going down for multiple brides So and they say see that's polygamy.

(24:58):
They were they were all for polygamy and polygamy at the time was just fine Yes, but sohere's here's the problem that I you're about to give me normative authority.
Maybe maybe
The problem that I have with that is that you can twist scripture if you want to, butscripture does inform scripture.
And so you can use it to confirm.
Like, okay, so you say the Jesus thing.
Can you point to, I don't even, I wouldn't concede that point, but the great thing aboutthe Bible is that Jesus or God spread the message over all of the available bandwidth.

(25:28):
It's a great thing to do in the military.
If you have an enemy jamming your signal and you want to spread your message over theentire bandwidth, that way if any of it's jammed, it can still get through.
Yeah.
Rip a page out of the Bible, tell me what you've lost.
Doesn't matter the page.
You've not lost something that is fundamental to Christianity by ripping one page out.
So what that tells me is that God makes this point over and over through symbolism, know,stuff being fulfilled from the Old Testament to the New Testament, patterns being set up

(25:54):
from the Old Testament to the New Testament, being fulfilled in Jesus, in differentletters.
It's spread throughout the available bandwidth.
You would have a really hard time saying, hey,
I found one thing in the Bible that another part of the Bible doesn't inform me on and beable to end up that far askew.
But people do this and say, I found my verse.
I'm going to build my church on that.

(26:14):
Yeah, I'm a snake handler.
But they but in order for you to do this, you would have to appeal to a normativeauthority.
In this case, you scripture.
Well, OK, scripture informs scripture.
Yes.
Who's who's reading it?
The people.
This is what Paul said in Acts 17.
You're reading it, right?
You're reading it.
I'm reading it with you.
So you're the interpreter.
Theoretically, yes.

(26:35):
So who's the normative authority?
I'm reading the scripture right here.
You can argue what it says, but here's the thing.
What if you're wrong?
What if you guys are wrong?
question to you.
What if you're wrong?
It's the same thing with the Orthodox Church.
You guys split from Catholicism, right?
No.
was a Catholicism split from us.
Oh, come on.
There's no come on.
They split from us.
Okay.
Now they get into the whole, you know, they go off on other things.

(27:00):
So.
I think Gerald does a good job of responding to Andrew here.
So what Gerald is pointing out is a hermeneutical principle.
So hermeneutics is how you read things.
And specifically biblical hermeneutics are how you read the Bible.
And you have to, in order to read something, you need to know what it is.

(27:24):
What does it claim to be?
And are you going to read it then based on
what it claims to be.
So if you're reading a novel, you know it's a novel, right?
And so you're going to read it like a novel.
The scriptures are not presented to you as a novel.
They're presented to you as historic truth and God's revelation uh in the past, in thepresent, and for the future.

(27:49):
And that the scriptures are about Christ and God's salvation of mankind through his son,Jesus Christ.
oh
When you know the scope, you got to know the scope of Scripture, then anotherhermeneutical principle then is that Scripture interprets itself.
And so, in other words, if you find a passage in Scripture that seems to be a little bitunclear, you illuminate that with other passages of Scripture which are clear.

(28:22):
And that's basically what Gerald is saying and responding to.
Now, what Andrew is saying...
is that you need a normative authority.
And what he's arguing for then is that you need the Church and the traditions of theChurch to be an authority apart from Scripture or supplementing Scripture in order to

(28:45):
really know what Scripture says.
So again, the Roman Catholic Church is going to say this is the magisterium of the Church,it's the councils, the papacy, and the tradition.
And the Eastern Orthodoxy, they're going to say something similar, you know, the traditionof the church.
And all the intricacies there, I'm not as familiar, not as caught up in all of how theywould articulate that.

(29:12):
But basically, they would reject that scripture alone is the norm.
Now, Andrew is right that you need a normative authority.
And uh what we would argue, and what Gerald is trying to argue, is that that normativeauthority is Scripture.

(29:34):
Now the question then that he brings up is, okay, yeah, but people read the Bible and theycome up with different interpretations of it.
And this was Andrew's experience growing up.
He grew up in this very vapid kind of uh church environment where it was
I'm assuming very much like what I described with the IVCF, where they're just kind oflooking at, what does it mean to you?

(29:57):
And so the result of this then is that you get Anabaptists and other kinds of like Quakerswho will look at Jesus's teaching from the Sermon on the Mount, which says, if your
brother slaps you on the cheek, or if someone slaps you on the cheek, turn the othercheek, give him the other cheek.
uh And Jesus is teaching nonviolence.

(30:19):
He's teaching
he's teaching us to bear the cross.
Well, some will take that then to mean that therefore the civil estate should not uh everwage war, they should never uh have the death penalty.
that what they were talking about there was self-defense, which is a topic that has beenargued among Lutherans in recent years.

(30:46):
And my brother James and I talked about this briefly, you know, with the right to beararms and stuff like that.
But, when you understand the teaching of the, uh you know, the civil estate and thedomestic estate, that you have a duty to protect your home and to protect your community
and protect your country, uh you know, those things should not be overlooked because, youknow, the scriptures uh speak of that.

(31:15):
You know, have one of the guys who comes to faith in Christ and whose faith Jesus lauds asgreat faith that he hasn't even seen among Israel is the centurion, ah who of course would
have been an official who was in charge of soldiers, like hundred soldiers under him.

(31:38):
So, and that's another issue.
I don't want to run down that bunny trail about self-defense in the three estates, butthey are right.
They're right in their observations that there are people who will take this to mean thenthat there's never ever any time that anyone would have the authority to put someone to

(32:01):
death or to retaliate against crime.
Well, of course, St.
Paul says in
uh in Romans chapter 13, that the governing officials are God's ministers of judgmentagainst those who do evil.
uh And we pray for them so that uh we could lead a quiet and godly life.

(32:27):
And of course, Jesus even says, Jesus makes allusion to, if you go out to war, you'regoing to make plans.
And he compares that then to
making sure that you can tell, that you are aware of what is to come, the greater thingwhich is to come, which is much greater than some invading army, uh but is actually the

(32:50):
coming of the Son of Man.
So watch and pray so that you don't fall into temptation.
At any rate, the issue then is about normative authority.
And the way that the Lutherans have always understand normative authority,
is in this way.
The norm of all Christian doctrine, everything that should be taught and accepted andbelieved in the Church of God, that norm is the Scriptures.

(33:22):
And what we call it is the norming norm, that norm which norms our teaching, right?
It sets the standard for our teaching.
But then we also speak of
what is called a normed norm.
And that's what we would refer to that as the creeds and the confessions of our church.

(33:46):
And we would say that these are derived from the Scriptures.
But this is really just, this is derived from the Scriptures not only in that it collectswhat the Scriptures teach.
But the fact that we have these is because of what Scripture teaches.
Scripture, Jesus tells us to confess Him before men, right?

(34:10):
ah St.
Paul tells us that we should strive for unity in the Spirit and by the bond of peace,right?
That we should hold fast to the teaching, to the deposit of the doctrine, hold fast toyour doctrine.
There so many passages in Scripture

(34:30):
that talk about this, and that we should agree, as Jesus says in Matthew 18, where two orthree of you agree on earth, it is true in heaven.
So it follows that if we have the Scriptures and we are to teach the Scriptures, that weshould agree on what the Scriptures teach.
And this is why we have creeds.

(34:52):
And I'd like to read to you a portion from—this is from the Epitome
to the formula of concord, and this is in our book of concord, the Christian book ofconcord, or the Lutheran confessions, uh and this explains the rule and norm and where

(35:15):
we're coming from, like what is our norm.
So we say, we believe, teach, and confess that the only rule and norm according to whichall teachings together with all teachers should be evaluated and judged
are the prophetic and apostolic scriptures of the Old and New Testament alone.
For it is written in Psalm 119, 105, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to mypath.

(35:40):
St.
Paul has written, even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospelcontrary to the one we preach to you, let him be accursed.
So there they established the scriptures are the norm.
But then they go on.
However, other writings by ancient or modern teachers, no matter whose name they bear,
must not be regarded as equal to the Holy Scriptures.

(36:02):
All of them are subject to the Scriptures.
Other writings should not be received in any other way or as anything more than witnessesthat show how this pure doctrine of the prophets and apostles was preserved after the time
of the apostles and uh at what places." So this would include, you know, the teachings ofthe Church Fathers, even the teachings of Luther, the writings of Luther.

(36:28):
The writings, you know, let's go back to uh Irenaeus, to Ignatius, to Clement of Rome, touh Justin Martyr, let's go to St.
Augustine, let's go to the Cappadocian Fathers, etc., etc., you know, Cyprian, uh allthese guys who have written good things, they've also not always hit the mark.

(36:55):
So we can't use them as our norm.
but we're going to use them rather as witnesses to the scriptures because what's theirsource?
What source are they relying on?
They're relying on scripture, right?
And so to make them the authority, an authority alongside scripture, or somehow theirconsensus, which they don't really hold a full consensus, to make them an authority next

(37:21):
to scripture uh would contradict uh not only the scriptures but really
how they acted themselves since they relied on scripture.
Now, of course, you have this quote from Augustine in uh his writings against theManicheans where he says, I would not believe the gospel except by the authority of the
Catholic Church.
There he's simply making the point that he's fighting against these schismatics who areattacking the true church, the true believers who are holding to the truth.

(37:50):
And he's saying, well, these guys are the ones who taught me the gospel.
They're the ones who gave me the gospel.
And so, you know, why would I turn against them and believe you when you're contradictingthe gospel?
But at any rate, so the point is that our norm is the Scriptures and these other fathersare witnesses to how the Scriptures are taught, which is very useful.

(38:17):
And this is why one of the things that the Lutheran Reformation did was revive a lot ofpatristic studies.
especially with, you know, starting with, with guys like Melanchthon, uh but thenespecially with Martin Chemnitz, where you have a, then John Gerhardt in the 16th and 17th
century, there's a ton of, of the studies of the church fathers, which has, which hascarried on to this day.

(38:43):
You can thank, you can thank the Lutherans for that, uh for that uh rise in interest ofthe fathers.
But then it goes on to talk about what's called symbols.
Okay?
So when we talk about normative authority, we also need to talk about then, okay, so howare we going to hold one another accountable to this normative authority?

(39:08):
And that's really, I think, what Andrew is trying to get at.
And what he's going to say is, okay, you're going to hold to this tradition, to thechurch's authority that is kind of passed down.
But listen to what the summary
uh the summary content rule and norm of the formula of concord, the epitome says.

(39:30):
It says,

(39:53):
the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, we pledge ourselves to these symbols, and in thisway we reject all heresies and teachings that have been introduced into God's Church
against them.
So the symbols are when the Church gets together and goes back to Scripture in order tocorrect and rebuke false teaching, which is, of course, against Scripture.

(40:17):
So how did they determine what these symbols are in the first place?
How did they determine
what the doctrine was in the first place, from Scripture.
And what's key here is that they are coming together and agreeing.
That's why this book is called the Book of Concord.

(40:37):
Concordia simply means to be one in heart, right?
To be of one accord, to agree on the doctrine.
As recorded in Luke chapter 2,
after all these people were baptized on Pentecost, they devoted themselves to theApostles' doctrine, to the fellowship, the communion, the breaking of bread, and the

(40:59):
prayers.
So then they go on.
However, schisms in matters of faith have also happened in our time.
So they're speaking here in the 16th century, the time of the Reformation.
Therefore, we regard as the unanimous consensus
and declaration of our Christian faith and confession, especially against the papacy andits false worship, idolatry, superstition, and against other sects.

(41:29):
The first—and this is what they hold to then—the first unaltered Augsburg confession, thatwas from June 25, 1530.
It is the symbol of our time, and it was delivered to the emperor, Charles V,
at Augsburg in the year 1530 in the Great Diet.

(41:52):
So that is diet was is where the emperor would meet with the other electors and princes ofthe Holy Roman Empire.
And so they presented this confession, which I would recommend reading.
in the Book of Concord.
We hold this confession along with its apology, that is its defense.

(42:13):
And the articles composed at small called in the year 1537, those were written by MartinLuther, which the chief theologian signed at the time.
Such matters also concern the laity and the salvation of their souls.
Therefore, we also confess Dr.
Luther's small and large catagisms as they are included in Luther's works.
They are the layman's Bible, because everything necessary for a Christian to know forsalvation is included in them.

(42:40):
which is handled more extensively in the Holy Scriptures.
So Hannah, you should read the large catechism.
Have you read any of it?
Yeah, get on reading that.
That's where you start.
Read the large catechism.
You memorize the small catechism, right?
Read the large catechism and then move on to the Augsburg Confession.
It makes for great devotion, home devotion.

(43:01):
Get into that habit now so that when, you know, as you get older, anyway, I'll stoplecturing you.
uh
So as announced above, all teachings are to be conformed in this way.
What is contrary to these confessions is to be rejected and condemned as opposed to theunanimous declaration of our faith.
So notice the key on unanimous.

(43:23):
Now, is this unanimous with all Christians everywhere?
Well, no.
But the Christian church is hidden under uh sectarians and under persecutions and under,you know,
uh heretical places, you're still going to find members of the church scatteredthroughout.

(43:44):
But see, this was not something that was done in a corner.
This is something that that uh that that that several hundred even a man I can't rememberhow many is even thousands.
There's several thousand uh people signed this and said, Yes, we will conform our teachingto this.

(44:04):
Why?
Because
It is derived from scripture.
It's a faithful exposition of scripture.
And then they go on to talk about uh how, you know, they can, they can accept otherwritings, uh private writings, but they're not, can't, private writings can't actually
serve as the norm.
uh Now I want to read one other part, and this is in the conclusion to the formula ofConcord.

(44:30):
This is just a couple paragraphs here.
These and similar articles, one and all, with
what belongs to them and follows from them we reject and condemn as wrong false hereticaland contrary to God's word." uh So, with what belongs to them and follows from them we
reject and condemn as wrong false heretical and contrary to God's word.

(44:51):
So here he's, this is, uh he's, what he's talking about is this is the conclusion of uhthese
erroneous articles that they listed all of these errors that had popped up and they say,reject this, we reject this, we reject this.
And that's sort of the conclusion to the whole formula of Concord where they had 11articles where they addressed issues like sin, free will, the righteousness of faith, good

(45:19):
works, law and gospel, third use of the law, the Lord's Supper, two natures of Christ,Jesus' descent.
into hell, and then the issue of church ceremonies and things that are neither commandednor forbidden, and so how a church service should be according to Scripture, and then

(45:40):
predestination, and then they just clarify what Scripture says about these things, andthen they reject the errors and potential errors, and then they go on to reject a bunch of
other errors.
So that's what they're saying here.
These and similar articles, ah these errors we reject as contrary to God's Word.
And uh then they go on to talk about the symbols again that they confess.

(46:05):
They say the three creeds, the apostles, the Nicene, the Athanasian, the AugsburgConfession and Apology, the Small-Colored Oracles, and Luther's Catechism.
All godly Christians should beware of these articles to the extent that the welfare andsalvation of their souls is dear to them.
um

(46:26):
So, I mean, this is like in the Nicene Creed, at the end of the Nicene Creed, we don't saythis in church, but some churches, actually, some Eastern churches, I think the Eastern
Orthodox still do this, where they say at the very end, it says, there are those who saythere was a time when he was not, and of those we say they are anathema.
Right?
And I would be all for adding that at the end of the Nicene Creed.

(46:49):
There those who say there was a time when the Son of God was not.
And we say they're anathema.
They are cursed.
Right?
And uh because what's important is that when you give the truth, the positive truth ofScripture, you also have to then follow it with your uh negative theses or what is it that
you condemn.
Now, this means that we condemn these things that are contrary to it.

(47:13):
So it's like when Paul says in Ephesians 2, we're saved by grace through faith, but it'snot of your works.
It's not of yourselves, right?
It's a gift of God.
ah
So then this is how they end, and this is a really important uh characteristic to thesesymbols which serve as a normed norm, which we agree to and hold one another accountable

(47:37):
to.
This is what every confession, whether it's your own private confession of the faith orit's your public confession like we do in church when we confess the creed, it's always in
view of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As Paul says to Timothy...
to Timothy and Timothy to preach the Word in season as season in view of Christ who'scoming.

(48:00):
He says, they say, in the sight of God and of all Christendom, the entire Church ofChrist, we want to testify to those now living and those who will come after us.
That's us.
This declaration presented here about all the controverted articles mentioned andexplained above and no other.

(48:22):
is our faith, doctrine, and confession.
By God's grace, with intrepid hearts, we are willing to appear before the judgment seat ofChrist with this confession and give an account of it.
We will not speak or write anything contrary to this confession, either publicly orprivately.

(48:43):
By the strength of God's grace, we intend to abide by it.
Therefore, after mature deliberation,
we have in the fear of God and by calling on His name, attached our signatures with ourown hands." And then they give their signatures.
the thing with...
So, this is our normative authority.
You have the Scriptures which norm everything, and then you have your symbols or yourconfessions which hold us accountable to the clear teaching of Scripture.

(49:13):
And the fact that we can even have these creeds and confessions...
uh
What it implies is that the Scriptures are clear enough to be understood and to be agreedupon.
People often do this, don't they, where they say, well, you have your views, I have myviews, and, you know, let's just agree to disagree.

(49:33):
No, the Scriptures, Jesus says that we should agree, and we can agree because theScriptures are clear.
Does that mean that the Scriptures in every place are as apparent?
No, of course not.
There are darker parts of scripture.
There are enigmas, there are mysteries, but they are illumined, given light by other partsof scripture.

(49:54):
And when we get together and we confess that and we hold one another accountable to it,then we are holding one another accountable to that authority.
And so that is, and so this is when instead of guys aping after
you know, these other churches that promise you this normative authority outside of theScriptures, what they should do is they should take a look at the Book of Concord and

(50:28):
consider, wait a second, we already have this uh confession which holds us accountable.
I was asked by a Catholic friend one time if I— uh
If, which of the councils, the ecumenical councils we as Lutherans accepted.

(50:48):
And I see, yeah, I guess the first like six, uh I think maybe seven.
uh But what I said to him was, what we accept is not the councils as such.
So, so when you have a council, you know, the Nice, the council of Nicea, for example, is325 AD, right?
And they have the creed, which ends at we believe in the Holy Ghost.

(51:11):
But then they have other kinds of canons where they give directions for, you know, thingslike jurisdiction, who, you know, who should, uh how a church should receive a pastor,
what the bishop should do and stuff like that.
And that's all kind of, uh you know, that's sort of like today's business kind of stuff.

(51:33):
right, like what we have in our conventions.
It's, you know, these canons are kind of casual street and there's a lot of good in there.
There's a lot that you can learn from these cannons, but we're not subscribing to thecannons as such.
We're not subscribing to the whole council as such.
Even the council in Jerusalem is recorded in, in, in, in, in, Acts chapter 15.
We don't subscribe to the entire, uh, council as such.

(51:57):
Cause that would mean then that we like don't eat blood sausages, you know, that
They were dealing with a particular situation, and so they had certain directions for howto deal with these particular situations.
But what we do subscribe to in Acts 15 is the doctrine that they taught, that the HolySpirit is given to the Gentiles as much as it is given to the Jews, that Christ is the

(52:24):
same for all people, that He has taken away the sin of the world, and that we all haveaccess into God's grace.
That's the confession that's given there, that's held there in Acts chapter 15.
That's what we hold to.
We don't even, you know, but that doesn't mean that every little application that they didfor themselves at that time, that we are subscribing to that action.

(52:53):
So the same thing then, you know, with these other councils.
When we say that we subscribe, that we accept the Council of Nicaea, we're saying that weaccept the Nicene Creed and the Council of Constantinople, the first council of
Constantinople in 381 kind of finished the Nicene Creed and added the part about the HolySpirit.
And so when we say we accept that council, we're saying we accept the doctrinaldefinition, the doctrinal consensus that was proclaimed.

(53:24):
And same thing with the Council of Ephesus that says that Mary is the mother of God, theCouncil of Chalcedon that says that there are two natures in Christ and yet they are not
confused with one another.
So we accept those definitions.
We accept those doctrinal statements and we hold one another accountable to that doctrine.

(53:44):
It doesn't mean that we accept every single decision that was made for the kind of
you know, housekeeping that they had to do at that time because obviously we have a littlebit different housekeeping.
You get that distinction, Hannah?
Okay, so now what I also want to talk about here, I want to end this little segment bytalking about, I guess it's not that little of a segment, we've gone quite a while, huh?

(54:14):
Is talking about this idea that, okay, you're going to escape feminism.
um If you leave your Protestant Church and then go join a Roman Catholic Church, go andjoin an Eastern Orthodox Church.
Now first what I'll say about the Roman Catholic Church is, mean, come on guys.
The Roman Catholic Church, where do you think we got women lectors?

(54:36):
Where do think that came from?
It came from the Roman Catholics because for them, as long as the priest, the main thingfor the priest is that he's doing the sacramental acts.
He's sacrificing the mass.
he's hearing confession, right?
So that's male-only priesthood, they'll hold onto that.
But then when it comes to women teaching men and proclaiming the word from the lectern,they say, well, you know, that's not, that's something that any layman can do.

(55:11):
Well, then a lot of Lutherans then ape after that and they do that.
What they're doing is they're succumbing to feminism.
And so, mean, Roman Catholicism should be, if you're trying to find a church that has notsuccumbed to feminism, first of all, that's not the only issue.
Feminism isn't the only issue, and I know that when you're inundated with something reallybad, it's hard to see anything else as an issue besides that thing.

(55:37):
Like, that becomes the main issue.
Okay, feminism isn't the only issue, there are other issues.
If feminism is the only issue for you, then what you're going to end up doing is becomingjust a chauvinist.
that and also you got to recognize that, you know what, if you're young and you're zealousand you're kind of a chauvinist, don't worry about it.
I always my mom told me that all men are chauvinists.

(55:58):
And my mom had like, you know, she had a bunch of boys and uh she submitted to my dad.
She is the least feminist person I've ever met in my life.
She told me, don't you ever let a woman
tell you what to do.
That's what my mom said to me.
And yet my mom also said, yeah, men are chauvinist pigs.
Why'd she say that?
Because it's in their nature, right?

(56:19):
So like, when my 14 year old son tells a story ah that is kind of offensive, um thatportrays like this this woman as like, like a poop monster, because she doesn't have a
man, you know, it's it's kind of it's pretty jarring, right?
It's like, well, yeah, he's just he's being 14, right?

(56:40):
And so if you find yourself, you're a little bit of a chauvinist and you're a man, yeah,you're just trying to get your bearings straight, you know, like don't worry about it.
But at the same time, be careful that you're not just flocking to something that says,hey, here's some guys with beards and this long tradition that they have for you.
You know, do a little bit more thinking than that.

(57:03):
And I also want you to consider this then about Eastern Orthodoxy.
And this is just as true in the Roman Catholicism.
um The Eastern Orthodoxy has succumbed to mysticism.
They're rampant with mysticism.
And what mysticism is, in other words for it, is enthusiasm.

(57:25):
It's this idea that you're going to have an encounter with God that is separate from theexternal revealed Word of God in the Scriptures, right?
So you can do it through this kind of practice where you like pray and try to get yourmind to go down to your heart and do these kind of internal exercises and then you'll have

(57:45):
visions and all that kind of stuff.
In the fifth century, which was around the time when there was this controversy about Marybeing the mother of God, do know why people, one reason why a lot of people were reluctant
to call Mary the mother of God?
was because, especially in the area of Ephesus, there were Marian cults going on wherethey were mixing the Christian religion with these pagan religions.

(58:13):
They were worshipping Mary as like this goddess.
That's effeminate.
Totally effeminate.
I mean, this is...
And now obviously they're wrong to say that Mary is not the mother of God.
Of course she's the mother of God.
She bore God in her womb, right?
Jesus is God.
uh But...
you can kind of understand where some of them were probably coming from.

(58:36):
This business of looking at Mary as this like co-redemptrix, that is total effeminate,right?
That's like looking at God like, well, I can't go to Jesus who's the one mediator betweenGod and man, whose love is hard and he sweats blood and he drinks the cup.

(59:02):
for you and he bears the wrath of God, the judgment of God.
That instead you have to go and find some kind of, you uh you got to run to mother, yougot to run to mommy, you know, and find some other kind of mediation through her.
That's being a mama's boy.

(59:22):
Now, should we respect Mary and see her as a symbol of, should we call her a mother?
Of course we should, because she bore God in the flesh, she bore our savior.
And we should honor her as a mother of faith, just like we honor Sarah and we honor allthe other mothers in our lives, you know?
uh As Paul says, treat all older women as mothers.
So certainly we should honor our mothers.

(59:44):
We should honor our spiritual mothers.
But don't treat them like in a mama's boy kind of way.
That's effeminate, right?
And what they're giving you is just more of that.
Also consider that the Eastern Orthodox Church
denies the vicarious satisfaction.
In other words, they deny that Jesus bore the wrath of God in our place.

(01:00:05):
They water down the teaching of original sin.
They call it like original corruption.
So they're going to take away the severity of sin and God's judgment.
They're going to water that down and replace it with some kind of mystical experience thatyou go through.
uh That is effeminate.
And what it is, it's enthusiasm.

(01:00:27):
Again, enthusiasm is this idea that you can encounter God, that you can have some kind ofrelationship with God, or some kind of experience with God apart from His promises from
Scripture, apart from His word from Scripture.
And this is the thing, when you get punished by your father for talking back to your mom,have you ever gotten punished by your father for talking back to your mom?

(01:00:52):
You don't have to answer that, but maybe you have, yeah.
You were seeing the face of God.
Have you ever been punished by your dad?
There's one time when I talked back to my mom, my dad grabbed me right here and I waslike, my bowels were like getting loose.
It was just like, and it was, he put the fear of God in me.
Why?
Because God's Word tells us that to honor our father and our mother, God's Word tells usthat our father and our mother are the face of God.

(01:01:21):
And so it's through that revelation of God's Word
that God works through my father to teach me God's wrath, right?
And when we try to get away from that and instead rely on some, you know, seemingly morefoolproof authority than the Scriptures, what is the difference between that and this

(01:01:46):
business that we find in the popular culture that's constantly trying to subvert theauthority of a father?
Like,
like in Home Improvement and all these other uh shows that I grew up watching.
uh And so, Luther says in his Small-Called Articles that enthusiasm is that poison fromthe devil that he first put into Adam and Eve when he got them to turn away from God's

(01:02:14):
external word and follow their own dreams.
And this is exactly what people are doing when they claim to have these mysticalexperiences.
of the saints or Mary or whatever.
And they claim then to rely upon this other authority, this other normative authority thatis not derived from scripture, that is not uh dependent and normed by scripture alone.

(01:02:44):
It's like some guy coming into your house and replacing your dad.
I mean, my goodness, could you imagine such a thing?
And that sadly is often what happens with kids these days.
uh So now I want to move on and this won't take quite as long.

(01:03:04):
uh But speaking of the Roman Catholics, especially, but I suppose the Eastern Orthodoxtoo, one thing that you will hear from the Roman Catholics.
is that the only time the scriptures speak of faith alone.
So do you believe that you're saved by faith alone, Hannah?

(01:03:29):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
You're justified by faith alone, by grace alone, by Christ alone, right?
We have these solas, right?
These alone.
Scripture alone is our authority, right?
And so what Smarty Pant uh papists like to say is, well, the only place in the Bible thattalks about faith alone is in James chapter two verse...

(01:03:57):
20.
And I'm gonna read it here for you in the Greek so that we really know that we have it.
It says, he says, I'm just gonna read, I'll translate it English.
You see, you see that a man,

(01:04:24):
is let's see here
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

(01:05:02):
Not by faith alone.
They're like, boom, you Lutherans say that you're justified by faith alone.
And James says, you are not justified by faith alone.
And they get after Luther for adding faith alone to passages like, you know, like inRomans chapter three, they were justified by faith apart from the works of law.

(01:05:22):
He adds the word alone in there.
Right.
And well, first of all, the word alone is simply
to, is simply uh reinforcing what the script, what the text is actually saying.
When we say faith alone, we're saying, therefore not by works, right?
Okay, so, but they're saying that, no, no, well, the only time that the scriptures eversay faith alone is when James is saying that you're not justified by faith alone, but also

(01:05:50):
by works.
All right, so first of all, what James is talking about is being justified before men,before the world.
by observation.
He says, he says, you see that a man is justified uh by works.
Well, of course, that's true.
Can you see that I'm justified by faith alone?
No.

(01:06:11):
You hear it from God's promise and before God then only faith can grasp God's promise.
But if you see that I'm justified, you have to see my what?
I always put Hannah on the spot.
My works, right?
You have to see my works.

(01:06:31):
And so, first of all, there's that.
James is not talking about being justified before God being received into his favor andhis sins being forgiven.
He's talking rather about what we observe, that God vindicates us.
He doesn't just justify us before himself.

(01:06:53):
But he justifies us before the world by proving to the world that our faith isn't dead.
And the way that he proves it to the world is by manifesting to them the works that faithproduces, right?
And that's why James says it was fulfilled then what was said to Abraham that Abrahambelieved God and God counted it to him as righteousness.

(01:07:21):
It was fulfilled in this sense
when Abraham uh obeyed God to give his son as a sacrifice, that God was manifestingthrough Abraham that his faith was actually genuine.
And in doing that, actually, he was illustrating exactly what Abraham's faith was in.

(01:07:41):
What's Abraham's faith in?
In God giving his son as a sacrifice.
And so God made Abraham see through his own eyes.
so that he would learn more deeply what his faith is in.
um And so, of course, God justifies by works, but that's not the same as him saving us andgiving us eternal life.

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He justifies us by works, by vindicating us, proving that we're righteous before the worldso that you see that we are justified by the works that come out of faith.
That's how you can see that.
Now, with that, they're also wrong when they say that nowhere in the Scriptures does itsay faith alone except for in James chapter 2 verse 24.

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If you go to Luke chapter 8, this is the story of Jairus, who was a leader of a synagoguewhose daughter was dying.
And he came to Jesus and he said, you know, Master, please come with me.
or my daughter's dying, so Jesus goes with him and he walks with him and he encourages himthe whole way.
And then this woman comes and she has this flow of blood and she touches his garment andJesus heals her and Jesus tells her, your faith has saved you, your faith has made you

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well.
It's often translated as made you well, but it's actually a zotzo in the Greek, is tosave, right?
So now listen to what Jesus says here to Jairus.
So, uh while they were still talking, this is verse 49, someone uh from the leader of thesynagogue uh came uh and he said to him, your daughter has died.

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Do not bother.
the teacher, right?
That is, don't bother Jesus.
Your daughter's already died.
And so what did Jesus come to give us?
Life, right?
He came to save us.
That's what's going on in justification by faith alone, right?
So this is what Jesus says.

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I remember uh what James said, that you see that you are justified by works and,
not by faith alone.
This is what Jesus says to Jairus, verse 50.
says, Okay?
Jesus uses the exact same words.

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Well, Pistah-o is the verb of Pistus, but still it's the same, it's basically the sameword.
Only believe monon Pistah-o and what will happen?
She will be saved.
This is the point.
Salvation.
Jesus brings salvation when he heals people.
That's the main point of his signs, his miracles.

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They're signs.
They point to his salvation that he brings.
And so when Jesus is talking to Jairus,
Does he say, uh believe and uh add works to it and then you will be saved or then she willbe saved?
No.
He says, only believe.

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So Jesus himself teaches faith alone.
so, this is, so when people, you you might hear this from someone who says, well,
You know, faith alone, that word faith alone, that phrase faith alone is only found inJames where he says that it's not by faith alone.
First of all, you've to understand that faith alone simply means faith apart from works,which is clearly taught in Scripture.

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And uh second of all, the Bible does teach faith alone.
Jesus teaches faith alone to Jairus.
So now, when we talk about this being justified before men,
and being justified before the world.
We got to understand that God is still the one doing both of them.
So St.
Paul makes this distinction between justification before men and justification before theworld in Romans chapter four.

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He says Abraham had reason for boasting by being justified by his works.
But then he says, but not before God.
So he did have reason to boast before us.
That is as our example.
And this is when God proved his faith by his obedience, right, as he gave his son uh Isaacand offered him and was willing to actually kill him in obedience to God.

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So to be justified before God is to be justified through faith in the promise of Christwho is the propitiation for our sins, as he is the turning away of God's wrath.
To be justified before man, as...
As James says, you show me your faith and I'll show you my faith by my works.

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To be justified before men is to be shown before men that you are justified before God.
Faith alone can't do that, right?
Faith alone can't show other people that you're righteous because people can't see yourfaith.
But God who sees in secret rewards you, as Jesus says.
And so this is, so we've got to make this clear.

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To be justified before man does not mean that we're justified by men.
No, God is always the one who's justifying whether it is before men or before himself.
And so we see this then in uh Job.
We've been going through Job in Bible class.

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And with Job, he is standing before the tribunal of God.
There's Satan as the prosecutor, there's God as the judge, there's Job.
being accused by Satan and God is sending afflictions on him.
For what purpose?
To prove to Satan that the faith that God gave to Job is genuine.

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And then what Job is looking for is a defender, a defense attorney, whether it's amediator, a comforter, advocate, or a redeemer.
and he's having a hard time finding one.
His friends aren't doing a very good job, and his friends then are starting to assume thathe must have been guilty in some civil, worldly sense, and that's why God is doing this.

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And so Job argues with his friends, and he ends up proving, winning the argument withthem, that he is righteous, that he is blameless.
And so everyone's just kind of quiet, and then God shows up.
first Elihu shows up and speaks for God and then God shows up in the whirlwind and Godrebukes Job for justifying himself rather than justifying God.

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What does it mean to justify God?
What it means to justify God is to believe what God says, to let his words stick.
And so if God has sent me afflictions, I still believe that he's just and the justifier ofthe one who has faith in Jesus.
So it's only after Job repented that God told his friends that Job spoke what was true.

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So what is God doing here?
Job is justifying, or what is God doing here?
He's justifying Job before his friends by saying Job spoke the truth, even though Job
didn't always speak what was right.
God rebuked him for not justifying God and trying to justify himself.

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And so the point is before God, Job is justified by the mediator, the mediation, theredemption, uh the advocacy of God.
That's how he's justified before God.
But then God turns to his friends and says, uh
that my servant Job has spoken what is right.

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So this is called vindication and it's actually, it's the same word in Greek forjustification, right?
God vindicates us and he justifies us.
So to vindicate would be to declare you righteous on the basis of observable things, okay?
And so God has...

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God has told you to do something, you went and did it, people got mad at you for doing it,then God shows up and says, no, that was the right thing to do.
That's vindication, right?
ah Justification, as we usually speak of it, which you can understand it as the same thingas vindication if it's simply justification before the world, before people, observable
things.

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But justification, as we usually speak of it before God, is that He declares yourighteous, except on the basis of what Jesus has done.
on the mediation that he has provide.
So, whenever you pursue those works which make your election sure, as St.
Peter says, you are repenting of the sins in which you would otherwise be walking.

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And this is whole point of vindication.
God is teaching you to live in daily repentance.
ah And so, repentance always includes both rejecting the bad and affirming the good.
And so when the apostles admonish us to walk in good works, like what James is doing,they're admonishing us simply to repent, lest we let sin reign in us and make us obey its

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passions.
And in this way, God is vindicating us.
That is, he's justifying us before men.
He tries our faith, that is, he tests our faith, and he proves it to heaven, to earth, andto hell.
that we are his children.
We experience it, of course, as a rebuke.

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We experience it as reproof, right?
It's painful, but God reveals it to the world as proof that the faith he put in our heartsis true.
Now, I'll end with one final observation.
uh

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God is always vindicating himself, right?
He's always vindicating himself because God's name and honor is at stake.
When you are, when your faith is being tested, who gave you that faith?
Who gave you your faith?
The Holy Spirit did.

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God gave you your faith.
So when your faith is being tested, God is testing your faith.
Who's
Whose name, whose honor is at stake there?
His honor, right?
He is staking his entire name on this.
And so for his namesake, he blots out our sins.

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And also by his might, he vindicates us before men.
He pleads our cause.
And he's showing that his own creation of faith in our hearts is good.
And he's proving that his cause is good.
And so if you do your duty, whatever that might be, husband or...

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father, mother, wife, trusting in God's mercy, you know, child, employee, whatever yourduty is, and you trust in God's mercy.
God is vindicating you in what you're doing, not because of how worthy your efforts are,but because it's His cause.

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He's the one who called you to do that, right?
And so He's the one
who is going, the very one who gave you both your faith and your duty and the crosses thatare attached to that to prove your faith, he's the one who's going to prove it to all be
true because it all came from him.
But if we confuse this with how we are justified before God and received into his kingdom,then we take

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the merit away from him.
And then we end up having no certainty of our salvation.
And this is really the whole point of all of this.
When these young men, they're trying to find a church that actually, you know, upholdsassertive, authoritative teaching.
What are they looking for?
They're looking for certainty.

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Well, the Scriptures give us certainty.
The Scriptures give us doctrinal certainty on what is taught and what we can assert to betrue.
And most importantly and most central, they give us the certainty of our salvation throughthe promise of Jesus Christ who has died for our sins and been raised again for our

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justification before God.
And so that means that we can do the duty that God has given us, walk in the works that hehas given us uh with the certainty that God is going to prove his work to be true and he
is going to preserve us in that faith.
So I think that's enough for today.

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