Continued review of (Dis)Ordered by Rev. Christopher S. Esget.
Immanuel LCMS Fairview Podcast
Bible Class - September 1, 2024
OK, we are in not discernment, but disordered. We were finishing up-- we finished up three, I think, chapter three, appetite for destruction. And we were in chapter four, considering some of these definitions that he spoke about. And last class, we did spend a lot of time, too, on this idea of mortal and venial sins, and this idea that it is a recognition of the-- it's almost more a description of the person than the actual sin that's taking place, because we know all sins, of course, are rebellion against God. But like when Jesus tells his disciples, when he institutes the office of the holy ministry, he says, Jesus breathed on the disciples. And does anybody remember that passage? He breathed on his disciples and said to them, whose ever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. But whose ever sins you don't forgive, right? They are not forgiven. So even here, what we would call in the institution of the holy ministry part of this, even here, Jesus is saying, look, consider the person, right? Sins, right, there's no different word for sins in both of these verses when Jesus says this. There are some sins that you forgive, and there are some sins that you will be tasked with that you are to say you are not forgiven. And it could be the case, right? We think about-- it's a little different, but think about what did Peter do to our Lord? He denied him. He denied Christ, and Jesus restored him. Judas, then, of course, he denied or betrayed Christ, and yet he did not believe. He did not have faith. So one person-- and this also, too, is interesting because it kind of relates maybe. I haven't thought over this much. It just kind of dawned on me that the reason that Cain was so angry, right? Do you remember why Cain was angry, why he murdered his brother? Because the last person came up, because he gave us sacrifice. They both gave us sacrifice, didn't they? But his wasn't out of faith. His was out of duty. Right. They both gave us sacrifice. God accepted one, but not the other. The other, Cain's, was a sin, his sacrifice, because it wasn't with faith. So this is why Cain was so angry. He says, Abel, why is his sacrifice accepted? We're the same. We're the same, or some people saying, why is that sin forgiven, but not mine? I did the same thing. Well, it's faith. So that's all I wanted to kind of tail in on that discussion and not discuss it too much more if you have questions come to me, and we can discuss it. But it is this recognition, which the author said was helpful for him, right? In his Christian walk about sins that he committed and receiving the gospel as comfort and forgiveness. So just wanted to tie that up a little bit, and then move on to-- oh, yeah. We'll have another discussion of another word that's misused. Chapter 4, selfie, begins the discussion of the Black Mirror, this wonderful Black Mirror that I am trying to enslave and use for good and the proclamation of the gospel and good. So as we reflect on the questions on page 77, anything in particular-- oh, I have to brag-- that came up in my social media feed. Yeah, do y'all remember that little girl? She would murder me if she knew I was doing this. [LAUGHTER] She's very smart. We can go. Look at what this says. 12 years ago-- I thought it was yesterday. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, so she's doing good. I appreciate everybody asking, and how she's doing. She's settling well there in Tyler, and enjoying the university there. OK, in what ways? Or first, I'll ask if there were anything in chapter 4 that anybody thought was worth mentioning or examining, that you thought was good in the book. In that chapter, chapter 4, selfie. Any outlines or anything, anything lined? This is on page 70. This is an interesting thing to contemplate and think about. The paragraph that starts with the title, worship my face. This is-- yeah, this is interesting. And if you look at this word face, even in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, the face of God, or the face of a person, even going back to Cain and Abel, God comes to Cain and says, Cain, why is your face drawn down? Why is your face downward? And it was because he was stewing in his anger and his sin. So worship my face. He takes this to worship, right? He talks about different worship, and images, and icons, and being in a Byzantine-- use that word on page 70-- Byzantine-style churches typically have worship surrounded by things that the idea is to take the worshipper surrounded and to remind him of that passage in Hebrews, that when we're in church, we are surrounded by the cloud of witnesses, that when we are in church, the book of Hebrews tells us that you come to a mountain, you are surrounded by saints, angels, and archangels, and all the hosts of heaven, that the most people in church-- there's no such thing as what we call a low church Sunday. There's no such thing as a Sunday service where the pews are not packed or the room is not packed. Hebrews says, when you come to worship, you don't see what's going on. Like Saint Paul says in our spiritual battles, there's spiritual battles all around us. Well, along these lines, the book of Hebrews teaches us and says, when you come to worship, you come to a mountain that cannot be touched. Yet, you still come into the presence of our God who's a consuming fire, like in the book of Exodus, when God tells Moses to come up and to get the 10 commandments and how it was thundering and lightning. And if anybody would touch the mountain, they would die. If anyone would come into the presence of God, they would die without God telling them you come. 'Cause God then told Moses and some of the elders at different times to come up on the mountain when God invites you. And I think I've talked about this a little bit. Remember God told Moses and all the people. He said, if anybody touches this mountain, they will die, man, beast. All right, Moses, come up on the mountain. Mm, yeah, right? Imagine that. So this is kind of the same thing. What, why was Cain's offering not accepted in the presence of God? 'Cause he didn't have faith. Moses had to trust what God said to him. Moses, yeah, come up to the mountain. And to take that, can you imagine taking that first step onto that mountain, just being like, oh God, please. But God does not lie. And so he, so the book of Hebrews, this is along the lines of what Pastor Esgut is talking about. Talking about worship and the things that are in worship. And there is an interesting word there on page 70. The word that I have come to realize is helpful for me. Have any of y'all heard the word venerated? It's in the middle of that paragraph on page 70. Yep, yep. Another word that can be misused, like all words, venerated, he says this. The images or icons are venerated. The worshipper is thus mindful of Christ and the great cloud of witnesses in the saints. So this word venerated, I thought was useful, beneficial and worth looking at because it is misused. Kind of like mortal and venial sins. That venerated is a word that the church uses to describe when you look at an image and it teaches you or it points you to Christ. So we see like this cross up here. We see this cross, but there's something further beyond the cross that we are being taught and pointed to, right? We're not being pointed to and taught, we're not being reminded of, oh, I don't know, of popcorn, right? We're being reminded and taught of Christ. And so we see the cross and we venerate it, which means we don't worship the cross, but we worship what the cross represents. We venerate, or even in the Old Testament, if you wonder, well, is this word even, why would we say and do that? Well, if you remember in the Old Testament, there was a story of the Bronze Serpent. You remember this? And Moses put the Bronze Serpent up on the staff and the people were to look at it. Same thing to look at it in faith because what did the Bronze Serpent, what was it connected to? Why was looking at the Bronze Serpent? Why did it heal the people? Okay, it healed them from the snake, the venomous bites. Why did it heal them? Because they trusted in faith God's promise. He attached his promise to the snake and said, look at the snake, right? And you will be healed. You'll be not just healed, you'll be saved from death. And so then they kept that Bronze Serpent. They put it in the Ark of the Covenant. They carried it with them and they had it along until the people started to worship the snake, until the Bronze Serpent. They started to worship that and use it kind of like a good luck charm. In the Israelites, they do this all the time. Even with the Ark of the Covenant, if you're in the Tuesday afternoon Bible study, you know, we've talked about this. Where the Israelites, they had the Ark of the Covenant that they were traveling with through the Promised Land and all around. And they said, let's take the Ark of the Covenant and let's go battle this nation, but they didn't pray to God first. They didn't ask God if they should go battle this nation. They took the Ark of the Covenant and assumed God's gonna agree with all of our great ideas. So they took the Ark of the Covenant and it became like a rabbit's foot, like a good luck charm. They began to worship the Bronze Snake, the Ark of the Covenant. And so they took that Ark of the Covenant and they went to battle and what do you think happened? They lost. They got creamed, yes. They got decimated and they didn't go to the priest. They didn't go to anybody to ask if it actually is God's will that they go to battle. They just said, hey, God's on our side, let's yee-haw! Let's go, right? We wouldn't do that today, would we? God agrees with me. Woo, let's go and do this, right? And a lot of times that leads to a sin and then that it's going to snowball. So we do this in politics a lot, right? And in the United States, we think the United States is whatever we decide, God's going to approve, right? But that's not the case. So this point in the using this word venerated is it helps us to have a sort of a word or it helps me to have a framework that I can see across in church, I can see a crucifix, I can see a pastor and say, oh, what is he up there for? What is he doing? What's his job? And we can venerate things, recognizing that, okay, but we're not crossing that line of what? Worshiping him, right? So this is why churches and why even God in the Old Testament and teaching Solomon on how to build the temple, there's all kinds of imagery on the temple, there's gold, right? Even gold itself is something to be venerated in a sense, but not worshiped. Why did God have everything in the temple lined with gold? No, why not? I like the way you think. Let's do that in our sanctuary. With all the, what do you think? - Everyone had to give it a funny. - Right, yeah. - No, it was... - It didn't just come out of thin air, the members had to give it. - And then they got it from God. - Other nations, yep, yep. - It's beautiful. - Okay, it's beautiful. - Why wouldn't you want the temple of the one true God to reflect beauty if he is truth, goodness, and beauty? - If he is dwelling there, yep, of his presence. So, you know, and this has been a point of contention even within the Reformation, right? Because there were the radical reformers who said no, you're worshiping the cross, you're worshiping crucifixes, you're worshiping stained glass, right? They took it too far. They became known as what we would kind of characterize, we would call them iconoclasts. They see icons and they want to destroy them. - Now churches look like warehouses. - Yes, and that's the points of this paragraph and this chapter and talking about this and saying, look, just because something has been abused, if we know words, if we kind of know vocabulary, like venerating something, then we can know, we use that word knowing that there's a line that we must not cross, because then we become like the Israelites, who just think that the cross, right? That you see it on TV with musicians, right? Pop musicians, what are they wearing around their neck? A cross, but what are they singing about? What are their lives? What kind of lives are they leading, right? Or the politician, right? Going to the church service, right? And going to church, you know, and saying, you know, these sorts of things. Yeah, it becomes, we have to be careful, it doesn't become a tool to please the flesh. Or something that teaches us contrary to what the scriptures say, right? Okay, yes, Sarah. A venerable, just kind of the same way words, veneration means likely to man respect, like the venerable mister. Oppers? (audience laughs) Sorry, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's kind of like, you know, venerating, you know, when you go into these big Byzantine churches, or, you know, other, even some Lutheran churches that have a lot of more in stained glass, you walk in and, you know, it commands, like, it's something to be perspective, like, it's. No. How about, yeah, how about, should kids venerate their parents? Yeah, I don't know, yes. Yeah, yeah, because what a, what a parents teach you. Who are your parents? Okay, they are God's, they are God's appointed representative to you, right? So, you know, and that's why I think this word is helpful when we use, and we see this word, now you're gonna be looked at weird if people, if you use the word venerate, you know, but that's okay. But what it does help is it says, look, you know, just as God used in the Old Testament, and even, even you can see in the New Testament, right? Jesus, he saw the temple, right? He said, look, the temple, the dwelling place of God, right? That was only meant to teach you about what I'm going to do. Jesus said, what's he gonna do to the temple, the sanctuary of God? I'm gonna tear it down in three days, build it back. Jesus said, look at the temple and appreciate it. Jesus told the lepers, he told them, go back to the priest so he can declare you clean. There is the warning always there though, and when we use the word venerate, and we know what it means, that helps us in our mind and in our discipline to make sure and say, okay, what would it look like if I'm worshiping this? And for us in our own personal lives, how do you know, let's take out religious veneration in your life, in your daily life, the things you have, or the reputation you have, or things like that? How do you know if you've begun to worship something? - Because it's more important, do you? - Okay, it becomes more important than your faith. How does that look on a practical level? What happens then, you're driving your Ferrari around, sorry, Bob, to expose you. You're driving your Ferrari around, and somebody runs into it. - It's only a lease. (laughing) - Somebody runs into it, or somebody does just a, here we go, somebody does just a venial sin against you. Someone unintentionally sins against you, and they run into your car, or they step on your toes, or they say something about your kid, or they say something about whatever it is that you are venerating, or going beyond venerating, how do we know if we're worshiping something? We get angry when it gets taken away, or when someone threatens our throne. It's just flying off the handle, right? That's how you know if you're going beyond venerating, we're told to take all things captive to Christ, right? All things, but when do we stop, right? And that's what this word, and he used it in here, just throwing it off, and he defined it then, right? Mindful of Christ, and the great cloud of witnesses in the saints. So then he builds that up, and he says, and this is part of the reason, right? Not understanding this distinction, or this word venerate, recognizing that you can have something beautiful, and it can be used in service of the gospel. The iconoclasts, or people who wanted to just get rid of everything historical, which sounds like Marxism, get rid of everything historical in the church, and we're gonna start with something new. We're gonna have new traditions, we're gonna have new images, we're gonna have new messages. We're going to get rid of everything, and we're going to have our own images. And that's what he says here. He says, yeah, once you move away from that, yeah, you can use whatever images you want in the church. It's not commanded by God. But when you do use other images, what are you saying? What are you teaching? What is it that you are pointing to? And he makes the point, I think, very astutely and very good, that modern churches that feature a stage with large screens or performers who are the focal point. If icons, and Christ, and pictures of him, and biblical imagery remind you of being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, things you don't see, what is it that the modern church is pointing you toward? (indistinct) - Maybe world, maybe, and I'd say we wanna give them benefit of the doubt, but looking at those things, what are the images that they bring forth? What are the images that they use? Okay, that's his point in this selfie, in this chapter. Him attending another local church in Washington, DC, and kind of speaking of that. And he talks about that the pastor, in particular, the preacher, is supposed to point you to Christ. That's one of the reasons why we have vestments. That's why we wear callers. That's why we have things in the church. It's intended to use some sort of biblical imagery to point you to Christ. But if that is tossed aside and thrown aside, he makes the point and says, you know, when it's just the image of a pastor detached from the people, he says, there was a pastor at this church, he did the sermon through a screen. A pastor detached from the people mediated through screens is a substance, I'm reading on page 72, is a substantial change from the church's incarnational ministry, which is centered on human interaction with in-person words and hands that absolve and bless, wash with water, and make personal distribution of sacred food. So he talks about this idea that a disordered desire, that of being a celebrity, narcissistic, black mirror, that when you're staring at the phone, it's teaching you to love yourself. That's why it's so addictive. It's the physical right side of this, the chemical, the dopamine hits that it provides. He says, this is a disordered desire and churches should appeal to teach us using symbols and art to point us away from ourselves. And that's part of me wearing robes on Sunday, is I don't look like you, right? Amen. Yeah, thanks me to God. That was gonna say, thanks me to God, right? Yeah, I don't look like you, I don't dress like you because part of my job is to say, you're hearing the words of Christ. It's as if Christ is standing here among you. And not that you necessarily have to, right? But you have to ask the question, why not? Why change or what ways can we use to support the gospel? Okay? Any thoughts or questions on that? I know, I said a lot. - If you focus on that screen and I've been in the process, but do that, then you're focused on the screen. Do not focus on the author at all. - It's reasonable. - If there is an author, but even if there is an author, you know, you are focused on looking at the hymn on the screen or the past remove. - Well, and we have to be, yeah, and we want to be careful. We want to respect and say, you know, is that the fault of the screen or the user? - The user. - Yeah, just like anything else, right? It can be misused, can be used rightly. He takes it, takes this point and leads it. And he says, you know, this leads to this temptation within our disordered fallen flesh for everything to be about the personality of the pastor or to be about the personality of the church as something apart from Christ. He writes this or this is one of the things he says. The answer to celebrity pastors, right? Or have you ever considered how robes and pulpit take away from the man? The answer to celebrity pastors, meaning robes and pulpit that makes me disappear. The more I disappear, the better. The answer to misusing this and having celebrity pastors is not to seek pastors who are cold, distant and unrelatable, but what is the correct balance between desiring a talented preacher and making too much of him? Ideally, people are not drawn to the church because of the man, but to the one whom he works for, Jesus. There are many ways pastors can carry themselves that draws too much attention on themselves and not Christ. At any rate, all Christians face this temptation that we, right, that we as Christians, we are holy. We are set apart. You represent Christ. So people should venerate you. You should make yourself, maybe that's our nicknames, right? Venerable. There was a church father called the Venerable Bede. I don't remember much about him, but I always thought it was a funny name. So we are, you are venerable. You are to be venerated. You are yourself to know that you represent Christ. So you are a work of art, right? You are beautiful, you are, you are, what does God say? You are knit together in the womb of your mother. You are not trash. You are holy and righteous in God's eyes, his treasure. Okay, so that I thought was good and worthwhile to consider and mention, that social media, right, distracts us, it feeds narcissism. And he tells a little story about narcissism, narcissists. Verse three, you guys tell me, what should my goal be in preaching and worship? Christ, crucified. Yeah. Now where did you get that from? I don't know. You read it on a fortune cookie. Yeah, Saint Paul said, when I came to you, I did not bring to you lofty wisdom or great words, but I came to you and preached Christ in him crucified. Okay, good, right? The pastor's goal in preaching and worship should be pointing us to Christ crucified. What else? I'll kill you with the law, but then raise you back up to the gospel. Jesus said to his disciples when he was ascending, when he was leaving, he said, go into all the world beginning in Jerusalem, preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins in my name. Preach repentance, the law and forgiveness, the gospel. Okay, good, taking this from the scriptures, very good. The goal in preaching and worship, anything else? You guys are making it very easy on me. That's all I got to do. Man. - You have to also in a sense interact with your congregation. - Okay, yep, yep, be alive. Yeah, yep. Jesus said to Peter, go, they tell us this at seminary. I don't know if you've heard this yet, Grant. Our Lord said to Peter, feed my sheep, not kick my dogs. - I know, you give us the gifts that Christ is. - Yep, yep, feed. So, yep, sacrament. Okay, all right, oh, then this great definition, he takes us to this Greek word, hedoni or hedonism, right? And he lined out a couple of places, right, where hedonism is used in the scriptures, right? Look at this on page 72 and 73. If you look on 73, he's talking about the self-care trend, books with titles like Top of page 73. I love me more. How to find happiness and success through self-love and love yourself. These reveal the widespread acceptance of an ethic that turns the scriptures to great commandments on their head. Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law. Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your mind. This is the great and first commandment and a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law in the prophets, Matthew 22. Okay, so then you go another paragraph or two down and look, he introduces us to this Greek word, hedoni. The Greek word for pleasure. Okay, now look, he's going to point us to where the scriptures use this word hedonism or hedoni. At the top of page 74, this is the word that Jesus uses in Luke eight to describe the soil that receives the seed with great joy at first. And then what happens? The top of page 74. The seed grows up and then all the sudden weeds choke out this seed that blossomed so quick and was so full of energy. And then it says they are choked by the cares, riches and hedonism of life. Luke eight, 14. The Apostle Paul also uses this word in Titus three. We ourselves, top of page 74, we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and hedonism, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. And now here James is going to use this word hedonism in the middle of the page there. He says, what causes quarrels, fights among you? Is it not this that your hedonism is at war within you? You desire and do not have so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel. You have because you do not ask. You ask and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend on your hedonism, you adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? It changes the verse a little bit when it hits your ears when you put that Greek word in there, doesn't it? I mean, that word hedonism, we hear that word and we think, oh, pretty controversial, right? And I think that's pretty beneficial. I really appreciated that he brought that Greek out with these passages. Talking about disorder, desire and hedonism, the self-care, loving yourself, self-pleasure, right? Is the source, James says, of you're arguing, you're fighting. You love yourself more than God and your neighbor. So then, question, is pleasure always bad? Are there times in history where people have kind of erred that far, saying that any pleasure is bad? Yeah, how so? What do you think? Okay, well, that's the difficult. Yeah, they see pleasure can become a God, so we have to avoid pleasure at all costs. No, right, yeah. Sometimes the church, sometimes people, even ourselves, right, usually it happens after we eat a big lemon meringue pie all by ourselves, so I've been told. And you're full of air and you're like, man, I'm never eating a pie again, right? That was embarrassing. I'm not gonna touch the pie. I'm gonna, I should have shared that, yeah, yeah. Why, this, I'm never touching the pies again. In fact, I'm never touching another drop of sugar, never not flavoring nothing, right? And it can go to the other side, right? This happened in the Reformation too with the priests and the menot, you know, celibacy of priests, right? They aired too far in saying no, a priest has to be above the desire for pleasure, has to be above any sort of seeking of pleasure. You have to beat yourself every day. Some people can do it. But remember too, there's also a certain amount of pleasure gained from causing yourself to suffer. So, right, no, not all pleasure is ungodly, is wicked. It is, how would you describe pleasure then? How would, how would you describe the rightly use of, how can we distinguish between godly and ungodly pleasure? - Can I be taking pleasure? (laughing) - Yeah, sure it was. (laughing) Speaking of eating pies. (laughing) - Maybe taking pleasure in our vocations, whether it's like pleasure is someone's spouse or pleasure and your motherhood or fatherhoods. - Yeah, yeah. And that godly pleasure will look different for different vocations, right? And I think that leads back to those four words that we used for love, right? That the Greeks understood that love looks different in your vocations. So they even had a different word for each of those. But yeah, godly pleasure. What is God's word? Say is godly pleasure. How do we reorder our disordered desires and for pleasure in particular? And pleasure, godly pleasure, will look different for different Christians. We use our God-given wisdom. You know, does, is my pleasure affecting somebody else negatively, right? That also is something we need to keep in mind. But chiefly we go back to the word of God to see what that is. All right, he talks a little bit also about addiction and how just telling somebody to try harder does not work. It can oftentimes lead to despair or pride, but indeed takes quite a bit of prayer, of course, and treatment in many regards. Talked about that a little bit on 75 think, yep. And that in the end of that chapter. All right, hedonism leads to, of course, then addiction, if you will, and not being able to turn away from things. Okay, chapter five and six is what we'll do then next week. Any closing thoughts, anything about these chapters? Chapter four that you thought was worth mentioning before we go on to five and six, hopefully next week. All right, keep up your reading. Take notes, underline things, bring back some observations that you've had, things that are good or bad, and let us close with a word of prayer. Dear heavenly father, we thank you that your son, Jesus Christ, who is the image of the eternal God that he himself did not love himself, but gave himself up for us, that in giving his life, he'd defined love for us, showing us indeed that you are a God who loves and is merciful and kind. We ask that you would forgive us when we have let our hedonism push and pull us. We pray that you would teach us repentance by your Holy Spirit, that we indeed may live lives that show people and point people to your love, your kindness and your mercy. Yet also, Lord, give us strength to stand firm when necessary, to stand up for the weak and the forgotten, and to stand up for the truth of your word. Give us your Holy Spirit also for that dedication that we, like, would be ready to give our lives, even as John the Baptist was ready to give his life for the truth of your word. May we follow his example through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord.