What it means to be Lutheran - Week 3

[00:01:04] Speaker A: Thank you for calling us to repentance and giving us your gifts through Christ. We ask that this morning you would call us to repentance and that you would lift us up in faith, that we would look to Jesus and be brought up into your own life. Thank you for that. In Jesus name, amen. All right, this morning, this is week three of what it means to be Lutheran. Week one, if you remember, we said that what it means to be Lutheran is to be orthodox. That's the real goal of Lutheran ism. You know, I don't like calling it an ism, but it wasn't meant to be an ism. Luther actually didn't want us to be called Lutherans. It just kind of happened because we were labeled that by the opposition, and so it stuck, and we're called Lutherans. But Lutherans were only trying to be orthodox. They were seeing problems theologically and in practice in the church in the 16th century and sought to solve those problems, to bring reform with orthodox solutions. So we went through the councils, the ecumenical councils, seven ecumenical councils. And those slides are printed and in Sherry's hands, if you still want those slides. I didn't print 50 of them, but I could always print you more if we run out, if you want to go back and look at those. All right. Last week we said that what it means to be Lutheran is to be confessional. And so we showed how Lutherans then in order to hang on to orthodoxy, because orthodoxy is like straight teaching. It's just like the christian faith, the proper teaching. Well, how do you stay on that straight road? There are always pressures trying to pull us off. And so the lutheran reformers and the early Lutherans compiled documents, you know, creeds and then confessional writings that said, this is what we believe, and then tied themselves to that. And we do today. In my ordination vows and in my installation to be pastor here in my call, you know, I committed to teaching according to the lutheran confessions. And so we looked at why that's important, how that anchors us in the. In that understanding, so that we don't swerve this way or that as theological controversies come and go, because they do. All right, so those are kind of set up. You know, what it means to be Lutheran is we're just trying to be Christian in the proper sense. What it means to be Lutheran is we're tied to these confessions. Those are all that's kind of background, but it's important. Today we're going to look at an overview of reformation teaching. What did the Lutheran reformers believe how can we summarize their thought? And that's a lot more exciting to talk about, a lot more uplifting, because it's evangelical. All right, it's evangelical. This term might make you think of, I don't know, non denominational or Baptist Christians. They're using the terminal, but that's not what we mean by evangelical, like the name of a group. Evangelical is related to gospel. It comes from the greek word oyongelian, which means good news, which means gospel. And so evangelical means gospel y. And that's an actual word. I was trying to think how to phrase that or how to say that. And so I put, I was thinking, well, if I said gospel y, would that be one l or two? I don't know. And so I typed it into google, and it wasn't spelled wrong. It was saying, this is an actual word. So I looked up the meaning, and it means something like resembling gospel music. But I think that it works well here, too. So anyway, evangelical means gospel y, like kind of all about the gospel. What do I have next here? All right, so I've got some bible verses. So these. Yeah, let's go through these bible verses, and then we're going to be talking about, well, what is the gospel and what does it mean to, to talk about being evangelical? Why does this all matter? All right, so this is Paul. I just grabbed some quotes from romans. Paul says, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the jew first, and also to the Greek, for in it, the righteousness of God is revealed. For faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Paul is excited to preach the gospel. He says, it's the power of salvation for those who believe. The gospel is powerful. It brings salvation, and it's been revealed. Okay, it's been revealed. And this is really key. The gospel is not something that you can just think up. The gospel isn't generated by smart people figuring out what makes the most sense. The gospel is something revealed, kind of like, you can't tell what's going on in my head, you know, until I reveal it to you. It's the same thing only on, like, a human and divine level, right? Or you could say earth and heaven. Heaven is above our heads. We can't generate God's will. I can't predict for you apart from God's word and what he's revealed. I can't tell you anything about God. Or about spiritual things. It's only what he's had, what he's revealed to us. All right, we're going to go on to the next quote from Romans. This one is two slides long. So this is from. Actually, no, this is from Ephesians. I guess I skipped around of this gospel. Paul says, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though, I am the very least of all his saints. Figure out when the slide changes. Okay? Sorry. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to preach to the gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone. What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places? Okay, so Paul is a minister of the gospel. He's preaching the gospel, and then he describes it this way. Like preaching the gospel means preaching to the gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. Unsearchable because you can't find them apart from the proclamation of this gospel. How do you get the unsearchable riches of Christ? How do you learn about them? Only from the preaching of the gospel, which is what Christ sent the apostles out to do. So this is divinely revealed, and it gives the riches of Christ and light for everyone to bring to light for everyone. What is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in goddesse? So again, this is hidden until it's revealed. It's been revealed, and Paul's all excited about it because he gets to go tell people about it and show them the riches of Christ to unveil for them the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known. So again, here we have the manifold wisdom of God being made known not because people are figuring it out by themselves, but because it's being revealed to them by God, so that it might be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. All right. And finally, how then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent as it is written? How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news, the gospel. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us. So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. Hearing through the word of Christ. So the gospel needs to be heard. It needs to be preached. What is preached? The word of Christ. So the word of Christ is preached, and then faith. Faith comes from hearing, and faith receives the word of Christ. All right, here, if you have a, you know, if you have a sheet here that you're looking at a handout, you have a little more information than what's on the screen, just a little bit more, but it doesn't really matter. So the gospel is revealed from heaven. We've just made that point, but that's very important. And when I say heaven, okay, you can think of, like, what's above versus what's below. If you look on your sheet, I've got some other words. Under. Under heaven and earth. The reason I'm using this language is that it's all over in Luther's writings and in confessional writings, talk of heaven and earth. And we don't think this way so much anymore. But I think it really helps to make this reformation point. This is at the core of reformation theology, of Lutheran Reformation theology, that the gospel is revealed from heaven, not generated on earth, so it comes from above. And then this other statement, the word of God makes earthly things heavenly. So Luther says this explicitly, and it's kind of a guiding principle for him that anything earthly can be heavenly. Right? Anything earthly can be heavenly if the word of God is brought to it. So, for example, you could say, like Luther does, maybe your job is as a milkmaid, you know, and you're milking cows, but you can be the happiest person on earth, because you know that you're not just milking cows, you are a mask of God, as Luther would say, behind you, behind this ordinary task, if you have eyes of faith to see it, is God providing for his human creatures through you. You see how the word comes to the milkmaid, and all of a sudden, this is a spiritual thing she's doing. All of a sudden, meaning and purpose flood in the. She's doing this as God's servant and doing it for his sake, serving him and therefore serving others. So the word of God makes earthly things heavenly. If you look on your sheet at the things under heaven and earth, one of the items under earth is flesh. So this is a common way that Paul speaks in his letters. He talks about the flesh and the spirit. So I want to talk about that just for a second here. Flesh and spirit, I think. I mean, this is one of those things where, like, flesh is just something we deal with on a daily basis, right? We have flesh, but then we also. We eat flesh, right? We eat meat, okay? And so this is a case of Paul and others, Christ using something extremely ordinary to represent something very meaningful. But for me, flesh has never seemed very ordinary. Maybe because I don't kill my own animals and prepare them or something like that. So just thinking about what flesh is briefly here. So you got a piece of meat and you're going to eat it, but it's not alive. It could be alive, but it's not. It was alive, now it's not, all right? So in terms of, like, heaven and earth, okay, the way this works is that, like, flesh is. Is devoid of life, okay? Just like an earthly thing could be spiritual combined with God's word or, you know, the chicken. Let's go here. Let's just spell it out, okay? The piece of chicken is lying there lifeless. But it used to be animated, right, by something higher in the chicken. All the parts of the chicken were working together in a coordinated fashion, moving and such, because they were. There was something heavenly in that chicken, in the sense that the chicken was leading from the head, you could say, which is the highest part of the chicken, you know, it was leading from the head and guiding all the parts together. So all these things that are mere flesh apart from the head, now they're brought up into the life of the chicken, right? Taken up beyond themselves, and they're no longer mere flesh on the level of a chicken. They're heavenly. Does that make sense? All right? I mean, that's what Paul is talking about when he says flesh. It's like he's using the word flesh because flesh is meat. That's what it is, right? So that's on the level of a chicken, okay? But for us, like, the way that this is used theologically is to say that God, the goal for the Christian is to look to Christ and be led by him, right. To receive his spirit, so that we're no longer just individuals acting and thinking alone, but that now we're animated by Goddesse through his son, Jesus Christ. Like we're members of his body, okay? Body, flesh. We're talking about the kind of the same thing here, all right? So we are Christ's body. We're no longer merely flesh, right? But now we are. We're the flesh of Christ, right? We're the body of Christ and animated and led by him. And we have the mind of Christ. So flesh, in a theological sense, is used to say, like, earth devoid of heaven, earth apart from God's word. So if you think back to Adam and Eve in the garden, God breathes into them the spirit of life. They're clay, they're flesh, not animated, right? But then God breathes into them the breath of life, and they're animated by the spirit of God. Breath is spirit. So this is what human beings were made for, not to be merely, you know, human like, merely earthly. But they had heaven breathed into them. And then in turning away from God to listen to the devil, they end up just following their own desires, their own thoughts. We end up following our own thoughts and desires, and we give up heaven. We give up God's spirit. We give up being led by God, animated by him, and now we're just animated by ourselves, and so we become merely earthly. So that's then why Paul says, put to death what's earthly in you, those kinds of things, and set your minds on things above. He's saying, be led and governed and ordered by God from above, right. Receive his order. Don't make it up for yourselves. So I don't say it's kind of funny talking about flesh and such, but I just think it's important to see, like, mechanically, what's this doing, you know, in the. In the. In the concept, and then to apply it on a. On a bigger level, spiritually, flesh is devoid of. Of heaven. So this is earth by itself, not informed, like in informed, right. This is like a. Like heaven informing earth now brings meaning. All right, so. So also, you see, under heaven, I've put gospel, and under earth I've put law. And Luther, throughout his writings, is making this distinction that the gospel belongs in heaven, the law belongs on earth. The gospel belongs at the top of the mountain, the law belongs in the valley. And we'll see why in a moment, hopefully. But the gospel. The gospel is revealed to us from heaven. The law is written on our hearts. Paul says in romans one, they're without excuse. Like, nobody's lacking a conscience fully or whatever. We're without excuse. But this has now been revealed to us from heaven, right? This righteousness of faith that Paul talks about and Luther talks about. All right, so the word of God makes earthly things heavenly. If you want something to be spiritual, bring the word, you know, receive the word of God, and this gospel is revealed from heaven. All right, so we're going to move now into looking at the three SOLAs of the Lutheran Reformation, and these are sola scripturas scripture alone, sola fide, faith alone, and sola gratia grace alone. Who's heard that before? You know? So this is, it's not like Luther was like, well, there are three solas. You know, this came about like, 102, hundred years after Luther, that this now is a way we look back at the reformation and summarize reformation teaching like, what was at the core of the Lutheran Reformation or lutheran theology. The three solas kind of help us summarize the. Not just the concerns, but the truth, let's say. All right, so the first sola, scripture alone, God delivers spiritual goods from above through his word. So again, the word of God, it comes from heaven. It's something hidden. Like, if we are earthly and don't, like, we're not receiving from heaven. Think the readings this morning. Like, if we think, we already know and we've just. We've got our own ideas, and we're not going to receive from heaven to, then we're not looking for the word to come and inform us from heaven, but by faith, we receive God's word, and all of a sudden, it opens up to us what otherwise are mysteries? All these things are hidden for us in God until by faith, we receive it. If you want to know about God, you have to receive it from God himself. He has to reveal that to us. And how does he reveal himself to us? Through his word. And then you could take that a step further and say the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Like, where do we hear about that? In his word. So the word is the source of everything that we receive spiritually. The word alone makes things heavenly. So in the context of Lutheran Reformation and in the medieval Roman Catholic Church, this mattered because the Roman Catholic Church was setting tradition and the authority of the pope up right next to scripture and saying, well, you know, you can argue from scripture, but here's what the pope says. Luther called that, like, working up from below. Okay, so we were talking about councils two weeks ago. Luther writing about the councils. He says, like, even in the decrees of the councils, some things are like God's word. And so, like, that's. That is. Sure, and we should listen to it, you know, like, we're saved by grace and you don't have to be circumcised to be saved, you know, from that first council in acts 15. Like, that's. That's God's word, and that doesn't change. But then when they go and say, but we think that it would be, you know, best for christians to observe these practices, like, for me, maybe out of love for the weaker brother or that kind of thing, like, well, that's. That's built up from below. That's not like God's word coming down and saying this. That's them saying, and here's a good practice. Here's a good idea from below. So he says. He says the councils, like, sometimes there's. There, you know, well, basically, that they. In order for us to hold to what they're saying, we've got to discern what's coming down, like rain from heaven to water the earth, and then what's being grown up from the earth. And he says, the pope and them, they're trying to grow this from below and not receive it from heaven. All right, scripture alone. So scripture alone is the source of doctrine, of teaching, and of life. All right? Sola fide. Faith alone. Now, you can think of that passage that we like from ephesians two. Ephesians two, eight, nine. We're saved by grace. Through faith. By grace you have been saved through faith. This not of yourselves. It's the work of goddess, not by works, so that no one can boast. Right? So we're saved by faith alone. I really like. And I bring this up a lot because I just think it's helpful, but I really like the way Luther writes about Adam and Eve in the garden. And if you want to read it for yourself, there's a series of Luther's works translated from German into English. The most common one, it's the american edition, and this is from volume one. So volume one of that. Like, 70 volume series or something like that is. And that's actually a lot of volumes, right? It's like, whoa, 70 volumes. But that's just a selection of his writings that have been translated into English. His writings are incomprehensibly, you know, voluminous. I don't know. I don't understand how you even did that. But volume one, okay, you can find this. It's on Genesis, chapters one and two and three, I think. Or one through five, I don't remember. But he comments a lot on Eve being tempted by the serpent, and he's teaching faith alone. And the way he does it is say, look, Eve's first mistake was to turn away from the word of God and to the word of another. And that Satan's like, the root temptation that he employs in that scene is getting her to listen to another word. So what is faith? Faith looks to the word of God and receives it. Or to another. You know, there are other kinds of faith, right? You can also worship something that's not God. In fact, Luther says that's inevitable. You serve one thing or another. Look at the end of romans six for the same teaching from Paul, right? That we're no longer slaves of sin, so we're slaves of Christ. Don't present your members as instruments, as the body, as the, you know, the tools of sin. Present your slave, present your members. Everything that you have as instruments of righteousness to God. [00:27:08] Speaker B: Right. [00:27:09] Speaker A: So you're a slave of one thing or another. And what you are a servant of is based on what you have faith in. And faith is looking to one word or another. And so the christian faith is about looking to God's word in order to receive from him everything. Any questions on that? So Luther distinguishes between two kinds of righteousness or two righteousnesses. One of them he calls passive, and the other he calls active and the like. Passive righteousness is received from above. It's like we don't do anything for it. You can't get it. You can only receive it. And he's talking about faith, the faith that looks to God and then actually receives Christ himself. That's what we receive by faith, everything that God has to give. What does he have to give his son Jesus, who says, I and my father will come and dwell in you. So by faith, we receive Jesus, so that with Paul we can say, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. So he calls this righteousness of faith passive. But in another sense, it's like the farthest thing from passive, because we've got Christ working actively in us, Christ himself dwelling in us. And then the other side of it is active righteousness, which is the righteousness of the law. And this is like working from below, like we've got access to the law. Okay, let's see how well we can do. Which Paul knocks down in Romans three and says, the wages of sin is death, and there's nothing that we can do. And then beginning of Romans four, he says Abraham. Like, how did Abraham get his righteousness? He believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Well, having it counted to him as righteousness, that's like saying God gives it to him, but it's not saying he earned that. And so Paul's argument is, well, this is like what's been revealed to us from heaven. The gospel is the righteousness of faith, that it's received by faith as we look to goddesse. Now, are there any questions on that? It's like, if there are no questions. It's like, oh, no. Okay. Oh, I don't think I did that. Oh, good. Uh oh. [00:29:53] Speaker B: Just speak more clearly into it. I have that passive righteousness is received from above. And then you went on to talk about how Christ is very active in. [00:30:08] Speaker A: Us, which is good because of that. [00:30:10] Speaker B: Passive righteousness and the faith that we have. And then you started to talk about active righteousness and working from the law, and then I lost what you said. [00:30:20] Speaker A: After that to explain that probably wasn't your fault. Yeah, yeah. So active Luther uses the idea of active righteousness of the law to speak of our trying to build ourselves up to be worthy of God's grace and gifts, or just like, any activity kind of coming from below, like trying to work on earth in order to get heaven to come down, that kind of thing. Does that help? Yes. Right? Yes. Passive would be Christ centered. Active would be human centered. And, yeah, I think that's how Luther says it. And he says that our nature, like our fallen, sinful nature, like, we can't, we're constantly tempted to look at our own active righteousness, like our own striving how we're doing, how badly we're doing, how well we're doing, and that kind of thing. And he says, when you find yourself confronted with the law, like the devil says, you know, well, check this out. You messed up. That's a moment of temptation where if you're thinking in the mode of, let's say, active righteousness, like my own activity and such, rather than what I'm going to receive from God, then I'm tempted to say, well, now, yeah, you got a little point there, but look, and try and justify yourself or to despair and say, look, I've got no chance. You're right. And Luther says, like, don't do either of those things. You find yourself on earth and you're faced with active righteousness of the law. Here's what you do. You just say, you know what, devil? Yeah, you're right. I've broken that law. And actually. And then he goes through all ten commandments and says how he's, you know how each one of those confronts him with his sin? And he says, so it looks like you won. But actually, I've got somebody above and beyond the law, Jesus Christ, who's fulfilled it for me and who offers me forgiveness of sins and life and nothing can touch me. And so it's like when you find yourself on earth looking at the active righteousness of the law, let it kill you. That's what the law is for. Right. But that's just like, put to death what's earthly in you. Let it kill what's earthly in you and rejoice in Christ. So I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the thing is, it's like you don't even have to say, and then now that you have Christ and forgiveness and life, now go do the law. It's like you've got Christ living within you and nothing to fear anymore and everything. And then you're like, wow, you know, then you just go, Luther says, and you do your duty as a magistrate or a father or like, whatever, whatever, your milkmaid, you know, because you got Christ living in you. Oh, in the back. [00:33:47] Speaker C: One of the things I look at with the active portion of righteousness is what I, the lutheran church is really fighting against, and that is the works righteousness, where you feel like I'm in charge of making myself righteous. And so I reach out to God, even though as dead flesh, I can't do anything for my own righteousness. But there are a lot of churches out there who want to say that you have to do x, y, and z before God can do the rest of it. And so that's one of the things I think we fight against with active righteousness. [00:34:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. It's tempting to think, like, I've got to meet God in the middle or something like that. Like, is there anything we need to do in faith? You know? Yeah. Paul says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. But the next part is key, for it is God who works in you to will and to work according to good purpose. Like, don't think, like, well, I'm just gonna sit back now and not do anything, right? That's a bad sign, right? That's not what faith says. So, Mike. Oh, you're just handing Mike's out. Mike's got the mic. I see. I just keep thinking you're waiting so patiently. Nope. All right. Okay. All right. And sola grazias. Grace alone, renee. [00:35:25] Speaker D: Okay. So it makes me think when we talk about works righteousness and in the catholic church. So I've had, when I was at Christ in Denver, we would go to a nursing home before COVID and share the good news with them. And we had a catholic lady who always asked us to pray for her mom and dad. She was still worried that they were in purgatory and that we needed to pray for them. So in the catholic church, I believe they even think somebody else can do the work for them, even after their death. And I can't wrap my head around why they would think that, because then why do we need Christ. [00:36:31] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:33] Speaker D: If you can do it yourself and you can have somebody else do it for you, even after you die. [00:36:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I think you're right from a lutheran perspective. But there's also something we can learn from that a little bit, which is that we should be praying for one another. Right. And. No, no, that's right. That's right. But in a sense, like, we do help each other out when we pray for each other. Right. Like, pray for my faith. Right. That kind of thing. That does sound hard to carry the burden of your ancestors. That's true. Yeah. Yep, yep. [00:37:18] Speaker B: So, okay, Laura, one of the reasons why I think that people such as those who are in the catholic tradition is I know for people I have loved and lost, and I'm not aware or certain of their salvation to them, that gives them hope. It's a false hope, but it's their way of generating hope that they can make sure that their loved one, they're going to meet in heaven when they join them. And it is a lie that Satan is created, but because as we do for those who are living, we pray for them, they have pushed that onward into. We can do that also for our loved ones to make certain that they're there, because that's our greatest hope, is to have that salvation with them. And it's Satan's lie who's misled. And I think that's something we need to pray for those in the catholic faith, that they can be enlightened that way, and because it is a false hope. [00:38:21] Speaker E: Pastor, correct me if I'm wrong, this is something that Martin Luther was struggling with, was the active portion. Right. He was trying to do things to prove his worthiness to God, and that kind of led him down the path. Right. Because of his beliefs. He was always trying to. To take an action to find that salvation, and that's what brought him to the scriptures and to find it was really faith alone that provided that path and not what he did. Is that correct? [00:39:02] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Luther was struggling under the law and recognized and felt what St. Paul says, which is that if you break one part of it, you break the whole thing. And so he just had kind of a realistic view of his own abilities under the law and recognized, I can't do this. And it was driving him to despair. And so, yeah, receiving forgiveness and righteousness like Abraham did, you know, from God, by faith. By faith in Jesus. Yeah. Was a huge relief from Luther. And then. And then the accusation against Lutherans is that, well, then that makes people lazy and take it for granted and such. And so we still need to teach works and such. And in some sense, yeah, don't fall asleep and make shipwreck of your faith. But that's kind of how a Lutheran says it. Yeah, but not that it's God's grace and our works that make us righteous or make us right with him. And that's the sola. You know, grace alone is related to what we've been talking about. You know, it's that it's not at all our work that qualifies us to receive what God has to offer, but that it's just because he wants to. It's all on him. And again, you can picture that vertically and say we on earth need God graciously to descend from heaven as he's done for us in Christ. That's why Christ came down from heaven and was incarnate, became a human being for us. It's because that's what we needed. We didn't have the ability, otherwise, Christ wouldn't have have needed to do that for our salvation. So we receive it from above as a gift, just like we don't make it rain. Uh oh, your mic isn't. It's not on. [00:41:14] Speaker B: Okay. Can you hear me now? [00:41:15] Speaker A: Yep. [00:41:16] Speaker B: Okay. So, basically, the law shows us what we need to know and reaffirms what God has written on our hearts, our conscience. So we need the law. As Christ said, he did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill the law, because it's only through him that the law can be fulfilled. That was what his mission was. So that's why we have to trust and hope in Christ for that grace, for the fulfillment of the law. But then we don't throw the law away because it illustrates what we are as humans and why we need to repent and accept Christ's grace. Is that correct? [00:42:00] Speaker A: The law shows us our sin, right? And so it exposes our pride, you know, smashes our pride and. And. And calls us to repentance. But it's the gospel who that? It's the gospel and the preaching of the gospel that lifts us up. Right? [00:42:22] Speaker B: So law is to show us the need for repentance, and the gospel is to show us the grace of salvation. [00:42:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, you could say that. [00:42:37] Speaker F: Is it possible that I think you had brought up praying on behalf of the dead? I understand that we aren't to do that. Do you think that that might have been more part of the corruption of the Catholic Church to create guilt in the congregation. Your parents did this, that passed away. So you need to feel their guilt. And using the scriptural verse from second Timothy, where we are asked to pray on the intercession of other people for those that are not praying for themselves, could it have been that maybe that scripture, like, they may have had this before the corruption took place, that you are to pray on behalf of other people and then in order to get what they wanted, which they had done multiple times? I mean, when you're doing the buying and selling of sins. [00:43:39] Speaker A: Right. So this also was bought and sold. And I think that that context is really helpful that you had. It's estimated a quarter of the population at the time was in a monastery or nunnery, something like that. Right. And that a lot of them were paid to make prayers and intercessions for, like, the dead, I think. I hope I'm not skewing that, but it's like you had this whole industry of doing masses like communion, but for the dead and being paid for that. So if you're wealthy, you can make things better for your deceased relatives and that kind of thing. So there was a lot of corruption in that sense. And I will just say maybe controversially, maybe not, that it's not real clear to us how it works when we die and where do we go? Right away we know we're with Christ, but we also, you hear about the souls under the altar calling out how long in revelation. So it's like, how all that works is a little confusing to us and all that to say. I mean, I could see somebody calling out to God, like, you know, please have mercy on my mother or something like that, you know, who has, let's say that. Let's say she died yesterday. Like, I can't pray for it. You know, it's like, well, you know, God's outside of time, and he sees it all at once, and he knows what's going to happen beforehand and afterward and. And all of that. And so I don't know, there's a sense in which we don't want to make, like, metaphysical judgments about, you know, like, too many things. But certainly, like, you know, now is your chance while you're still running your race, you know, to not make shipwreck of your faith and to look to Christ and receive what he has to offer. So don't. Don't think, like, well, you know, when I'm dead, my children will cover me, you know? So. All right. Okay. I think that has to be it for today. So I'll just sum up by saying that I think, I think that a way to summarize like lutheran reformation teaching is to say that every spiritual good comes from above, and it comes through the, the word, making earthly things spiritual. And so without the word working on our own below, we can't make ourselves right with God. So we pay attention to the word and give that the priority to let it govern our doctrine and our life. And we receive all good, all spiritual goods through faith. And that's not by anything that we've earned. It's by grace. Thank you. [00:46:48] Speaker B: Dan. There we go. There's a few more copies of the week. One, two and three handouts back here. [00:46:58] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Thank you. It.