What it means to be Lutheran - Week 4

[00:00:01] That's great. [00:00:08] Yep, it actually works nicely. [00:00:11] All right, well, it is about time to begin. [00:00:30] All right, let's begin with prayer. [00:00:36] Heavenly Father, we thank you for graciously sending your son Jesus to us, to recall us from our error, to rescue us from ignorance and death, and to give us life and knowledge and faith in you. Please make us grow in faith today. Work through your word to transform us. We pray in Jesus in his name. Amen. [00:01:11] All right. [00:01:13] Okay, so just to briefly recap what we've done in past weeks, this is our fourth week of this study. In week one, we said that what it means to be Lutheran is to be orthodox. [00:01:26] And the point of that was to say that the lutheran reformation wasn't about starting something new. It wasn't about a new genius way to read scripture or something like that. It wasn't even a discovery of a truth that had never been recognized by anybody. [00:01:46] Like, we're saved by grace through faith. That wasn't a revolutionary kind of discovery. It was an orthodox discovery. It was a rediscovery and a desire to bring the church back to what it had already been teaching. And we kind of fleshed that out by looking at the ecumenical councils, that Lutherans don't reject all the councils, the seven councils, where the whole church got together to figure out a. [00:02:13] How to articulate the faith in the face of theological controversies, and that we're dividing the church and kind of scattering the flock. [00:02:23] So Lutherans, Luther and the lutheran reformers and Lutherans were looking for orthodox solutions to the problems facing the church. [00:02:35] Week two, then we said that we're confessional, and we talked about. [00:02:40] We talked about the creeds and confessions, I guess, more the confessions, how they came about, all those lutheran documents to which we hold today, and also why it's important to have confessions, why it's important that we hold two documents that anchor us, that keep us. We have something to hold on to, not in competition with scripture, but scripture has to be interpreted. And all the heretics in the history of the church used scripture for their arguments. And so what the Lutheran confessions do for us is they ground us so that when the winds of theological controversy or whatever, when the winds come, we don't get blown off course. We have something to hang on to. And so the confessions sort of serve us in that way, in keeping us in line where maybe we would be convinced to go astray. [00:03:39] And last week, we said that we are evangelical. And evangelical is essentially the word, like gospel y, from the greek euangelion, which means gospel, and specifically we said that the gospel comes down from heaven, right? It's. You can't. How are they going to believe if nobody's preached to them? Right? The gospel has to be preached to us. This word of God comes from outside of us, and it comes from above. It's given by God, and through it, we receive spiritual goods. [00:04:20] So. [00:04:23] So the gospel comes from above. And. [00:04:28] Well, the way we said it is that the word, the word of God makes things spiritual. [00:04:34] Anything here on earth can be spiritual when the word of God is combined with it. And I mentioned the milkmaid. Luther says the milkmaid is the most blessed of people because she recognizes that she's not just, you know, milk and a cow. She's serving God in this calling to serve his creatures. She recognizes by faith that it's not just her milking the cow, but that through her, God is working to serve her fellow creature. So faith receives God's word, and God's word makes things spiritual. [00:05:13] All right. And then we looked at the Solas. This is important because this is last week especially. That's foundational for what it means to be lutheran and how Lutherans think theologically. So let's hold on. I think I have. [00:05:29] Yeah, some review here. So, gospel is revealed from heaven. The word of God makes earthly things heavenly. And then we looked at the three solas, sola scriptura, scripture alone, that God delivers spiritual goods from above through his word. I sola fide, faith alone. [00:05:47] Spiritual goods are received from above by faith and sola gratia, grace alone. Spiritual goods are not earned or grasped from below, but rather freely given from above. [00:06:00] So, in other words, you can't make this. You can't manufacture spiritual goods. [00:06:09] It's like, what's going on? Okay. [00:06:13] And I was looking at this again, thinking, like, well, they are kind of grasped from below. You know? Faith is what grasps the spiritual goods, right? And so. So faith does that. But they can't be. You can't. Apart from faith in. In the word, you can't go and get these things yourself. Luther talks about faith like a. Like a wedding ring, you know, almost like the ring that encloses the diamond, you know, and Christ is the diamond. And he gives us this faith, you know, in marrying us, the church, his bride. He gives us this ring that grasps himself. And then we have everything, you know, everything that he is and has belongs to us in this marriage, in this blessed exchange. [00:06:58] All right? So this week, though, we're looking at how we are sacramental. I don't know. [00:07:07] I like the other words better, but sacramental, it works. [00:07:11] What it means to be Lutheran is to be sacramental. So we're going to talk about sacrament, what it means, and then just broadly, the implications of the sacraments, and hopefully, hopefully connect this to what we did last week with kind of the fundamental lutheran theology. [00:07:37] All right, so sacrament, it comes from latin word sacramentum, which means mystery. And that word comes from a greek word mousterion, which means mystery. So I guess, you know. Well, yeah, so when we say sacrament, you know, sacrament, just remember it means mystery. But. But the way that sacraments, the word has come to be used is more specialized and specific than just mystery. [00:08:14] Here's Paul speaking in one corinthians four. [00:08:19] This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. [00:08:28] Now, in this context, Paul is saying, in chapter one of one corinthians, he's saying, you guys are saying, I follow Paul, I follow apollos. It's like, I follow Jesus. It's all dividing out. And he's saying, no, we're not anything in ourselves. We're stewarding the thing that you should really pay attention to, it's about the mysteries of God, not about us. And we all apostles and teachers, we are stewarding those mysteries. We are. [00:09:04] It's not about us. We're the messengers, maybe you could say. Right, so stewards of the mysteries of God. That word mystery, musterion in the New Testament is used in other places by Paul to talk about the mystery of Christ, like in Ephesians one. We had it as a reading recently in Colossians one, I think, and in other places, too, about the mystery of Christ. Okay. [00:09:34] The will of God for us in Jesus Christ and his plan of salvation that was hidden. Right. And now is revealed in Jesus Christ. [00:09:45] So the mystery describes God's work of salvation for us and his will that is hidden to us, except that it's been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. So think about this in terms of above and below, like we've been doing that the gospels in heaven, the word of God comes down to us from heaven. I. The purpose of speaking that way is to say, like, we're on earth, and if we try and understand God apart from his word, we're going to mess it up, because you can't grow these things from below. It's got to come down from above with this word hidden. Or we're talking about a mystery. It's above our heads, like I said this morning. I just find that helpful. [00:10:31] It's in heaven and revealed to us through God's word and gifts, revealed to us by Christ himself. [00:10:45] Alright, let's see if I have anything else up here. There we go. Okay. [00:10:49] All right, so we've reviewed and we're ready. The mystery of the incarnation. So this is the mystery that Paul talks about. And so I'm gonna, I'm going to talk through the reason for sacraments. So when we're talking about sacraments as Lutherans, we're talking about baptism and the Lord's supper. And just so you know, I mean, there was a reformation debate about how many sacraments there are. Maybe you're familiar with that. So Roman Catholics said, confirmation, marriage, holy orders, like priest or monk or, you know, none, that kind of thing. [00:11:37] So confirmation, marriage, holy orders, anointing with oil, I think. And there's one more that I'm not thinking of, maybe. [00:11:53] Yeah, you guys can figure that out. Anyway, all of these are sacraments also. And Lutherans said no. And we'll talk briefly about that. [00:12:06] Eastern Orthodox don't enumerate sacraments. They don't say like, this is how many sacraments there are. And so I'm just pointing out that holding to two sacraments, first of all, it's because of a specific definition of sacrament, right? If you're just a little bit more broad with it and just say like mysteries, well, then maybe you get a different result. But, but there was a specific, they were, they were defining sacrament for, for a reason. It was important, but it was also rooted in earlier controversies in the church and earlier writings of church fathers, like, like St. Augustine. So it's a just a pretty specific kind of issue in general. But I'm going to go, I'm going to go broad right now and just talk about the reason that we are sacramental. So let's start with definition of a sacrament. And I don't have this on a slide, so, you know, if you want to write it down, I'll just repeat it twice or something like that. Okay. But for Lutherans, there are three elements that make something a sacrament. First, it's instituted by Christ himself, and then secondly, it is, there's a physical element involved. So think baptism. What's the physical element? [00:13:28] Yep. Water. And in the Lord's supper, bread and wine. So we've got a physical element and it's instituted by Christ, and then it is imparting God's grace. Like God is working to give his grace through this. [00:13:54] So marriage, let's take marriage. [00:13:59] Is marriage a sacrament? Well, marriage is not exactly instituted by Christ, right? It's instituted in creation still. I mean, it's instituted by God and it's a gift, right. And does God give grace through marriage like he can? You know, marriage can be a real blessing and it's there for a reason and such. [00:14:27] Then, like, where's the physical element of. [00:14:30] Right. You see, it gets a little bit. [00:14:33] There's no real physical element there. So again, like, what separates marriage and baptism or the Lord's supper? Well, they're all gifts from God, so it's nothing to demean marriage, right. But in baptism and the Lord's supper, grace is being given in a, like, through a physical element in a special way that's different from other good gifts of God and institutions of God. Right. Things instituted by God. Does that make sense? [00:15:01] So there's a little bit of work toward the definition of a sacrament. [00:15:07] So fundamentally, we can think of a sacrament as God working through physical means to give his gifts. [00:15:15] Now, do we need physical means to receive God's gifts? [00:15:21] Aren't God's gifts spiritual? So why use physical means? [00:15:28] Can God work apart from water and bread and wine? Yeah, yeah, he can. He certainly can. But he chooses to give his gifts through water in baptism and through bread and wine in the Lord's supper, physical things. And. And that's actually really important for us. We need it. [00:15:52] And looking at why we need it, we can go back to Christ, the word becoming flesh. Do we really need the word to become flesh for us? Can't God just talk to us? [00:16:08] Why do we need the word to actually become flesh? [00:16:12] And this is why we need sacraments as well. So I'm just going to read a tiny bit from John, chapter one, if you want to pull out your pew Bible and look at it. [00:16:49] So it starts off, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. [00:16:56] He was with God in the beginning. [00:16:58] Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. [00:17:04] In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. [00:17:13] So we hear about the word, and then in verse 14, we hear the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father, full of grace and truth. [00:17:33] The key there, I think, is we have seen his glory. That's what I want to draw out. [00:17:38] We've seen his glory. [00:17:41] There are two ways that we see his glory, physically and spiritually. [00:17:47] They're related. [00:17:50] How did Christ show us his glory? [00:17:55] Anybody with miracles? [00:18:00] Jesus showed us his glory with miracles. Now, I mean, so some of those were like feeding the 5000, right? Making a miraculous meal out of just a little bit of bread and fish or turning water into wine, right? Raising people from the dead, healing people, calming the storm. How about his life? [00:18:24] His life, how he lived his life. Sure. Yeah. The miracle of obedience, right? Or of defeating the devil in the wilderness when he's tempted. [00:18:37] Yep. He rose from the dead. [00:18:40] He demonstrated power over demons. [00:18:43] Right? So Jesus, I mean Jesus in his works, the works that he did, the body, right, these visible things, he showed himself to have power over everything. Even the wind and the waves, even the demons. Nothing is above him. And you see that with your eyes, kind of. [00:19:06] But it's not just like you see him do a miracle and it's not just your eyes or like the physical seeing then that matters, but it's a, it's then the believing with the heart right, through the eyes you see. And then with your heart you believe that Jesus has the name that's above all names and has all power and authority in heaven and on earth. And that there's something more to this guy than meets the eye. [00:19:33] So it's actually through his works and his words given in the body that we come to know about him. What you can't see with your eyes come to believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, that kind of faith. [00:19:51] So, well, couldn't God have just told us he was powerful and had power over all things? [00:20:00] Couldn't he have just told Israel like, look, I've got you. [00:20:04] Instead of rescuing them from Egypt and then pointing back to that all the time and saying remember that thing that you saw me do for you that you experienced? Remember this salvation that I worked for you, trust me, I can help you. [00:20:20] You see, so God, I mean we're physical people, you know, we're not just, yeah, we have a spiritual element to us but we live in the world and I, and like this physical world, we are body and soul together. And so we, we need, we need physical, physical things. We need to see God rescuing his people from Egypt. We need to see Jesus Christ, right? And then he can show us the father, he can show us his glory. We have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. [00:21:00] So in Jesus coming to us, right, God sending his son the word becoming flesh, that's where we see God using physical means fundamentally for our salvation. [00:21:19] Now the Roman Catholics had no problem with that, I mean, they were holding to the ecumenical councils as well and such. But the radical reformers, and this is where Baptists and a lot of non denominal denominational churches and others come from. The radical reformers like Calvin and Zwingli, among others. [00:21:56] They wanted to separate the physical and the spiritual and say, well, now you know, well, maybe I should start with the Roman Catholics, actually. Okay. And the issue that Lutherans had with them, because they share those concerns with the radical reformers, and that is that at the time of the Reformation. I might have a slide about this. [00:22:18] There we go. [00:22:20] Okay, so during the time of the Reformation and today, okay, Roman Catholics were saying and say that the sacraments work ex opere operata operato. [00:22:32] And that means just by the work being worked, by the work worked, okay, like, the sacrament is done, the act is done, and it works that, for example, in baptism, you receive all the benefits of baptism just because the ceremony was. The rite was performed according to the institution of Christ. [00:23:03] And the concern there is you don't want to make baptism dependent on, for example, the faith of the. [00:23:10] The pastor performing the baptism. Something like that. It's like, well, but what if my pastor is a hypocrite? [00:23:19] Did my baptism really work? [00:23:21] That was a controversy in the early church. [00:23:28] I can't think of the name. Is that donatism, anybody? [00:23:33] It doesn't quite sound right right now, but in this controversy, there was a question of whether. Yeah, whether priests could administer sacraments if they were themselves unbelievers. And then people were starting to question the efficacy of those sacraments for themselves and for their own faith. Like, was I really baptized? Right. And the church together worked it out with the help of St. Augustine. He was a major figure in that controversy and. And articulated that, no, it's not dependent on the faith of the person performing the ceremony, but that the ceremony is effective because of God's word, you could say, well, so then the problem that Luther and the other reformers had with the Roman Catholic ex opere operato, just the sacrament, is effective in and of itself, apart from anything else, is that they held that the faith of the recipient was important. [00:24:43] And that's because, again, going back to what we talked about last time, we receive spiritual goods from above through the word. And how do we receive it? By faith. That wedding ring of faith that receives God's gifts and that itself, the receptivity to it, the faith which receives the gifts, that's a gift in itself. We can't manufacture that either. It's because God calls us. It's because Christ came to us, and it's because we've had the gospel preached to us that we believe by God's grace. [00:25:22] The word is received by faith, and the sacraments are all about the word. [00:25:31] So Luther and the other reformers, they didn't want to say that the sacraments work just by being done apart from the faith of the recipient, but that the recipient receives the benefit by faith. Well, how does this work with baptism, you might ask? Because when we baptize a baby, is that received in faith? [00:25:55] And Luther's answer is, yeah, faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit. And in that baby, perhaps in some sense, it's like a potential faith. [00:26:06] It's the faith of the family and the community. And this baby is receiving God's gifts, being washed by water and the word reborn by water and the spirit. In the language of John three, the baby hears the word, right? And the word is. The word is what produces faith anyway. And so a baby can receive faith even in the womb, like John the Baptist, you could say, who leaps for joy when he hears the voice of Jesus motherhood. And so, yeah, even there in baptism, it's received by faith, which is given in the sacrament along with the Holy Spirit. [00:26:57] And then baptism continuing throughout our christian life. Baptism is about faith as well. [00:27:05] You want to know what your identity is, really? [00:27:10] It's in Christ. And how do you. I mean, you can take comfort in your baptism and look back at what God did in your baptism. And the benefit then is remembering that you've been baptized, remembering that you've been given these gifts, and you can point to a time and something that was done not by you, not something that was done even, not that you manufactured yourself, right. But something that was received from God. [00:27:39] And the physical element, the water, the washing with water, that gives you that. [00:27:47] I mean, it just gives you something tangible to remember it by, right? It gives you something tangible. [00:27:55] So ex opere operato, the danger there would be that you would say, well, I was baptized, and that worked, and nothing else really matters now, and I can go do my thing, right? Or that the Roman Catholic Church at the time was teaching. [00:28:15] Well, it wasn't really teaching faith. It was just kind of like we talked about with indulgences. You know, buy this piece of paper and your relatives are sprung from purgatory. It just bypasses faith. It's like, well, what about repentance and faith? Where does that fit in? If I can just buy salvation with a piece of paper? The same thing here, like repentance and faith. Baptism and the effectiveness of baptism, the gifts that we receive in baptism, of being reborn, becoming a child of God, being united to Christ in his death and resurrection, being forgiven, receiving the Holy Spirit in faith, being washed, cleansed by water and the word, all of these things come to us, but they don't negate repentance and faith, which Lutherans saw as ex operado is doing, making faith null and void. You don't need it. [00:29:13] All right? So on the other side of things, the Roman Catholics just kind of said it just works in this sort of physical way. But they weren't teaching faith or repentance. [00:29:26] And the radical reformers, Zwingli and Calvin, they went really far in the other direction and said, the physical thing doesn't do anything. It's not actually physical. It's just a remembrance. It's just something to remind you of. It's just something to, it's like a visual aid. [00:29:45] It actually, I guess more accurately, it's an external sign, an outward sign of an inward transformation, of an inward reality. [00:30:00] That's how they wanted to see it. [00:30:03] So this is why, for example, Baptists would wait until somebody is old enough to express their own faith, and then baptism happens. Because in their view, baptism is then this external sign of what's happened inside by faith. So the spiritual good of faith in Jesus and a spiritual transformation, this then is represented by the washing in water, where we would say that actually what's really happening is the washing with water, that we're being cleansed and being given gifts by God. [00:30:50] He's doing the work, he's doing the giving, and we're receiving. [00:31:00] So fundamentally, the Roman Catholics were saying it just works in this kind of physical way. [00:31:10] And the radical reformers were saying, no, it's all spiritual. [00:31:14] And in fact, they would say, with regard to the Lord's supper, they would say, no, it's just bread and wine. [00:31:22] It's not Jesus body and blood. Jesus body is up in heaven because Jesus body is physical. [00:31:30] And so why would it be? Why would it be everywhere at once? Okay? They separated out Jesus two natures, that he's divine and human. [00:31:42] So his human body is up in heaven, and the bread and the wine only represent him. And this is the phrase that they used. I actually do have it up here. Okay? So they used this phrase, the finite cannot contain the infinite. Okay? So the finite, like, what can be measured? Or. [00:32:04] What's the word for that, Bob? [00:32:07] Science and math guy. You know, there's a term for, like, circumscribing I guess, what can be, like, circumscribed or measured. [00:32:16] That's what a body is, right? Like, my body is finite. It's not everywhere at once, right? [00:32:25] So they were saying, like, jesus. Jesus body is finite, and it can't contain the infinite, the bread and wine in the Lord's supper, those are bodies. They're physical things. They're finite, and they can't contain the infinite. And so since Jesus body can't be on earth, if it's human, and human bodies don't have those properties, being able to be everywhere at once, then Jesus isn't actually present in the Lord's supper. We're not actually receiving his physical body and blood. [00:33:05] So you see how this is a separation of the physical and the spiritual, even in Jesus, that Jesus body is somewhere that he, in the form of God, isn't. [00:33:18] Like, so. So Lutherans, you know, working through this, we're going back to the early councils to say, no, remember, I don't know if you remember. This is a pretty brief overview in the first week. But, you know, Cyril saying, two natures of the one Christ, right? That. Sure, like two natures, but it's one person, okay? [00:33:42] That in Christ there's a union of God and man, and not like a confusion. It's not like they're mixed together in such a way that now you have this new third thing. It's not that God's humanity kind of brings his. Or Jesus humanity brings his divinity down or something like that. It's actually. It's the other way around that human nature is elevated by being brought up into Christ's life and being united. [00:34:14] We're united to him because he is God and man in the same person. But we hold those together. You don't say, like, well, we see God dying, Jesus dying, and that's something that a human being does, and so that's his humanity, right? And then we see God. We see Jesus, you know, teaching with divine wisdom. So that's his divinity working, and then we see him suffering. Well, that's his humanity. [00:34:45] We don't separate those things out. Jesus just is one person, and he has these two toolboxes now, now that he's become flesh, now that he's become a human being, he is divine and he's human. And so he does everything as both. [00:35:01] Okay, so the radical reformers, they were departing from early councils. They were falling into Nestorianism is the technical term. It's like separating out the natures. Like they're kind of the term that was used, like, in our confessions, is like two boards glued together. You know, his natures, like, they're still separate. [00:35:26] So the finite cannot contain the infinite. [00:35:31] Sorry, this is getting a little bit dense, but that's okay. It'll be over soon, and maybe you got something from it, you know, so to kind of pull it all together. All right. We talked about the mystery of the incarnation and the importance of God using physical things for us, right? Like we who, who were blind, right, who had turned away from God's word. You can think of romans one. It says, like, well, the things about God should have been clear from creation, like, from the beginning. But instead of worshiping and serving the creator, we worshiped and served creatures instead. So we turned to things other than God's word. Things, earthly things, you know, if you think about the vertical thing, earthly things, and stiff armed heaven. And so we were just stuck there, only able to see earthly things. And so then God sends his son into the flesh to become a human being for us. [00:36:32] And then Jesus draws our attention with physical things, miracles, teaching, all of this done as a human being, like somebody that we can talk to and hear from and see doing things. And then in his own body, on the cross, he bears our sin, dies, defeats the devil, rises from the dead, has victory in the body, victory over the demons in the body, rules and reigns over all things in the body. And so we have Christ, the human being, come for us. It's all physical. [00:37:14] So the sacraments are kind of an extension of that. Like, why do we need water in baptism? Well, otherwise everything's just kind of spiritual and left up there. You know, we have this thing outside of ourselves, this physical act that happened to look back to, not as like magic water, you know, or something like that, but water combined with God's word, right? Water and the word of to look and to have this moment, to remember and to see God's promises given to us through physical means in order that we might believe in God's promises, that he attaches to water, to baptism, that we might take comfort in our and embrace the identity that we have in Christ, that we've been united to him in his death and resurrection, that we've been reborn by water and the word. And we'd apply all that to the Lord's supper also. But we'll look more specifically, I think, at baptism and the Lord's supper. [00:38:26] This was more just an overview of this more broadly sacramental structure, that God works through physical means because we are body and soul. [00:38:42] That was starting to sound like inspirational music. [00:38:46] I was about to get really emotional. God works through us anyway. Thank God that he works through physical means and that he condescends to us. A lot of what I was using today to describe some of that stuff was from a writing of Athanasius called on the incarnation. And you could find this, and if you want to be pointed to, like, a readable edition of this, it's from the fourth century. Athanasius is a pretty significant, significant guy in the history of the church, and a good teacher, or some of us could read it together, but it's on the incarnation. He talks about the importance of the incarnation, the mystery of the incarnation, and God's working through physical means. Anyway, he says, I've quoted this in a sermon before, I think. But he says, just like a good teacher condescends to the level of his students. You know, like, that's what. That's why the word became flesh for us, meeting us where. Where we are. And that's true of the sacraments as well. [00:39:50] All right, let's open it up to questions. [00:39:58] Oh, wait. Yeah. [00:40:05] Oh, it's not on. It's not on. [00:40:15] Why would a pastor require, and this is a lutheran pastor Missouri synod. Why would he require a person that was going to be married in the church even though she had been baptized in another lutheran church? Lcms he would require, before he would do the wedding, he required her to be baptized. [00:40:41] Okay, so this lutheran pastor who had somebody be re baptized in order to be married, who had been baptized before in a lutheran church? Yeah, that's not, that's not our practice, so that shouldn't be. We don't re baptize unless you were baptized, like, in something not christian or not trinitarian, like a church body that doesn't recognize the Trinity or something like that. Or like something outside of Christianity, like Mormonism, then we would re baptize. [00:41:15] So good question. [00:41:34] Is there anything in lutheran doctrine on the, the frequency of communion versus some churches? Once a month, some once every other week or three times a month, generally? Is there any frequency regulation in, or definition? Sure. Anything definite in Lutheranism about how frequently you should celebrate or receive communion, that kind of thing? [00:42:12] Well, I mean, at the time of the reformation, communion was very frequent, I guess. I mean, it was every, every divine service, I believe, had communion, and then there was a whole lot more besides in terms of communion. I mean, there were other days of the week that you could go to church and receive communion, and. [00:42:36] And I don't think that that changed until recently. You know, I don't know. I don't know exactly how. How we came to the. [00:42:46] Came to not have communion all the time or when that happened, but I suspect in the last hundred or so years, I'm not really sure. But it's not something that was reformed during the reformation. It's not like Luther thought we're having it too often or something like that. So. [00:43:23] Yeah, you just said it's possible that happened because of lack of pastors. [00:43:27] That's certainly true. Historically that, you know, I mean, specifically, like in places like in the mountains or, you know, smaller areas that didn't have their own pastors, pastors would go around and so you'd have communion every four weeks or, you know, whenever the pastor could come around, that kind of thing. And then also, you know, it's not like everybody came to church every Sunday. Not that, you know, it's a good thing to do, you know, but. [00:43:56] But certainly christians have not always received it every Sunday, and they. I've been okay, you know, I don't know. That's a weird thing to say, but, yes, kind of on that direction. [00:44:11] Where does Luther stand and where does the Missouri synod stand today on who initiates communion? Does it. Does it require an ordained servant to be the provider, shall we say, of communion? Or is that a right, a sacrament that any believer can administer or partake in without ordination involved? [00:44:49] Yeah, good question. So that was probably heard by those online. Right? That question. Okay, so throughout the history of the church, I think that's been administered by called and ordained pastors. And, you know, like Paul said in that verse that I. That I readdeze, they're the stewards of the mysteries of God sacraments, talking about more than just baptism and the Lord's Supper. [00:45:21] But yes, there are reasons to only have called and ordained pastors administering the Lord's Supper. And that's LCMS practice and also historically, the practice of the church. [00:45:38] Matt, I'll take that question a step further. For is it required to be from. [00:45:52] Does it have to be like, I'll take the cliche example of a plane crashes and it's me and somebody else and they want to take communion to be saved or to not be saved, but, you know, part of the rituals or whatnot? And would I be allowed and would it be a thing I should do? Yeah. So in an emergency situation, could anybody just do it? And, I mean, so kind of, yes. And this is where, like the. In the hymnal, at the. At the back of the hymnal, there's. I believe there's a. There's actually. I think it's in the back of the hymnal. There's a rite of baptism for an emergency situation. Right. For anybody to do so just saying, you know, carry your hymnal with you everywhere you go. Okay. [00:46:40] And it's really simple. But that's because, you know, you're brought into the family of God by baptism and, you know, the thief on the cross wasn't baptized. It's not that you absolutely have to be baptized, but this is the way God has set it up. And so, yeah, in an emergency situation with somebody who isn't baptized and wants to be baptized or it's a baby or something like that. Yeah. Baptize them. The Lord's Supper is different, though, because it's not such an emergency kind of thing. I mean, it is, you know, it is something that we want to provide to people on their deathbed, you know, and that kind of thing. I mean, it's not that in an emergency you don't want it, but it's a little different than baptism in that. Baptism is initiation into God's family, you know, and reception of faith in the Holy Spirit. And the Lord's Supper is like the strengthening of that continually. [00:47:33] So. [00:47:35] Yeah, just take a picture with your phone of that. Right. And then you've got it. [00:47:41] Okay. Well, we better finish up, but I'll let you ask the question. Well, what I was going to say with. [00:47:49] Concerning the Lord's supper, though. Bread and wine need to be blessed or they're just bread and wine. [00:48:00] Yeah, the bread and wine need to be blessed, or else they're just bread and wine. Well, yes. [00:48:06] Not in like a magical sense, but in the sense that we do the Lord's supper. Terrible phrase according to the way it was instituted. Right. And, yes. [00:48:23] So we don't want to do it other than how it was instituted. [00:48:29] All right, thank you for your kind attention. [00:48:49] Where. [00:48:54] Thank you and thank you.