Confident.Faith

Καιρὸς τοῦ φιλῆσαι καὶ καιρὸς τοῦ μισῆσαι· καιρὸς πολέμου καὶ καιρὸς εἰρήνης.

You will usually see this rendered into English as ‘There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace.’, which is not inaccurate, but it is misleading for the reader who does not know the difference between English “time” and Greek “καιρός” (a term we have actually just imported directly into English). Greek certainly has a word that is truly the equivalent of our time, but it is not καιρός; it is χρόνος, from which we get such words as chronological and chronometer. Καιρός is something more than mere time. And so, permit me to provide a better English translation: ‘There exists a due season for (or to) love and a due season for (or to) hate; a due season for war and a due season for peace.’ I trust we are all familiar enough with English to recognize that “due season” is a set term that may mean anything from a moment up to an era, or even eternity; “due season” is simply our notion of καιρός, and it is, in fact, used to translate καιρός in some translations of Scripture:

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.

(that is, indeed, καιρός there rendered “due season”).

Love and hatred are centrally important concepts in Scripture, and few things are more abused by modern pastors and ‘exegetes’. In the false conception of Christianity that so many advance or defend these days, we have no enemies and we are to love everyone and hate no one. What would these moderns say to Jesus Who called Peter “Satan” in today’s Gospel reading, or to Paul who instructs us in today’s Epistle reading to “abhor what is evil”? You cannot have love without hate (at least not in this world). If you do not hate that which threatens that which and those whom you love, then you do not truly love. The Lord God hates the devil, sin, and sinners. Would these ‘moderns’ accuse God Himself of error? And it is abject nonsense to contend that something that is sin when men do it is not sin simply because God is doing it instead; moral relativism corrupts the soul and the mind.

The truth is far different from what these men would like to get you to believe. In truth, you do have enemies and you are commanded to hate. One of the tricks employed most frequently by the enemy is conflation. If his minions can convince you that two unlike or distinct things are identical or that a term with multiple senses is univocal, then he wins a great victory without having to alter a single letter of the text; equivocation and eisegesis are powerful weapons indeed. Conflation is exactly what we have here with “enemy”. English, for better or worse, does not distinguish (at least not by using a different word) between different kinds of enemies. Latin has inimicus and hostis: I am to forgive inimici mei — my personal enemies. Greek has ἐχθρός and πολέμιος: I am to forgive ἐχθροί μου — my personal enemies. I cannot forgive the hostis, the πολέμιος — the public enemy —, for he is not my enemy in the personal sense. We are commanded to forgive our personal enemies, not public enemies. It takes only one example to both make this obvious and destroy all opposition to such clear truth: ‘Have you forgiven Satan?’ If the opponent says no, then he has agreed that some enemies must not be forgiven (and thereby cedes the entire argument); if your opponent says yes, then you ask him if he believes himself more merciful and loving than God (Who has most certainly not forgiven Satan). Our enemies’ positions are so very easily defeated, and yet many fall for their lies and their tricks.

Ultimately, these enemies are antinomians or even nomoclasts — haters, despisers, and destroyers of God’s perfect Law. If God commands you to hate, then who are you to tell Him that He is wrong? Do you know better than God? Are you more just than He? You may gain the approval of the world if you deny that Christians must hate, but perhaps our Gospel reading has something to say about the man who gains the world by compromising the things of God and a related thing about what that will surely cost him. When the Christ returns in His glory with the angels He will recompense all for their deeds in this life. What do you suppose He will do to those who lied about His Nature and attempted to lead His sheep astray? There exists an outer darkness where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Our Epistle reading for today could not be more clear about this matter:

Let love be genuine: Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

The Greek, of course, has no punctuation, but, in English, there should surely be a colon after the command “Let love be genuine”, for the balance of the verse is how we are to do this: We must not only “hold fast to what is good”, but we must also “abhor what is evil”. The Greek word there that is translated “abhor” does, much the same as the English, mean hate. This verse does not merely command you to hate; it also tells you that you cannot love if you do not hate. Our English translations rightly employ a semicolon here: These are two parts of, or even two ways to express, the same thought. I personally find it extremely unlikely that Paul was not thinking of Ecclesiastes when he wrote this part of his letter. Our ESV editors added a number of footnotes:

Seek out what is fine and honorable, and not what is base, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God who rules all, shall be with you, even in the manner you yourselves have declared: “We have hated the base things and loved the good.” Restore judgment in the gates, that the Lord, the God who rules all, may show pity to those who remain of Joseph.

I did not set before my eyes a thing beside the law;

those who do transgressions I hated.

A crooked heart did not cling to me;

as the evil one was turning aside from me, I did not know him.

You who love the Lord, hate evil.

The Lord guards the souls of His pious ones;

He will draw them out from the hand of sinners.

and these are good, but they should have also included Ecclesiastes 3:8:

There is a due season to love and a due season to hate;

there is a due season for war and a due season for peace.

If the Ecclesiast can say, in the Spirit, that there is a time for war and hatred, then Christians surely cannot assert in good conscience that we are to love, forgive, and be at peace with all men. What does Paul say in our Epistle reading?

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

If we were intended to live at peace with all men, then Paul would not have included a caveat; if it is necessary to include “if possible”, then there exists at least the possibility that it will prove impossible to live at peace with some men.

Tell me: Has it proven possible to live at peace with all men? Was peace possible with the Jews that persecuted the Early Church? Was peace possible with Sodom and Gomorrah? Was peace possible with the Mohammedans that invaded Europe and plagued the Medieval Church? Was peace possible for Abraham when barbarians kidnapped Lot? Is peace possible today with the wicked Jews, Muslims, and Hindus? God commanded His people to exterminate His enemies in Canaan. They failed and ceased to be His people. God does not change. Incidentally, when the Ancient Israelites failed to obey God and destroy the peoples He commanded them to destroy, He let their lands be overrun by foreigners, including those they had failed to destroy. Again: God does not change.

And so let us return to Ecclesiastes: There is a time for love and peace, and there is a time for hatred and war. You must ask yourself if you believe you are in the former or in the latter. When you look around, does it seem like we are in a time of love, unity, and peace or does it seem like we are in a time of hate, division, and war? Do you think that if we were to throw down our weapons, our enemies would choose to live with us in peace? Where peace is not possible, you must prepare for war.

To the Greek reader, καιρός did not simply mean ‘a good time’ to do something; rather, it implied something much greater: A kairotic moment was not merely the right time to act; it was a moment that demanded action, and to fail to act was seen as foolish, disastrous, or even wicked. A wise man is one who understands the times, one who neither forces an action out of season nor fails to seize the kairotic moment when it arrives. Speeches, campaigns, battles, and much else are governed by kairotic moments that are seized or missed. In the words of the Psalmist:

Every pious man will offer prayer to You [for this] in a season that is fitting; / yet in a flood of many waters they will not come near him.

The prayers of the pious man shield him from disaster. In the words of Paul (and Isaiah):

“In a kairotic moment, I listened to you,

and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”

God offers to men the free gift of salvation — behold, the kairotic moment! — and He does so according to His good time and plan — behold, the day of salvation! —, and some men seize this lifeline and are drawn into the Ark that is the Church and some men reject Christ’s outstretched hand and are swept away by the floodwaters. Death waits for no man, and men who ‘plan’ to confess on their deathbeds often find God has scheduled their departure earlier than they expected:

Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?

The Lord God is patient, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, but opportunities for mortals to repent are not infinite. Tempt not the Lord; miss not καιρός.

Christianity is a religion of peace: By, through, and for the sake of Christ, we have peace with God and adoption as sons; via the certainty of our Election, confirmed and sealed in the waters of Baptism, we are at peace with our own mortality and the inevitability of death; due to the promises of God, we are at peace in this life, even when matters seem bleak or hopeless. Christianity is a religion of war: From the Garden onward, God and His camp have been at war with Satan and his; every single day, every single Christian wages a personal war against the temptations of the flesh, the world, and the devil; and the children of God here in time, the Church Militant, wage war against the enemies of God. Our forefathers in the faith understood their duties to God and man when they drove the Saracen hordes from Europe and pursued the vile heathens back to their lands across the sea — lands that were once, and will be again, Christian; we find ourselves today in a worse position than they — these are not times for peace. Jehu understood his duties to God and man when he looked upon the wicked practices of Ahab and set about to purge the worship of Baal, Asherah, and other demons from his lands; we find ourselves in a worse position than he, for abortion surely outranks child sacrifice and fornication and pornography surely outrank temple prostitution — it is not a time for peace. Our ancestors from the Roman Empire onward, were surely acting in accord with their duties to both God and man when they suppressed, oppressed, persecuted, expelled, and certainly did not tolerate the wicked Jews; we find ourselves in a worse position today, for, while the Jews continue their wicked opposition to the Christ and their genocidal campaign against all mankind, our institutions (to include our government) are even more thoroughly captured and more deeply corrupt than those of nearly any past era — it is not a time for peace. If the words of the Lord God in Ecclesiastes are true, then there exists a time for hatred and war; if the words of the Lord God spoken by Paul in today’s Epistle reading are true, then we are commanded to hate that which is evil. It is my contention and my firm belief that it requires only the most minimal — even remedial — sort of spiritual discernment, or even merely natural human wisdom according to reason, to recognize that we now live in a time of war.

To live in a time of war and call it a time of peace is to betray both God and man, to participate in the wicked shout of ‘peace, peace’ where there is no peace. To find yourself in a kairotic moment that demands war and to not only fail to seize upon and pursue it but to go so far as to run in the opposite direction and seek after an impossible peace is to commit a sin worse than Jonah’s, to be a fool, a coward, and a traitor.

I want to make absolutely certain that I have been completely clear about the necessary exegesis of the passage from Ecclesiastes: God does not say there ‘may’ be a time for hatred and war; He says in no uncertain terms that there will be times for hatred and war; in fact, this is so certain that He employs the simple present to state it as bare fact: There is a time for hatred and there is a time for war. And of our passage from Romans: You cannot have a genuine love without both holding fast to what is good and hating what is evil. If the Christian life is one that involves love (and it most certainly is), then so, too, must it necessarily involve hatred.

It may help you, in dealing with these matters, to think of yourself as a soldier in God’s army, and so you are, for you are a member of the Church Militant; as a soldier, you are not at liberty to throw down your weapons and declare the enemy forgiven — it is not your place to do so. Your rightful Lord and Commander gets to declare who is a friend and who is a foe. Your duty is to follow orders and hold the line. Whatever calls you have been given and whatever tasks have been set before you, it is your duty to love your own as dearly as God loves us, to forgive your personal enemies because God has forgiven us, to oppose the enemies of God and His children with all you can muster, and to remain loyal with all that you are.

Amen.

I suppose it is about time we deal with Romans 11 — not in the sort of fragmentary way of today’s reading, but in its totality. In fact, as none of you is watching or listening to this live, I highly recommend you pause here and go read Romans 11, or even Romans 9 through 11. I will leave a pause here to make that easier.

…

Now that you have read part of Romans, we will turn to Galatians. Galatians 4, starting with verse 21:

21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? 22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. 23 But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. 24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. 25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 27 For it is written,

“Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear;

break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor!

28 Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29 But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. 30 But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” 31 So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.«

Why do we need Galatians to read Romans? In truth, we do not, for Romans is clear on its own to the Christian reader, but this passage from Galatians certainly makes some of the explanation of Romans easier. Also, lest we forget our maxims: Scriptura Scripturam interpretatur — Scripture interprets Scripture. Now, back to Romans.

We will, today, we treating three key verses and three key concepts or terms. The verses are Romans 9:6, 11:20, and 11:26. The concepts are ‘Israel’, ‘nation’, and Election (with, perhaps, a little digression into jealously). We will take these in turn.

Really, Romans 9:6b. Frequently, false interpretations, false doctrines, even entire false theologies are built upon pulling individual verses out of their context and then contorting them to fit some preconceived idea. Among the Judaizers, this often happens with this verse:

For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

They try to contort this verse to fit into their schema in which all ‘Jews’ are saved, despite the extremely clear Scriptural evidence to the contrary. Worse, the very next verses give the necessary interpretive context:

… and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

Romans 9:6b is not even a complete thought from Paul, because the thought runs through the end of verse 8, and even the sentence itself (once punctuation is added) runs through the end of verse 7. There are two Israels in our verse, and verse 8 explicitly gives us the two categories Paul had in mind when he dictated verse 6: “children of the flesh” and “children of God”. Before we go deeper into this, let us abstract the logic of the verse:

\neg \forall x\, (I_1(x) \to I_2(x))

‘Not all individuals (x) who are part of Israel 1 (I_1) are necessarily part of Israel 2 (I_2).’

or

\exists x\, (I_1(x) \land \neg I_2(x))

‘There exists (at least in theory) an individual (x) who is not part of both Israel 1 (I_1) and Israel 2 (I_2).’

This is the actual logic of what Paul is saying. A simple application of the law of noncontradiction tells us that an individual cannot both be a thing and not be the same thing simultaneously, so we cannot have an Israelite who does not belong to Israel if being an Israelite is defined as belonging to Israel, for that would be to declare that our individual (x) is both I and ¬I simultaneously. (We could arrive at the same conclusion using the law of the excluded middle, of course.) That being said, the two Israels are ethnic Israel (“all who are descended from Israel [i.e., Jacob]”) and true Israel (i.e., the Church, the Elect). There are (or at least there were) some ethnic Israelites who were also elect, but not all of them are elect. The passage is actually quite easily understood when read in context. Incidentally, Paul’s words apply to every race, not just to the Israelites: There exists a Germany, comprised of those descended from Ashkenaz, and some portion of that Germany is Israel (i.e, Elect members of Christ’s Church).

Really, Romans 11:20b. This verse is the key to the whole of Romans:

They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith.

Set aside, for the moment, all the figures of speech — the allegory, the simile, the metaphor — what does Paul actually say here? Faith is what matters. Faith is what distinguishes the elect members of every nation from the unbelieving members; faith is what makes one a part of the only Israel that matters: the Israel of God, the Church. Did physical descent from Abraham or Jacob save the Israelites? No. And neither will descent from Japheth or Ashkenaz save you. To be a member of the true Israel, you must have faith, for it is faith alone that saves you, declares you righteous for the sake of Christ, and will preserve you from the fiery end of this Creation. If you understand this one verse, you will understand the Book of Romans, a great many passages in the Old Testament, and many core doctrines of the faith — more, you will be preserved from many errors, but we will get to Election soon. You stand in the faith, as did our righteous ancestors, or you depart from the faith and fall, as did the wicked Jews. It is that simple.

Really, Romans 11:26a. The Dispensationalists and other Judaizers love this verse. Well, they think they do. If they could read or if they had the Holy Spirit, then they might reconsider. At any rate, what does our verse actually say?

And in this way all Israel will be saved.

Does this mean, as the heretics claim, that all ‘Jews’ will be saved? Well, it certainly cannot mean so in the sense of all Israelites; read the Old Testament: Most of them were damned. What of all of them going forward in time? Certainly not. Look at Paul’s anguish in the introductory verses of this very chapter:

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Paul knows full well that most of his brothers were damned. And look at their state today: They still reject the Christ and they are still damned. What then does it mean that “all Israel will be saved”? Well, which Israel is in view here? You all know the answer without my saying it. The only Israel comprised exclusively of the saved (i.e., the Elect) is the Israel of God — the Church. And the immediately prior verse confirms this:

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the nations has come in.

There are Elect from every tribe and nation and language, as Revelation clearly teaches. God has used the stubbornness of the Jews to ensure the Gospel spreads to all nations and He inflamed the jealousy and the envy of the Jews to ensure that they were not all damned. He has ensured that all of His Elect will be brought to saving faith by the means (and Means) that He knew would be effective. With Paul, we should most certainly exclaim:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Now, our three terms or concepts. First, Israel. We have already covered much of this one, and so we can be relatively brief here. There are four ‘Israels’ in Scripture:

(There is also a fifth sense in that the Christ Himself is the true — or even truest — Israel, but we will leave that for another time). The third category can generally be ignored, but the other three must be carefully distinguished. Thankfully, they are easily distinguished. For the first category, seldom will it be difficult to distinguish an individual man from a nation or a conceptual grouping. The second and fourth categories are where problems typically arise, and yet Scripture provides us an easy answer: As already examined, it is faith that defines the Israel of God, the true Israel, so those without faith cannot be found in the fourth category; more, we know that all the promises of God are ‘yes’ and ‘amen’ in Christ. Well, who are those who are in Christ? Only those in the fourth category, so the promises of God pertain only to the Elect.

Second, nation. More accurately, εθνος, for we are dealing with Greek when we are dealing with Scripture. The Greek does not map perfectly onto English nation or race, but that is so only in one specific way (that is relevant for us here): The Koine Greek speaker or reader could use εθνος of bees or similar (as Homer did in Classical Greek in the Iliad); we would not, in English, employ such a phrase as “a nation of bees”, except, perhaps, in some very niche circumstances, and even then more as poetry than as prose. In all other cases, the Greek εθνος and the English nation or race essentially agree (n.b., the modern tendency in sloppy use of the English language to conflate nation and country is incorrect, misleading, and worthy of condemnation). The word ‘εθνος’ appears nearly a thousand times in Scripture; it is not a minor or an unimportant concept. Paul employs the word twenty-nine times in Romans alone. If you are using a Bible that employs the abominable word “Gentiles”, you need to know the actual word there is εθνος, which should generally be translated into English as nation or race.

So, Paul actually speaks of himself as being the Apostle to the nations and of the fullness of the nations being brought in. Some of you are undoubtedly thinking of 1 Peter 2:9:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Indeed, Israel (the true one) is an εθνος in the sense previously discussed (with the bees), but this is more commonly portrayed as οχλος — a multitude — or even a συμμιγης οχλος — a mixed multitude. Think of the mixed multitude that went up with Israel in the Exodus and the mixed multitude that is Israel in Revelation. The Israel of God is, indeed, an εθνος and also a συμμιγης οχλος — both a figurative holy nation and a literal mixed multitude.

And yet we must not ignore the core sense of εθνος: To the Koine Greek speaker, εθνος meant nation and race. When Paul spoke to the Galatians, he used εθνος ten times, and they heard and understood nation and race; they knew that they were of the Celtic Galatian εθνος. The Romans knew they were of the Roman εθνος (Koine Greek being the common language of the empire). The Hebrews knew that they were of the Hebrew εθνος. The men to whom Paul wrote would not have been confused by the terms he employed; he used their language (and one of his) because so God ordained and thus they could understand. The educated among Paul’s audience would have been familiar with works such as those of Herodotus in which εθνος is defined as a matter of common blood, common language, common sanctuaries and sacrifices, and similar customs. Paul himself reinforces this understanding in many places in his letters, not least of all the much abused Galatians 3:28:

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

If there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ, then both Jew and Greek must be real categories, or else the verse would be gibberish. Salvation is neither bounded nor scoped (although it is certainly modulated) by race: The free gift of salvation is open to all men and God desires that none should perish. Even the Canaanite woman is praised for her faith.

Soteriology does not destroy ontology. You are who and what God made you. I was raised Christian and so I cannot employ myself as an example here, but if you were converted as an adult, you did not cease to be what you were before you were converted. If you were male and French before you were converted, then you are still male and French, you are simply also Christian now. You did not cease to be anything you were and are essentially. I am male and I am American (of German and Scottish descent) — I will remain those things my entire life and for all eternity, because I am those things essentially. The Church neither ‘overrides’ nor destroys essential realities like biological sex and race; you are saved regardless of such things, but you will remain them forever. To deny the reality of such essentials is to deny the Creator Who made them. You are not a genderless, sexless, raceless amorphous blob; you are either male or female, you are a specific racial composition, and so you will and must remain. Those who think they know better than God and would deny such truths would do well to read Revelation 7:9 a few dozen times:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.

Third, Election. Many have gone off the rails when it comes to Election. This is not cause for avoiding the doctrine, for it appears frequently in Scripture and is a key part of God’s plan of salvation; rather, it is warrant for deliberate and careful teaching in this area. Election is addressed in an article of the Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord; if you are a teacher, to include fathers, then you should read and understand that article. But before you do so, read and re-read God’s short teaching on the matter contained in Romans 8:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Election is not Law. I will say that again: Election is not Law. If you read or conceive of Election as cause for worry or despair then you have read it wrongly or understood it incorrectly. Election is Gospel. Again, I will repeat myself: Election is Gospel. Election is not God’s foreknowledge, for His foreknowledge covers all things — good and bad — and all men — believers and unbelievers. Election applies only to believers and pertains to how God has both ordered and ensured our salvation. You are not elect because of your merit; you are not elect because of your good works; you are not elect because of your righteousness. Your election depend entirely and solely upon the merit of Christ and the gracious will of the Father. This is Gospel precisely because it does not rely upon you. As Luther put it:

I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.

What is the purpose of Scripture? It seems like such a simple question, and yet far too many far too often lose sight of the truth of 2 Timothy 3:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

And, again, this time from Romans 15:

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Scripture, correctly read, is never irrelevant; Scripture, correctly understood, will never cause despair. Scripture is God’s revelation — explicit revelation — of Himself and His plans to and for His Elect. God is our loving Father, and His promises pertain to us, to His beloved children. Never let anyone convince you that Scripture belongs to anyone other than the Church (i.e., the sheep who hear the Master’s voice). Never let anyone convince you that the promises of God belong to anyone other than His children (i.e., those who are in Christ). Never let anyone convince you that there is any way to the Father except the Son. The Book of Romans was written for us, just like all Scripture.

The world is full of false teachers who would steal everything from you if only you would let them. They would steal from you your identity by convincing you that gender, sex, race, and other such things are not real. They would steal from you your patrimony by convincing you that borders are not real and your neighbor is every man on Earth. They would steal from you the Word and promises of God by convincing you that they were meant for other men. But false shepherds have no power over the true sheep who hear and heed only the Master’s voice. Wicked TV programming can be turned off; wicked books can be put down (or burned); and false shepherds can be simply ignored. Pray that God will give us faithful magistrates to punish such wicked men, but, personally and for your part, simply do not listen to them.

There is only one Israel that matters, and that is the true Israel, the Israel of God, the Church, and she is comprised of believers from every language, tribe, and nation, which is to say race, and she is not bounded by time, for Adam belongs to her the same as you and I, and she is not bounded by corporate form or human governance, for there is but one Good Shepherd and the sheep are those who heed His voice, and she is both Militant, comprised of us who struggle here in time, and Triumphant, comprised of those who brightly shine in eternity. The men who would advance or advocate for any other ‘Israel’ most certainly have another god, and we would do well to rebuke and shun them, at least until God gives us faithful leaders to make such men a foot or so shorter. May the Lord God arise and scatter His enemies and may those who trouble His sheep flee from before Him.

Amen.

What sort of a God do you have? In one sense, the question can have only one answer, for the Lord God is and remains your God, whether you reject Him or not. The Ancient Israelites rejected God time and time again, and yet He remains on His throne. In another sense, the question is, perhaps, more interesting. What is your conception of the God you claim to worship? If your god would not flood the world and destroy nearly all life, then you surely have another god, not the Lord God. If your god would not command the genocide of a wicked race — to include the women and the children — then you have another god, not the Lord God. If your god will not bring this Creation to an end in flames and then consign His enemies to the same for eternity, then you have another god, not the Lord God.

The Reformed go too far in emphasizing God’s sovereignty and glory, for they do so to the extreme of effectively denying His mercy and His love — they fall off the right side of the horse. In a very real sense, Lutheranism has simply been the ship — the Ark, if you will — that has successfully navigated between Scylla and Charybdis, fallen off neither the right nor the left side of the horse, and we must be careful to do the same here: We must not so emphasize our Father’s other attributes that we — actually or effectively — deny His sovereignty or His glory. The Lord God is Master and Creator of all things. He is the Absolute Infinite, and all else is as nothing before Him. He made and named every star and He formed you in your mother’s womb and He knew your name in eternity past before your grandparents had even met. There is nothing that can contain God, for He contains all things. We could never fully describe God, for He describes all things. He is infinitely above and beyond us, and yet He also knows each and every one of us better than we shall ever know ourselves. We cannot, in absolute terms, overstate the magnificence, the awesomeness, or the glory of God.

The point of the Book of Job is the absolute transcendence, knowledge, power, and control of God over all things. At no point did anything happen to Job — and at no point has anything happened or will anything happen to you — that was not entirely within God’s control. Now, God did not personally inflict any evil on Job, but the devil is God’s devil and he has never ‘slipped his leash’. Whatever the devil did, God permitted; whatever the devil wanted to do, but did not, God prevented. The God Who set the boundaries of the sea, telling her ‘this far and no further’, also set the boundaries the demons cannot transgress. You will never suffer temptations or trials beyond what you can, by the grace and power of God, endure; even Job, the great patron saint of those who suffer for the sake of righteousness, was not tempted or afflicted beyond what God knew he could and would bear. Satan himself could not break righteous Job; whatever lesser tempter has been assigned to you will surely have even less success. This is not to minimize or downplay the suffering and trials of the average Christian; rather, it should be taken as a source of strength: God did not permit the archfiend who led angels astray and ushered sin into the world to break righteous and elect Job. The Good Shepherd will lose not one of His sheep to the wolves. But let us return to today’s text.

When God speaks to Job, does He justify Himself? Does He explain Himself? No. The first reply of God to Job is actually two verses before our reading:

“Who is this who darkens counsel / by words without knowledge?”

God’s first words to Job are a condemnation of Job’s complaint and lament, and they set the stage for the rest of God’s speech:

“Where were you when I was laying the earth’s foundation?

Now tell me, if you are endowed with understanding.

Who determined its measures, if you know?

Or who was it that stretched a line upon it?

On what have its rings been fastened?

And who is he that cast a cornerstone upon it?

When the stars were born,

all my angels praised me with a loud voice.

“Again, I shut up the sea with gates,

when it quivered with eagerness, as it issued from its mother’s womb,

and I made the cloud its clothing,

and with mist I swaddled it;

yes, I prescribed bounds for it,

setting bars and gates around it.

And I said to it, ‘Thus far you shall come,

and you shall not go beyond;

“Indeed, was it in your time that I instructed the morning light

and that the morning star saw its post,

to take hold of earth’s wings,

to shake the impious off it?

Indeed, was it you that took clay soil and formed a living creature,

and, able to talk, set him on earth?

Again, did you remove the light from the impious

and crush the arm of the proud?

“And did you go to the source of the sea

and walk in the tracks of the deep?

Again, do the gates of death open to you out of fear,

and did the porters of Hades cower when they saw you?

Again, have you been advised of the breadth of what is under heaven?

Do tell me how much it is.

“As well, in what kind of land does the light dwell,

and of what kind is the place of darkness?

Might you perhaps lead me to their borders?

And perhaps too you know their paths?

Thereby I know that you were born then,

and the number of your years is great!

“And have you gone to the storehouses of the snow,

and have you seen the storehouses of the hail?

But it is at your disposal for a time of enemies,

for a day of war and battle.

And from where does the hoarfrost come,

or from where is the south wind dispersed to what is under heaven?

“And who prepared a course for the driving rain

and a way for the tumults,

to bring rain on land, where there is no man,

wilderness, where there is no human in it,

to feed the untrodden and uninhabited

and to cause it to grow an effusion of greenery?

“Who is the rain’s father?

And who is it that has given birth to the dew’s nuggets?

And from whose womb does the ice come forth?

And who has given birth to freezing rain in the sky

that descends like flowing water?

And who froze the face of the deep?

“And did you understand the bond of Pleiades,

and did you open the barrier of Orion?

truly, will you open Mazouroth in its season,

and the Evening Star with its luminous tail—will you lead them

And do you know heaven’s changes

or the corresponding events under heaven?

“And will you summon a cloud by voice,

and will it obey you with a violent burst of water?

And will you send out thunderbolts—and will they go?

And will they say to you, ‘What is it?’

And who gave to women skill in weaving

or knowledge of embroidery?

And who is he that numbers the clouds in wisdom

and inclined the sky to the earth?

And dust has been poured out like soil,

but I have cemented it, like a block to a stone.

“And will you hunt prey for the lions

and satisfy the appetite of dragons?

For they are in a state of fear in their lairs,

and they crouch in the woods, lying in wait.

And who prepared food for the raven?

For its young have cried to the Lord as they wander about, searching for food.

Job responds correctly:

Why do I yet contend—being rebuked even while confuting the Lord,

hearing such things—when I am nothing?

And I, what answer shall I give to these things?

I will lay my hand on my mouth.

I have spoken once, but I will not add to a second time.

But the Lord continues His speech:

No, but gird up your loins like a man, and I will question you, but as for you, just answer me!

Do not shrug off my judgment.

And do you think I have dealt with you in any other way

Do you have an arm like the Lord,

or do you thunder with a voice like his?

“Go ahead take on loftiness and power,

and put on glory and honor.

And send forth messengers in wrath

and every insolent person humble.

Yes, extinguish the proud,

and at once make putrid the impious.

And hide them outside together in the earth,

and fill their faces with dishonor;

then I will acknowledge that your right hand can save.

“But look now, you are familiar with ‘monsters’;

they eat grass like cows.

Look now, its strength is in its loins,

and its power in its belly’s navel.

It stood up its tail like a cypress,

and its sinews have been interwoven.

Its flanks are flanks of copper,

and its spine is cast iron.

“This is the chief of what the Lord created,

made to be mocked at by his angels.

But when it went up on a steep mountain,

it brought gladness to the quadrupeds in Tartarus.

Under trees of every kind it lies down,

by the papyrus and reed and sedge.

And tall trees find themselves in its shade,

with limbs, as do the chaste-tree’s branches.

If there is a flood, it will never notice.

it trusts that the Jordan will tumble into its mouth.

Will he catch it in his eye;

while bent back, will he pierce its nose?

“And will you catch a dragon with a fish hook

and put a halter around its nose?

if you will fasten a ring in its nostril]

And will you pierce its lip with a ring?

And will it address you with a petition,

with a supplication, softly?

And will it make a covenant with you,

and will you take it as your perpetual slave?

And will you play with it as with a bird,

or tie it up like a sparrow for a child?

And do nations feed on it,

and do the Phoenician races divvy it up?

And a whole fleet, gathered, cannot carry the mere skin of its tail.

and its head in fishermen’s boats.

But you will lay a hand on it,

though you remember the battle that is waging in its body,

Job finally replies:

“I know that you can do anything,

and nothing is impossible for you.

For who is it that hides counsel from you,

and being sparing with words thinks to hide them from you as well?

But who will tell me what I did not know,

great and marvelous things that I did not understand?

Now hear me, Lord, that I too may speak;

then I will question you, and you, teach me!

Whereas before I would hear an aural report of you,

now, however, my eye has seen you;

therefore I disparaged myself and wasted away,

and I regard myself as dust and ashes.”«

And yet what does God ultimately say of the words of righteous Job? ‘He has spoken of Me what is right.’ What are we to make of all this?

Perhaps my earlier diction was (perhaps intentionally) too strong: Does God actually condemn what Job said in his lament? Certainly, He says that Job has ‘darkened counsel by words without knowledge’, but He finally assesses Job as having spoken what is right about God. In truth, God more or less ignores what all of the men have spoken and, instead, appeals to His glory as demonstrated in Creation. God does not reply to the words of Job; neither does He respond to the arguments, accusations, et cetera, of Job’s friends; instead, God simply speaks words of truth about Himself and about His Creation. Jesus sometimes does much the same in the pages of the New Testament: teaching instead of answering the question asked. And God is, indeed, teaching here, for those with ears to heard:

“Who is this who darkens counsel / by words without knowledge?”

This implies a number of things, two chief among them:

Again, all that happened to Job was known to God before it happened and was permitted by God according to His perfect knowledge, justice, and mercy. Nothing has ever happened without God’s permission; nothing ever will happen without God’s permission. And there is nothing hidden from His sight.

There are two ways God reveals knowledge about Himself: explicitly and implicitly. The former we all know and understand well (it is Scripture); the latter is that to which God appeals when speaking to Job, and it is also, in many ways, the greater revelation. But the implicit revelation requires greater effort from and makes greater demands upon the man who would obtain access to it. Scripture, of course, demands a lifetime (more than a lifetime, really) of study to truly understand all that it teaches about God and His Creation. This is not to say that some matters are not simple: The Gospel can be explain in ninety seconds. And yet there is an immense difference between the explicit and the implicit, but there are also immense rewards for those who invest time and effort into the implicit revelation. Some few things are known only from Scripture (e.g., the Gospel), but all else is known more fully (or even only) from Creation.

The more you study a masterpiece — whether a painting, a poem, a novel, a sculpture, or something else — the more you will discover; both about the piece and about the master who made it; the same is true of Creation: Everywhere you dig, you will find God, and the deeper you dig the more deeply you will encounter and understand God. You will find the Lord God in the ordering of the Solar System and the movement of the stars, and you will find Him in the rebirth of spring and every cell division. You will find Him in the pages of history and, when you arrive in the future, you will find Him already there waiting for you. With our modern technology, we can count our respiration rate, our heartbeat, and dozens of other such metrics, but the Lord God knew how many breaths you would take and how many times your heart would beat before you were even born. I have lived in some of the largest Western cities and camped in some of the most remote parts of this country; God was no further away in either location. There exists nowhere you could ‘escape’ from God. In the words of the Psalm:

Where should I go from your spirit?

And from your face where should I flee?

If I ascend to the sky, you are there;

if I descend to Hades, you are present.

If I were to take my wings at dawn

and make my covert at the farthest limits of the sea,

indeed, there your hand shall guide me,

and your right hand shall hold me fast.

And I said, “So then, darkness shall trample me,

and night be illumination in my delight,”

because darkness will not be made dark due to you,

and night will be illumined as day;

The Book of Job is a book for Christians. Yes, certainly, I mean so in the sense that all Scripture is written for our instruction and our comfort, but I just as certainly mean so in the sense that one cannot read and understand Job and not become a Christian. Now, we could draw out the whole of Christian doctrine from Job, but that will have to wait for another day. Instead, let us focus on the core truths that are taught in Job: Although we are beset by troubles in this life (in the words of the hymn: ‘We walk in danger all the way.’) and although we will surely be tempted and tried by fire, we can yet remain confident that we have a Father above Who knows us, and orders all things; we will be neither tempted nor tried beyond what we can bear, and every trial and all suffering will be turned by God for our good. We rely neither upon our own strength, which would surely be insufficient for the task, nor upon our own wisdom, which would surely darken counsel; rather, we rely completely and totally upon our God and Father, for He knows all things and He has never failed, nor will He ever fail.

As the righteous Son of God suffered in our place, so the righteous son of Esau suffered for our benefit, that we might look to his example and take comfort in times of trial and affliction. It is unlikely that God will permit Satan himself to afflict and tempt you, and yet even should that worst of possibilities occur, we know that God will see us successfully through the storm, and will even reach out to rescue us, as He did with Peter. We rely not on our own strength, just as we rely not on our own works. Although we exist in time and must endure all things as they come, each in its own season, God is not bound by time; God saw Job vindicated and triumphant long before Satan had even requested to afflict him. When God looks at you, He certainly sees and understands your present trials, but He also sees your eternity; He knows that your name is inscribed in the Book of Life, and He knows precisely how He will turn your every temptation and trial and all your affliction and your suffering for your eternal good. He is your loving Father Who disciplines you for your good, and His Son is the Good Shepherd, Who never loses or abandons His sheep.

Life is short; eternity is long. We know ourselves and each other here in time only as we presently are — fallen, imperfect, afflicted; God knows us as we will be in eternity, as He always intended us to be — sinless, perfect, and content. We are, in this life, simultaneously saints and sinners — simul justus et peccator —, but the God Who perfectly knows every second of our lives — both here in time and there in eternity — knows that peccator will fall away and only justus will remain. When He looks at you, the Father sees the perfect righteousness of Christ which was made yours in the waters of Baptism. Although we have only a foretaste of that righteousness in this life, and the process of sanctification is never completed in this fallen world, we believe, teach, and confess that we will be fully and finally sanctified in the Resurrection of the Just. And a mystery still more glorious: God will not merely overlook or ignore our past sins in eternity; rather, He has promised that He will forget them. How God can forget, we do not (and likely cannot) know, but we do know what God has promised and that God never lies. I want you to think about that promise for a bit: God will remember your sins no more — He will forget them. All that exists exists by the power, knowledge, and wisdom of God, and the perfection of every instance (to include you and me) exists necessarily in the mind of God. To say that God does not know something is to say that it does not exist — more, that it never existed at all.

Your sins are not merely washed away in eternity; as a true son or daughter of the Father, you will be restored to the righteousness God always intended for you, and your sins will cease to exist. Here we would do best just to stop and marvel, to affirm what God has promised, and to exclaim with Paul:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

Our Father’s gifts are always greater, deeper, more expansive, and more perfect that we can even imagine. We pray “Thy will be done.” not only because it is the correct orientation of creature toward Creator, but also because He surely intends for us things both greater and more perfect than anything we could specifically formulate ourselves.

In Peter, we see that God will reach out to save us from drowning and, in Job, we see that God will not permit temptation, trial, affliction, or suffering to break us, no matter how bad or even bleak things may seem here in time. This life is certainly one of trials and tribulations — and anyone promising you anything else is selling something other than Christianity —, but we Christians have the security of knowing that God is for us and the great privilege of doing His work. More Christians have been called and commanded to live for the truth than have been called and commanded to die for it, but both have happened and both remain distinct possibilities. Whether you are called to lose and to endure everything for the faith or to live quietly and peacefully in good works, it is all for the glory of God and for your good.

Do good, live well, die well.

Amen.

To paraphrase Luther and Walther: ‘The sheep rightly judge their shepherds.’ To be certain, there is but one Good Shepherd and He is without error and beyond rebuke, but undershepherds — pastors and teachers — are mere men and are, thus, liable to err and are proper subjects of godly rebuke should they err. And yet not all sheep should rebuke their shepherds. Women, for instance, must not do so, for Scripture commands women to be silent in the churches and to inquire of their own husbands at home. Neither should all men endeavor to rebuke the shepherds, for the man who would offer a rebuke stands in the place of a teacher — more, a teacher of teachers —, and so he must be certain that his rebuke is grounded in truth, grounded in the Word of God, for then it is not truly the sheep who is rebuking the undershepherd, but the Good Shepherd Himself, speaking through the sheep. There is, of course, also the matter of rebuking a shepherd who goes astray with regard to matters of God’s first book (i.e., Creation), but the man who would undertake that sort of rebuke must rely upon the gifts God has given him and his conscience.

The sheep are given qualifications in Scripture according to which shepherds may be judged, but there are also examples against which the sheep may judge their shepherds — and against which you shepherds should judge yourselves. One of the most powerful and important such examples is found in today’s Epistle reading: St. Paul not only expresses a desire to save the sheep, but above and beyond this, he expresses such a strong desire to save his own race that he expresses, as a hypothetical, his willingness to be cut off for the sake of his racial brethren. I would directly address other shepherds: You may be inclined to read St. Paul’s words as extreme or a sort of pinnacle; permit me to disabuse you of any such delusions: St. Paul’s words do not express the height or zenith of what it means to be a shepherd — at least not alone; rather, what Paul expresses is simultaneously the height and the bar — the minimum. If your desire to see your own people saved does not match that of St. Paul, then may I rather strongly suggest you take up digging ditches or some other honest work with your hands, for the man who would not give everything for the salvation of his own people is unworthy to hold the office or post of shepherd. But, of course, that is a matter that is between you and your conscience and God, a matter that will be perfectly and finally sorted at the Stricter Judgement. And, for the sheep: You are entitled to such a standard of care from your shepherds, not because you are worthy, but because that is the standard our Lord and Savior has set and which He demands from those who hold office under Him.

There are many unworthy shepherds these days. Paul says that, were it a possibility (hence the hypothetical nature of his comments), he would be cut off — blotted from the Book of Life — for the sake of his people; many modern ‘pastors’ (and even more ‘priests’) could not even tell you who their people are, and many would even go so far as to deny that they have such a thing as their own people. Who is wrong: St. Paul or these moderns? They cannot both be right. If St. Paul is right to express so deep and profound a love for his racial kinsmen, then the moderns stand condemned — or even damned — by their refusal to echo the same of their own racial kinsmen.

God is not the author of confusion or disorder or chaos, and the Gospel does not destroy nature. When you became a Christian — whether it was in your mother’s womb or as a full adult — who and what you are did not change. If you were American before your Baptism, then you remained American after your Baptism. If you went into the waters French, then you came out French. Soteriology does not destroy ontology. You are not less male or female, German or Scottish, or any other such essential category because of your justification and renewal; if anything, you are more what God made you, because the process of sanctification conforms you to what God always intended you to be. If you believe that the Gospel destroys, erases, removes, or even merely suppresses or limits realities such as biological sex and race, then you have listened to false shepherds and internalized their lies. Certainly, such false shepherds will receive their due punishment from God, but you must purge such false teachings from your own mind and they must never be found on your tongue. The shepherd will receive the stricter Judgement, but that does not mean that sheep will receive no Judgement or have some sort of ‘perfect’ or complete defense at the Judgement. A woman is not her own head, but, even though her head will receive the greater scrutiny, she is not thereby fully excused.

Given the state of modern shepherds, perhaps more and greater admonition is due. Shepherd is not a mere job or occupation; to be a shepherd is to hold an office and to be subject to an attendant set of duties. If you think of your office primarily as a matter of privileges, rights, honors, or any other such things, then you are utterly unfit — resign and beg God for His mercy. Unlike the office of father, which one obtains naturally and holds for life, the office of shepherd may be relinquished. Surely, if God has prepared you for the office and called you to it, then you will be judged if you decide to neglect these gifts and refuse that call — ask the faithless servant who buried his talent or Jonah who got on a ship and sailed the wrong direction —, but it will go much worse for you if you hold such office unworthily or execute it faithlessly. The faithful shepherd is promised a crown; the false and faithless shepherd should expect only wailing and gnashing of teeth. God will not be mocked, least of all by those who claim to stand in His stead and to speak on His behalf, and yet care nothing for His sheep and seek only to fill their own bellies and service their own egos and thereby fill full their cup of wrath. In the words of St. John Chrysostom: ‘The road to Hell is paved with the bones of priests and monks, and the skulls of bishops are the lampposts that light the path.’

I fear that, in desiring never to overstep, I have been insufficiently forceful, so let me be clearer: Every time you take up the pen to write or open your mouth to speak on behalf of God, you should be possessed of a holy terror, for to touch the things of God is to take your life — and your soul — in your hands. You should treat God’s truth — all of His truth — with no less reverence than the Ancient Israelites were instructed to treat the Ark. I encourage every shepherd to contemplate Oza (or Uzzah, if you are not yet familiar with the LXX). In a very real sense, Oza was dead before David even began to bring up the Ark; he was dead because his leaders — his shepherds — failed to do what God required of them. Or did you think that your wickedness or laxity would never affect others? Cursed is the one who does the work of the Lord with slackness. Oza surely died for his own transgression, but Oza also surely could have been saved had his leaders been faithful and obeyed God’s commands.

And via Oza we come to an uncomfortable (for some, anyway) truth: The faithlessness of your shepherds will not excuse your transgressions. Certainly, there is a diminishment of fault, after a fashion, for those who act in ignorance, but you do have a duty not to be ignorant with regard to certain matters. Wives are to obey their husbands, which means they must know what their husbands have told them to do or not to do. Men are to obey Christ, which means that we must know what He has told us to do or not to do. Certainly, it is the duty of shepherds within the Church to lead the sheep truly and well, but the shepherds may lead the sheep with and only with the words and truth of the Good Shepherd, for His sheep know His voice. The sheep will follow the undershepherds who speak with the voice of the one true Shepherd, but they will just as surely — must just as surely — reject the many false ‘shepherds’ who do not speak with the Master’s voice. Should the sheep wander off after false shepherds, then we know that the Master, Who seeks the lost, will surely send other, faithful shepherds after those sheep, but the sheep must then choose to which voice they will listen, whether that of the true Shepherd in the mouths of the faithful undershepherds or the voice of the liar below in the mouths of the false shepherds, leading them into the wilderness to become goats instead of sheep.

There is no way around this matter: The sheep must judge their shepherds. You, as sheep, must discern the faithful from the faithless. Some will tell you that you must simply submit to this or that authority, and that you will thereby resolve (or even avoid) the problem, but that merely abstracts the problem by a layer or two. If you submit to some authority, then you have decided that that authority is faithful, or at least that you will treat him or it as if he or it were. God has given us the only standard according to which undershepherds may be judged faithful or faithless: His unchanging and perfect Word. You may judge any shepherd by whether or not the things he says are consonant with the things God has said before him, for faithful shepherds speak with the Master’s voice. This does not, of course, mean that you must mistrust everyone in everything, for faithful shepherds prove themselves over time, much as false shepherds reveal themselves. God will never leave us without faithful men to teach His Word, to speak His truths after Him, but this remains a fallen world and Satan will continue to try to sneak his ‘prophets’ into the churches. It is the duty of the faithful prince and magistrate to remove faithless and wicked teachers, but God has not blessed us with such a man, at least not today, and so the sheep must be particularly vigilant in refusing to listen to the voice of Legion, which is, today, spoken by the mouths of thousands of false shepherds.

Wives, God will ask you at the Judgement where your children are. Husbands, God will ask you at the Judgement where your wives and children are. Shepherds, God will ask you at the Judgement where His flock is that He entrusted to your care. We all have callings, duties, tasks set before us. According to our callings and our gifts, we will be judged; according to our duties and our faithfulness, we will be judged; according to our tasks and our diligence, we will be judged. Whether you are a pastor or a housewife, a teacher or a plumber, a magistrate or a retired grandparent, you have duties, callings, and gifts; you must be neither lax nor false. Your Lord and Savior has entrusted much to your care and He will demand much in return, and from those to whom He has entrusted greater and rare gifts, He will demand all the more. And yet we must not and, indeed, should not, take any of this as demanding or burdensome:

“For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.”

The Lord God does not call you to be what you are not; rather, God calls you to be what you were always meant to be and what you will fully and truly become in eternity. It is not a burdensome thing to be a husband; it is not a burdensome thing to be a wife. Yes, as the Apostle says, you will have trouble in this life if you marry, for we, men, are fallen, and so are the women we marry, but such a small cost is surely worth the great joys of marriage, for which God designed us. And other callings are certainly similar. It is not burdensome to be a teacher, modulo the words of Hebrews 13:

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you.

God has both designed and equipped us for the very callings He has assigned us and tasks He has given us. We must endeavor to do these things with joy. The Lord has already done the hard work and He has even prepared our good works for us. This life is certainly not easy, but it is, perhaps, easier than we sometimes make it for ourselves.

There is a general desire among men (and women) to ‘outsource’ certain (perhaps difficult or complicated or time-consuming) tasks, and this desire is not always wrongful. If my HVAC stops working, then I am probably going to call an expert. I do not roast my own coffee, build my own cars, or translate from Russian. And I am quite happy to have other men produce the ink for my pens. It is not wrong to rely upon true expertise, nor is it wrong to rely upon trustworthy men. But there are times and topics where men must necessarily investigate (at least to some depth) for themselves. I do not need to learn to fly a modern jetliner in order to check if my pilot is competent, but I should probably fly only on airlines that require training, licensure, and screening. Similarly, you do not need to exhaustively analyze every statement made by teachers you already trust, but you should check them from time to time against the Word of God, and you should know the Word of God well enough to do that. And yes, I do encourage you to hold me to the same standard. There is no room for error when it comes to the things of God. The sheep hear the voice of their Master; make sure your shepherds are not speaking with some other voice.

Amen.