Good and Evil: A Toxic Mix

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern,

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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Mark chapter 3 verses 20 through 35. Then Jesus went home and the crowd gathered again so they could not even eat.

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And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him for they were saying, he's out of his mind.

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The scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, he's possessed by Beelzebul, the prince of demons.

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By him, he casts out demons. And he called them to him and he said to them in parables, how can

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Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

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If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end.

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But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man.

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And then indeed, he may plunder his house. Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man and whatever blasphemies they utter.

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But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.

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For they had said he has an unclean spirit. And his mother and his brothers came and standing outside, they sent to him and called to him.

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And a crowd was sitting around him. And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. And he answered them, who are my mother and my brothers?

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And looking at those who sat around him, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

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This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus. All right, when

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I was a young lad, I would sometimes lay on my parents couch, flip over on my back and then look at the ceiling.

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You ever done this? It didn't take too long for the ceiling, at least in my mind, to begin to look like the floor and the floor to look like the ceiling.

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I would then imagine what it would be like to walk on the ceiling and rock around my house with a couch above me and the

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TV hanging upside down. Now, I don't know why, but that little fantasy was always fun for me.

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Seems a little bit backwards. But, you know, I was bored as a kid, you know, things like that. But as fun as that make believe game was,

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I'm always profoundly struck by the devastation that sin has wrought on humanity.

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In fact, our Old Testament text chronicles the immediate aftermath of our first parents decision to cast

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God's word and command his word and his command aside and to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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It's important for us to remember that in the preceding chapters, that after God created the heavens and the earth and all that we see, the sea, the creatures in the sea, the plants, the seed bearing fruit trees, all of the animals.

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And then Adam and Eve, he said that it was Tov Ma 'od, very good.

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Something terrible has happened. In fact, it's as if the entire creation itself has been flipped upside down and no longer is the creation

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Tov Ma 'od, but our experience of it embraces both good and evil, according to the fruit of the tree that Adam and Eve ate.

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So return with me to Genesis chapter three. We'll pick up a little bit of the context, starting at verse one and work our way through it and consider the implications of this text.

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And then also look at how this relates to our gospel text today. Here's what it says.

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The serpent said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

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And the woman said to the serpent, well, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you may not eat of the tree of the eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst or in the middle of the garden and neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

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But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

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Basically calling God a liar. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.

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And with these words, serpent basically accused God of kind of holding out on humanity, not giving him the whole truth, basically casting

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God as the bad guy. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes, notice where she's looking rather than the word of God.

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She's looking inside of her heart and Jesus himself makes it clear that this is where sin begins. And so it begins with Eve.

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Rather than listening and holding on to that firm and certain word of God, she now is making this decision based upon her feelings, nothing more than feelings.

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This is not the way we make decisions. Unfortunately, it's the way we all do many times. So she took of its fruit and she ate.

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She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate and the eyes of both were opened.

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They knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together to make themselves loincloths.

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You see, from this moment in human history, and yes, this is history, not mythology. We collectively, mankind, have been morally turned upside down and have become utterly irrational, blind and spiritually clueless creatures.

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Where we were once very good, now we are really, really confused, really blind, really dead and trespasses and sins.

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First Corinthians chapter two talks about the impact of sin in this way, that the natural person, those who are born according to the standard way humans are born, direct descendants of Adam, they don't accept the things of the spirit of God.

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In fact, the things of the spirit of God are folly to them, and he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

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So devastating is what happened in the Garden of Eden that literally human history is literally filled now with people who call evil good and good evil.

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You don't believe me? Watch the evening news, see what's going on in Washington or London or Brussels.

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Things are terrible. In fact, we live in a world where Christians are being persecuted and silenced for basically standing up for what

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God's word teaches regarding what is right and what is wrong. The prophet Isaiah in chapter five verse 20 says this.

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Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.

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And the reason why they do that is a direct result of Adam and Eve's sin against God.

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With the devil said, you will not surely die. God was right. We surely have already died spiritually.

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Woe to those then who are wise in their own eyes, shrewd in their own sight.

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You see, like Eve, those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight are looking inside of themselves and thinking how clever they are rather than listening to and paying attention to the objective outside of them.

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Word of God, which sets the tone, which sets the standard. Their standard is internal.

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It's within themselves. Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, valiant men and mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, deprive the innocent of his right.

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I think of the millions of unborn children who've been murdered, who've been deprived of their right to life.

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And yet, isn't it strange? You cannot seem to reason with the world in these regards.

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You say that is a human being. It has a heartbeat. It has a different genetic code than the mom.

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It literally is a different human being altogether. And they say, no, it's just a blob of cells.

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There's nothing morally wrong with killing that. And so what do they do? They go and murder it.

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But it is murder nonetheless. Therefore, as the tongue of fire devours the stubble, as the dry grass sinks down in the flame, so their root will be as rottenness, their blossom go up like dust.

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They've rejected the law of the Lord of hosts. They despise the word of the holy one of Israel.

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And that despising and rejecting goes all the way back to the garden. You see, we see all this today in spades in the world around us.

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Those who champion homosexuality, transgenderism, social justice, and you have to put that in air quotes.

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We see this in the visible church today with heresies, false doctrine and false church practices such as women's ordination.

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We see this even on our own hearts with all the sins that we are all too familiar with and sadly comfortable with.

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Sins such as sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, gossip and things like these.

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Paul warns in Galatians that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. You see, this is why in our corporate confession of sins, we begin by confessing first that we are by nature sinful and unclean before we begin enumerating our individual sins.

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Our Old Testament text teaches us to do that because the impact of sin is so utterly devastating that not a single person in this room, not a single person in human history, is not impacted by it.

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Jesus didn't have this original sin that we have, but he ended up paying the price for it.

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And then you think of the silliness now of what has happened. The text goes on to say that Adam and Eve, they heard the sound of Yahweh Elohim walking in the garden in the cool of the day and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the

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Lord God among the trees of the garden. I'm pretty sure that tactic would never work. How do you hide from God?

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And yet when you read the back of the Bible, the back of the Bible is very clear that when the signs of Jesus's eminent return appear in the heavens, people will try to hide themselves under rocks and in caves to avoid the presence of God.

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That won't work any better than fig leaves worked or hiding in the trees worked. And you can see we've gone from being tov me 'od to being grotesquely absurd.

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So they hid themselves, but the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden.

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I was afraid, afraid of the good God that made them. How backwards can you get?

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I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And then God said, who told you you were naked?

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Now God is not asking this because he's thinking there's some bird came along says, hey, you guys are naked. That's not the point.

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He's asking the question for the sake of Adam and Eve to recognize what's going wrong with them. Have you eaten of the tree of which

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I commanded you not to eat? And now comes the blame game, the shifting of the blame, the passing the buck around.

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The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. Adam blames

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God. So then Yahweh Elohim said to the woman, what is this that you've done?

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The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. Isn't it fascinating that we as sinful human beings, when confronted with our own sin, we have the hardest time ever saying, you know what?

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I messed up. I'm guilty here. I'm sorry. Forgive me.

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But like mentally ill people, they shift the blame. Blame the victims.

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Anybody but themselves, they try to justify their sinful behavior and their condition.

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So now the Lord said to the serpent, well, because you've done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.

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Notice God didn't even give the devil a chance to speak at this point. He just begins handing out verdicts.

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On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. All I can say is hold that thought for a second.

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We'll come back to it. To the woman, he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. And every woman who's given birth to a child always says, thanks

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Eve. Because that's always fun. In pain you shall bring forth children and your desire shall be for your husband.

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Fascinating text. Everything is messed up now. Remember, a woman was made to be a helpmate for man.

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And here as part of the curse, God has basically made it so that the woman will always have a desire to kind of rule over her husband.

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And then he says he shall rule over you. In other words, basically guaranteeing that in every marriage there's going to be a constant power struggle, which is a result of the curse.

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So to Adam he said, Because you've listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which

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I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

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Thorns and thistles it'll bring forth for you. And you shall eat the plants of the field. And by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return the ground.

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For out of it you are taken, for you are dust. In the dust you shall return."

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Utterly devastating. Martin Luther commenting on this text said this,

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All the creature remains in revolt against its sinful master. All the creation.

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As a result of this sin the beasts harass. They harm. They kill.

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They eat their former Lord. In the air he breaks his neck. The water drowns him.

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The earth becomes his tomb. You see this good creation. In the beginning of this Adam was like the

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Lord of all of the creatures. So much so that he got to name all of them.

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And now because of sin everything flipped upside down. Rather than it just being good, now the two streams of good and evil flowing together.

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It's a toxic mix. Because of this now crazy things happen.

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You ever flip the channels watching the news and they'll say and today in Australia two people were eaten by a great white shark.

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And then you flip the channel and in in Montana yesterday a fellow lost his life when a grizzly bear took his face off.

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And we always hear of these strange bizarre deaths. And all of this is a result of our sin.

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So the water drowns humans. The earth becomes our own tombs. And all of this teaches us what an abomination before God's sin must be.

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Since it is so thoroughly deranged the relationship between man and the rest of creation.

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Not only does that derangement affect our relationship with the creation itself. It also impacts our relationship with God.

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Consider with me what just the opening verses of our gospel text say in Mark 3 starting in verse 20.

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Jesus went home to Capernaum. A crowd gathered again so they could not even eat.

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And when his family heard it they went out to seize him for they were saying he's out of his mind.

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I want you to consider this text. The sinners think of the only sane person to ever walk the planet.

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The only perfectly good and righteous person who never once sinned.

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He is helping, caring, healing people selflessly and their only conclusion regarding Jesus is he must have gone soft in the head.

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He's out of his mind. It's time for a change. It's time for us to take him to the clinic where they can put that jacket on him and he can stay in one of those little padded rooms.

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Do you see the problem here? This is nuts. We're the ones infected by sin, not him.

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We're the ones out of our mind, but see that's the thing. Sin has turned us so upside down.

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We think good is evil and evil is good. We think Jesus is nuts while we're sane.

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And this even gets better. So the scribes they came down from Jerusalem. This is headquarters.

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This is headquarters. The scribes came down from Jerusalem and they were saying well, it is our professional assessment regarding Jesus.

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We've done the research. We've done the work. We've seen him in action. And the only thing that we can conclude is that Jesus is possessed by Beelzebul and that the only reason he's able to do the miracles he's doing is because he does them by the prince of demons.

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That's how he casts out demons. I mean seriously. Jesus's own family thought that Jesus was crazy.

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The scribes and the pharisees, the top religious leaders of Israel, rather than understand that God himself was in their midst, they could only explain

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Jesus's works as being the result of the demonic. Everything is upside down, backwards, inside out.

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It's as if all of humanity has literally fallen through the looking glass. But it's important for us to note this.

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As early as we are in the gospel of Mark that Jesus was already at that very time heading to the cross.

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Just as promised in our old testament text. If you remember when God was handing out punishments and curses to the serpent and to Adam and Eve.

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To the serpent God said this, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

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That is the very first hint. The very first gospel itself.

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A ray of sunshine in the midst of complete darkness. That God was going to do something.

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That there would be one who would be the seed of a woman. Predicting Jesus's own virgin birth.

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Who would destroy the devil and his works. And what happened as a result of our fall into sin.

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And it's this that gives us hope. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 16.

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Talking to us as Christians. From now on we Christians, because we are in Christ, we regard no one then according to the flesh.

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No one according to this backwards, upside down, inside out, through the looking grass, crazy mix of good and evil.

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No. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh. Instead we regard him thus no longer.

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So therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

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And that is so vital for us. Because at the moment we are presently, according to this text, because we are in Christ a new creation.

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Jesus being the first to rise from the dead. Is the first born of the new creation.

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We being united to him through our baptism. We are now in Christ and we ourselves are now participating in this new creation.

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The new creation has already begun to break into the old. And that's the wonderful part.

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And see the old has passed away. The new has already come. It's here presently. And all of this is from God.

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Who through Christ has reconciled us to himself. And listen to these words.

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Has given to us the ministry of reconciliation. That's what we as Christians are to be about.

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The business of doing. We have been given the ministry of reconciliation. That's a great way to describe the great commission.

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To make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the father son and holy spirit. Teaching them all that Christ has commanded.

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You see we have been given this ministry of reconciliation to announce to the world that in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.

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Not counting their trespasses against them. And entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

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And because of this then we are ambassadors now for Christ. And God is now making his appeal to the whole world.

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The whole world turned upside down by sin. God is making his appeal to the world now through us as Christians.

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So Paul implores all of us on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. And that requires us to daily return to the waters of our baptism.

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To daily to count ourselves well as sinners. In need of a savior.

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Trusting in the finished work of Christ. The second Adam who has come to take the world turned upside down by sin.

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And pull it through death. And on the other side recreate the world.

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And once again be able to say it is tov meod. Very good. So therefore we implore you on behalf of Christ.

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Be reconciled to God. Repent. Believe the gospel. You are not good. Like not even close.

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If you think you are you're looking at everything upside down. These texts tell you no, no, no the world isn't oriented this way.

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It's oriented this way. By the word of God. You see for our sake

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God made Jesus to be sin. Who knew no sin. So that in him we born dead in trespasses and sins that we might become the righteousness of God.

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Paul then says in Colossians chapter 3. If then you have been raised with Christ. And have you?

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I would argue that you have. I seriously doubt you'd be here if you haven't. If you haven't come talk to me.

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We'll talk. But go back to the waters of your baptism. Because in your baptism you're united with Jesus and his death and his resurrection.

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If then you have been raised with Christ and you have. Seek the things that are now above. Where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your mind on things that are above. Not on the things of the earth. Everything here is upside down backwards and inside out.

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And sinful as all get out. Set your minds on the things that are above. Not on the things of the earth. For you have died.

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In your life is now hidden with Christ in God. And when Christ who is your life appears. You will also appear with him in glory.

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So therefore put to death what is earthly in you. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

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You see on account of these things the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once used to walk.

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When you were living in them. But now you must put them all away. Put away anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk from your mouth.

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Do not lie to one another seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices. In verse 10.

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And have put on the new self which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

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You see that image of God that was lost in the garden of Eden. Because man was created in the image of God.

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It is now being renewed in us. The new creation has already come.

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See Christ is renewing us. Making us again after his own image. And when he returns that restoration work will be accomplished.

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And we will finally be rid of good and evil. And get back to good.

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Tov me 'od. Very good. As Jesus says in the book of Revelation chapter 21 verse 5.

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He who is seated on the throne said. Behold I am making all things new.

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Do you not yearn for it? Do you not hear a verse like this?

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And sigh and gasp. And wish it were already here. Not because of the sin out there.

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But because of the sin in here. Are you done with it?

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Are you finished with the sin? I want to be done with it forever.

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He's making all things new. As we pray as it was in the beginning.

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Is now because we are in Christ. And will be forever. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church.

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. 1 -59 -50 470th

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