Missing the Full Council of the Word of God

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. Matthew, the 22nd chapter.

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When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.

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Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your

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God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all of your mind. This is the great and first commandment, and a second is like it.

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You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

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Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question saying, What do you think about the

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Christ? Whose son is he? They said to him, The son of David. And he said to them, Well then how is it that David in the spirit calls him

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Lord, saying, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet.

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If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word, for from that day, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Well, the

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Pharisees and Sadducees are still at it. They're doing that Wile E. Coyote thing that we mentioned last week. And if you guys have seen the movie

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you know like when they get to the final, you know, challenge that they've got to work their way through.

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It's a gruesome scene because the bad guys show up first in order to get the

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Holy Grail. And they're sending in these soldiers one after another, and they can't get past the first thing.

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And one guy goes forward, his head gets cut off and rolls backwards, and they send the next guy in.

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And you see how this is going. I kind of think that's what's going on in our gospel text here.

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The Sadducees had just been silenced by Jesus, yet they were the ones who instigated the conversation for the whole purpose of testing

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Jesus to kind of get that thing that Jesus would say then that they can turn around and use in order to put him to death.

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So we read in our gospel text, when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together.

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And you have to wonder, were they nervous? You know, here they've got to gird up their loins. They're going to go in. We're going to succeed where the

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Sadducees had failed. But we're going to note this. Both the Pharisees and the

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Sadducees, they are not people who recognize and understand the

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Scriptures properly at all. I mean, not even close. The Sadducees didn't even believe in the resurrection.

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Jesus silences them by basically asking a question. How is it that God is referred to as the

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God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Isn't God the God of the living, not the dead? And the

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Sadducees go, whoop, and the people say, hmm, something's wrong with their theology, right? Well, the

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Pharisees, we're going to note this about them. They are obsessed with the commandments.

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They love debating the commandments. And as a result of it, you'll see by the end of our gospel text,

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Jesus nails them to the wall because of their lack of understanding of the full counsel of the

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Word of God. Now, if you think about that Ark of the Covenant, you know, and I'm not trying to do an

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Indiana Jones theme here, this is purely coincidental, but the Ark of the Covenant, on the very lid of the

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Ark of the Covenant, you have what's called the mercy seat, and you have these two angels facing each other with their heads down towards the mercy seat, wings spread out, right?

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Now, I'm on record, and I'm not changing my mind on this. I'm convinced that the mercy seat is a visible prophetic representation of what the angels did while Christ's body lay in the tomb.

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We learn from the gospel accounts that there were two angels, one at Christ's head, one at Christ's feet, and you have to sit there and go, hmm.

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But it's really interesting, in considering maybe the theological significance of the imagery of the mercy seat itself,

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Johann Gerhardt and the church fathers all have a slightly different perspective. Now, I'm not saying their perspective is wrong,

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I'm saying I think both are true. If you remember back to infomercials, when was the last time you saw an infomercial, by the way?

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I can't remember the last time I actually watched television, right? There you are, you're having a fit of insomnia, that I'm telling you a little bit about myself, having a fit of insomnia.

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It's two in the morning, so you're downstairs and you're flipping channels, right? And you see, oh, this is the most amazing product ever.

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You can take potatoes and turn them into French fries in three seconds flat, and if you act now, wait, there's more.

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We'll even throw in free Ginsu knives, right? Remember these things? Okay, so I like to think of it when it comes to the mercy seat, you know, wait, there's more, and here's how the church fathers and Johann Gerhardt talk about the mercy seat.

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If you were to think of it this way, the mercy seat has two angels, and for my

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Greek students, the word angel, angelos, is also, has kind of the same meaning that it does in Hebrew, and an angel is a messenger, right?

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An angel is a messenger. So it is not out of place to think of the two angels over the mercy seat as maybe representing

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God's law, the messenger of the law and the gospel. Both are in both testaments, and some people like to talk about it just kind of in crass, you know, simplistic terms.

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One angel is the Old Testament, the other is the New Testament. It's not a bad way to think about it. In Exodus chapter 25, here's what it says when

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God gives the command, and I think this interpretation by the church fathers and Johann Gerhardt really bears out.

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Here's what it says. God says, you shall make a mercy seat of pure gold. Two cubits and a half shall be its length, and a cubit and a half its breadth.

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And you shall make two cherubim of gold of hammered work, shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat, make one cherub on one end and one cherub on the other end, and one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends.

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The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be.

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And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you.

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There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony,

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I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.

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So God says, I'm going to speak with you from right above the mercy seat between the cherubim.

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Hmm, that's kind of an interesting concept. So this interpretation of the mercy seat, the two cherubim, one being law, the other gospel, one being the

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Old Testament, one being the New Testament, not a bad way to think about it. In fact, you have to understand that God does send two messengers in the scripture.

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One for the express purpose of condemning us and showing our sin and our need for the

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Savior, and the other assuring us that God is merciful and kind. And in the

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New Testament we learn that God's mercy and kindness is for the sake of Christ who fulfilled God's law perfectly for us and bled and died for our sins in our place in order to reconcile us to God.

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And you'll note the Pharisees, they were focused in only on one of the messengers, and that was the law.

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La la la la la la, la la la la la la, la la la la la la la, right, it was all law. And these guys, oh man, everything they did, everything they said was about debating the finer points of the law and their own man -made laws that they had added through the oral

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Torah, the tradition of the elders. And as a result of that, you'll note that Jesus' question to them exposes their biblical ignorance and their focus being incomplete.

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If you were to think of the apostle Paul, his parting words to the pastors of the church of Ephesus in Acts chapter 20, he says to them,

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I am guiltless regarding the blood of all of you, for I did not withhold teaching to you the full counsel of the word of God.

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But here's the thing, all the self -righteous, let's just say they are biblically illiterate when it comes to the aspects of Scripture that don't, well, jive with their theology, their self -righteousness, their assumption that somehow my good works now merit salvation for me, right?

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And this is how the Pharisees thought, this is what their theology expressly taught.

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In fact, they added to the 630 commandments of the Mosaic covenant their own set of like a thousand more and made it clear that if you kept their commandments, you'd never break

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God's commands and you'd be in with God and you'd be saved. But you cannot be saved by the law.

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In fact, none of us can. And it's in this regard then that we consider our gospel text.

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So one of them, a lawyer, what a bad combo, a Pharisee and an attorney, okay, if he invites me to lunch,

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I'll pass, right? A lawyer asked him a question in order to test him, here goes

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Wile E. Coyote again, I can hear the whistle now, splat, right?

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You know this is what's going to happen. And the question itself seems pretty straightforward, teacher, what is the great commandment in the law?

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And one has to wonder what's going on with this question, right? Because you'll note that over and again we learn in the gospels that the

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Pharisees were incensed and scandalized by the fact that Jesus forgave sinners, that Jesus ate with sinners, he hobnobbed with sinners.

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So the question itself makes me wonder if they were thinking that Jesus was some kind of antinomian that was somehow putting the law of God aside.

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But Jesus wasn't putting the law of God aside at all. Remember there's two angels, the law and the gospel, we must hear both.

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So Jesus takes on their question and says, all right, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

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This is the great and first commandment. So let me ask you a question, how are you guys doing on that one?

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Not so good? Yeah, me either. We'll talk about that more in a minute. All right, now this is, and a second commandment is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Now here's an important point that we need to take into consideration, is that many people who profess

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Jesus as their savior mistakenly think that the gospel is love.

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You ask some people that are Christians, what's the gospel? Love God and love neighbor. No, love is the commandment of the law.

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And each and every one of us falls woefully short. I don't think that there has been a single moment in my existence on planet earth from the time

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I was conceived until this moment now in my 54th year of life that I could legitimately say, yup, did that.

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I loved God with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. Not even close.

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And you'll note that this condemns me because I haven't loved

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God with all of me, and neither have you. And then the second one hinges from the first, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

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Hmm, maybe I've gotten closer with that one, but you'll note that each of my arrows still seriously and egregiously misses the mark, and so do yours.

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Loving my neighbor as myself, my general problem is I love myself. I got half of that right, but it's the loving other people like the way

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I love me, that's the tough bit. And you are the same as I am.

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But here's the thing, when we consider the fact that love is the core root of the law, we recognize then that Christ is perfect.

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Christ, he has loved God with all of his heart, with all of his soul, with all of his mind.

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At no point has Christ ever broken this first and great command.

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And you'll note that the whole reason why Jesus is on earth is because, as the second commandment says, he has loved his neighbors perfectly as he has loved himself.

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That's the whole reason why he came. So you'll note that love then is the motivation for the gospel, but it is not the gospel.

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You have to make that distinction. So Jesus says on these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.

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Now Jesus, who literally wills for the Pharisees to repent of their heresies,

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Pharisees, heresies, that kind of rhymes. I should become a rapper, right? Maybe not. Okay, stop, stop, stop.

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Roll in your eyes. I saw that. I saw that. All right, okay.

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I relent of said disaster. So the Pharisees, now

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Jesus is going to confront them regarding their heresies and point out what's really missing in their theology.

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For all their debating of the law, they haven't considered the full counsel of the word of God.

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And so Jesus does a little messianic theology with them from the Old Testament, because the

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New Testament didn't exist when he said this. And so he asks a straight up question, all right, what do you guys think about the

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Christ, the Messiah? Whose son is he? And you'll note, it's a straightforward question, but Jesus here, the physician of their souls, is willing for them to see what is missing in their theology.

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For them, by them not being able to answer these questions, to see their need to go back into the scriptures and consider again what is revealed there.

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Because you'll note that one of the things that the Pharisees and the scribes and the chief priests had all said was the reason why

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Jesus was such a dangerous fellow was because he said that God was his father and he was making himself equal with God.

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So Jesus' question here, who do you think the Christ is, whose son is he? They immediately answer the question, he's the son of David.

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But then going into the Psalms, and this is said in the Psalms very explicitly, he said to them, well then how is it that David, in the

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Holy Spirit, calls the Messiah Lord, saying the Lord said to my

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Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. And you'll note, for all their debating of the commandments, they had never considered this.

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In fact, in the next chapter, chapter 23, is that whole, well, that whole woe section that I read out last week, where Jesus calls down woes on the

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Pharisees. How they strain out a gnat, swallow a camel, how they've ignored the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness and things like this.

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And you'll note, the self -righteous, they are utterly blind by their belief that they can somehow save themselves by their good works.

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It never works that way. So Jesus here, in asking the questions, puts his finger on the fact that they're only listening to one of the messengers of the scripture, and that God speaks from the mercy seat with two messengers, not one, law and gospel.

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And this gets at the heart of the gospel and who Jesus is, who the Messiah is.

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If then David calls him Lord, how then is he his son? And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

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Well, that failed spectacularly. In fact, Jesus isn't the one who walks away from that encounter looking embarrassed.

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They are the ones who are truly embarrassed, and now their theology is suspect, and it should be.

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So what do we do with this commandment to love? Like I said, love is the very motivation for the gospel itself.

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As scripture, we're all familiar with, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

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I love the way Paul puts it in Titus chapter 3, and here's what he says in describing what we were like prior to the appearance of Jesus.

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He says, we ourselves, we were once foolish. We were disobedient, led astray.

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We were slaves to various passions and pleasures, and we were passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others, and hating one another.

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Well, that sounds like Twitter and Facebook, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. You'll note that nothing has changed.

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Have you noticed that as the world has changed, and boy has it, it hasn't changed for the better, it's changed for the worse.

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It is palpable just how much hatred there is in the world. Have you ever stopped to think that the real reason why we are paying four, five, six dollars a gallon for gas is because of hatred and because of a lack of love?

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I mean, the timing is impeccable. Just think back, when did the gas prices start going up? As soon as war broke out in Ukraine, right?

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That's not an act of love, that's an act of hatred. And well, people seeing, ah, there's an opportunity here, they jacked up the gas prices in order to make more money, right?

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This is motivated out of malice. This is motivated out of greed. The world that we live in, you'll note that love is a rare commodity, difficult to find.

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Hatred, you can find that a plenty, just turn on the news, right?

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Every single day, it's a litany of hatred, man's offenses against man, and it's getting worse by the day.

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Have you noticed that when mass shootings take place here in the United States, they're happening with such frequency, it doesn't even faze us anymore.

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Ah, another one, oh well, those poor people, right?

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And then don't even get me started about the hatred and the malice that exists within our own relationships.

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You know, over and again, I think about, you know, when I conduct a wedding ceremony, and I haven't conducted that many of them,

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I'm kind of hoping there's one coming up in the future. But all of that being said, all of that being said,

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I really think I should change, make a slight modification to the rite of holy matrimony, okay?

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And here's the change I would like to offer, are you ready? Right after they exchange their vows, and they say

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I do to each other, do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, to fitness and his health, until death do you part,

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I do. Do you take this man to be your husband, in sickness and in health, you know, for better or for worse, until death do you part,

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I do. You may now kiss the bride, right? And I want to make one slight modification, and here's the modification.

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We put a boxing ring bell right here, and as soon as they've kissed each other, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, let's get ready to rumble, right?

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Because that's how marriage works. It's a realistic look at these things.

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And everybody who's married knows what I'm saying is true. But don't let that scare you, right?

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Don't let that scare you. And you'll note that even within our most cherished relationships, there is anger, malice, hatred, discord, strife, anger, right?

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And I would not be telling the truth if I said it's only coming from your spouse.

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It comes from me, it comes from you, husband and wife.

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And children, when they are added into the mix, just make it even more complicated.

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So you'll note love is a thing that we all don't have much of, and it's really to our detriment.

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And you'll note, so Paul says, we were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

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But here's the turn. But when the goodness and the loving kindness of God our

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Savior appeared, what an amazing set of words. When the goodness and the loving kindness of God our

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Savior appeared. It makes me wonder if the reason why the self -righteous hate

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Jesus is because they imagine God to be like them. They project their own hatred, their own pride, their own prejudices, their own malice.

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They project it onto God and assume that God is as hateful and spiteful and wicked as they are.

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And they're offended to find out that God is not like that at all. That's the devil that they're worshiping, the devil that they are like.

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But see, God is good. God is loving. God is kind. Christ wasn't sent to condemn you and I.

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When the goodness and the loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy by the washing of regeneration and the renewal of the

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Holy Spirit whom God has poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our

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Savior. So that being declared righteous by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

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That will preach the goodness and the loving kindness of God. Christ has loved

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God and loved us perfectly and done so for us.

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John writes it this way in 1 John chapter 4, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.

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Whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know

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God, because God is love. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent

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His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

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And what kind of love is that? We who've rebelled against God, participated in the sins and the pride of the devil, have mistreated each other horrifically, gained an advantage over our own fellow human beings.

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We who've hated God, who've thumbed our nose at Him and shaken our fist at Him and said, if you were really good, you'd give me more of what

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I want, and since you don't give me more of what I want, I hate you, God. Right?

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But God doesn't give us what we deserve. In His great love, He sends Jesus into the world so that we might live rather than die eternally.

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In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He has loved us and He has sent

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His Son to be the atoning sacrifice and the propitiation for all of our sins.

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And see, Christ, He took all of our hatred, all of our rancor, all of our malice in Himself, and He swallowed it up on the cross because of His great love, because by His great love in mercy,

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He laid down His life so that you and I could live. In this is love, not that we have loved

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God, He has loved us, sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

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No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.

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Is it any wonder then that Jesus makes it clear that people would know His disciples not by whether they danced or smoked or chewed or drank alcohol.

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He said that they will know you by your love for one another. And so it's then that we should consider that our love has failed, our love for God has failed, our love for others has faltered, our prayers have been weak, our good works for our neighbor, for our neighbor's sake, have been, well, all too missing.

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And here we must repent. But be assured, brothers and sisters, both angels speak today.

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The law condemns us rightly, but the second angel is the angel of the gospel and it speaks to you words of comfort and peace, forgiveness and mercy because of God's great love for you.

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So again, as a baptized believer in Christ, repent. Repent of your tepid, lukewarm, half -hearted love for God and for others.

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Repent and be forgiven and be assured Christ has bled and died for that. And cry out to God, the

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Holy Spirit, that He would give you strength to no longer focus only on loving yourself, but that you would be unbent from looking only inward and see then the

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God who loves you and love Him in return and also see your neighbor and love them in good works, all for the sake of Christ.