Someday the Exiles Will Return to Their Homeland

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

Alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. John, the 14th chapter. Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going. Thomas said to Him, Lord, we do not know where you are going.

How can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know Him, and you have seen Him.

Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me? Philip, whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father?

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does His works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.

Truly truly I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus, Amen. So a little bit of biographical information to help frame our themes from our biblical texts today.

Ancestry, Homeland, and the Search for Identity

The idea is this. My wife, back a few months ago, came up with this really interesting idea. My wife likes to do that Ancestry .com website, which costs money by the way, and she received an email from Ancestry .com, and they were having a sale on those Ancestry .com DNA tests.

So she thought it would be a good idea for the two of us to take our Ancestry DNA tests. For a long time, I've always wondered, what am I? What's my homeland? Now, when I was growing up, my mom, she was very insistent that I had really strong German heritage.

And well, she grew up and she was born in Germany, and all of that's well and good. But there's other parts to my family. My grandmother was Irish, full Irish. My grandfather, full Polish. And then I have a grandfather who I never met.

And he was from the United Kingdom somewhere, at least his family heritage came from that part of the world. And so I was curious to find out. And so we ordered these things on sale, of course, on sale, because you always got to remember, you got to get things that when you can save money, this is why I'm always sent to Walmart with 10 coupons and things like that.

But anyway, having received it, the instructions said that you had to spit into this vial, and it was vial indeed. But yeah, so you can't have brushed your teeth prior to that by 30 minutes, can't have had anything to eat prior to that for 30 minutes.

So after you had waited the correct amount of time, you worked up an amount of spit, put it into the vial, cap that thing off, put it back in a return envelope, and sent it off to Ancestry .com. And then just a few days later, you receive an email to the effect of, we've received your spit.

Well, they didn't really say it that way, but that's my interpretation of the email that we received. And then the waiting game begins, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait some more. And then finally, you get the email saying your results are in, and now you get to figure out who you are, where you came from, at least that's kind of the thinking.

And I wasn't prepared for my results, wasn't prepared at all. And let me explain. For all of my mothers saying how German we are, there was really very little German in.

Me.

I mean, very little in comparison to everything else. In fact, something I was not anticipating is how much Welsh there was in me.

Welsh!

And I even had DNA matches of close, distant relatives, is that a thing, of relatives who were close genetically to me, some of them in different parts of Wales, but when I clicked on their names to get information about them in order to find out who they are and stuff like that, every one of them, they'd already moved to the United States.

In fact, the amount of Welsh in me caught me completely by surprise. By the way, more than just Welsh though, I have a lot of Irish in me, which I was not exactly surprised about, but surprised that it's more than half of my genetic makeup.

And I've got genetic hits of people who are in a place in Northern Ireland called Inishowin, which sounds like a name that was written by somebody with a lisp. But anyway, coming back to my Welsh roots, I didn't expect the Welsh part.

Contacted a very good friend of mine who is also part of a mission congregation we're planting in Swansea, and I said, which sports team am I supposed to be rooting for now that I know that I have some Welsh in me?

And he said to me, yeah, Chris, I think you should just keep rooting for the American.

Team.

So, after getting my DNA results, I was no closer to figuring out who I was or where I was from, because basically after getting the DNA results, if you were to make a map of Western Europe, including parts of Scandinavia, and turned it into a dartboard, I could blindfold myself and throw a dart as long as the dart didn't end up in the North Sea, I pretty much had genetic roots going back to any one of those places in Western Europe.

So it didn't really answer the question where I was from. And so I had this profound sense that I seemed to be missing a homeland. But then there's another piece of all of this, related but different.

And that is that when I was in junior high and started reading the Bible for the first time after hearing the gospel, and Christ breathing and blowing and fanning into flame my faith and trust in him, my first Bible, I got it from a place called B. Dalton Bookseller.

Do anyone remember these things called bookstores? Yeah, there are not many of those anymore. But B. Dalton Bookseller, I went there, told him I was looking to buy a Bible, and the lady behind the desk recommended that I get a King James Bible.

And it was a King James Bible with a black cover that was faux, not even real leather. And that was my first Bible. And I remember reading the Bible for the first time and feeling like I had somehow lost the genetic lottery.

And the reason being, because here in the Bible, you have these accounts, you have these accounts of people who are the chosen people of God, they're God's people. And genetically, they're related to Abraham.

And so they come from Israel in one sense or another. And I feel like I somehow, well, I lost out. I lost out because I wasn't Israeli. There's no Jewish blood in me. And as a result of that, I felt like I really had missed it.

And worse, the theology that accompanied my early days in Christianity in the Methodist and then in the Nazarene Church, they were talking about how blessed the Jews were, the ones who had refounded Israel in 1948, and how they were really the people of God.

They were God's chosen people. And I felt like I had somehow lost out. And as a result of that, not only do I really not know who my people are, as far as where am I from, who am I as far as people in Europe?

I've struck out and wasn't really part of the people of God either. But if you paid attention, if you paid attention to our first reading today from the Book of Acts, did you notice something important?

That is, who Stephen was preaching to? Remember, Stephen is the first Christian martyr. And who was he martyred by? The answer to that question is he was martyred by people who were genetically descendants of Abraham.

These are people who are supposed to be the people of God, and yet they didn't. In fact, in Acts 7, verse 51, it says, this is Stephen preaching, Brothers and fathers, hear me. Who are his brothers? They're the children of Israel.

These are people who are genetically descendants of Abraham. The God of glory appeared to our father, Abraham. And so you'll note who he's addressing. He's addressing people who are supposed to be his brothers genetically.

Those descendants of Abraham, our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia before he lived in Haran. And then verse 51 says, you are a stiff necked people. You are uncircumcised in your hearts and your ears, and you always resist the Holy Spirit as your fathers did.

So do you.

Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? And they killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the righteous one, the one whom you have betrayed and you have murdered and you who received the law as delivered by angels, you did not keep it.

And so you'll note that Stephen was martyred by people who are genetic descendants of Abraham and his indictment against him and the words of judgment he spoke against them, against their hard heartedness, against their unbelief, against their murdering of the prophets, of their murdering of the son of God himself.

He was speaking to people who are genetic descendants of Abraham and they could not get out of these indictments and these allegations, these charges by saying, oh, none of that matters. We're part of the chosen people of Israel when in fact they weren't because they did not believe.

And that's really the point. Who are the descendants of Abraham, the true descendants of Abraham, the ones who are blessed along with Abraham? Well, the scriptures are clear on this account. It is not those who are merely Jews outwardly, but the ones who have the same faith as Abraham.

And we'll talk more about that as we work our way through these texts. But in our epistle text, consider the greater context of our epistle text. And the greater context of our epistle text takes us into the beginning, the beginning portion of 1 Peter.

Elect Exiles and the True People of God

And here again, the words of Peter in the opening verses of 1 Peter. Peter says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, and indeed he is. He says, to those who are elect, exiles. And you remember what scripture teaches us, what Christ has taught us, that the scriptures are about him.

And the Old Testament is types and shadows. And so if you think back, if you know your history from the Old Testament, you know that Israel, both the northern and the southern kingdom, at different times, but almost concurrent with each other, went into idolatry.

And God in his great love and mercy sent prophets to call them to repent of their idolatry. And through those prophets assured them of the forgiveness of sins, that he would forgive them of their idolatry, but they wouldn't.

The northern kingdom persisted in idolatry and God eventually scraped them out of the northern kingdom and dispersed them into the nations. The southern kingdom of Judah, just like her sister, persisted in idolatry and would not turn away from her sins.

God sent prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. And you'll note that neither Isaiah nor Jeremiah, they didn't prophesy to Judah and say to them, behold, the coming Sycharos season, that there'll be a season of suddenlies and breakthroughs and nonsense like that.

No, these are true prophets calling them to repent of their idolatry, confronting them with their sin, telling them of the mercy of God that he would have towards them if they would only turn from their wickedness.

That's what true prophets do. Pointing people to their sins, pointing people to the God who forgives their sins. But the southern kingdom wouldn't listen. Southern kingdom wouldn't listen. So God raised up Nebuchadnezzar and he came and he sacked the southern kingdom.

And in that campaign, 90%, 9 out of 10 people, 9 out of 10 died in that campaign. And of those remnant that were left, they were sent off to be exiles. Which means that they never got to see their homeland.

And so Peter says, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for the sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

And so this is part of the group of texts within the New Testament known as the Catholic epistles. And I understand every time you hear the word Catholic, you go, yeah, I get it.

I get it.

But we're not talking about Roman Catholic. That's an oxymoron. Catholic means universal. So this is written also then to us because we are also elect exiles. We are part of the dispersion now. And where are we dispersed to?

We are dispersed to Oslo, to Radium, to Thief River, to Crookston, or wherever you're joining us today from. Whether it be in Australia or in the Netherlands or Barbados or parts of Oklahoma or down in Alabama, it doesn't matter.

We have all been dispersed. We are exiles. And so this theme then of exiles, Peter repeats that phrase three times in the opening chapters of 1 Peter. And that forms the context of what we read then in our epistle text today and then hear the words that Peter writes to all of us who still have yet to see our homeland, who are exiled from our true home.

Here's the words he says, but you are a chosen race. The you there is us. Y 'all, we are a chosen race. We are a royal priesthood. And when you look at the Old Testament in the Torah, how God had set apart for himself for his own possession, the tribe of Levi, that's invoking us.

We are a chosen race. We are a royal priesthood. We are a holy nation. We are a people for God's own possession. Now, all of the things that I wished that I had because I didn't have because I was not Jewish, it says here that I have, that you have, that we have.

And how is this possible? It is possible because Christ has bled and died for your sins. Now, an important note here, the church has not replaced Israel. Not at all. So if you ever hear anybody say, yeah, well, you know, we live in the New Testament era and the church, well, it's replaced Israel.

No, that's not how that works. And our governing text in this regard is from the book of Romans. In Romans chapter 11, the apostle Paul explains how we Gentiles are part of this chosen race, how somehow we can say these things about ourselves.

And he talks about how his fellow Jews have rejected Christ and what this then means for us. In Romans 11, Paul starts off the chapter. He says, I ask then, has God rejected his people? He says, by no means.

And he says, I myself, I'm an Israelite. I'm a descendant of Abraham. I'm a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel?

Lord, they've killed your prophets. They've demolished your altars. And I alone am left. And they seek my life. But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7 ,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.

So too, at the present time, there is a remnant. And this is a remnant chosen by grace. But what is our relationship as Gentiles then in regards to Israel? Here's the answer. The Apostle Paul goes on to say this.

He says that some of the branches of Israel were broken off. And here he likens Israel as to an olive tree. Some of the branches were broken off. And although you Gentiles are a wild olive shoot, you were grafted in among the others.

And you now share the nourishing root of the olive tree. Ah, okay. So what I really wanted, really wanted as a kid, you know, to be part of the chosen people of God, to be part of God's people. Well, I am.

And you are. It doesn't matter if you're Norwegian, Polish, Irish, Welsh, Celtic, German, Scandinavian, Italian, Greek. It doesn't matter. None of this even matters at all.

Why?

Because regardless of your ethnicity. Oh, and by the way, here's the thing. Is that if you kind of follow everyone's genetic heritage. Yeah, I've noted this kind of important fact. I don't have any royalty in my genetic heritage.

I come from a really sketchy group of people. Really, really sketchy.

Yeah.

No kings, no royalty. No saints either. At least by Roman Catholic standards. No, thieves, robbers, just terrible people. Yeah, and by the way, since we're all descended from Adam and Eve, y 'all have the same problem I have.

And that is that we all really come from rotten stock. And this is where the gospel just shines. Because of God's mercy to us. We who are a sketchy lot, a band of brigands and sinners and just messed up people, rebels against God.

He has had mercy on us. And through the mercy of Jesus Christ and the fact that he's bled and died for all of our sins. The sins of the whole world. He now in his mercy has lovingly and kindly taken each and every one of us.

Wild olive shoots. And done the unthinkable. Nobody does this. These wild olive shoots and he has grafted us into Israel. Each and every one of us. And so then coming back to what Peter said. So you are a chosen race.

You are a royal priesthood. You are a holy nation. A people for his own possession.

Why?

So that we may proclaim the excellencies of the God who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. And that's exactly what he has done. Looking back at my family's history and all the different branches.

It's just darkness. Darkness and sin and death.

And evil.

But God in his mercy has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. None of us were a people. None of us. But now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy. And what a miserable state that is.

What a miserable state that is. Once you had not received mercy. But now you have received mercy. You have received the forgiveness of your sins today. Today and every day. God's mercies are new every morning.

Consider the love, the patience, the grace, the kindness of our God. Who continues to freely forgive our daily shortcomings. And so you'll note then in finally going from having no people to being a nation.

To having a people. To being a chosen race. You might sit there and go, oh man, I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to mess this up. And this is a good kind of thinking. We want to continue to enjoy what God has so freely given us.

And you'll note then, how does one continue to maintain such a great gift? The Apostle Paul answers us. And he notes this then. That since it was all given to us as a gift. That arrogance in this regard.

Or looking at contempt at those who have fallen away because of unbelief. This is out of the question. This is out of the question. And so Paul writes again in Romans 11, 17. If some of the branches were broken off.

And you, although a wild olive shoot, you were grafted in among the others. And you now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree. Don't be arrogant. Don't be arrogant toward the branches. The branches that were broken off.

If you are, remember it is not you who supports the root.

You do not.

It is the root that supports you. So then you will say, well, branches were broken off. So that I might be grafted in. That's true. That is true, Paul says. They were broken off because of their unbelief.

But you stand fast through faith. Continue to humbly believe. And do not become proud. Instead, have a righteous fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches. Neither will he spare you. And see, that's kind of the danger.

You sit there and go, man, I'm a chosen race. I'm part of a royal priesthood. I'm kind of the bee's knees. I'm kind of important. Yeah, that's the pride that comes before a fall. And a very, very terrible one.

So don't become proud. Don't become proud.

So note then.

Note the kindness as well as the severity of God. Severity towards those who have fallen away in unbelief. But kindness to you. And then listen to the words. Provided you continue in God's kindness.

And there it is.

What does it mean to continue in God's kindness? To continually humbly say, Lord, have mercy on me.

A sinner.

And believe that God in his kindness and his mercy has forgiven you. And because you are forgiven, then you forgive. Because you are loved by God when you were loveless. Now you love even when somebody is unlovable.

That's the idea. Continue in the kindness of God. Continue in the faith. Continue in the grace, in the mercy. And then consider these amazing words by Jesus and how comforting they are. Remember what Jesus' father did for a living?

The carpenter of Nazareth, Joseph. And Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, oh, he probably learned his father's trade. Because that's how things go. You learn the skill of your father. And so I always like to think of Jesus.

Not only does he have nail-scarred hands, but growing up in the trade of his father, learning the skill of his father, Jesus probably learned how to lay brick, probably learned how to cut wood and build tables and do the carpenter things that his father did.

So not only were Jesus' hands nail-scarred, they were calloused. Calloused from hard work. They were not the soft hands of men who work at a keyboard. These were the hard, callous hands of a hard-working fellow.

And you're going to note, then, the picture that Jesus gives us. Because we are now Christ's possession, we are his people, God himself, Christ himself is preparing a place for each and every one of us.

For all of us. For those of you in Minnesota, those of you in the United Kingdom, and around the world in Oklahoma and other places. The carpenter of Nazareth is presently busy. Jesus is wearing a tool belt this day.

And it says this. Jesus said, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many rooms, and if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

And of course not. He wouldn't have said such a thing, because Jesus never lies. And so, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and I will take you to myself. That where I am, you may be also.

Brothers and sisters, this is not merely true of the apostles. This is also true for you. It's true for me. Christ is presently preparing a place for you and I. And in the Father's house there are many rooms, and Christ himself is preparing all the whole thing.

From the paint, to the woodwork, everything, to the design, to the layout. It's all being prepared for you by the carpenter of Nazareth. And I want you to consider then what the last details, kind of the details that were left out in the book of Acts regarding Stephen.

Because when Stephen was being murdered, martyred for his witness of Christ, something interesting happened. Remember, Christ goes to prepare a place for each and every one of us. And in Acts chapter 7, after Stephen delivered his address, starting at verse 54 it says these words,.

And consider the details of this. This is a word that is different. You see, what do we confess? That we believe that Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. That's where Christ presently is. He sits at the right hand of the Father.

But in Stephen's vision of the open heaven, Jesus is not sitting down. Listen to what it says.

Not sitting.

It's a small detail, but I don't think it's an accident. Because Stephen is getting ready to see his homeland for the first time. The carpenter of Nazareth is about ready to show him for the first time the room that he has prepared for him.

Stephen now is getting ready to cross over from his land of sojourning, the valley of the shadow of death itself, And the first person he is seeing as he is getting ready to end his sojourn is Jesus. Not sitting on the throne, but standing there ready to receive him.

And he does the same for each and every one of us. When one of the saints dies in faith and gets to go home for the first time, Jesus will be there to meet you as well. Not sitting in judgment, but standing ready to receive.

To receive you and your eyes seeing him for the first time. So brothers and sisters, take comfort in this. Because Christ has bled and died for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous. Because he was pierced for our transgressions so that we can have peace with God.

We have been adopted into the family of God and we are no longer people without a heritage. We are no longer people without a homeland. But our homeland is not here in this present earth. Our homeland is with Christ where he is.

And he will make his dwelling among men. And we will someday be allowed to return from exile, to return home, to see him face to face. So because of what Christ has done, brothers and sisters, you forgiven sinners, you are a chosen race.

You are a royal priesthood. You have been made a holy nation by the blood of Christ, by the holy precious blood of Christ which was shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. You who were a rabble and not even a people, you have been made a possession of God by Christ.

And now you called to proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness by grace, through faith, into his marvelous light, all because of his great kindness towards you. So remain in that kindness.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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