Liberation by the Great I AM

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. John, chapter 8, verses 48 -59.

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The Jews answered him, Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and you have a demon? Jesus answered,

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I do not have a demon, but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory, there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. The Jews said to him,

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Now we know you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets, and yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.

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Are you greater than our father Abraham who died, and the prophets who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?

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Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our

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God. But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him,

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I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

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He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen

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Abraham. And Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was,

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I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.

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In the name of Jesus. So listen to the opening sentence of our gospel text today.

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The Jews answered him, Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and you have a demon? You've got to love it when the reading begins right in the middle of a story.

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Seriously, what's going on here? What does Jesus have himself embroiled in? And in order to get what's going on, we're going to have to grab some context.

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I know you've heard me say this before. In order to rightly understand God's word, there are three rules you've got to abide by.

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And they are, get this, context, context, and you know the third one, right?

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Context, right? Now, just so you know, some of the context is a few verses ahead.

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While some of the needed context, get this, it's all the way back in the book of Exodus. Yeah, I know.

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You can talk about context here because you've got to understand what's going on. Now keep in mind, today is Trinity Sunday.

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Today is the one day of the year when we really focus in on the doctrine of the Trinity.

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And one of the major tenets of the doctrine of the Trinity is that Jesus Christ is both God and man.

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Oh, and yeah, Jesus is the same God as the Father, but Jesus isn't the Father. I know it's kind of mind -blowing, right?

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You have to work it all out. And today, rather than confess the words of the

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Nicene or Apostles' Creed, we're going to pull out that one that only comes out once a year, the

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Athanasian Creed. And I understand that this is Janet's favorite. Now, with that, we're going to turn to the book of Exodus.

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We're going to be in chapter 3, and I'll start at verse 1 if you want to get there. And by way of a little bit of a context as to what's going on here.

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In Exodus chapter 3, Moses has already experienced his basket experience, if you would, as an infant.

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He was put down the Nile because Pharaoh had basically ordered that all the male children of the

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Israelites be killed. Moses was put in a basket. He was drawn out of the Nile River by the daughter of Pharaoh, raised in the palace.

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Then goes on to decide he wants to set his people free and murders an Egyptian. That didn't go so well.

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He ends up on Egypt's most wanted list. Every Saturday night they featured his face. Have you seen this man?

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His face was all over the post office all over Egypt. And so he spends 40 years on the run, if you would, as a fugitive and is living in the land of Midian.

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And this is when God decides to call him. We have to pay attention to a few things going on here.

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So Exodus chapter 3 verse 1 begins, Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father -in -law, Jethro, priest of Midian.

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He led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, Horeb is Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.

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And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

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Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned. When the

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Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called out to him out of the bush.

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Now pay attention to how many times you hear the word God in the next few sentences, all right? Moses, Moses, he said, here

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I am. Then he said, do not come near, take your sandals off your feet for the place which you are standing is holy ground.

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And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the

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God of Jacob. Moses hit his face where he was afraid to look at God.

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Y 'all got who Moses is talking to? Okay, there's no doubt about it right here.

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You have to have really bad reading comprehension skills to not realize he's talking to God, right?

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So then the Lord, Yahweh, said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt.

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I've heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the

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Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the

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Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and as I like to tell my children, the

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Balletites and the Uptites, all right? And now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me.

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I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh so that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

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But Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?

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But he said, I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people of Egypt, you shall serve

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God on this mountain. So then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them,

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The God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they asked, Well, what's his name? What shall

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I say to them? So God said to Moses, I am who

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I am. He said, Say to this people of Israel, I am has sent me to you.

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God also said to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the

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God of Jacob, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever.

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And thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. All right. So in our context here, we know who

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Moses is talking to. It's pretty clear he's talking to God. What's the name of God that God wants him to give to the children of Israel?

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It's a weird one. I am. What a name. I am. Not I was.

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I am. God is basically saying I am the self existing one. I have always been.

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All right. So now we know who he's talking to. We know the name. Tuck that little bit of information away.

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Also, by way of just a little bit of a note here. Note that Old Testament is type and shadow.

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New Testament is reality. Notice the story of slavery and liberation and how

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God is doing something to set his people free. We'll key in on that a little bit. Now, let's go back to the

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Gospel of John. We're going to back up to verse 31. Now, back on Reformation Day last year,

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I preached on this text. I know you all love that sermon and you've memorized it. So, you know, it was a great one.

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You guys are a tough crowd today. Tough crowd. Tough Norwegians. I'm telling you.

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All right. So let's take a look at verse 31. So the Jews. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him.

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If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth and the truth will what?

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Set you free. Right now. Keep in mind here. There's because of the context before this.

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There's two groups now that Jesus is addressing. One are those who are believing him. And then you got the other guys who are not.

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And they are the ones who form the basis of kind of like the ongoing battle that's taking place all the way up to our gospel text.

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So here, notice that Jesus is talking like his words are equal to God's words.

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That's a funny way to act. I mean, if I were to tell you, hey, listen, I've got some really great ideas. Listen to my words. Oh, and my words, well, they're going to set you free.

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All right. Pastor Roseboros lost it. Right. Well, this is the way Jesus is talking and it's not an accident.

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So they these are the ones who don't believe in Jesus. They answered him. We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.

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How is it that you say that we will become free? To which I would say, really, you've never been enslaved to anyone. I just read from Exodus 3 how all of the children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt.

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How do you get off saying you were never enslaved to anyone? Right. Clearly, they've lost sight of a few things here.

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Jesus, though, answers. He says, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

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The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the sun sets you free, you will be free indeed.

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Ah, what is the sun setting you free from? Sin. Right.

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And this is an important thing. Biblically, this is a major category. When you start talking about slavery and freedom type and shadow in the

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Old Testament, right? The reality is that the slavery we all find ourselves, well, born into is slavery to sin.

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So Jesus talks about sin in this way. Paul in Romans 6 talks about sin in this way.

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The Apostle Peter also talks about sin in this way. I'll point out a little bit of cross -reference here from 1

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Peter 2. I'll start at verse 9. Peter writing to Christians says this about them. You are a chosen race.

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

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Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

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Notice here how the gospel precedes any talk about what we're to do as Christians. We do not do good works in order to become a chosen race.

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We do not do good works in order to become a royal priesthood. We do not do good works in order that God will once and for all say, all right,

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I'm going to finally take you out of darkness. No. We are already a chosen race.

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We are already God's holy people. We are already a royal priesthood because we are in Christ. All right.

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And it's because of that that we do good works. So Peter continues. Because we have received mercy,

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I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

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Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify

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God on the day of visitation. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be the emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

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For this is the will of God that by doing good, you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

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So notice here, all the instructions about how we live all come off of the fact that we are forgiven, that we are already

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Christians. So live as people who are free, Peter says. Oh, there's that concept again, freedom, live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover up for evil, but living as servants of God, honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear

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God, honor the emperor. Okay. So it is for freedom that Christ has set us free and slavery, well, this has to do with sin.

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Sin is slavery. Back to our gospel text, still picking up a little context.

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Jesus then says this, I know that you are the offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.

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Yeah, genetic descendants of Abraham, Jews, who, well, God's word finds no place in them.

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And he says, I speak of what I have seen with my father and you do what you have heard from your father.

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A little bit of a warning here. If you think that Jesus is kind of like, well, think back to the 60s.

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You know, a guy running around the landscape wearing a bathrobe, driving in one of those wonderful VW vans painted up with the flowers and runs around and says peace and, you know, things like that.

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Maybe sways at the campfire while playing kumbaya on his guitar. You got the wrong

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Jesus. Okay. That's not what Jesus is like. Okay. This is going to blow that up, so I apologize, but the real

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Jesus, he's kind of in your face and watch what he does here. So, Jesus says, all right,

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I know that you're offspring of Abraham, yet you seek to kill me because my word finds no place in you.

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So they answered him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said, all right, if you were

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Abraham's children, you'd be doing the works that Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God.

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This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did.

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And you can see them scratching their head. Our father did? So, they basically infer from this that Jesus is saying that they were illegitimately born.

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So they said, well, we have one father. We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even

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God. Well, Jesus said to them, all right, if God were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I'm here.

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I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say?

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It's because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil.

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And all the air got sucked out of the room. Oh, no, he didn't. No way.

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He just said that. I mean, seriously, if this were the days of social media, I mean, could you imagine the outrage?

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OK, Twitter would be a buzz. Facebook. I mean, it would be all over the place. Jesus calls

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Jews sons of the devil. We got to do something about this.

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All right. Notice that he's speaking the truth. This isn't hyperbole. You are of your father, the devil.

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Your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

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When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he's a liar and the father of lies.

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Because I tell you the truth, you don't believe me. So which one of you convicts me of sin? I tell you the truth.

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Why do you not believe me? Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.

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And there's our little that's our context now. All right. So now to our gospel text, which begins with their response to Jesus saying that their father is the devil.

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They decide to respond in kind. So the Jews answered Jesus. Are we not right in saying that you are a

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Samaritan and you have a demon? All right. By the way, this is a racial epithet that the

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Samaritan phrase here at this point to call somebody Samaritan. Well, that's a lot like, you know, being in the

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South prior to the days of the civil rights movement and calling somebody the N word. So we're not right in saying that you're a and have a demon.

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This conversation is spinning out of control.

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Let me point something out here. This is total blindness on their part and shows you the nature of sin.

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Sin blinds us to the truth. Being born enslaved to sin and the devil totally gets our world upside down.

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We end up thinking that good is evil and that evil is good. That's how things get crazy.

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And by the way, the demons themselves, they're not even this blind. Let me give you an example.

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Mark 5 opens with a story about a demoniac in the Gerasenes.

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Here's what it says. When they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit.

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He lived among the tombs. No one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart.

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He broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him in the night and day among the tombs on the mountains.

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He was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. I mean, this sounds like the preview for a terribly scary horror movie, right?

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Can you imagine seeing this on the big screen, some new horror movie coming out featuring this guy?

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It doesn't get much worse than this, right? Demon -possessed, you've totally lost control of yourself. But again, the demons are not as blind as we are.

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So when he saw Jesus from afar, this demoniac ran and fell before him and cried out with a loud voice.

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Get this. What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most high God? The demons know who

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Jesus is. They know.

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These Jews who Jesus is talking to, totally clueless. So Jesus's answer to them,

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I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me.

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Yet I do not seek my own glory. There's one who seeks it. He's the judge. Truly I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

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Do you believe that? It's true. Jesus doesn't lie. I don't know what it means.

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I really don't. I just know that Jesus doesn't lie. So if you're in Christ, those who are in Christ keep his word, you're never going to see death.

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So when death comes knocking, whatever that end looks like, you're not going to see it.

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You're not going to taste it. And of course, this incites his critics. Now they think he's totally lost it, right?

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He's talking about his words as if it's somehow going to keep you from dying. Jesus is speaking the truth, just in a way

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I don't understand. So the Jews said to him, now we know you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets.

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Yet you say if anyone keeps my word, he'll never taste death. Are you greater than our father Abraham who died?

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And the prophets who died? Who do you make yourself out to be? See, they're starting to catch on.

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Jesus isn't claiming to be an ordinary human. So Jesus answered, well, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

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It's my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God. But you have not known him.

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I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I keep his word.

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Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.

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When did Abraham rejoice at seeing Jesus' day? Where does it say that in the book of Genesis?

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Answer, it doesn't. Jesus is talking about Abraham in a way, well, as if he has like inside information about Abraham that ain't nobody got because he and Abraham used to kick it together or something like that, right?

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Well, now, a little bit of a side note here. Abraham did know about the day of the

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Lord, and he did rejoice. And when you read the church fathers, when they try to pinpoint, well, where is it that Abraham sees, at least from afar, the day of the

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Lord coming and rejoices in it? They pinpoint it to Genesis 22 with the sacrifice of Isaac.

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The Lord calls on Abraham to go to Mount Moriah and sacrifice his son

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Isaac. As they're going, Isaac says, where's the lamb for the sacrifice? Abraham says, the

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Lord himself will provide for himself the lamb for the sacrifice. And then they continue, verse 9 of 22, they came to the place of which

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God had told him. Abraham built the altar there, laid the wood in order, bound Isaac, his son, laid him on the altar on top of the wood, dress rehearsal for the crucifixion, by the way.

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So Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife to slaughter his son, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said,

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Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.

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For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me.

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Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by his horns.

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So Abraham went, took the ram, offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. Abraham called the name of that place, the

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Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.

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And see, that's the day that Abraham's looking to. The day in which on the mount of the

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Lord it will be provided. Because on Mount Moriah, if you were to travel there today, you can go there.

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Mount Moriah is crowned with a temple mount today. And it was just outside the city gates of Jerusalem, on the slopes of Mount Moriah, that God did provide the lamb for himself for the sacrifice, and that's the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,

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Jesus Christ. On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided, and it was. Abraham knew that day was coming and he rejoiced.

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We have now seen and heard of that day, and we also rejoice with Abraham. Back to our story.

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So the Jews, picking up on the fact that Jesus is talking about Abraham in a way as if he really knows him, said to him, you're not yet 50 years old and you've seen

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Abraham, and here comes the bomb. Are you ready? Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you before Abraham was,

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I am. Who is

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Jesus making himself out to be? He just used the divine name from Exodus 3 for himself.

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Well, here's what the text says. So they picked up stones to throw at him, not to say get out of here, but to kill him because they believed he committed the sin of blasphemy and that he needed to die for because Jesus was claiming to be

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God himself. But he hid himself and went out of the temple. So Jesus was using the name that the

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Lord had revealed to Moses, the name of which God himself said, quote, this is my name forever and thus

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I am to be remembered throughout all generations. So now the story comes full circle.

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Remember in Exodus, it says, the Lord said, I've surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

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I know their sufferings and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

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In other words, God has seen our afflictions and has heard our cries for deliverance and has heard our pleas for liberation from our taskmasters, the devil and his demon horde.

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God knows our sufferings and the I am who spoke to Moses in the burning bush.

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He has now come down to deliver us and then take us to a good and broad land flowing with milk and honey, which is the new earth, whose capital is the new

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Jerusalem come down out of heaven. And by the way, Jesus has conquered our taskmasters.

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Colossians 2, 13 through 15 puts it this way. And you, you Christians, you were once dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, but God has made you alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of death that stood against us with its legal demands.

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He has thus set it aside, nailing it to the cross. And by doing so, he has disarmed the rulers and the authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

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The rulers and authorities here who Christ has conquered by the cross is the devil and all of his demons.

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He's triumphed over them. Jesus' death on the cross, therefore, is our emancipation proclamation.

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We are free. His death fulfilled the prophecy. Jesus spoke to Abraham, in which he so greatly rejoiced that on the mountain of the

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Lord it would be provided, and it was. We now have been liberated to slavery to the devil.

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We have been liberated from slavery to death. We have been liberated from slavery to sin. We have been baptized into the

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Red Sea of Christ's blood. And though we are now in the wilderness, sojourning through this life,

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Christ is guiding us to the River Jordan where we will finally walk on dry land yet again because we will not see death and we will finally set foot in a land that is unlike this one.

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A land flowing with milk and honey. A land illuminated by the glory of God. A land where we will forever see the face of Christ.

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A land in a world without end. There will be no more sickness. There will be no more brain tumors.

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No more multiple sclerosis. No more dementia. No more suffering.

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No more death. No more sin. No more tyrant devil and his demonic horde.

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Christ, through His death and His resurrection for you, has toppled the satanic regime and now reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

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So let us rejoice and be glad with Abraham because like him, we too have seen

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Christ's day. And like Abraham, let us praise God for the great victory and liberation that has been won for us by the great

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I Am Himself, Jesus Christ, on Mount Calvary. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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