People are People, So Why Should it Be...

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. Mark, the seventh chapter.

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

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All right. When I was living as a young man in the 1980s, this tune came on the radios.

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It was very popular at the time by a band called Depeche Mode, and here are the lyrics. People are people, so why should it be that you and I should get along so awfully?

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People are people, why should it be that you and I should get along so awfully? So we're different colors, we're different creeds, and different people have different needs.

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It's obvious you hate me, though I've done nothing wrong. I've never even met you, so what could I have done? Have you noticed that human beings don't get along with each other?

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I would note that I think one of the stupidest things that we teach our children is by allowing them to watch like Disney princess movies, and at the end when the princess and the prince finally get married, it always ends with these dumb words.

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They lived happily ever after. And here's the thing, those stories were originally written and told as Christian allegory.

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The prince was never just a prince. The princess was never just a princess. The idea was the prince was always

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Christ, and the princess is supposed to be the bride of Christ. It allegorizes that relationship.

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But now we live in a post -Christian world, and good grief, Disney has no clue of the

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Christianity that they're spewing at Disneyland and other places and on their streaming services when they play these songs that come from these movies that are about princes and princesses from long ago in places like that.

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But all that being said, what we expect in this life is this as a result of those words misunderstood that once a happy couple in love with each other, hormones raging, by the way.

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Have you noticed how completely incapable of sound decisions people who are experiencing love hormones are, how they are?

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You know you don't want to make that decision. Trust me, that's not the guy for you.

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That's not the girl for you. And they won't listen. They don't listen. But then eventually the love hormones wear off, and they wake up one morning in the bed of that person, and they go, what have

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I done? And here's the issue. We human beings, because of the expectations that were raised on, these fantasy ideas, we believe that once we say

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I do, that that means we're going to live happily ever after. But here's the issue. You put two sinners together under the same roof, and it's a problem.

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It is absolutely a problem. And here's the thing. We all know this. Because have you noticed it's the people that are supposed to love us?

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The ones who are supposed to care for us? The ones who are supposed to be by our side through thick and thin oftentimes turn out to be the people who are not.

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In fact, what they bring with them is not love and support and caring and cherishing.

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Instead, they bring with them anger and abuse. You think of the husband who said

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I do to his wife and promised to be faithful to her. And then after she has five kids, and she no longer looks like the 18 -year -old swimsuit model that he married, he decides he's going to trade her in on a new model.

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And he's going to start all over again, create a whole new family with a younger woman.

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And here's what happens. Now you've got custody battles and divorce hearings and kids sitting there going, why am

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I not good enough? Why did my father leave me in order to have these other kids?

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What do they have that I don't have? And then you think of like abusive parents who constantly run down their children and say things like, you will never measure up.

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You are stupid. You are ignorant. You are just the scum of the earth.

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Is this any way for a parent to talk to a child? Or worse when they talk that way to their own spouse?

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And so you'll note the world we live in is full of pain.

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And here's the thing. Who can you trust in the middle of that if you can't even trust your own blood relatives?

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Who can you trust? And so here's the thing. People go through life angry, upset, alone, broken, thinking they are worthless.

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And so when somebody comes along and offers just a modicum of compassion, a little bit of love, some attention, maybe a wee bit of empathy, finally somebody who understands me.

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And next thing you know, you're being scammed by that person and you're out $10 ,000 because they were just being kind in order to get close enough to you to take your money.

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Who can you trust? And if you think you can trust yourself, don't even get me started on that.

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No, you can't. You cannot trust yourself because you'll note that over and again, you are broken like me.

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You're a sinner like me. And oftentimes the decisions that we make in order to assuage or to comfort ourselves or make us feel a little less pain in our lives, oftentimes those decisions turn out to be sinful.

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Sinful. And as a result of it, we add to the problem.

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We are the problem. The problem has occurred to us. We are abused. We abused. We are screamed at.

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We scream at others. We have been the victims of terrible things and what do we do?

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We turn around and we do terrible things. What a great picture.

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I should just end the sermon right here and say, there's no hope, right?

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But here's the thing. There is hope and it's important for us to recognize something.

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And that is that the predicament that we find ourselves in is the result of sin.

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But its author is not God. And in fact, humanity is not the author of sin.

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Satan is. Satan chooses to undo

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God's good creation. And rather than us living in the freedom of being the sons and children of God, we instead are brought into the bondage of slavery to sin, to death, to the devil, to the world and its passions, and our own sinful flesh.

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Satan is the archenemy here. And I would note, in our gospel text, we run into what

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I consider to be kind of the epitome of the problem. Have you ever, ever experienced or maybe you just experienced it secondhand, maybe through television or the news or something like this, watching somebody experience something that you knew there was no recovery from it?

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None whatsoever. Maybe it's the guy who's texting while driving down the highway, and you can see it coming.

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This guy's not paying attention. And sure as certain, every attempt to try to get his attention has failed.

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And what happens? He plows into an oncoming truck, dies, kills other people in the process.

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And the thing is, is that when you notice what was happening, it was already too late. I would note that when somebody is born deaf and unable to speak, that's a great metaphor, if you would, of what it means to be dead and trespasses and sins.

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Because the person who is deaf cannot hear the Word of God. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the

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Word of Christ. And you'll note that those who are deaf cannot speak.

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Have you noticed that in our day there's been great progress to teach the deaf how to speak?

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But that's something that's come along in our lifetime, at least those of us who are older, right?

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Have you ever looked at somebody who was born with a disability and felt uncomfortable?

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I do every time I see it. Every time I see somebody who's blind, somebody who is missing a limb, somebody who's deaf.

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Because here's the thing. We all were originally created in the image of God.

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You and I were. And in our creation, we were noble.

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We were perfect. There was no death. There were no disabilities.

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In fact, every parent, every couple who decides to have children, the reality is this, they are rolling the

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DNA dice and praying it doesn't come up with a disability.

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And what happens when somebody is born with Down syndrome, born without the limbs, born with a cleft palate, born with special needs?

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Now you have a family who, for the rest of their lives, are burdened with the difficulty of caring for a special needs child who turns into a special needs adult.

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And what's the hope for that child once those parents are gone? You know what

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I'm saying, right? We're all uncomfortable together. And so you'll note this is all the consequences of our sin.

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Being born deaf means you can't hear the word of God. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

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Being mute means you cannot speak the language of the people that you are a part of.

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You cannot sing the praises of God. And so you'll note there's a little more to this gospel text than meets the eye.

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If you would, there is, in a real way, kind of a spiritual target here that we need to consider.

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So our text in our gospel begins with Jesus returned from the region of Tyre, and he went through Sidon to the

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Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. You've heard me say it before. I'll keep saying it.

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Geography matters. And in this particular case, the setup here, the geography, screams a theology.

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Let me explain. Tyre and Sidon, is that inside of Israel? No, not at all.

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That's pagan territory, right? And Jesus, coming back from Tyre and Sidon, doesn't head back to Capernaum.

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He heads to a place called the Decapolis, which in Greek just means the Ten Cities. And these

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Ten Cities are not Jewish settlements. They are not places where you would expect sound doctrine to be taught and preached from the synagogues.

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The Decapolis, these were cities of idolatry, of the worship of the false gods of Rome.

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That being the case, what's Jesus doing there? Well, you'll remember, God told

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Abraham that through his offspring the entire world would be blessed. Christ is not merely the king of the

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Jews, he's the king of the world. And he is our king. And he did not come merely to set

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Israel free, but also to set those who are Gentiles free and then make them citizens of the new

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Israel that he is making of himself with his people. And so this is a foretaste of that.

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But you'll note then that when Christ, the light of the world, comes into the

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Decapolis, the Decapolis is a place of darkness. It's a place of paganism. You remember when

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God called the apostle Paul, when he was, knocked him down, blinded him on the road to Damascus.

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He made it very clear that Paul was to be sent to the Gentiles to call them out of darkness into the light of Christ.

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That being the case, here the light of Christ is, well, shining in the darkness of the

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Gentile paganism and their world. And so these words then come in.

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They, we don't know who they is. Who's they? They, this group, they is more than one.

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It could have been two, it could have been five. They brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.

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What a beautiful sentence. But if you slow down and think about it, there's a lot going on here.

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Who are they and how did they know that Jesus would be helpful, that he would be willing to help this man who is deaf?

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And I would note, speech impediment is just a lame, just a lame translation, all right?

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Better way to put it is that he was mute. He was unable to speak because he's deaf. So that being the case, how did they know that Jesus would be the guy to help them?

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Because you'll note the religious leaders of Jesus' day weren't interested in helping anybody with anything.

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The only thing they cared about is making you their disciple and making sure that they got properly paid for it and that you gave them the proper honor and things like this.

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And if you run into a problem in your life, maybe you come down with an illness that's gonna last you for decades, oh, that's on you because you didn't have enough faith.

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You weren't obedient enough. It's because of your sin. It's all your fault. And of course, when they come down with those types of diseases, they always have an excuse, don't they?

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So how did they know that Jesus was the fellow that would help them? They knew something about Christ.

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And they knew that he was merciful. They knew that he was kind. But more than that, Jesus is fulfilling prophecy and I'm doing so left and right.

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Let me give you an example. Psalm 68, a

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Psalm of David. And you'll note David knows a thing or two about family problems. Remember, he married a gal by the name of Michal.

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Michal, who is she? She was the daughter of Saul. So David had a father -in -law named

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Saul who happened to be the king. And how well did Saul treat

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David? Dysfunctional family, shall we say?

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Tried to murder him on many occasions. Pin him to a wall with a spear. The spear never seemed to hit him, though.

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That spear was intended for Christ, not for David. But listen to this Psalm. The prophet,

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King David, writing, God shall arise. His enemies shall be scattered.

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And those who hate him shall flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so shall you drive them away.

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As wax melts before fire, so the wicked shall perish before God.

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But the righteous shall be glad. They shall exult before God. They shall be jubilant with joy.

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Sing to God, sing praises to his name. Lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts.

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His name is Yahweh. Exult before him. And listen to these next words.

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He is father of the fatherless, the protector of widows, is

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God in his holy habitation. He settles the solitary in a home. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity, but the rebellious, they dwell in a parched land.

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Note here, God says he's father of the fatherless, but the Pharisees say if you're fatherless, it's your fault, you sinned.

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So when dad leaves, doesn't have anything to do with you, off with another woman, making babies with her and completely neglecting those who he made with his first wife.

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You'll note that rather than giving you the line, well, you just weren't good enough,

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God comes in and says, I will be your father, because I am, I am your heavenly father.

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And when widows, widows are the poorest of the poor in the ancient world. Before women can own property, everything depended upon the health of their husbands.

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And wives would want to die before their husbands did, because if they became widows at a young age, there was like no hope for them.

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It was a sure and certain formula for them being destitute for the rest of their lives. And what does

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God say? I am the protector of widows. Those who have been driven out, the homeless, the solitary,

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God leads home and gives them a home. To the prisoners, you know, the people who really messed up, the ones who got caught committing crimes,

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I had to put the emphasis on the word caught. Because how many people commit crimes and never get caught?

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Each and every one of us, when we sin against God, we're guilty of criminal behavior, whether you agree with it or not, that's true.

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We are all prisoners, slaves to sin, and God is the one who leads us out to prosperity.

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To those who have been, well, brought to dereliction by sin, who started off so well, who jumped into this world thinking that, oh, everything's going to be just peachy keen.

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I mean, after all, you can be all that you can be. In fact, you can be anything you want to be.

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That's what they tell you, right? You can use your words to attract to yourself fame, fortune, influence, power, wealth, a solid financial foundation.

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And yet, how many of you work and labor week after week after week, and sometimes you wonder how you're going to make ends meet, how you're going to pay all the bills, right?

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So you're going to note here, God, the one true God, is siding with the losers.

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God is siding with and coming to the aid not of those people who have their acts together, who have won the lottery in life in one form or another.

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Instead, he is there for those who have been left for dead because of the consequences of sin.

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We are not here gathered at Kongsvinger for the purpose of singing our praises and me telling you, you know, you're just this close to living your dream.

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All you have to do is apply these ten easy steps, and you, too, can be influential and powerful like me.

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Because I ain't, by the way. So God is the father of the fatherless, protector of widows.

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He settles the solitary in a home. He leads out prisoners to prosperity.

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That's the God who is in human flesh in our gospel story.

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And so as the word has gotten out, they have heard, or maybe they have seen for themselves,

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Jesus isn't like the other religious leaders. He's not here to condemn us and to basically take our nose and smash it into the dung of our sin and tell us to stop messing up the house.

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He's here for a different reason. And so they knew full well that Christ was the one that this man who was deaf and mute could be brought to and that Jesus would do something about it, that he wouldn't complain, that he wouldn't scold them, that he wouldn't just say, all right, well, here's the tithe coffer and just make sure to put your tithe in before I give you this miracle or blessing.

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Nothing of the sort. So they begged him, please, Jesus, lay your hands on him.

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They knew that Christ wasn't a charlatan. He wasn't a scammer. He wasn't there for himself.

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He was truly there for others. And taking him aside from the crowd privately,

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Jesus is not putting on a miracle show here, right? How many people today who claim to operate in signs and wonders, the signs and wonders only occur when the cameras are on and the video is streaming across the internet, right?

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Jesus took him aside privately. He put his fingers in his ears.

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And after spitting, he touched his tongue. You'll note, this is such an interesting thing.

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It doesn't happen very often. God is capable of healing with the word. Christ is capable of healing with the word.

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He can command this man to hear and he would hear. I mean, didn't God in the very beginning in Genesis speak into the void, the nothingness, and said, let there be light, and there was light?

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But I would note here, when I see Jesus doing something like this, taking his fingers, putting them in his ears, you know what

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I see? I see kind of a reenacting of some of the details of what must have taken place when

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Christ fashioned the body of Adam, right? There he is in the Garden of Eden and he takes together the dust of the earth and he starts to put it together.

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And you can see Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth, now the anatomy carpenter, he's putting together the body of Adam and going, all right, let's put this here.

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We'll give him six -pack abs. Tell him to stay away from carbs, otherwise he'll ruin that. Things like this, right?

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And working out his hair, putting in his eyes, putting his ears together, making sure that everything's in place.

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It just has that feel of creation to it, right? Kind of Jesus going back.

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I don't know, was he wearing a lab coat at the time or was he wearing an apron? I don't know. It doesn't say.

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But here's this picture, Jesus taking his own saliva, touching his tongue with it.

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And I know if you're under the age of 11, you're going, ew, eh. It's okay, okay?

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I would note that don't be grossed out because when you finally get to the kissy phase of your life, you'll be swapping spit,

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I'm just saying. Been there and done that. I just feel like that's gonna become the alternate title for this sermon, the kissy phase.

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All right? And then note here, he looks up to heaven.

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And this is not theatrics on the part of Christ. I would note he looks up to heaven for very specific reasons, because all good things come from God.

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And God's abode is in heaven above. And so Christ looks up to heaven, a reminder that what is to take place comes from God himself, and that this is a blessing from heaven.

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And then he sighed. It's kind of a breathy thing to do, isn't it?

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Kind of a spirit -y thing to do to sigh. And then he said to him,

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Ephetha. Another breathy word. The whole word just breathes of breath, okay?

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It's the windiest word out there. Ephetha. And that means be opened.

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And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

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And I would note, you have to think of this, there's a dimension to this miracle that we oftentimes miss.

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So let me ask you this question. Y 'all seem to speak English pretty well. Where'd you learn it?

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Where did you learn how to speak English so well? Think about it, right?

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Well, those of you who've raised kids, you have a pretty good idea where you got the ability to speak English. Because when they first start saying words, what are they doing?

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They're mimicking the words that we are speaking. And you'll note, it takes a long time to master a language.

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It really does. And so you'll note that if you have a child who's in elementary school, oftentimes what are you doing?

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You're correcting their language when they speak because they'll say things like, I think

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I speak gooder than you do. And then you sit there and go, no, no, no, you don't say gooder, no, you gotta correct them, right?

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And so it's a constant back and forth of learning of vocabulary, learning how to put sentences together, helping them make them sound educated and stuff like this.

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But a man who has no ability to hear, how good do you think he's going to be at speaking

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Koine Greek? How good do you think he's going to be at being able to speak

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Hebrew to get along with the Jews in his region or Aramaic or any of the other Latin, other languages, including

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Latin? How well do you think he would do at that? I would note that when

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I first learned modern Hebrew, I used the Pimsleur method because it's a great way to do it.

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It requires you to listen and then repeat. Listen and repeat.

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Mashlem ha hiyom. Ah, very good. How are you today? And so you say it back and forth.

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This is how you learned as a child, right? But here we have a fellow who's deaf and then with one word, epithet, be opened.

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He now speaks plainly. He speaks perfect, whatever the language is of that region, be it

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Koine Greek or Latin or Aramaic, he's speaking it perfectly.

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And here's the thing. Like I said, there's a spiritual dimension to this. Think with me.

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Back to Psalm 51, beautiful psalm. The psalm that David wrote after he had committed adultery and murdered, adultery with Bathsheba, murdered her husband,

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Uriah the Hittite, and then was called out on it. Verse 15. We use these words at the beginning of Vespers.

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O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. What a prayer, right?

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But isn't that exactly what we see going on here? In the physical realm, we see the reality of something that's true for all of us.

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If God had not opened our mouths, opened our lips, we would not be here today to sing his praises.

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It is not because we are such great people. We're not. We were born dead in trespasses and sins and dead means that you're mute.

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Dead also means that you're deaf. And dead people just don't do anything.

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They're boring to hang around. They do not even carry on conversations, right? Don't even get me started on Wilson the volleyball, but that's a whole other thing, right?

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But all that being said, the Lord is the one who opens our lips.

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And in opening our lips, we declare his praise. He is the one that forgives us. And listen to the

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Psalm in its context. David praying, Lord, have mercy on me. According to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, please blot out my transgressions.

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Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity. Cleanse me from my sin. If that isn't a baptismal reference,

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I don't know what is. For I know my transgressions. My sin is ever before me.

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Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so that you may be justified in your words, blameless in your judgment.

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Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth and the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

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Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

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Note the petitions here are not that, wait a second, Lord, let me go take a shower, I'll clean myself up, and then

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I'll come into your presence after I've made myself sparkly and clean. Instead, David comes to God with the muck of his sin still on his being, in his soul, and he prays, please wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

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Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken, let them rejoice. Hide your face from my sins.

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Blot out all of my iniquities. Please, God, create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me.

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Self -righteous religion has this completely backwards. You need to make yourself right with God.

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You need to clean up your act. You need to get your act. You need to be intentional.

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You need to put that stuff away. You need to, you need to, you need to, you need to. David caught flat -footed.

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He doesn't say, give me a minute, God, while I clean up myself. I'm going to wash my heart.

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He says, please, God, blot out my transgressions. Create in me a clean heart,

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God. Renew a right spirit within me. The things that he's asking for, no human being is capable of doing.

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Not me, not you, not the most moral person who's ever lived among us.

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None of us are able to do this. God, if he doesn't create in us a clean heart, if he doesn't renew a right spirit within us, we are doomed.

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But why should we believe that God would treat such sinners as us, undeserving sinners as us, worthy of his wrath?

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Why would he even go out of his way to create in us a clean heart? Because he's the father of the fatherless.

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What kind of dad has the devil been for you, by the way? Abusive, tyrannical?

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Does he ever care for you at all? When we were conceived, we were born children of the devil.

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That meant you may as well be children without a dad. Because you know who the devil cares about?

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The devil. The devil cares nothing about you. You exist only for his purposes and his way of thinking, right?

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So we come to God broken, fatherless, abused, guilty of our own egregious sins, and we pray, create in us a clean heart, oh

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God. Renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence as I deserve and don't take your

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Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me with a willing spirit.

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Then and only then, if you do these things, God, then will I teach transgressors your ways and sinners will return to you.

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Deliver me, because I cannot deliver myself from blood guiltiness, oh God. Oh God of my salvation.

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And then my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

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You see, it all works together. This gospel text points to that song.

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And here this fellow, miraculously able to speak plainly despite being deaf, has now been released and he can sing and speak the praises of God.

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Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. So, Jesus, who's not interested in drawing too much attention to himself because it legitimately impedes his ability to minister, he charged them to tell no one, please, keep this on the

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DL. But here's the thing. A man who was deaf and mute, who can now speak the praises of Christ plainly, what do you think somebody who's gone an entire lifetime unable to speak is going to do as soon as you give him a tongue to speak?

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I gotta tell you about Jesus, right? And so the text says, the more they charged him, the more zealously they proclaimed him.

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What a great thing. Oh Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise and don't even tell me not to because I can't help but to.

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That's how good Jesus is. And so the text ends with these wonderful words.

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They were astonished beyond measure. They've never seen anything like this.

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But I would note, it's not merely the miracle. They have never seen love like this.

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They have never seen kindness like this. They've never seen selflessness like this.

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This is so much different than what we get from the other religious leaders. This is what's so different than what we get from our own parents.

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This is different than we get from our aunts and our uncles and our family members and people who are close family, relatives, and friends.

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This is love without strings attached. This is selflessness with no expectation of payment.

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This is the one who is at work delivering captives, opening the ears of the deaf, those who are born blind and deaf and unable to speak, opening their ears, opening their mouths, opening their eyes just as he has done for us.

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He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.

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That's you and that's me. So let us sing the praises of the kind one who is the father of the fatherless, the one who sets the prisoners free and leads them into prosperity, the one who doesn't look for the people who have their act together but takes the broken, the losers like you and I.

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And he bleeds and he dies for us, opens our ears, gives us speech so that we can sing his praises.

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And let us ever focus on him, and let us never shut up, even if the world tells us to stop telling us about Jesus.

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May we say it all the more. In the name of Jesus, amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support.

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