Behave Children

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 in salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 18th chapter.

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At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

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And calling to Him a child, He put Him in the midst of them and said, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

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Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me. But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

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Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes.

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And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.

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It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire.

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And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

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It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.

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See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.

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What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety -nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?

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And if he finds it, truly I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety -nine that never went astray.

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So it is not the will of My Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.

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If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.

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If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

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If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a

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Gentile and a tax collector. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

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Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.

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For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I among them.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. From the gospel according to St. Matthew chapter 18,

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Jesus said, Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

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Let's pray. God our Father, you call us to live in our various vocations in the world, in family, in church, and in the greater society, and yet these areas of life can often be beset with danger and confusion.

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And so we pray that as we hear your word today toward the end of service to our neighbor, you would sanctify us with your truth.

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Your word is truth. Amen. Well, beginning with my seminary journey,

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I was taught something very, very clearly and most especially as I headed towards the preaching endeavor towards the end of my training.

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And it was this. Never take a political stance. Never get involved in politics, and whatever you do, don't impress your political ideologies upon anybody else.

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This is fairly good advice for the seminary, and I must say, I certainly met some folks at seminary who had very interesting political persuasions.

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And if I'm really completely honest, and if we're all completely honest, perhaps our own ideas of how things ought to be run might just lead us towards our own despotic little kingdoms.

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When we think about politics, so often we think about, well, the desire within us, what we want, what often we think we deserve, and the way that we think we ought to order things.

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We can't avoid politics when we look at our text today, and as we live in our various societies and communities, we also can't avoid politics.

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And Jesus has some very salient words for us and some very salient ideas on how we might engage with the world around us.

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You see, the world of politics, that is the world of the civil society in which we live, those orders that we are surrounded with, whether they be the judiciary, the ordering of law, whether they be the legislature, the ordering of our parliaments, or whether they be the executive, the carrying out of the various bureaucracies that keep our societies going, they are one part, one estate,

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Luther would say, in which we live. There are two other estates, and these are also carried in our text today.

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Those estates being the estate of family, and this is primarily viewed in the estate of marriage, of course, that encompasses children and those that live under our roofs.

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The other estate is, of course, the church and how we deal with one another as Christians, as brothers and sisters, and how we render to proper authority within the church.

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All of these are laid before us in the text that we have in Romans, and the key to understanding all of this is in Jesus' words in our gospel according to St.

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Matthew. But let's first consider what we have before us in the opening of Romans chapter 13.

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We hear these words, let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

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Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

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Now you and I, and all of us gathered in all of our different places across the world, know that this is not a matter of black and white.

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The recent history of this earth, and perhaps as your families have been impacted by various conflicts across the recent years, as mine certainly has, my grandfather served in World War II, I've already perhaps told you of that previously, the various doings of our nations are ever before us, and sometimes, well, we find that government is at odd, at complete odds with what

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God has commanded. In fact, so often those authorities placed before us seem to be in opposition, open opposition even, to the faith.

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So what do we do with this notion of being subject to these governing authorities? Well, it's hinged on this notion that there is no authority except from God.

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It is hinged on the fact that no matter how convoluted and how gray the lines become, how blurred our allegiances might become, in submitting to the authorities

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God has placed before us, we are indeed submitting to Him. And in so many ways, when we suffer persecution, when we see before our very eyes governments and authorities going against or even persecuting

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God's word in our own communities, we find ourselves, well, turning to God in prayer.

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As Luther would say, even the devil is God's devil, and in so many ways, even corrupt authorities, even demonized authorities to many extents, well, still being given by God, are there in so many ways to teach us to depend not on our own understanding or what is before our eyes, but to lead us to prayer, to lead us in subjugation to God's will, and to lead us into a greater dependence on Him that He would see the day through.

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This, of course, in most of our, I don't know every single nation that is gathered here today, but certainly for those, for myself in Australia, and as I understand the representative government that you have in the

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United States, it is true to say that being subject to the governing authorities, well, means being subject to one another in so many ways, to be built up together to make good decisions.

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We know that in a representative government, as it is supposed to be properly ordered, we are so very blessed in this day and age to be those that delegate this authority, the authority of the

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Senate and upper house and both of our systems, as I understand it, doesn't come from the individuals sitting in those positions of authority, but it is delegated by the people for the service of the people, and therein, in being subject to the governing authorities, we have a great work before us to soberly consider those who would represent us, to consider what various policies are put before us to make decisions and to discuss amongst one another and to actively participate in the guiding of authority so that it serves the common good and rests under God's good and gracious will for us.

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We are called to engage in this soberly and to do so with eyes wide open, but also with the kind of zeal that respects what

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God has given. And we are so very fortunate in this day and age, though it does certainly appear to be usurped so often by sneakiness and ongoing games behind the curtains, still we have something to give glory to God here.

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We have with great joy the opportunity to give, to thank God that we participate in these authorities and the kind of despotic actions of various emperors and rulers throughout the ages.

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Well, we are not subject to that kind of abuse in the same way that others were before us.

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You perhaps have heard of, I've spoken of how the Lutheran Church came to be in Australia, that there was a union forced upon the people and the people gathered there said we will be subject to God in this grey area.

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We will find a different authority under which to serve and toil, having been tossed out of their homes.

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And so many made their way to Australia to subject themselves to the authorities here, finding a place to build church and to build family.

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This is a good and gracious gift of God that where authority goes awry, there might be others provided under which we might serve.

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However, of course, in the current situation that we have, we are so very blessed to be able to participate in open democracy, to have our say.

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And according to the authorities given within the authority of the structure of a representative democracy, we are also given to protest and have our say when we feel things going awry.

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All of this is to be in subject to the authorities instituted by God.

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This, of course, doesn't give us room to go about assassinating those who we might disagree with or taking upon ourselves to establish our own little our own little kingdoms where we might desire to.

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That might be a part of the desires of our hearts. But at the end of the day, God calls us in subjecting ourselves to authority to consider ourselves less, to humble ourselves before God's will, to participate where we can in humility and to accept outcomes and to live under those outcomes, whether they be opportunities to train us in patience and prayer, whether they be galvanizing to drag us to drag our communities back to Christ.

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So often we see when governments go awry, people lose faith in authorities as the little gods above them, the little providers of all good.

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And so often when authorities go awry, well, we're led in greater numbers to be subjected to the great provider and his eternal provision ever before us, as it is already ours now as we pray for our daily bread, the roof over our head, the provision of good work and the safety of our families.

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In all these ways, the governing authorities still are the work of God for our good.

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Of course, under this, we pay our taxes and we do good works according to how

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God has ordered society. And we can be confident then that the things that we do, according to authorities before us, are good works before God.

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It's very easy for us as Christians to get confused about what a good work might be.

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And let me tell you, it's very easily easy to be taken for a ride these days. There's so very many scams.

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And I know when I was a parish pastor, so very often I would have all manner of different panhandlers at the manse door.

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I don't know whether you call it a rectory or a manse, but we were provided a manse as part of the parish.

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So often I would have to discern, well, do these people really require my aid?

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But for us Christians, when we pay our taxes and it goes towards welfare or programs towards health and all these other things, we can be very confident that we are in fact doing

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God's work, that those monies, that taxation has been provided for the greater good.

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That's not to say that you shouldn't give to the downtrodden, of course, discerned over the years, folks that really need our help.

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And we've been able to give that help. And I'm sure you've all been in that situation. But God gives us these overarching authorities to do his will and also to give us a means by which we might be comforted in what we do for him and be comforted by the fact that it's out of our hands.

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We don't have to discern every single means by which we might do good.

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But God gives us channels to do so. This is how we live in society then under the authorities that God has been, that God has instituted, recognizing that he stands above them all and his will will be done whether we see it or not.

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There is great comfort in this submission. The second, of course, is this notion of life in the church and life in the family.

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They're both contained in the following verses, verses 8 to 10 in Romans, where we read of owing nothing to anybody except to love one another and that love for one another is the fulfillment of the law.

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We also see the summary of the second table of the commandments. You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and any other commandments summed up in this word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself and love doing no wrong to a neighbor.

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Therefore is the fulfilling of God's law. This too, for us as Christians can be a cause of confusion, especially as we get lambasted day in, day out by notions of love that do not equate to the love that God calls us to hear, and we see this very clearly because we see in the end of the gospel reading today, an aspect of love and an act of love that we are called to, that doesn't appear very loving as the world would have us understand it.

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We hear these words in verse 15 of chapter 18 of Matthew's gospel. If your brother sins against you, go tell him his fault between you and him alone.

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If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. If he does not listen, take two others, one or two others along with you that the charge may be established and then take it to the church and then, well, make, let them be to you as a

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Gentile and tax collector, that is, let them be to you as one who is in dire need of God's law to convict and his holy absolution to restore.

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Too often, and it is too easy for us, very easy, well, it is actually our internal desire so very often, rather than to love our neighbor and to desire that they might, in repentant faith, live with a good conscience before God.

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It is far too easy for us to accept the world's view of love, which is to consider one another's feelings first and foremost, rather than one's conscience before God, rather than one's conscience before a neighbor either.

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Too easy, it is too easy for us to live according to the world's understanding of love and to say, well,

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I would rather preserve my relationship with my brother or my friend or my neighbor and allow them to continue in their sin and just turn a blind eye to it.

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I would rather not have any animosity between us. I would rather not have any harm come to our relationship.

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I'd rather not have any animosity at the Christmas dinner. Let's face it, sometimes that can be a hotbed of a great danger for those that we know have stepped away from God's law.

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And so often this hides our own bad conscience, trying to hide the sin of our neighbor and turn a blind eye to it.

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So often we do so hoping very much that others will also ignore ours, that our sin might go uncalled out, that it might go hidden in the background where it might fester, and indeed it does fester.

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But this provides no comfort, just as rebelling against God's authority will only end up with us in great danger.

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So the momentary preservation of our own selves and the preservation of our own relationships or ideals so often will only end up with a bad conscience and a festering guilt and a festering wonder in the back of our mind, perhaps in so many ways, whether we should have addressed sin and allowed our own to be addressed in the same way.

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We are not called then to love one another with the kind of love the world expects, which is the love that is described in the word

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Eros. Rather, we are called to love according to the love that God has given, and that is the word agape.

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There are three types of love. Two of them were very well highlighted in our text last week.

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They were agape, that is the self -sacrificial love epitomized in Christ, who gave himself for the world, epitomized in Christ, whom for God's great, the

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Father's great love for the world, gave his only Son, withholding nothing from us. This is a self -sacrificial love and is epitomized in Christ and nowhere else.

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This is the kind of love we are called to. Phileo is another kind of love, which is the love between your brother that says, well, my brother might be a pain and might be a danger to society, but he's my brother and I'm the one that will deal out his punishment.

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Thank you very much. The love for a brother overlooks much. The third type of love is the dominant one that the world would impress upon us.

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And it's the word Eros. And from that, you can hear the word erotic, of course. It has to do with our innermost desires.

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It has to do with the desires of our old nature, the desires of our old heart.

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Used rightly, it is, well, what binds a man and a woman and puts the sparkle in the eye when a man goes and asks a lady's father whether he might have his daughter's hand in marriage.

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It is necessary for procreation that one would be physically attracted to one's wife, but the way it's abused in our society and pressed upon us in the church so often is to say that feelings are paramount, that our desires and my own way of doing things or my own opinion or my own standing or my own desire should be paramount and hang everybody else.

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This is the love of the world that is pressed upon us. And it is a perversion of that good gift.

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We're not called to this in this text, but rather we are called to love one another with a complete self -sacrificial love.

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And this, when we consider ourselves less than our neighbor greater is the means by which we would love our neighbor with the love that Christ has first given us, but how does this work?

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How does this well play out? How do we approach this? By what means would we humble ourselves, especially how would we sacrifice ourselves when we're called to well point out sin in our neighbor, especially in how are we to live as one who would have our own sin called out so that we might find ourselves in repentance and with a good conscience before God in this life as we receive his holy absolution.

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Well, Jesus sums it up for us so very perfectly in this text here in Matthew chapter 18, his words here ring through the ages and place us.

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Well, call us to consider a mindset and a way of being that gives no room for ourselves and gives no room for our desire or our, our, our own, uh, our own innermost feelings, but humbles is a way and a means in which we humble ourselves before our great father who is in heaven and does so according to Christ and for the sake of Christ.

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This is why Jesus says, I truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

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And whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And further, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

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These three fundamental ways of viewing our Lord and viewing each other and viewing our father are fundamental for us to be able to love our neighbor as ourselves in this self -sacrificial love.

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I like to call the, the, the way that I view this and the way that we can all view this is the age of usefulness.

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I call this in children. My kids are a bit past this age of usefulness, although one is still holding onto it.

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It's that age that you might see, uh, between sort of eight and 12, right? Before the age of willfulness takes over as puberty and the, the, the testing of boundaries takes over when the age of reason comes upon us and our reason so often turns against God's, God's law and God's good authorities.

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But there is that beautiful age and it's not, it's not always perfectly represented, but I'm sure you've seen with your own children or with your grandchildren or with your nieces or with your nephews, what

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I'm talking about in this age of usefulness. It's when you say to a young kid, Hey, why don't you come and help me weed the garden?

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And with no thought for what cartoon might be on the television or no thought for how they might be wanting to play

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Play -Doh, a child so often in that, that special age will say, sure thing, dad.

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Your mother might say, how about you come and make a cake and it'll be sure thing, mom. It's that age where a child knows that they are in full dependence for everything they receive and are grateful for it.

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When this works well, of course, sometimes families are broken, but when this works well, this picture stands so well.

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The idea in the child's head is they just want to be near and to be like their parent, to be like the authority that is before them, to share in the good work that they are doing and to perpetuate what has been given to them as they've so often received the wrapped cake, let's say in their lunchbox.

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So they'd like also to make a cake for their brothers and sisters. You've often, you often see this with little kids as their older siblings go off to school the same way.

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They, they see you doing good things for them and providing for them. And so they want to provide back. And if we consider ourselves like little children in this way, firstly dependent for every good gift, but then also as those who would emulate the gift of father and of big brother, the primary authority given before us, we humble ourselves necessarily knowing that without the provision first given us, there is no way that we would continue to have life, that we would no longer continue to be a part of the family, that we would only face wrath and danger rather than safety and a continuing abiding place in which we live and endure.

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So we turn and we become like children entering the kingdom of heaven by the means of the will of the father who calls us to his side, calls us to his side by no volition of our own, by no desire within ourselves.

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We know that when our desires become our own, so often they are against, they're against what

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God would have us do. But in the humility of a child, we receive passively and we receive then perhaps even in confusion, sometimes

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God's gift of, of, of discipline when we go astray, perhaps sometimes we also come to him with great, and I'll use this metaphorically, but great big runs of chocolate cake up our faces, those children who have delved into the cake mix when mum wasn't looking with a look of guilt on our face, knowing that our father knows exactly what we have done.

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In all of these ways, as we humble ourselves like little children before the father, we depend on him for his grace and mercy.

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And above all, we depend on him for his forgiveness. There's no greater self to a child who knows that they have done wrong than to let it out and say, mom, dad,

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I've done wrong. And to receive that forgiveness. And that is only a shadow of the grace and the good conscience that God restores to us when receive his absolution.

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Secondly, then Jesus says, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.

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And when we order our lives and we view our neighbor in the same way that we view ourselves before, as in the same way that we recognize ourselves before the father, it is nigh impossible for us to elevate ourselves above another, to consider ourselves better Christians or better providers or better actors in, in towards God's kingdom as better servants or as, as more faithful Christians.

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There's no way when we consider and receive ourselves in the same way that God has received us as little children, that we can consider one another anything lesser or greater than who we are before the father.

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And so we find perfect love that recognizes in one another, in our neighbor, the same dependence, the same need, the same failing, the same sin, and the same, the same dirty mark of stolen chocolate cake upon our face.

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Though that is a paling metaphor for the sin that so often covers us.

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And we are called to receive each other in such a way that is to recognize one another's sin, not to Lord it over, but to say, do you know father forgives?

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Do you know father will restore you? Do you know father's not going to turn you out for your theft, for your gossip, for your murderous thoughts, for your anger, for your hatred, for your rebellion against him?

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Do you know that father will restore you because I am a child like you and he has restored me time and time again.

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And in doing so receiving one another in this way, we humble ourselves and we participate in the work of God here on earth.

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Luther sums it up in the small called articles that the mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren, that is sharing the grace of Christ, like little children pointing to a loving father to say how great our father is, to speak of how great the gifts we have received, how great

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Christmas is, quite literally the gift of the son given for us, how great

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Easter is beyond the chocolates and beyond the Easter eggs given to us, but the empty tomb, the empty cross and the blood of Christ shed for us.

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That is our gift to one another as we receive each other as a child pointing to those gifts first given to us.

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And all of this then is summarized in the fact that it is

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Jesus who humbles himself perfectly in this way because if we were to consider our work with this prerequisite before us, we would understand that we have never humbled ourselves like perfect children.

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Too often we look for our haughty desires. Too often we look for what should be our place above another.

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We look for the grand seat at the front of the village as Jesus would describe elsewhere.

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We seek to stand above others. We seek to lie in our own nest, to build our own little kingdoms, to see our own ideals come to fruition.

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Too often we're not humble like these children. And even when we consider the end of this text,

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Jesus says again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done by my father in heaven.

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How many times have you sat around the table and said, let's be in agreement about my new ute, my new truck or my big win, or you get the kids to pray that this time we'll get a good, we'll get a good, good deal or something like that.

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You know, so often even we look at God's word and put our eyes, the eyes of our sinful nature on it rather than a humble child who seeks only the gifts of the father and only to serve according to what he has given.

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So we must base all of this. We must found ourselves on this very fact, that the one who humbled himself perfectly, the one son, the one son who the father loves with whom he is well pleased is

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Jesus. He is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven and it is in his humility then that we are bound.

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We don't humble ourselves by our own means, but Jesus who humbled himself and is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven under whose feet rests all the powers, principalities under whose feet is given all authority and in heaven and on earth.

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He who humbled himself to death, even death on a cross who prayed father, not my will be done, but your will be done.

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He who humbled himself for your sake is him to whom you are bound through the waters of your baptism, through the transfusion given in his body and his blood as you receive his holy sacraments.

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It is to him you are bound one to another in the body of Christ who is his church.

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And so that is the foundation from which all of this must flow from it.

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Of course flows our contrition from him, flows his grace from him, flows our absolution from him, flows our humility where we are buried with him in baptism and from him flows every good thing that we might do for neighbor, for his sake, by his forgiveness, his mercy, and his work in and for us that we might serve according to his example, by his will and according to the power of his word and sacrament given to us for the sake of our neighbor.

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Thanks be to God. Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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