The Law Won't Save You Unless...

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 Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, the 10th chapter.

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Turning to the disciples, Jesus said privately, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it, and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

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And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

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And he said to him, Well, what's written in the law? How do you read it? He answered, Well, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

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And he said to him, You've answered correctly, do this and you will live. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

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Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

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Now, by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

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So likewise, a Levite, when he came to the place, saw him and passed by on the other side.

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But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

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He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

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And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, Take care of him whatever more you spend,

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I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

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He said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Our gospel text has two very different pieces to it, one short and the other very long.

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And the first piece I think we need to pay attention to before we get into the longer piece. Turning to the disciples,

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Jesus said, Note the word privately. Have you ever stopped to think that we in the gospels are privy to private conversations that Jesus had with the disciples?

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You'll note that private conversations are generally not places that are welcomed to people who are, well, on the outside.

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You'll note that by putting in this private information, it shows that you're on the inside. I remember when

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I was a young lad, I had a tendency to not mind my own business.

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And when I, when my stepsister was with her friends and she was talking with her friends and they didn't want me to know what they were talking about, they would talk in low tones and whispers.

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And I would come in and just be stupid and say, What are you talking about? And then my stepsister would say things like,

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Well, this is an A -B conversation, so see your way out of it. Point taken.

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You get the idea. But here, this is not that kind of conversation. At least you are privy to the information that Jesus said to the disciples privately.

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So pay attention. They're very important words. And here's what Christ said, Blessed are the eyes that see what you see.

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For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it and to hear what you hear and did not hear it.

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Now at first glance, this may not seem all too, well, explosive of a revelation.

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Why spoken privately? It's important here because Christ is revealing to his disciples in very clouded cryptic terms, but revealing nonetheless that he is the

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Messiah. And you'll note that many prophets and kings desired to see what the disciples saw.

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In fact, if you remember back a couple weeks ago on the sermon that I did on Cain, that Eve in the

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Hebrew and there in Genesis 4, it says when she gave birth to Cain, she said, I have brought forth a man, the

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Lord. She believed she gave birth to the Messiah, which tells us a little bit about Eve, aside from being woefully wrong about who the

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Messiah would be. It does show that she had a hope for the seed of the woman that would come and set us free from bondage to sin, death, and to the devil.

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Unfortunately, Cain was not that fellow and turned out to be more like the Antichrist. But all that being said, even

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King David himself, he writes in the Psalms, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool.

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And then all the prophets, they have all these passages that clearly are pointing to Christ. And when

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God revealed these words to them to write into the scriptures, you can see, according to Christ, that they longed to see the very things that they were prophesying about.

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And now the hope of the ancient world has come on the scene. The promised

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Messiah is on the scene, and the disciples are truly blessed to see what they see, to hear what they hear.

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And that being the case, we need to pay attention. And I would note that if you are like me, you probably think, well, wouldn't it be great if I had lived back then and saw the things the disciples saw and heard the things that they heard?

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And I would note, you are blessed kind of by proxy, if you would, because Jesus in his high priestly prayer in the

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Gospel of John on the night that he was betrayed, prayed for every one of us who would believe in Jesus through their words.

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He has chosen them as the eyewitnesses. So that being the case, we do not see

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Jesus with our physical eyes. We do not hear Jesus with our physical ears.

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We hear Jesus with our spiritual eyes, with the eyes of faith. We hear Jesus with the ears of faith.

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And this blessing then comes to us as well. But the point is this, Jesus is the one.

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He's the one everyone was waiting for. Now I always have to point this out when this text comes up, because I'm still in therapy over this stuff.

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And so in talking this out, it helps, we'll do some group therapy together. You'll know that I like to punish myself by listening to and watching copious amounts of heresy, occupational hazard.

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Well, back in the day when I was still pretty new at what I was doing regarding fighting for the faith, there was an up -and -coming church planter who just came onto the scene like a lightning bolt.

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His name is Stephen Furtick. You may have heard of this fellow, right? He's the king of the narcissists. See, there isn't a single passage in the scripture that somehow isn't about him, including all the ones about Jesus.

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It's weird. And he started off by basically planting his church at like a high school auditorium, and then he moved to an old folks' home for a while.

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And then eventually they had enough people that they were able to secure a piece of property. And once they had their first facility, their first campus, he celebrated by holding something called the

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Code Orange Revival, which kind of begs the question. How does one schedule a revival?

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You see, Holy Spirit, we're going to be having a revival next week, and I'm kind of hoping you'd show up, right?

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It just doesn't work that way. But this was basically a full week of who's who among heretics coming and tickling the ears of the people there at Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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One of the nights, Perry Noble was invited. Perry Noble used to be the vision -casting leader of New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina, and he was removed from ministry for being a drunk and a wife -beater.

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And then he restored himself to ministry and planted another church called Second Chance Church. But before any of that took place, he was one of the special speakers at the first Code Orange Revival, and he preached from this text.

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Blessed are your eyes, they see, and blessed are your ears, because of what you hear. And he said to the folks there at Elevation Church that they were blessed to hear the preaching of Stephen Furtick, and that this text was about Furtick.

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And their ears were blessed and their eyes were blessed to see and hear the things that they're seeing at Elevation Church. Excuse me,

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I need a barf bag. Are you kidding me? Complete and utter blasphemy.

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Christ is the one. We are blessed in hearing and seeing him.

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Not me, not Stephen Furtick, not Perry Noble, not nobody. In fact, I would remind you all that there has been some growth here at Kongsvinger, but I would remind you all, none of us are here for me.

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We are here for Christ. We are not blessed by me. We are blessed together by Christ and his words, right?

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And when I eventually move on in ministry, either I fall asleep, crump while preaching a text.

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I think that's a good way to go, don't you? There I am in the middle of preaching Jesus and all of a sudden, I'm dead.

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And it's like, y 'all be panicking, I'll be sitting there going, bye. When I eventually move on, the next fellow, you're not there for him either.

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But pick a fellow that will preach the blessings of Christ, his words and his deeds and keep pointing you back to him and forgiving you of your sins and feeding you his body and blood given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

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You get the idea. It's all about Christ if you haven't figured it out. And Jesus, in these words, makes it clear that the entire

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Old Testament really is about him. He is the promised Messiah. So with that little blessing now rattling around in our ears, we being privy to that private information, the text goes on to say these words,

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Behold, a lawyer, nothing ever good happens when those words appear. I'm just saying, this is why there'd be so few of them in heaven.

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I'm just saying. And here's this fellow, clearly he's been listening to the preaching of Christ.

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And I think based on what it says here, Behold, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test.

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Oh boy. Think back with me for a second here. In the legal world, when it comes to attorneys, if any attorney is able to land a high -profile case and try that case, they're set for life.

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Those of you old enough to remember, there was this trial that took place in the 1990s.

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O .J. Simpson, a murder trial, and Shapiro and other attorneys were on his legal team.

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And the fact that even though he was as guilty as sin, they got him off. He got a not -guilty plea, and it's like, blech.

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Right? Now, forget the fact that O .J. Simpson then went on to be found guilty in a civil suit and was liable financially for the death of his wife, and that other fellow, was it

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Goldman or something like that? Forget all of that. What happened to the dream team?

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Oh man, they have been raking in money off of more high -profile cases.

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Those guys were set for life, right? And so, think of it here.

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This attorney basically sees an opportunity. He hears Jesus preaching, and he's assuming that he's going to be able to get

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Jesus to disagree with him, and he's going to prosecute Jesus using his vast knowledge of the law, and he'll be the guy that will be remembered for taking down Jesus, okay?

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He's set for life if he pulls this off. So, a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test, and here's the question.

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Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Now, this is not a fellow who's asking in good faith.

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He thinks he knows the answer to this question, right? That's the reason why he's asking.

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He's expecting that Jesus is going to say something that's going to be wrong. He's going to trip him up and then pounce on him like a tiger.

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Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And I look at the question and go, what a stupid question, because it assumes something that we are all blessed to know that that assumption is false.

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It assumes that somehow you can merit eternal life by what you do.

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Good luck on that one, right? In fact, our epistle text helps us out here.

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Let's do a little bit of an excursus, and I'm going to back up just a little bit in the context for our epistle text.

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We're in the book of Galatians chapter 3, starting at verse 1.

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Listen to these words, Paul writing to the churches in Galatia who had been heavily influenced by the

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Judaizing heresy and the belief that if you are not circumcised, if you do not keep

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Torah, if you don't do all this other stuff, you're not even a Christian, despite the fact that their church was filled with Gentiles.

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He says to them, opening words in chapter 3, Oh, foolish

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Galatians. Now remember, this is written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Work this one out.

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Did Paul just say that they were fools? Yes! He said, whoa, you can't talk like that.

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People might get offended. Oh, this is no way for an apostle to be behaving, let alone a pastor.

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Get over it! The Holy Spirit inspired him to rebuke them and call them a bunch of fools.

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Why were they foolish? Well, you'll see why here in a second. Oh, foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you?

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And then note the definitive argument. It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

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That's the definitive argument. So if you hear somebody say to you something like this, Well, we all know the truth that if you're a true

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Christian, you never smoke cigarettes and you never drink alcohol.

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No true Christian would do such a thing. Your answer should be, Christ was crucified.

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What are you talking about? And they go, what do you mean? Okay, you're going to note when people talk this way, what are they doing?

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They're trying to sneak works in to justification. They're trying to remove the gospel.

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Paul gets right to the point. Christ was portrayed as crucified. So let me ask you this. Here's question number one.

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Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

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And I would note in the region of Galatia, in the synagogues, the Jews there, they were hearing the law week after week after week,

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Saturday after Saturday and the Sabbath day. And did they receive the Holy Spirit in the hearing of the law? No, not at all.

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When did they receive the Holy Spirit? When they heard the gospel and they believed with faith.

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That's when the Holy Spirit came to them. He says then, are you so foolish having begun by the

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Spirit? Are you now being perfected by the flesh? Now, don't let these words roll by you too quickly.

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Slow down and think about this for a second here. Have you ever heard somebody talk about sins of the flesh?

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They talk about it this way. Oh, that person, he's just so fleshly. Now I want you to think here for a second.

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What Paul has just said is that those who think that they can justify themselves by their religious obedience, they are not spiritual.

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They're fleshly. Let that sink in for a second.

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So when we think of like Sister Nora, Sister Nora, oh, she's such a saint. She doesn't drink.

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Oh, man, Sister Nora, she's as pure as the wind -driven snow. In fact, I've heard that it's been months since Sister Nora even sinned.

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And of course, Sister Nora will make sure that everybody knows it's been months since she's even sinned.

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And everyone goes, she's so spiritual. Paul says, no, that's all fleshly.

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She's as fleshly as anyone out there sexually fornical butylating. I know it sounds odd, but this is what the

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Word of God reveals. The most fleshly religion on planet Earth is the one that says you save yourself and you merit eternal life by your obedience, by your works of the law.

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Paul says that's being perfected by the flesh. Is it any wonder then that those people out there that are constantly preaching law, law, law, more law, some law salad, some

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Kohl's Law, and more law, okay, that you'll note that there's no gospel in there at all?

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Is it any wonder that it always seems to come out that these guys are engaging in some pretty gross and egregious sins that usually wash them right out of ministry as soon as it comes to life, right?

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It's because that religion is fleshly itself, too. So then he asks, did you suffer so many things in vain, if indeed it was in vain, does he who supplies the

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Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

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And you're sitting there going, well, which is it? Just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

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So know then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the

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Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying in you shall all the nations be blessed.

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So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. He then goes on to say these important words, all who rely on works of the law are under a curse.

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Why? Here's why. Because it is written in the scriptures. It is written for us in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 27, verse 26, cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law.

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And that last part says, and keep on doing them.

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There is no point in your life where you can say, I've done it. I've accomplished it.

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I've done the law. I'm going to heaven. If you pull it off today, guess what you got to do tomorrow.

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Guess what you got to do the day after that, the week after that, the month after that, the years after that.

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Good luck and keep on doing them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law.

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Let me read that again. How many people are justified before God by the law? No one is justified before God by the law.

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Not one single person. The law can save you if you keep it perfectly from the moment you're conceived until the moment you die.

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Anyone here done that? Not me. So note, no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous will live by faith.

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The law is not a faith, rather the one who does them, keeps on doing the commandments, will live by them.

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And then these important words, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.

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Now that quote, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, comes from Deuteronomy 21, verse 23, and it's an important verse.

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Think of it this way. You guys remember the story of Absalom, David's son.

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In fact, if you've been reading the treasury of daily prayer, we recently worked through this section of the scriptures regarding Absalom.

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Now Absalom, I like to think of him as the antichrist. Now here's what

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I mean. Scripture describes Christ. He had no beauty that we should desire him, Isaiah writes about him in Isaiah 53.

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But Absalom, it describes him as handsome, as girls, women fawned all over him.

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He had long hair and muscles and stuff like this. He was like Fabio, except for the

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Jewish version of that. In fact, he was so self -important.

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He rode in a chariot, had 50 men in front of him saying, here comes

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Prince Absalom, and stuff like this. So if he's on his way to the grocery store, make way, Prince Absalom is on his way to Hugo's.

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If he's off to the post office, make way, here comes Prince Absalom. He's on his way to mail a letter to pay a bill, and all the women would go,

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Prince Absalom. And the guy was full of himself, absolutely full of himself.

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And he came up with a scheme, a plot, a plot to steal the hearts of the people of Israel, kill his father, and become the king of Israel himself.

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I mean, after all, he's the son of King David, right?

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But how did he die? So he declared himself king, got a whole bunch of people to go along with that.

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His father had to flee Jerusalem, and then there was a battle that ensued shortly after that.

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And in that battle, David's men won over Absalom's men.

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And while Absalom was riding his mule during the battle, he happened to go under a tree, and his long hair got caught in the tree branch, and his mule went right out from under him, and it says of Absalom, he was suspended between heaven and earth.

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Wasn't Christ suspended between heaven and earth? That's kind of the point.

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But Absalom isn't Christ, he's the Antichrist, right?

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So there he is, hanging on a tree. Well, Deuteronomy 21 tells us, cursed is everyone who's hung on a tree.

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And indeed, Absalom was cursed. He was eventually killed with a spear thrust through him, his corpse thrown into a valley in a ravine, covered up with rocks, and they tore down the monument that he'd made to himself.

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Who does that, by the way, right? And so, we can say of Absalom, he was truly cursed.

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He was hanging from a tree, but he was cursed for his own sins, for his vanity, for his pride, his murderous heart.

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But Christ also was suspended between heaven and earth, there on a cross, nailed to a tree.

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But what sin did he commit? Jesus was humble. He didn't aspire to take the throne of David.

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In fact, when people tried to make him king by force, he skedaddled and crossed the Red Sea by walking on the water, right?

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That being the case, it says here, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, its condemnation.

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How did he do it? By becoming a curse for us, for cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. That's what

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Christ was doing. You see, you and I can't keep the law, and the curse of the law condemns every single one of us.

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That being the case, Christ freed us from the condemnation and the curse of the law by standing in our place between heaven and earth, where you and I deserve to die the same way as Absalom did.

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But Christ was pierced for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities.

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The chastisement that brought us peace was upon him. He became a curse so that we might be blessed.

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And that's the point, then, that follows. He was cursed so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham, the one promised by faith, might come to the

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Gentiles so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. Now, now commences our epistle text, but I'm going to fast forward just a little bit.

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Paul asked this question then, all right, why then the law? Why was it given?

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Because you're going to know, the vast majority of humanity, they think the law was given because it's just 10 easy things that you need to do in order to go to heaven.

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It'll prove that you're a good person. But the law doesn't show that we're good people at all.

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Why then the law? Well, the law was added because of transgressions until the offspring, that's

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Christ, should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.

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Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. So then he asked this question, is the law contrary to the promises of God?

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Certainly not, Paul says. If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

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Has a law been given that can give life? No. What does the law do?

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It's called the ministry of death in the scriptures, right?

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The law kills us, the law imprisons us, the law screams at us that we're guilty. So if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would be by the law.

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But the scriptures imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus might be given to those who believed.

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Thus ends our excursus. Nice little gospel, proper understanding of law and gospel.

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Let's come back to our foolish attorney here who wants to take Jesus down. Teacher, what shall

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I do to inherit eternal life? You already know the answer to this. Nothing.

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You ain't keeping the law, dude. Despite your great learning in the law, you're not keeping it. Well, Jesus knows full well that this guy's trying to trip him up, so he sends him back to the law.

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So Jesus, with two questions, says, all right, what's written in the law? How do you read it? And like a perfect, arrogant, prancing pony, he decides to go ahead and give the right answer.

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Well, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

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Way to go, shiny penny. Way to go. Wow. Right? But listen carefully to what

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Jesus says, and here's where an understanding of the Greek helps. So he said to him, you've answered correctly.

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I know that the ESV says do this, but here's the thing. It is a present imperative.

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Okay? It says tuta poie, which means keep doing this and you will live.

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Remember what Paul said, those who live by these commands got to keep on doing them.

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Christ said this, keep doing this and you'll live. This should have silenced this fellow, should have put an end to the whole conversation because Jesus here is basically saying, you think you're doing it?

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All right, keep on doing that, buddy. Keep doing that and you're going to live. He ain't doing it.

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He's an attorney. Of course he ain't doing it. Right? But the text goes on to say, he desiring to justify himself.

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I read one commentator, which I thought was interesting on this one this week, who described this desire to justify himself as him basically being really upset about the fact he came at Jesus with a baseball bat and Jesus turned it into water.

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It didn't hit at Jesus at all. Jesus completely disarmed him and so he wants another crack at Christ.

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That's how he interprets the words, desiring to justify himself. So he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

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What a question. By the way, this is a relevant question today in our time.

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You want to know why? Because Nazis are back. All right? It's absolutely true.

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They are back. And you know what the Nazis say? They say the only people who are their neighbors are the people of the same skin color, the same ethnicity.

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So if they're European, their only neighbors are people who are European. If you're African, only your neighbors are

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African. This is how they talk. What a bunch of bovine scatology and satanically so.

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All right? Here's the important thing that we need to know here. Go back to the time of Christ.

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The Pharisees were racists. And I mean it in like the

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Nazi sense, okay? They legitimately thought they were the chosen race of God.

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And every other race was damned, was cursed.

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They are the ones. They are the children of Abraham. This is one of the reasons why Jesus would say to them, and don't say to yourselves, we are the children of Abraham.

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And Jesus would say, God can raise up children for Abraham from the stones if he wanted to. That ain't going to save you.

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Note the racist overtones here. Now let me give you a little bit of background here, which

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I think will help to kind of prove my point. How racist were they? Well, if you think back to Jesus' first sermon,

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Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five and verse 43, Jesus says these words, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

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Now have you ever stopped to ask yourself, where did they hear that? Because you're going to know, you're going to look long and hard.

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You can start in Genesis, you can go all the way to Malachi, you will never see anywhere in the

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Torah where it says, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. What does the law demand?

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Love your neighbor as yourself. So who was saying, love your neighbor and hate your enemy?

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The Pharisees. They were the chosen race of God.

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So Jesus says, now, I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

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Well, if I love my enemies, I'm treating them the same way as my neighbors. That means everybody would be my neighbor, right?

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If I'm supposed to love my enemies, and who's my enemies? Gentiles, right?

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And especially Samaritans. I want you to think about that. Jews absolutely, the

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Pharisees of Christ's day, they hated the Samaritans, all right? Absolutely despised and loathed them.

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In John chapter 4, when Jesus is talking to that Samaritan woman at the well, John puts in this little note in the text,

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Jews have no dealings with Samaritans, the text says. They were practicing racial segregation.

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And when Jews would travel through Samaria, they would very rarely do so. They would only do so under great pain or threat, or they had to have no other choice.

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As soon as they got back to the border of Israel, they would shake the dust off their feet because they didn't even want

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Samaritan dirt on their sandals to be tracked into Israel. If that isn't racial,

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I don't know what is. And then remember when Peter, when he preached the gospel to Cornelius, that Roman centurion, have you ever stopped to ask yourself, why do we get two full chapters regarding Gentiles being

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Christians? Acts chapter 10 and Acts chapter 11. Because the

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Jews of Jesus's day, they had some very bad racial ideas, right?

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So it says in Acts chapter 11, the apostles and the brothers who were throughout

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Judea, they heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party, a party you don't want to go to, criticized him saying, you went to uncircumcised men and you ate with them?

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Tell me if I'm wrong here. Wouldn't this fit if like we can go back in time to like 1950s

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Alabama? You ate with people with dark skin?

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What are you thinking? The schools were segregated, the churches were segregated, whole society was segregated.

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Nobody spent any time with anybody that wasn't from their supposed race.

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By the way, there is only one race on planet earth. It's called the human race. Black isn't a race.

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Asian isn't a race. White isn't a race. We are of the human race, the same kind.

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So now, things have gotten very interesting. This lawyer asks the question, who is my neighbor?

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And Jesus, knowing full well what's going on in Israel in his day, decides he's going to hide himself in the parable that he's going to tell.

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He's going to hide himself as the Samaritan. It's wonderfully scandalous. So who is my neighbor?

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And Jesus said, all right, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him, and departed leaving him half dead.

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That's you, by the way. That's you, that's me. If you want to find yourself in the parable, that's all of us.

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Who did this to us? The devil. His henchmen absolutely just wrecked us.

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Now by chance, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

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Important to note here, when you read Leviticus 21, Levites are forbidden by the

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Torah to be in the presence of corpses that are not really, really, really important members of their family.

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In fact, a Levite is so bound by these rules that if his wife dies, he's forbidden by God's law to make himself ceremonially unclean in the presence of his wife's corpse.

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It's fascinating when you think of it. He can do it for his mother, he can do it for his father, and things like this, but he can't even do it for his own wife.

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So there's the priest wandering, going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, probably just finished up his priestly duties in Jerusalem, and there's, well, that looks like a corpse over there.

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He passes by on the other side. Now, a little bit of a note. This doesn't exactly get him off. Here's the reason why.

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It's because, have you ever been in a situation where you're bound and you can't help?

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What do you do in situations like that? You find somebody who can, right?

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I can't help you right now, but let me put you over, you can talk to my wife, she's going to assist you at this point.

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I can't because I'm tied up and whatever. That's just how usual love for neighbor works out, right?

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But you're going to note that this guy has like no compassion at all. Sure he's bound by the

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Torah to not make himself ceremonially unclean. Why didn't he call 911, right?

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Don't sit there and go, well, because there wasn't one. I know. I get you. But the point is, is that there was an equivalent back in the days.

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Before we had 911, people would communicate to people that there was something bad going on and they needed help.

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Did he even do that? No. No compassion at all. By the way, the law can't show you compassion.

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It's kind of appropriate that Christ tells it this way. A Levite who wasn't even acting as a priest at that same time, still under Leviticus 21, he does the same way.

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He does the same thing. Likewise, Levite, when he came to the place, saw him pass by on the other side, and here it comes.

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But a Samaritan. Samaritan. And you can at this point just see the attorney's eyes turn red, right?

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In the book of Acts, a little bit of a note here, in the book of Acts, when Paul is arrested in Jerusalem, remember there was a riot that ensued and stuff like this,

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Paul asked to address the Jews there in the temple, and he made an address where he explained that he was a

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Pharisee, he had seen Jesus, and that he was an eyewitness of the resurrection, and everyone was listening up to the point when he recounted the fact that Jesus told him that he was going to send him to preach the gospel to the

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Gentiles. And as soon as he said that, they said, kill him, kill him, he doesn't deserve to live.

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That was the deal breaker. You can't take this to the Gentiles! Right?

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So Samaritan. But a Samaritan. And you can just see the guy going, whoa, where's this going?

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As he journeyed, he came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

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His splogna in the Greek, his guts were wrenched for this fellow.

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And watch what happens next, because it's absolutely fascinating. You'll note the Samaritan could have said,

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I shouldn't get involved. I'm not even in Samaria right now, I mean, this guy's a Jew, I'm a Samaritan, I mean, what if I help him and people accuse me of being the one who roughed him up?

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What if I help him out and when he comes to, he's angry that he was helped by a

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Samaritan and he doesn't even thank me, right? And after all, I mean, my credit card's already almost maxed out, how can

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I help this guy? I mean, this is going to be such a burden and stuff like this, right? You can just hear all the excuses that normal people would give when it comes to helping people out.

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None of that's there, none of it. He sees a man in need, and you know what he does?

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He has compassion. So he went to him, he bound up his wounds, poured oil on him and wine to soothe and help with the healing.

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He set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, took care of him. Next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, said, you take care of him and whatever more you spend,

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I will repay you when I come back. That's Jesus. When Jesus came to you, maybe he came to you in the waters of baptism, maybe he came to you when you heard the gospel for the first time.

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You know how he found you? Dead in trespasses and sins. And Jesus, our great high priest in the order of Melchizedek, he didn't sit there and go, ooh, well they got what they deserved,

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I'll pass by on the other side. You know what Jesus did? He rolled up his sleeves and he saved you.

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He goes to the cross, bleeds and dies for your sins, pays the full price for your healing, for your restoration, for your reconciliation.

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He himself becomes the sacrifice for your sins so that nothing of the expenses you incurred, he incurred it all for you.

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You can see here, Jesus is hiding under his Samaritan costume at this point and it's scandalous and it's offensive to the racists of his day.

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So then he asked the question to the attorney, all right, so which of these three? You have door number one, door number two, door number three, you've got the priest, the

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Levite, the Samaritan, which of the three proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

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The one who showed him mercy, he said. And listen carefully to the right way the Greek should be read here. Jesus said to him, you keep doing likewise.

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Do you think this fellow left thinking that he was going to be saved by his works? Or did he just get

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T -boned by the gospel? Right? Just didn't see that coming.

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He was going down the law highway and all of a sudden, right? It's spectacular.

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I mean, this is like a chess master beating somebody in four moves.

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I don't even know if that's possible. It is. Okay, good, we're checking with Matt. Okay, and they sit there and go, what just happened?

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You know what just happened? The gospel just happened. It's the thing that you cannot find in the law.

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The good news that God has had compassion on us sinners. And rather than give us what we deserve and let us die and go to hell, he sent his only begotten son so that we might live.

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Is it any wonder then that our gospel begins with the words, blessed are your eyes that see and blessed are your ears that hear.

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Let the blessing of Abraham come to us today in the good news that Jesus is our good Samaritan.

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I tell you, many prophets and kings and members of Kongsvinger and other congregations throughout the world have longed to see what the disciples saw and to hear.

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And through them, we hear and see these wonderful things that Jesus has done. And we take comfort knowing that he has had compassion on us.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. 1 -5950 -470th

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