Just as Moses Lifted up the Snake in the Wilderness

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St.

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John, chapter 3, verses 14 -21. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the

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Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave

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His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

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For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

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Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only

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Son. This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but men love darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

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Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.

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But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.

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In the name of Jesus. Three wonderful texts.

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I was saying to somebody earlier this morning, if I cannot preach the

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Gospel from these texts, you need to find another pastor. I mean, these texts literally preach themselves, but let's take a look and see if we can weave them all together.

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We'll start by looking at Numbers 21, 4 through 9. And we've talked about this in Sunday school class, so for some of you, this is going to be review.

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And that's good because that means you'll pass the test, the final at the end of the school year, right?

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So here's what it says. They. Who's the they here? The they is the children of Israel.

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Notice we're in the book of Numbers. We're not in the book of Exodus. So it's been a long time since the children of Israel have been out of Egypt.

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And remember, God delivered them by a mighty hand through acts of judgment, the ten plagues against Pharaoh in Egypt.

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Then saved them mightily by having them walk through the Red Sea as on dry ground.

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And then when the Egyptian armies came to, you know, to destroy them, God ended up letting the water come right back over Pharaoh's army and destroyed

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Pharaoh's army and mightily brought them out of slavery. You would think that after all of that, the children of Israel might get the hint.

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God loves them, cares for them, and means well for them, right? So here we are in Numbers 21.

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And they traveled from Mount Hor along the route to the Red Sea to go around Edom. But the people grew impatient on the way.

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They spoke against God and against Moses. Poor Moses. What a tough job.

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And they said, Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the desert? There's no bread, there's no water, and we have to touch this miserable food.

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You can just hear it, right? You know that's how they're talking. And the reason why we all know this is because we've done this, right?

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This is way worse than the kids in the back of the car saying, Are we there yet?

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Are we there yet? No, and don't ask me again. Thank God for GPSs so they can watch the number go down, right?

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So, okay, now notice this is a sin, okay? Why? They're not trusting

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God. They're not believing that God loves them. They're not believing that God cares for them. So here's what happens.

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Lord sent venomous snakes. That's a little weak.

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It's the nechashim seraphim. These are bronze fiery serpents. That's the way the

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Hebrew reads. Sent them among them. And by the way, the reason why they're called fiery serpents is because if you get bit by one of these things, it pretty much feels like you've caught on fire from the inside out, and then you die.

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So this is like being burned alive without flames. This is kind of how this goes. So the people came to Moses and they said, well, we've sinned.

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So God sends the venomous snakes, people get bit, they die, and they realize, whoops, now we're in trouble, but we see progress at this point.

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We see a confession of sins. We have sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you.

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Pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us. So Moses prayed for the people.

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So they confessed their sins. Moses prays, and watch what happens. The Lord said to Moses, make a snake, put it on a pole.

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Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. Now, theologically, this is important. God doesn't remove the curse.

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Instead, he gives them a way to actually survive through it. Does that make sense? And in the front of your bulletin, we have this nasty, icky, snakey thing.

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Now, what is this snake? Now, if Luther were around, he would ask the catechetical question, what is this?

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How can snakes do such great things? Bronze serpent said that, right? Well, the answer is what?

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Bronze serpents don't do such great things. This is the bronze serpent attached with promises of God, right?

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So, in other words, this snakey thing is one of the first sacraments in a very real way.

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And that's what a sacrament is. Sacrament means mystery. It's a great word, mystery, sacrament.

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And so, what do we have? We have earthly matter that, in and of itself, can't do these amazing things, attached with a sure and certain promise of God.

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So, the important thing is that God's word is attached to that serpent, right? Because if Moses, just on his own, decided he was going to make a bronze serpent and hang it on a stick, everyone would still die.

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But in this particular case, God said, fashion this bronze serpent, this nechashim seraphim, hang it on a pole, and anybody who looks to it will live.

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Now, real quick, I have a prop today. I don't normally do this. So, does this look familiar?

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Let's see if there's anything in there. There's stuff in here. I don't know. All right, hang on. So, remember, we have some sacraments.

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This is one of them, right? In here, I'm not going to perform a magic trick, by the way.

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But in here, we have ordinary tap water. You could drink this, and it's refreshing. Now, this, in and of itself, is nothing at all.

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It's water. We need it to live. It helps our vegetable gardens grow with this stuff.

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It helps the crops grow out there in the fields. But when this water is taken and put here, and then somebody is brought, and the pastor says these words,

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I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the

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Holy Spirit. This is no longer just water. And the reason why it's not just water is because it's water and the

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Word of God. And what does God's Word say now is happening here?

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Well, in Acts chapter 2, verse 40, 41, 42, remember the great day of Pentecost, Peter preaches that amazing sermon.

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And in that amazing sermon, the people are cut to the quick. It tells them they're guilty of killing the

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Messiah. And so Peter is out there preaching, the Holy Spirit's falling, and they're cut to the heart.

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And they say, brothers, what shall we do? And what does Peter say? Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

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For the forgiveness of sins. When we confess the words in the Nicene Creed, this is what we say, one baptism for forgiveness of sins.

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That's no longer just water. That's water and the Word. And what

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God's Word says that water is doing with the Word is what it does.

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It washes away sins. It forgives sins. You are buried with Christ. You are raised with Christ.

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Your heart is circumcised by Christ. This is what Scripture says. All of these promises from the

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Word of God attached to ordinary tap water. Right? So when we see in this text that Moses was commanded to make a bronze serpent, hang it on a pole, and anybody who looked to it shall live, we understand that this is a sacrament.

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Material, attached with God's Word, and God's Word's doing its thing. So if you were one of the children of Israel at this time, wandering through the wilderness and grumbling against God, and you woke up, and there was one of those nechashim seraphim in your tent, and it bit you, do you have to die?

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No. All you have to do is look at that snaky thing.

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That's all you have to do. And you will live. Now, all of this we learn from Jesus from our gospel text, from the book of Numbers, is type and shadow, pointing us to the reality.

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And our gospel text begins with these words. Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the

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Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him might have eternal life.

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So that snaky thing kind of looks like a cross in a way, right?

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Well, that's on purpose. It points us to Jesus. The Old Testament type and shadow gives way to the reality.

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Christ then is the one who is hung on a pole so that we who believe and look to Him will not perish but have eternal life.

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And the reason why this is so is because each and every one of us, according to Scripture, we were born snakebit.

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We have the venom of the serpent from the Garden of Eden coursing through our veins from the moment we're conceived.

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We're born dead in trespasses and sins, as we heard in our epistle text. And so because we are born snakebit, we are in danger of not losing our temporal life but being thrown into the fires of hell.

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Fiery serpent indeed. But Christ saves us by becoming a curse for us because it says cursed is anyone who is hung on a tree.

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And so He takes your sin upon Himself and He bleeds and dies in your stead.

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And now Jesus is the one whom we look to. And we don't perish. We live.

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He doesn't save us from the curse. He saves us through it, just like the children of Israel.

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And so Jesus teaches us in John 3 that this serpent in numbers points us to Him.

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And then in our Ephesians text, we learn how all of this cashes out.

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And it's wonderful. Think of it this way. Have you ever watched one of those television shows where somebody who has a home that really needs to be repaired badly.

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I mean, the kitchen appliances are falling apart, the cabinet doors are off the hinges, and there's cockroaches and spiders, and the yard looks like it's a gopher kingdom.

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You know what I'm talking about. We've all seen these television programs. And so what they do is they come up with some kind of a ruse, right?

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So what we're going to do is we're going to send you on a vacation somewhere. Oh, thank you.

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That's great. And while they're gone, in come the contractors. And they take this dilapidated house, bring everything up to code, bring new appliances in, and then when they come home, they collapse.

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Why? Because they're so overcome by such unexpected generosity, such unexpected love and concern, right?

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And we love watching those shows when the reveal happens, as we see their eyes light up and their jaws hitting the floor, and they seeing for the first time what they never even saw coming.

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And that's what God's grace is like. Because when we look into each one of our hearts, we know that we stand condemned before God.

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But God does the unexpected out of nowhere. Christ is born of the

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Virgin Mary. He lives a sinless life for you in your place. He then takes your sin upon Himself and goes to the cross.

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And then He bleeds, dies, rises again, and then announces to you, you are forgiven.

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All of your debt, every last penny of it, paid in full.

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Not a thing you have to do to earn it. It's all by God's grace. And to this we just collapse.

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How can this be? How can I, a sinner, really have eternal life and receive this incredible gift?

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And that's what it is. It's an incredible gift. And so we read in Ephesians 2, as for you, you were dead in your transgressions and your sins in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient.

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This is all of us. All of us were born dead in our sins. All of us, the text says, lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts.

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And like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But now here's the big reveal.

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But, ah, I love this but, because it erases all the other stuff. But because of His great love for us,

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God, who is rich in mercy, He has made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions.

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It is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

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Did you catch that? Oh, it's way better than those, you know, surprise remodeling programs because you're the one who's been remodeled from the tips of your toes to the top of your head, if you still have some hair, even all the way out to the rest of your hair, right?

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Christ has forgiven you, made you alive in Him, washed away all of your sins in the waters of your baptism.

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God has raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in order that in the coming ages

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He might show the incomparable riches of His grace. This sounds way too good to be true, but it's not.

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And wait, there's more. We even get Ginsu knives in here, right? I'm joking about the knives. You have to read the fine print.

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So God raised us up in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

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For it is by grace you have been saved. Notice it doesn't say will be. It says you have been.

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I'm preaching to Christians. You have been. You are. You are saved, saved, saved.

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Doobie doobie saved and ain't nobody gonna take that from you. I'm not gonna preach to you in the hopes that someday you might attain

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Christianhood. You are a Christian. You are in Christ. You are forgiven.

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You are redeemed. You are on your way to eternal life, face to face with Christ.

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No shame. All grace. All love. All mercy. And when you see His eyes, the moment you close your eyes in this world because you've drawn your last breath, when you open your eyes in eternity, the first person's eyes you're gonna see are

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Christ's and they are not angry eyes. They are deep, loving eyes of pure grace and mercy and you are going to get the hug of your life.

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That's how much God loves you. That's how much He has saved you. That is gonna be a glorious day and that is what you

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Christians have to look forward to. Not wrath, but mercy, grace, kindness, love.

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It's all for you and you have it now. For by grace you have been saved through faith.

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It's not from yourselves. It is the gift of God. It is not by works so that no one can boast for we are

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God's workmanship and we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which

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God has prepared in advance for us to do. As our Gospel text says, for God so loved the world that He gave

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His only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish and that's you, but you have eternal life.

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For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

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Whoever believes in Him is not condemned and that's you.

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You are not condemned. God so loved you that He gave His Son to die for you.

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You are not condemned. You are in Christ. You have eternity to look forward to and the grace and the generosity of God is so overwhelming it puts every single surprise television show to shame.

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But each and every one of those little shows in a way point us to the outrageous grace and mercy of Christ that He can save sinners as awful as me and as sinful as you.

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In the name of Jesus, 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 NW, Oslo, MN 56744 And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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