Explosion of Life

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. Luke, the seventh chapter.

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Soon afterward, Jesus went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him.

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And as he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.

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And a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her,

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Do not weep. And he came up and touched the beer, and the bearer stood still. And he said,

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Young man, I say to you, Arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

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Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, A great prophet has arisen among us.

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God has visited his people. And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. You know, we human beings have an insufficient definition of death and life.

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I know it sounds a little bit weird. You're sitting there going, Come on, this is just really obvious, Rose, bro. People who can fog a mirror, they're alive.

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People who can't, they're dead. Wrong. Wrong. Absolutely wrong.

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Let me tell you, we have to embrace the biblical definitions of death and life, and those definitions are woefully insufficient.

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Remember when Adam and Eve were told by God, or Adam was told by God, On the day you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you will surely die.

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Did Adam not die? Of course he did. Was he still breathing?

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That's immaterial, right? So we recognize then, because of our fall into sin, because of our first parents, each and every one of us are born dead in trespasses, in sins.

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So I know when your babies are born, they check to see whether or not they have ten fingers and ten toes, and if their color is right, and if they're breathing and crying and all those things.

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But every one of your children and every one of my children were born dead in trespasses and sins, which then leads to the question, then, well, then what is life?

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Well, here's what we're going to do today. We're going to look at our gospel text, and we're going to need a governing passage to help us understand theologically what's going on here.

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And in order to do that, we're going to have to flip over to the gospel of John, chapter five, and listen very carefully to what

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Jesus says regarding death and life. We'll test this theory out, by the way, with our

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Old Testament text, and then we'll apply it to our gospel. So we'll look at a few passages today.

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So in the gospel of John, chapter five, starting at verse 19, Jesus is talking to people, and he says,

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Truly, truly, or amen, amen, lego human, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of His own accord, but only what

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He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.

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For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all that He Himself is doing, and greater works than these will

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He show Him, so that you may marvel. Which then begs the question, if Jesus can only do the things that the

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Father is doing, and the things the Father show Him, what's the Father doing? Well, the text goes on.

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For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the

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Son gives life to whom He will. Well, isn't this talking about the resurrection? Yes and no.

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No in this part. The Father raises the dead. For the Father judges no one, has given all judgment to the

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Son, so that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the

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Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. And here's our governing verse, verse 24, amen, amen.

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That's how it reads in the Greek. I say to you, whoever hears My word and believes

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Him who sent Me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

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Now if you're gonna pass from death to life, you would have to actually be dead for that to happen. And it seems kind of logical, right?

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Sometimes exegesis is that simple, but you sit there and go, but, but, but, but, no, just embrace the definitions.

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You have to allow this bigger definition to fill in here. So you'll note that in our country, in our community, in our towns, we have a whole bunch of people who are literally the walking, breathing dead, dead in trespasses and sins.

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And God is the one who brings them to life. How? Well, through the means of grace, through the word of God, through the preached word, through the waters of baptism, right?

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So whoever hears My word and believes Him who sent Me has eternal life, and that person has already passed from death to life.

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And then watch what happens in verse 25. Amen, amen, I say to you, Jesus said. An hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the

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Son of God and those who hear will live. Well, isn't that talking about the last day?

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No. How do I know? An hour is coming and is now here.

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Has the general resurrection occurred yet? Okay. Are the people that have departed from us and who are buried in our graveyard, are they going to come and have fellowship time with us today?

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No, right? So this first part is talking about the preaching of the gospel.

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We hear the voice of the Son of God and we, now hearing Him, we have been made alive and we live.

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Sin is death. Christ is life. In fact, He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself. And He has given

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Him authority to execute judgment because He is the Son of Man. So do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs, that's talking about the day of the resurrection.

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All who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out and those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

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But verse 24, again, I say to you, whoever hears my words and believes Him who sent me has eternal life.

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He does not come into judgment, but has already passed from death to life. That's our governing text.

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Now here's the basic idea. Have you ever sat there and asked yourself, why did

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Jesus raise certain people from the dead only to allow them to die again?

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There's three notable times that Christ raised people from the dead. The daughter of Jairus, the synagogue ruler.

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Here we have the account of Jesus raising the dead son of the widow of Nain. And then most notable, kind of like the apex one, is

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Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. So here's the thing. Every time I read about these before I kind of backed up and said, what's really going on here?

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I always thought, you know, this is just kind of a mess. I felt bad for that girl. I felt bad for the son and I felt terrible for Lazarus because I can tell you this,

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I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to go through the experience of it and I definitely don't want to do it twice.

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Okay. Right. So why? Why are we having Jesus raising people from the dead only to have them die again?

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Answer. There's many multiple answers, but I'm going to focus on one in particular. The dead person being raised to life is indicative of us all being raised to life.

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It's a, if you would, a picture of being born again. That's the whole idea.

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And here's the thing. If you pay attention to the details, the people who are raised from the dead aren't the only ones who are raised to life.

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If you would take the expanded understanding of it here. So let's test this out, shall we? So last week we heard the account of the widow of Zarephath.

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Elijah was told by God to skedaddle because the people were out to get him because there's a famine on the land, right?

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And so he leaves Israel and he heads to Zarephath. Let me read last week's gospel text because I think it's going to help with our context.

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So the word of Yahweh came to Elijah. He is hiding out in the brook

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Kerith being fed by ravens. And he says, arise and go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there.

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And listen to the words. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you. So before Elijah even leaves for Zarephath, God has made it clear,

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I've had a conversation with the widow there and I've commanded her to feed you.

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Now, we're going to learn as this text unfolds, this woman has got nothing. Her refrigerator is empty.

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Her cupboards are bare. And the only thing she really has as far as food is concerned is a handful of flour and a little bit of oil in a jug.

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That ain't a lot. So when she gets the phone call, you know, her phone rings and she picks up, yeah, this is

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Yahweh. Oh, hi. The God of Israel? Yeah. It's the God of Israel. Oh, hi.

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What can I do to help you? I need you to feed Elijah. I'm sending him to you. Wait, what? Click.

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I would note that's probably stress -inducing. Okay, she's got nothing and God has commanded her to feed

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Elijah. Well, you'll note that explains kind of the stress that she's under when

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Elijah shows up. So it says, he arose, went to Zarephath, and when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks.

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And he called her and said, bring me a little water in a vessel that I may drink. And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, hey, bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.

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And now she snaps. And she said, as Yahweh, your God, lives.

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Who's God? Elijah's God, not hers. She's not a believer. She's a pagan, right?

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As Yahweh, your God, lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug.

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And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go and prepare it for myself and my son so that we may eat it and die.

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If you just take what she's saying at face value, the stress of being commanded by God to feed

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Elijah has brought her to the point where the solution that she's come up with is to unalive herself and her son.

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And Elijah's response is kind of funny. He said, all right, don't fear, but do as you've said.

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Go ahead and unalive yourself. But first, make me a little cake of it and bring it to me.

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And afterwards, make something for yourself and for your son. For thus says

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Yahweh, the God of Israel, the jar of flour shall not be spent and the jug of oil shall not be empty until the day that Yahweh sends rain upon the earth.

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And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and her whole household ate for many days.

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The jar of oil was not spent. Neither did the jug of oil become empty according to the word of Yahweh that he had spoken by Elijah.

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Great text when you think about it. God provides for her. And so all that she was stressed out about, well, it turns out she didn't need to be stressed out.

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But here's the deal. You put a prophet of the one true God in the home of a pagan woman who worships false gods.

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What do you think the dinner time conversations are going to steer into? Those idols are worthless.

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They can't help you. They can't hear you. That's just wood and stone and nonsense. You need to worship the one true

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God. And it's sinful for you. You're breaking the commandment. You shall have no other gods. I'm sure Elijah had conversations like that.

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And it kind of shows him what happens next. So here's our Old Testament text for this week. After this, the son of the woman.

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Both of them are dead, by the way. The woman is dead and the son is dead, right?

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Using the expanded definition of death. The only person alive in this scenario is Elijah. He's the only one living, right?

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After this, the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill.

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His illness was so severe there was no breath in him. That's a polite way of saying he died. That's what happens to people when they die.

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They don't breathe anymore, okay? And so she said to Elijah, what have you against me,

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O man of God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son.

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Who told her she was a sinner? Who told her she had sin? How much you want to bet Elijah did, right?

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And so now, being convicted of her sin, she believes that it is her sin that has caused the death of her son.

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And all of this because Elijah has come to town. Now, Elijah knows a little bit more about God than just his justice.

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Elijah also knows about God's mercy. So he said, give me your son, so he took him from her arms and carried him up to the upper chamber where he lodged, laid him on his own bed.

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And then he cried to Yahweh, Yahweh my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourned by killing her son?

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If I can take a phrase from the movie Hook, bad form, God. Here she's doing exactly what you told her to do.

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She's caring for me and I'm hiding out in her place and you've killed her son. I don't think that's a good thing for you to be doing,

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God. That's kind of the subtext of what's going on here. So, then he stretched himself upon the child three times.

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I don't know, father, son, Holy Spirit. How many days was Jesus in the tomb?

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Three days. Yeah, gotta pay attention to that three stuff right here. Three times he cried to Yahweh, Yahweh my

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God. And you'll note, that's true. Yahweh is his

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God. This woman, not yet. Let this child's life come into him again and Yahweh listened to the voice of Elijah and the life of the child came into him again and he revived.

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And Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, delivered him to his mother and Elijah said, see, your son lives.

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And the woman said, now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of Yahweh in your mouth is truth.

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I would note, two people were raised from the dead that day.

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The boy and his mother. And if you look at the expanded definition of life given to us by Jesus, you can't miss it.

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There were two people raised from death that day. And Jesus even invokes this widow of Zarephath.

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That's the thing that got him nearly thrown off the cliff in Nazareth, right? So I would note, where is she today?

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With Christ, worshiping him before his very throne in heaven, among the saints in glory, along with her son.

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Now, we're starting to see it. Let's take a look at our gospel text. Our gospel text does the same thing, but I would note to a magnitude of like 11 using the spinal tap scale, right?

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Here's what it says. Soon afterwards, Jesus went to a town called Nain and his disciples in a great crowd went with him.

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So Jesus is with a great crowd, huge crowd. And you're going to note, there's another huge crowd.

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So two huge crowds kind of colliding. One is the huge crowd of life. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, right?

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The other crowd, big crowd, is the crowd of death. They've all gathered for a funeral to bury a young man who died tragically.

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And here's what we got to remember. Death comes for all of us, and death isn't always polite and waits until you're old, right?

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Death can take any one of us at any time. But if you are given longer life, then you need to pay attention to the signs that your journey is getting towards its end, because you need to keep this in mind.

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You're only here for a short amount of time. We all know about this. One of the things I hate about vacations is knowing that I have to come back.

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When I travel and I'm on one of those long -haul flights, you have to come up with strategies to deal with those things, by the way.

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Being stuck in an aluminum tube at 40 ,000 feet for 8, 10, 13 hours is a little bit of a slog, right?

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But there's kind of a rhythm to these flights, OK? When you get on the flight, you sit down, you put your luggage in the overhead bin, and you make yourself comfortable, right?

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And then you play with the little stupid screen in front of you to figure out kind of what movies are on. Then you hear the safety spiel that you need to pay attention to where the track lights are pointing, because they're pointing you to an exit.

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And the exit may be behind you, or it could be in front of you. And they're always doing this with their things, like this. And after you get the safety spiel, then we take off, and you get up to a level flight.

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And the first thing on a really long -haul flight they do is they come out, especially on a Delta flight, and they give you a hot towel to wash your hands.

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And then they offer you a beverage, right? And you can have an adult beverage if you want. And then after that, a little bit after that, they bring dinner out.

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Eating dinner on a plane is a joke, OK? How are you supposed to eat dinner on an airplane with your elbows stuck to your chest,

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OK? And on Delta, they don't even give you silverware anymore. They give you bamboo, OK?

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I might as well be eating with chopsticks, and you're doing this, and it's just annoying, right? Well, then after that, there's a routine after that.

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After dinner, everybody has to go to the bathroom. There's a line. And then after that, after that, then you get in your seat, and you try to figure out the most difficult thing in all of life, how to fall asleep.

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And if you are unfortunate, like I've been unfortunate a few times, you figure it out 15 minutes before they turn the light back on and then serve you breakfast.

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And as soon as they serve you breakfast, you know you're one hour away from the end of your flight, right?

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Listen, when you're starting to get gray hair, hot flashes if you're going through menopause as a woman, or if you're losing your hair,

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I note that in our hymn today, it talks about God knows the number of the hairs on our head, and some of you, that number is zero,

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OK? When your health starts to fail, and you're noticing that you can't do the things you did when you were a child, you're getting towards the end of your flight.

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We have to take death seriously, pay attention to the signs, right?

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So here we've got these two crowds now colliding. Jesus drew near to the gate of the town.

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Behold, a man who had died was being carried out. The only son of his mother. She was a widow. A considerable crowd from the town was with her.

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And when the Lord saw her, and here it comes, he had compassion on her.

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Great Greek word there, splod needs, oh my, right? He had compassion.

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It means his guts were wrenched for this woman. Here's the Lord of life seeing this procession and great crowd of death, and he has compassion on her.

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And he offers words of consolation. He says, do not weep. And he's not giving a command, like it's somehow wrong to weep when your son dies.

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That's not it. He's offering her words of consolation because he knows about what's to happen next.

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So then he came up and he touched the beer. The bearer stood still.

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And he said, young man, I say to you, arise. Now when

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Jesus says, young man, I say to you, arise, what do you think's gonna happen? He's gonna arise. I would note, going back to what

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Jesus says in John chapter five, Jesus says, anyone who hears my words and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

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They have passed from death to life. Now if I were to say that about my words, y 'all would lock me up in one of those padded rooms and help get me some mental medical attention, which

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I would definitely need. But Jesus backs it up. How do we know that somebody's crossed from death to life?

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I don't know. He told a corpse to wake up, and he did. So he says, young man,

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I tell you, arise. And the dead man sat up. Dead men don't do that. Okay, it should say, the formerly dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

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But listen to the response. Fear sees them all. And this is not the fear of judgment.

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This is the true fear of God, right? And they glorified

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God. This great crowd of death glorified God, saying, a great prophet has arisen among us, and God has visited his people.

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Is that not a confession of faith? So here's a good way to think about it.

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Yeah, the young man arose, but you have to think of it like a nuclear explosion, right?

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When a nuclear bomb goes off, the place where it hits is called ground zero.

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We've all seen videos of nuclear bombs blowing up. Ground zero, a big mushroom cloud emanates from ground zero, but there's a shockwave that goes out, and when that shockwave hits buildings and ships and cars and things like that, it just obliterates them.

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Well, I would note that this young man is ground zero for a bomb that just went off. But this isn't the kind of bomb that kills and destroys.

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When this bomb went off, everyone in the crowd was raised to life. Rather than this bomb bringing death, this bomb brought life to all of them, because they confessed

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Jesus is the great prophet, the one prophesied in Deuteronomy 18, and that God himself has visited his people.

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This is a confession of faith. When death and life collide, life won.

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And so when you interpret this short little snippet of the ministry of Jesus that we're given in our gospel text through the words of Christ himself, and let me repeat them again.

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Truly I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

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He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. That's the whole point.

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And when you read the account of Lazarus, it's the same thing. When Jesus calls

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Lazarus from the tomb, there was a great crowd of people, and many, many, many, many, many people believed in Jesus.

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And so here they've gone from being dead to being alive. There was far more than just one person who was raised in the town of Nain that day.

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But you have to look at Jesus' definition of death and life to get it. And I would note, by comparison, if you go to John chapter 12, and you look at how the chief priests reacted to the news that Jesus raised

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Lazarus from the dead, it's stupid, it's funny in a bad, kind of tragic way.

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It says in John chapter 12, large crowds of the Jews, when they learned that Jesus was there, they came not only on account of him, but they wanted to see

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Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. And so the chief priests then made plans to put

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Lazarus to death as well, because on account of him, many of the Jews were going away and they were believing in Jesus, which means that they were being raised to life as well.

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And just think about how stupid this is. How dare Lazarus allow Jesus to raise him from the dead?

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Now all these people are believing in Jesus. I'm gonna kill him. How dare he be alive?

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The only people who talk that way are those who are dead. And that's the point. The chief priests are dead.

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That's why they want to kill Christ. But Lazarus is alive, and everyone who's believing in Jesus, as a result of that and seeing that in that report, they are made alive now in Christ.

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So here then, Christians, hear me out on this. Knowing then that our time here is short, and it is really short, is there anything here that we need to be clinging to, hanging on to?

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I would say no, not at all. There's nothing that we need to worry about that's here. You can't take any of it with you anyway.

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We've kind of learned that in dealing with my mother -in -law's estate. She wasn't able to take any of it with her.

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We've had to deal with all of it, right? So that being the case, what is it that we're afraid of regarding death?

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You'll note that Jesus has utterly destroyed it. He's completely conquered it.

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He is stronger than death. He himself has been raised from the dead.

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He's gone through it for us. He was pierced for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities.

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He died in the place that we should have been dying in. He suffered the wrath of God in our place.

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Why? In order to kill us? No, in order to give us true life. And so here's the thing.

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Whatever death has taken from us, and I would note when it comes to people, every dear person that is close to us who confesses

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Christ, there and although their body is in the grave, they're not dead, they're alive.

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Because Christ is alive and we are all in him and we are all alive together in him. And on the day that Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead and he calls us all out of the tombs, all the people who trusted in Christ whom death has taken from us will be restored to us and us to them.

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Knowing that, we never say goodbye to anybody who's a Christian ever. We always say see you later.

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Because that is our hope. Our hope is not in anything in this world. To place our hope in anything in this world is to again place our hope in death.

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This world itself will die. Christ is going to kill it when he comes back. Destroy it with fire.

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He brings it through death and resurrection. The whole creation itself is gonna be brought through death and resurrection. So brothers and sisters,

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I would note you're already dead, but you're already alive. We're not people with one foot in the grave.

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Everybody's born with one foot in the grave. We are people with one foot in eternity already. And only the scriptures can teach us this and this can only be apprehended by faith and by faith then we comfort ourselves with this truth.

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And so we praise God. We praise Christ for little miracles like this where Jesus lets off a little bit of a nuclear bomb and in the blast radius, all the people are raised to life, true life.

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That's the point of all of these times where Christ raises people from the dead. It's that he gives life more than to just the corpse.

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He gives life to the corpse. He gives life to all of those around. And he has given us life.

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So we've got nothing to fear when it comes to death, at all, not a thing.

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Let us praise the one who has gone before us and has been raised from the dead. We are members of his very body and he is the head of the body of the church.

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Will he not also raise the members of his body when he returns in glory? Indeed he will. So brothers and sisters, take heart, take comfort.

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Be a little bit defiant, if you would, of death. There's nothing wrong with that because Jesus is the

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Lord of life and he's proven it by raising not only three people from the dead but also raising himself.

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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 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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