The King of Kings is Born

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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

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

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew chapter 1, verses 18 through 25.

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Now, the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the

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Holy Spirit. And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

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But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take

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Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name

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Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the

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Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name

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Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the

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Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name

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Jesus. In the name of Jesus. Amen. All right. When I was younger, long before my hair started turning gray and I had to deal with cellulite and needed optical assistance, this season of the year was, well, absolutely magical.

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Every year I rewatched the exact same Claymation Christmas specials, and even though I knew how each story would build and then resolve, and despite the fact that by the time

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I was a teenager I was quoting lines from these specials verbatim, I absolutely loved hearing and seeing the same stories year after year.

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I suppose that is part of the wonderful joy and simplicity of childhood. Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, that our

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Lord has taught us in the Gospel of Luke that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.

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So this season, as we rehear these familiar and well -worn stories, let us put aside our adult cynicism, our busyness, take off our uniform, loosen our tie, remove the makeup, maybe even mess up your hair a little bit, put on your favorite

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PJs, grab a mug of hot chocolate, and then nestle into our favorite spot on the couch and begin to hear again the amazing history of the birth of Jesus Christ.

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It's the idea. Now as we look at our

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Gospel text this morning, there's something I would like to point out in the immediate context that precedes it.

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If you look at the Gospel of Matthew chapter 1, verse 1, here's what it says.

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This is the beginning sentence of the entire New Testament, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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The words we're going to key in on today are the son of David, son of David.

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We're going to hear this word even from the angel of the Lord today. And that should recall to your mind, well, if you know your

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Bible, the great high water mark, the golden era of the people of Israel as they were in their promised land.

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That was King David. You think of stories of his mighty men. There's even a bad guy who doesn't really believe

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God. And so, well, calling him the son of David recalls to mind the great exploits of this

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King David, but also recalls to mind the promises that God made to this king.

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And so as we hear this story today, think of it this way. We're going to hear the great story of the birth of a king, but not just any king.

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And like every good story in regards to the birth of a king, there's always a bad guy.

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And see, we find ourselves in a fascinating story. We are born literally in the era of the great war between God and the devil.

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And each and every one of us were born in darkness, born under the dominion of the devil. By nature, we were sinful and unclean.

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We confess this today. And so for us, the story of the birth of a king, not just any king, well, the one descended from David, is the kind of story that gives us hope, causes our hearts to stir just a little bit, and a little bit of awe, some wonder.

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And so with that in mind, we return to our gospel text, and here's what it says. The birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

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And I would draw your attention to the phrase, Jesus Christ.

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Now, Jesus is a transliteration, a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew name.

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Jesus would have been named, and his boyhood friends would have called him Yeshua. Yeshua literally meaning

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Yahweh saves, or even better, Yahweh rescues.

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What a great name, and it tells us everything about him. Now, the Greek word Christos, where we get the word

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Christ from, is a little, well, it can be a little deceptive for us as English speakers.

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We miss the significance of it, because the Greek word Christos literally means anointed one. But anointed one in Greek, Christos, is an exact synonym of a word we've all heard before, the

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Hebrew word Mashiach, Messiah. So you can say, the birth of the one sent by Yahweh to save us, the

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Messiah, took place in this way. It's theologically charged.

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When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the

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Holy Spirit. It's quite a claim. We all know that virgins don't give birth.

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Now, I want you to think about the setup for a second here, before we get to Joseph. The setup is rather fascinating, because here we have a woman betrothed to a man, and, well, she receives a message from an angel.

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This harkens back to the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, we find a woman, a virgin, betrothed to a man.

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And they receive, well, a message from an angel, but a fallen one.

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And so here's the idea. In the Garden of Eden, Eve is betrothed to Adam. They're not yet married.

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And they get word from the devil, who deceives them to disobey God. And these words lead to death.

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And now God, in true fashion, takes the whole scenario and then flips it. So now we have a virgin, a woman betrothed to a man, and an angel appears.

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And rather than bringing words of death, bringing good news and words of life. And so this all harkens back then to the promise that God gave while he cursed the serpent.

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In Genesis 3, where he says, The Lord said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field.

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And on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed.

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Hmm, it doesn't say his seed. It says her. Keep this in mind then.

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This is quite fitting. And the reason for it is simple. We're looking for the seed of a woman who would come to crush the head of the serpent, rather than the seed of a man.

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And this makes perfect sense, considering the fact that Scripture is very clear that it was because of Adam's sin, not

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Eve's, that we all fell. In Romans chapter 5, starting at verse 13, it says,

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Sin was indeed in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one to come.

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In 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 21 and 22 reads, The free gift is not like the trespass.

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For if the many died through the one man's sin, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of the one man

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Jesus Christ abounded for many. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection from the dead.

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For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

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And so now the great reversal begins with a woman who is a virgin betrothed to a man who is of the line of David.

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And she, her seed, Christ, will crush the head of the serpent in order to undo what it is that our first father did, plunging us all into this curse.

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So her husband, Joseph, the text says, being a just man unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

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In other words, Mary is found to be pregnant. Her explanation, no,

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I have not slept with a man, I do not have a lover. Gabriel appeared to me and told me that I would give birth to the

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Messiah. And I'm carrying him in my womb right now and the Holy Spirit is the one responsible for making me pregnant.

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Joseph isn't buying it. It's a little bit of an awkward situation anyway.

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And who would? When girls talk like this, we think that maybe they need some medical assistance in the brain.

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Maybe that's what he's thinking. But rather than put her to shame, Joseph, who church history tells us was an older man, he instead shows her mercy.

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Now, keep this in mind. We never hear of Joseph after Jesus is 12 years old.

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And so the idea is this, is that church history tells us he's probably significantly older, by a couple of decades, older than Mary.

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And so we don't hear of him when Jesus begins his earthly ministry at the wedding feast of Cana in Galilee.

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He's not there when Jesus's family is worried that somehow Jesus's mind had cracked and they'd come to collect him.

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In fact, Joseph was not there at the cross and the reason for this is because he died during Jesus's childhood.

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So if church history is accurate on this point, then the scenario is this.

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We have an older man betrothed to a young woman and he does not desire justice.

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In other words, he does not wish for her to be stoned to death for her sexual immorality. Instead, he is likely seeking to divorce her quietly in order to, well, give her her freedom so that she can marry the father of her child, which means that this man is extremely kind.

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There's no raging jealousy. There's no vindictiveness. There's no, I can't believe you did this to me.

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Instead he's a just man and a kind man. But as he considers these things, the text says,

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Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. Now I seem to recall in the

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Old Testament that there was another fellow by the name of Joseph who had this thing where he would dream dreams and the end result of these dreams was the salvation of all of Israel.

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Hmm, makes you wonder, could that possibly be a coincidence? No, of course not.

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So then the angel says this, Joseph, watch the words, son of David.

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Joseph, son of David. And these are electric words.

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But in order to see just how electric they are, we have to first come to grips with what has become of the house of David.

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Now, Joseph lives in Nazareth. We know from archeology, this is a hill town, small village, poverty stricken, probably 50, 60 people total.

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And he's not in a palace. There are no mighty men tending to him. There is no crown.

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There are no soft flowing robes, just the hard hands, the hardened hands of a carpenter in a small town.

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What has become of the house of David? To kind of give you an example of what this would be like, this would be like us finding somebody who was the legitimate heir of King Arthur.

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True royalty, legendary royalty. But rather than finding him in a palace, we find him working at a soup kitchen, maybe in Skid Row in Los Angeles.

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Doesn't seem right, does it? Seems out of place. But see, this is exactly what scripture prophesied would happen to the house of David.

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Psalm 89, which is a messianic psalm through and through, starting at verse 34, tells us what

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God was going to do to the house of David. And here's what it says, verse 34 of Psalm 89.

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I will not violate my covenant, nor will I alter the word that went forth from my lips.

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Once and for all, I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever.

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His throne, as long as the sun before me, like the moon, it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies.

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And see, all the way back here, the psalmist is preaching the revelation of the

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Lord that God will establish the throne of David forever. But, verse 38, but now you have cast off and you have rejected.

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You are full of wrath against your anointed. You have renounced the covenant with your servant.

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You have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls.

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You have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him.

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He has become the scorn of his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his foes.

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You have made all of his enemies rejoice. You have also turned back the edge of the sword and you have not made him stand in battle.

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And you have made his splendor to cease and cast his throne to the ground. And you have cut short the days of his youth and you have covered him with shame.

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How long, O Lord? Will you hide yourself forever?

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How long will your wrath burn like fire? Remember how short my time is for what vanity you have created all the children of man.

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What man can live and never see death? Who can deliver his soul from the power of Sheol?

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Lord, where is your steadfast love of old which by your faithfulness you swore to David?

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Remember, O Lord, how your servants are mocked and how I bear in my heart the insults of all of the many nations with which your enemies mock,

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O Lord, with which they mock the footsteps of your anointed. Blessed be the

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Lord forever. And so, as the prophecy goes, God takes the great house of David in all of its splendor, in all of its legendary might and brings it to nothing.

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Absolutely just takes it and cuts the whole thing down. The only thing left, if it were a mighty tree, the only thing left is a stump.

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And this is exactly what Isaiah the prophet says in Isaiah 11, there shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse.

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And that's what we're reading about in this text. A branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

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And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. And the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the

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Lord. I wanna know about this guy. His delight shall be in the fear of the

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Lord. He shall not judge by what he sees or decides disputes by what he hears.

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But with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

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And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

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Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat and the calf and the lion and the fatted calf together and a little child shall lead them.

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In our country, we don't have kings. We're kind of like the anti -king country, if you know what

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I mean, if you know our history. So the closest thing you can kind of liken this to is that feeling of awe and suspense and wonder and what's coming next every time we inaugurate a new president.

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This time around, I don't think I'll be feeling any awe or wonder, just saying. But that's kind of what we're talking about here.

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This amazing story that God takes this great house of David, the man after God's own heart, through a dreamer named

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Joseph. Hmm, I keep coming back to that. The one who dreamed that the sun, the moon, and the stars would all bow down to him.

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Wasn't pointing to Joseph, was it? No. And we hear that God takes this great house of David and just destroys it.

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Everybody who comes against it is victorious. So much so that everybody who comes against this house even mocks it.

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And yet the angel of the Lord, when he speaks to Joseph in the dream, remembers that he's royal.

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And he addresses him thus, son of David, son of David, do not fear to take

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Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is from the

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Holy Spirit. She told you the truth. She told you the truth.

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Believe, do not doubt. She has done nothing wrong. Your mercy is wonderful, but it's not needed in this case.

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Because something sinful has not happened. Instead, something wonderful is about to happen.

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From the stump of Jesse, a sprout is about to appear and grow into a mighty tree.

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And all of the nations will gather under its shade. His shade. And all of the earth will walk by the light of his face.

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And they will see his splendor and awe. Son of David, do not fear to take

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Mary as your wife. She will bear a son and you, you shall call his name

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Yeshua. For he will save his people from their sins.

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If you've ever read the Chronicles of Narnia, the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Wonderful book, great story.

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An evil character who happens to be named Jadus, an evil witch, has taken over Narnia and made it always winter, but never

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Christmas. And there's rumors that Aslan has landed, that he's on the move.

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And people talk about it in Narnia with hushed whispers, but with expectant hope,

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Aslan's on the move. This is even better than that. Because this is not a kid's story.

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This is our history. This is the truth. Jesus is on the move. He's on the move.

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He's landed. He's gonna take the devil and he's gonna squash him with the breath of his mouth.

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He's gonna turn the tables. He's gonna get rid of death forever. Poverty will be no more.

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No longer will we ever have to say, I cannot see God, I don't know if he exists, where are you?

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Instead, he will be there to wipe away every tear from our eyes. The war is about to be over.

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The king is about to land and make landfall. You will call his name

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Yeshua, for he will save his people from their sins.

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Brothers and sisters, you are his people. You, born under the dominion of darkness, have been made clean in the blood of the lamb that was there for you when you were washed in the waters of baptism.

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You heard the absolution not coming from me today, but coming from the throne of David itself.

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Your sins are forgiven. You are his people.

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He has rescued you from your sins. And all of this, Matthew says, took place to fulfill what was spoken by the

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Lord through the prophet Isaiah. Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and she shall bear a son, and they will call his name

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Emmanuel, which means God with us.

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He's no longer out there, he's here. He's no longer some abstract concept.

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No, he's there sitting in the manger. God among us,

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God tabernacling with us. And he goes from the wood of the manger to the wood of the cross.

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And his crown is not a crown of gold. It's the crown of thorns pressed into his head, a sign of shame and sin, as he took our sins upon himself to save us.

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God is on the move to rescue. So when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the

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Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son.

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And I think it's fascinating to note that in Scripture, we never hear a single word from Joseph.

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Not a peep, but he stands for us as an example of a man of faith.

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And we know he has great faith because of his actions. From the very beginning, he's merciful and kind and faithful and obedient.

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He, like David, before him, his father, is a man after God's own heart.

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And we see it not in his words, but in everything that he does. And we thank

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God that he is now on the move, that a true son of David, a sprout from the stump of Jesse, has arisen and has come to save us from our sins in the dominion of darkness.

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Oh, what a great, great thought. What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping?

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Whom shepherds guard. This is Christ, the King. The King has landed for you.

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In the name of Jesus, amen. Oslo, Minnesota, 56744.

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And again, that address is Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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

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