The One Thing That is Necessary

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 tenth chapter.

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Now as they went on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.

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And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving and she went up to Jesus and said,

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Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.

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But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha you are anxious and troubled about many things but one thing is necessary.

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Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. This is the gospel of the

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Lord. In the name of Jesus. All right a little bit of a question for the beginning of the sermon and the question is this.

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When does a good work become a bad work? That's kind of an important question.

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We're gonna have to tease that out a little bit today because we're gonna note that sometimes your good works can truly become bad works.

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Have you ever thought about that? I mean you're obeying the commandment. The commandment says that you shall not steal and you see in that the positive affirmation that requires us to care for our neighbors and to make sure that he is well cared for in his body and his needs.

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When can that become a bad work? I know it seems like a weird category but we'll just kind of throw it out there and we'll tease it out.

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Now as we go into our gospel text today we're gonna pay close attention to the fact that Martha was distracted and we're gonna ask ourselves a question.

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What was she distracted from? And I think it'll help if you kind of understand how the kitchen works in the

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Roseboro family residence. If you ever come to my house you are going to eat. There's just no way around it.

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This is what's going to happen. And my wife, her domain is the kitchen.

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And when she is cooking, and boy does she put a lot of work into cooking. I mean we've got magazines, we've got cookbooks, and we rarely see the same meal twice.

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In fact if you find something that she's cooked that you really enjoy you have to say I'd like to have that again someday because chances are it won't come back around in the menu for maybe 10 years.

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That's how many recipes we're dealing with here. And so when she's working in the kitchen I have noted that it's important that I don't make eye contact.

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If I enter the kitchen then I need to ask permission. And if I have to ask a question, oh boy,

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I got to make sure that I don't interrupt her or distract her.

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In fact I would say when my wife is cooking she's not distracted, she's focused, right?

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We all know how this works. So you're gonna note that while Martha is doing her serving it says that she was distracted, which seems backwards.

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She sounds to me like she's quite focused. And so let's work our way back through our text see if we can figure out what's going on here.

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It says this, as they were on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named

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Martha welcomed him into her house and she had a sister called Mary. Now if you remember the

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Gospel of John chapter 11, Mary and Martha also have a brother. His name is

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Lazarus. This is the same house, all right, that we're talking about. And the Lord himself raises

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Lazarus from the grave as he's heading towards Jerusalem to bleed and to die for our sins. And so this is the very place that Jesus is at.

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So she had a sister called Mary and Mary sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching.

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That's a good thing to do. I'm assuming that's why you are all here, to hear Jesus teaching today.

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But Martha, it says, was distracted. No, it sounds like she's focused but the text says she's distracted.

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And she was distracted with much serving, which begs the question what was she distracted from?

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No, she was so busy she wasn't sitting at the

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Lord's feet listening to his teaching. And so rather than the

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Lord being able to serve and to teach and to instruct and to comfort both

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Mary and Martha, only Mary is receiving the Lord's teaching while Martha is like too busy to hear him.

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She can't hear him because she's in the kitchen clanking dishes, pouring drinks, making sure that the roast hasn't burned and that the muffins are just about ready to be put in and you can't leave them in for too long, you know.

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She's got all of this stuff going on and of course you can kind of see how this is going down because all the while she's doing all of the work while Mary is sitting at Jesus's feet doing nothing.

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And so maybe she was in there and she took the pot and she put it down on the counter a little louder than she normally would.

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Clank! Or maybe she put the cups down and clinked them together. Clank! And it's getting louder and louder and louder in there and it sounds like she's beating the drums after a while as her anger level gets to an explosive volcano eruption point.

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The text says she's distracted. She's the one who's distracted. So she goes up to Jesus and like the ultimate end run,

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I mean the ultimate like taking things up the chain of command, I mean let's be blunt, you can't take anything higher than God.

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So notice she doesn't go to her sister and she doesn't go, help me, help me. She's not doing that.

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She can't seem to get Mary's attention so she goes right to Jesus and boy she lays into Jesus.

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Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?

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Don't you care Jesus? I'm working my fingers to the bone for you

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Jesus and you don't seem to care about my feelings at all Jesus. Right?

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Maybe it's best if I not give too much information at this point.

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I may or may not have heard similar things in my own family.

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But you kind of get the idea. That's what's going on here. So she's laying in, she's blaming Jesus for all of this woe and anxiety that she's feeling at this point.

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Now a little bit of a note. We're going to note here, preparing a meal for your family is a good work.

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This is most certainly true. God has made it so that we daily need to eat.

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We need to eat and so our body needs food and sustenance and preparing a meal for somebody else is most definitely a good work.

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But Jesus doesn't seem to be impressed with her good work at this point. So I ask the question again, when does your good work become a bad work?

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When does that happen? And the answer to the question is that happens when you are doing your good works not for your neighbor but for yourself.

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And so we can see what's going on here is that Martha's good works to one degree or another are really about Martha.

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She's really trying to impress Jesus. And I know what this is like.

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Now let me explain what I mean here. When I was growing up, you know, there was a certain level at which our home was allowed to not be pristine.

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You know what I'm saying? You know, it was comfortable. It wasn't dirty. It wasn't dusty.

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But it wasn't pristine, right? You know what I'm talking about. And this is the house

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I prefer to live in because that means like 10 in the morning, if I want to on a Saturday, I can come downstairs in my

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PJs and sit there and have a cup of coffee, read something in the news on my iPad, you know, and just not look great, all right?

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However, when I was growing up, if we were having company, all right, maybe family was visiting from out of town or my mom has decided that she's going to invite some friends from work over for dinner, all of a sudden that normal level of the house is no longer okay.

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Pristine now must reign and it's all about impressing.

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We don't want them to think that we live in a pigsty now, do we? We want them to think that, wow, your house is spectacular.

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And look, look, look, there's no spots on the crystal. There's no dust up on the mantel.

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This house is amazing. And you're going, it's a lie. It's a lie. We don't live like this.

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And my mom is making me work for five hours today to get this to this level. But as soon as you leave, please get out of my house.

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I get to go back to not having to be like this, right? Because it's all about impressing.

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Oh, man. Yeah. But these are the games we play. And so you can see here on some level that Martha is really expecting that Christ is going to say, you know what,

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Martha, you're right. What was I thinking? I mean, I understand that all this stuff has got to be done.

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And I'm so impressed by how much effort you're putting into this meal. Mary, I don't know what

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I was thinking. Get up and help your sister, Martha. That's their expectation. But that's not what happens.

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And what happens is, is quite fascinating, is that Jesus answers Martha and he says to her,

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Martha, Martha. Now, a little bit of a note here.

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Work this out. When you look in Scripture, when Christ confronts people and uses their name twice, it's not a good thing.

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It's, you know, think about Saul, right? Saul of Tarsus.

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In the book of Acts, this fellow will become the apostle Paul. He's on his way to Damascus to round up Christians, to arrest them, drag them back to Jerusalem, have them beaten in the synagogues and stuff like this.

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And Christ confronts him, blinds him, and speaks from a voice from heaven and says to him,

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Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Double names here, that's kind of their way of,

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Jesus' way of getting someone's attention. I liken it to when my mother used to use my middle name. I'm pretty sure that middle names are only for the purpose of letting you know that your mom is mad at you, okay?

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Because it would be like my full name with the middle name. It was Christopher Michael? Oh no,

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I'm in trouble, right? You say that, it's like my heart stops. So Martha, Martha.

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Not a good sign. And then he says this, you're anxious and troubled about many things.

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Many. And what's this anxiety about? What is she anxious and troubled about? Impressing Jesus with her good works?

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That's not what good works are for. So he says to her, one thing is necessary.

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Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her.

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What is the one thing that's necessary? Jesus says one thing is necessary.

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May I put it to you this way? Jesus is the one thing that is necessary. Remember, salvation is by grace through faith alone.

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Our good works do not save us and there's no such thing as a Christian who does not do good works.

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That animal doesn't exist. But when you do your good works for the purpose of meriting

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Christ's favor, they cease to be good works and they've become evil.

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So another way to think of it is kind of like this. On the Day of Judgment, when the books are opened, and let me assure you, for all of us who are in Christ, who are trusting in Him for the forgiveness of our sins, we'll hear in next week's epistle text in Colossians chapter 2 that the record of debt that stood against us has been canceled because Christ has gone to the cross and he's nailed that record of debt to the cross and so that record of debt will never be spoken against you on the

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Day of Judgment because it's all the way back at the cross and it's been ripped out of your book.

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But for those who persist in sin and unbelief, who refuse to be forgiven, they will hear on the

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Day of Judgment the record of debt spoken out against them. And we will hear sins spoken of and laid out that we all recognize as sins.

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We will hear about people who were idolaters. We will hear about people who were blasphemers.

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We will hear about people who were disobedient to their parents. That's a big one, by the way.

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We will also hear about people who were murderers, who were sexually immoral.

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We will also hear about those who stole. We will hear about those who coveted and those who slandered and lied about others and we are all sitting going, yes, that's right.

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But in the mix, we will also hear of people where their good works are listed as sins.

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That time you fed that poor person, that time you helped that person out, stands as a sin against you because you thought that by doing that you were earning your salvation, either in whole or in part.

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That you can merit the forgiveness of sins, that you can merit God's favor and on that day of judgment then all of your good works count for nothing and it's worse.

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They actually count against you. Now think of the average person. You talk to the average unbeliever, you know.

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We all know people who are like the average unbeliever. So when you die, do you think you're going to heaven? Well, yeah.

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Why? I'm a good person. Are you now?

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Really? And so you can see it. That's the way people think. I'm a good person.

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I pay my taxes. I've never been to prison. I help out with the Rotary and the

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Kiwanis. You know, I even was a volunteer during one of the parades that we had in Oslo and you can see it.

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This person really believes that they're a good person and all these things they've done, they think somehow merit them having salvation.

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But your best good work, and this is where we have to recognize this, your best good work will send you to hell.

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Because even our best good works are still tainted with sin. And so you'll note then that when you are trusting either in whole or in part that your good works are going to save you and merit salvation, that you are going to be attacking the gospel itself.

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And the gospel is going to be scandalous to you. Because there was Mary just sitting at the feet of Jesus doing nothing.

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Sitting there like a bump on a log doing nothing. Wasn't helping at all.

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Wasn't lifting a finger to help doing nothing. And what was she doing?

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She was receiving from Jesus. And that's the gospel. And so you'll note then that Martha in this little story, as tiny and short as it is, we can see the hostility there is from those who are looking at their good works to earn

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God's favor, the hostility that they have towards the gospel itself. And I want you to consider that this is one of the themes of Scripture.

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If you remember a few weeks ago we were working our way through the book of Galatians during our epistle readings here during the season.

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And you'll note, let me remind you of what was written by the Apostle Paul in Galatians chapter 2.

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And we're going to key in on the fact that there are some who are literally trying to take the gospel away from us.

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He says, after 14 years I went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas taking Titus with me.

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If you remember the book of Galatians is written against the Judaizers who were saying that Gentiles had to be circumcised according to the

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Mosaic Covenant laws in order to be saved. And if they were not circumcised they were not, they couldn't be saved at all.

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So Paul says, I went up to Jerusalem because of a revelation and I set before them, though privately before those who seemed influential, the gospel, the good news that I proclaimed to the

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Gentiles in order to make sure that I was not running or had not run in vain.

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Now listen to these words, but even Titus who was with me was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a

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Greek, yet because of false brothers secretly brought in who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ so that they might bring us into slavery, to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

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And you'll note this is a good cross -reference to help us understand what Jesus is doing. Notice that Jesus doesn't yield in submission at all, even an inch or an iota, to Martha in her complaint about Mary and says no, so that the truth of the gospel can be preserved for her.

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And that's the idea, is that the self -righteous who trust in their good works are always going to be scandalized by the fact that real sinners are truly forgiven by the shed blood of Christ.

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Now coming back to this idea then, this idea that your good works can damn you, and they do, and they cannot be used as currency to buy your way into heaven, keep that in mind.

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Knowing that then, that we should not trust in them at all and we should see that within ourselves when we are doing our good works to receive glory from others, to receive glory and merit from God, we have to repent of our good works while still doing them.

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Does that make sense? I don't want you to leave here thinking, Pastor Roseborough said I don't have to do any good works,

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I never said anything of the sort, and that would be blasphemous for me to say such a thing. But if you are trusting in your good works to earn

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God's merit and favor, then your good works will damn you. And we do not yield in submission to the self -righteous even for a moment.

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Paul then goes on in Galatians 2 and says, we ourselves who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, we know that a person is not justified or declared righteous by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

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So we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified, not one single person.

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There is no such thing as a human being who will be justified in God's sight and earn salvation because they were good.

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Put it to you this way, Scripture tells us that Christ died for the ungodly.

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When the person says to you, I'm a good person, you may basically say, well then

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I guess you don't need Jesus, because Jesus only died for the ungodly, and if you ain't one of them, you don't need him.

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It's kind of stark, but the reality of the situation is we must learn to see the truth about ourselves.

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That Christ, by confessing that Christ died for our sins, we are numbering ourselves among the ungodly, because that's truly where we are.

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To say that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and to note then that no one will be justified in God's sight by works of the law.

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So Paul then goes on to say that I have been crucified with Christ.

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It is no longer I who live, it's Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the

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Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. And so he says then, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then

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Christ died for no reason. So note the importance then that you cannot jumble these two things.

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The reason why Christians do good works is because they are Christians. They already have

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God's mercy, favor, and grace, have been forgiven and given the gift of eternal life, all because of what

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Christ has done. We do our good works because we are Christian, and then our good works are for the sake of our neighbor, because our neighbor needs them.

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We don't. You don't need your good works to save you. Christ's good works have been given to you free and gratis.

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You are forgiven, bled for, died for. No one will be justified in God's sight by the law, so stop trying to be.

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So note then, he says, I don't nullify the grace of God. And that's the thing, is that when self -righteousness creeps in, it will nullify the grace of God.

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We cannot yield to the self -righteous or even our own self -righteous tendencies, because by doing so we would nullify the grace of God.

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So coming back then to our gospel text, we can see what Jesus is doing. He will not nullify his own grace.

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He will not nullify the gospel, nor will he take away the gift that he is giving to both of them, although Martha wasn't receiving it, because remember, she was distracted.

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Mary wasn't. So Martha, Martha, you're anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary, and what is that one thing?

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Jesus. He is the one that is necessary, the only one that is necessary.

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If you have Jesus, you have it all. And so come to church.

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Come to church and bring your fuzzy bunny slippers and your PJs. Don't comb your hair.

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Come, sit, relax, and receive from Jesus. And note this then, that Jesus Christ has bled and died for all of your sins, even the sins that you have committed when you have taken your good works and tried to bargain with them with Christ for your own salvation and his favor and his mercy and his grace.

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He's even bled and died for that. So repent, be forgiven, receive from Jesus, and know that he will never take the one thing that is necessary away from you, and he will make sure that his grace is never nullified when it comes to you.

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So you have chosen the good portion along with Mary today, and it will not be taken away from her, and it will not be taken away from you.

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So receive it and hang on to it, cherish and believe it. And then when you see your neighbor in need, do your good works for your neighbor's sake, not your own.

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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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