The Wellspring of Sin

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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

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

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

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Matthew, chapter 5, verses 21 through 37. Jesus said, 1.

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First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 2. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.

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3. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. 4. You have heard that it was said,

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You shall not commit adultery. 5. But I say to you, that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

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6. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out, throw it away. 7. For it is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body be thrown into hell.

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8. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away. 9. It is better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.

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10. It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. 11.

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But I say to you, that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

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12. Whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. 13. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old, 14.

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You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord which you have sworn. 15. But I say to you,

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Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, 16. or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.

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17. And do not take an oath by your head, you cannot make one hair white or black, 18. let what you say simply be yes or no.

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19. Anything more than this comes from evil. In the name of Jesus.

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Whoa, did you catch that gospel text? That was not a gospel text, that was a law text.

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And let's not mince words here, I mean, Jesus, whoa, he sounds nothing like so many of today's mealy -mouthed, squishy, spineless, octopus -like serpent preachers.

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I mean, Jesus here calls sin, sin. And says the consequences of that sin is hell.

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And he even describes it as fire. Hmm, I thought the church voted a few decades ago to get rid of hell.

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Didn't we? We don't want to have any... We want to grow the church, this is not the kind of talk that's going to make people feel good about themselves.

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And let's be honest here, I mean, as I was reading this,

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I was made to feel like I was a sinner. How about you? And you sit there and you go, you know,

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I think Jesus is being a little uptight, just a smidge uppity. Maybe a little bit old -fashioned,

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I mean, after all, this was 2 ,000 years ago. I mean, as I read this, Jesus was literally saying, if I haven't murdered somebody, but I was angry and hateful in my heart, that I'm guilty of murder.

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Really? I'm a murderer? Oh yeah, you're a murderer. For real.

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Remember what we confessed today. I have sinned against you in thought, word, deed.

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So many people think that sin is just a matter of, well, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, it's only the things we do that make us sinners.

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So if you haven't actually pulled the trigger, plunged the knife into someone's heart, you're not really a murderer.

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Jesus says, oh no, no, really, you are. And on top of that, you're going to go to hell and sentence to an eternity in the fires of hell as a murderer.

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And then, well, this next part, what are we supposed to do with this?

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I mean, in the post -60s world, after the whole sexual revolution has been waged, and won apparently,

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Jesus is talking in a way that completely flies in the face of all of our culturally agreed upon sexual ethics.

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Remember, you are what you feel now. So if you've got that wibbly -wobbly, wormy feeling for somebody, it doesn't matter if they're married or not.

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It doesn't matter if you're married or not. You've just got to love the one you're with. Is that how the song goes?

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And Jesus is saying, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. When you have that wibbly -wobbly, lustful, kind of I can't get you out of my mind kind of feeling, and you're undressing that person in your heart, oh man, you've actually committed the deed, even if you haven't.

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Jesus is talking in a way that makes it sound like we're all evil, sinful, and that the root cause of all of this is something deep inside of us.

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We like to think of sin as, well, those people. They're the ones who are the problem.

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We are the holy ones. They're the problem. Jesus, remember, He starts off the

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Sermon on the Mount with the blessed. Blessed are you. He's talking to Christians, and He's talking to those who believe in Him, and He's reminding them of the depth and the magnitude of their sin.

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And brothers and sisters, let's face it. This text literally cuts us all down.

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There's nobody here, not one person, who after I've read this say, well, none of that applied to me.

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I guess I'm okay. No, it all applied to every one of us.

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And so, we would be wise to consider what it is that Jesus is telling us here, and wise to remember that we're not sinners because we sin.

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We sin because we are sinners. Let's do a little cross -reference work.

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I want to key in on this, where this stuff is coming from, because Jesus is talking about stuff that begins, well, in here, and makes us guilty even if it doesn't come out out here.

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Genesis 3. I know I return to this text often. It's the scene of the crime.

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This is where man fell. I want to point something very specific out in this passage. Genesis 3, we'll start at verse 1, but we're only going to pick up maybe about five or six verses.

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Let me remind you how we were all plunged into this misery. The serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the

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Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God really say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

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And the woman said to the serpent, well, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

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The serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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Now watch where Eve goes next. So here's the question put before Eve.

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Should you or shouldn't you eat of that tree? So where do you go to find the answer to this?

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Watch where she goes. So the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was, after all, a delight to the eyes, and the tree was to be desired to make one wise.

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Where does she go? Inside. She goes right into her heart, and now her heart is starting to have sinful desires.

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And see, before she even reaches out her hand, she's already dreaming of eating this fruit and the benefits that it will give to her.

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You see, sin begins here, which is why we don't go looking for the solution to our problems here.

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We have to listen to the Word of God, and God's Word comes to us out here. Not in here.

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Out here. Eyes up, not down. And see, that's our problem. As sinners, the way the church fathers describe it, they call it the incurvatus in se.

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That's a great Latin phrase. It means to be curved in on yourself. In other words, after the fall, we are habitual navel gazers.

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We're constantly bent in on ourselves. And who are we thinking about every waking moment of our lives?

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Me. I'm thinking about me. And that's the problem. In order to get the solution, you gotta look up, look out.

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And in order to do that, God has to unbend you. So the problem begins when Eve looks inside of herself.

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Luther in the small called articles, which are in our confessions, basically says that the devil turned

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Eve into an enthusiast. An enthusiast. And you're thinking, well, enthusiasm's a great thing.

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You know, I mean, when I go and watch a basketball game, I show enthusiasm. When I go to watch the

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Sioux defeat everybody, well, I've been a little less enthusiastic this year, but I try to show some enthusiasm.

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This is what we think about enthusiasm. But see, enthusiasm in the theological sense is that God within -ism.

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And no, the problem is when you start looking inside, you make your innards God, and you listen to that voice rather than the voice of God that really is

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God. We don't listen to God in here. We listen to God out here. We find him in the word.

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He comes to us in word, in sacrament, in absolution, in baptism. This is all objective outside of us, and it's not subject to feelings.

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Nothing more than feelings. Don't you love it when I sing to you guys? Anyway. I really want to show you a video.

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It's hilarious. Anyway, another topic, another time. So now let's fast forward just a smidge so you can kind of get the theme.

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In Genesis chapter 6, this is in the chapter leading up to the great flood, the flood of the entire earth.

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If I were to ask you just off the cuff, what was the reason why God flooded the whole world?

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What was the reason? Some people would say, well, there was clearly a lot of violence going on. Let's take a look at the text and see what it says.

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Genesis 6, 5. Here's what it says. Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and listen to this, that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

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Hmm. No wonder Jesus says that if you hate your brother, you've already committed murder.

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It all begins in here, and that's the reason why God floods the earth.

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Now, we live in a day that is quite crazy and insane. Let me give you an example.

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My birth certificate says that when I was born, I'm a boy, but we live in a world now that if I were to decide that, you know,

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I'm tired of being a boy. I feel like I need to be something different, so I'm going to be a girl.

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What would the world say? Oh, you're being authentic. You're being who you truly are because who you truly are is based upon what?

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What you feel inside of here. So if I feel like I'm the Eiffel Tower and I move to Paris and park myself in the middle of one of those open spaces,

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I should expect to see photos of myself and people next to me. Look at us in front of the

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Eiffel Tower, and you sit there and go, this is insanity. Yes, it is insanity, and the reason for it's simple.

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Have you ever stopped to think that sin itself is just crazy? It really is.

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It's totally irrational, contrary to sound reason, logic, how the world operates.

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It's the exact opposite of God, but we live in a world where if you just feel something, that's the thing you need to go with.

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No, that's the problem. Let's take a look at Matthew 15. Now we all know in Matthew 15, this is this wonderful passage where Jesus comes into conflict with the

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Pharisees, and what does he come into conflict with them about? Well, they had made a man -made law, basically said if you were out in the marketplace among the unwashed heathen, that their heathen cooties would get on you somehow, and you needed to wash your hands upon entering your home.

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There was a little religious ceremonial hand -washing ceremony that went on, and before you would eat, you would have to do that, because if you ate without washing your hands, you've now defiled yourself.

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And defiling, well, that sounds really serious. Really, really, really serious. But Jesus taught his disciples to not obey that little religious ceremony.

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It's not found in the Scripture, and the theology of it is totally backwards, and he explains.

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Start at verse 10. So Jesus called the people to him, and he said to them,

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Hear and understand. Are you ready? Here's kind Jesus. He's going to start offending people.

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It's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person. What? What?

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Pharisee over here said it does. Jesus says it doesn't. Notice Jesus is contradicting the religious leaders of his day.

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You can't do this. It's going to cause conflict. People aren't going to get along. He says it's what comes out of the mouth.

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This is what defiles a person. So then the disciples came, and they said to Jesus, Do you know that the

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Pharisees were offended when they heard you saying this? And watch what

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Jesus doesn't do. Jesus doesn't go, Oh, what was I thinking? I've offended somebody.

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Now, a little bit of a side note. We live in a day right now where one of the greatest crimes you can commit in society is to offend another person.

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And we all know that we are careful about what we say in public, on social media, and stuff like that.

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I want you to think of it this way. This is social sharia law. Jesus didn't obey social sharia law.

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He spoke the truth even if it offended somebody because they need to hear the truth.

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And you sit there and go, But if I do that, I might lose my job. I might be made to suffer.

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Somebody might unfriend me on Facebook. I may not get that invite to that really cool Christmas party this year.

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So be it. Jesus offended people. It just says so right here.

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And watch what Jesus does. So the disciples came and said, Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard you saying this?

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He answered, Every plant that my Heavenly Father has not planted will be rooted up. Leave them alone.

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They're blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit. Oh my,

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Jesus just called them names. Jesus didn't repent. And notice this.

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Jesus goes to the cross sinless. It is not a sin to offend somebody for the sake of truth.

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Offend them for the sake of offense. That's a different story. So Peter said to him,

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Alright, explain the parable to us. He said, Alright, are you still without understanding? And here's the important part.

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Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled?

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Oh boy, is this a clean translation. It's a little more graphic in the Greek. Talks about a latrine.

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So it goes into the stomach and then is expelled. But watch this. It's what comes out of the mouth that proceeds from the heart.

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This is what defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts.

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Murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.

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These are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile anyone.

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Brothers and sisters, the problem is in here. And in that list, are any of you able to say,

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Whew, glad that didn't apply to me. My heart's clean. No.

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Now you've got to be thinking, Okay, what do we do with this?

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These verses, these passages that I just read out have nailed us all to the wall.

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They show that we are defiled. That we've defiled ourselves.

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We've done this to our thoughts, our words, our deeds, which then flow from our wicked heart.

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This is showing us that the diagnosis is not good and it's not making us feel good about ourselves.

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And it's not supposed to. I mean, if you were suffering from cancer and didn't know it, and you went to see the doctor and said,

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You know, doctor, I've got this lump and I'm just not feeling right.

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I know something's wrong. And so the doctor runs the battery of tests. And the battery of tests, he's sitting there with that folder, that little manila folder, and he opens it up and he sees, big words, cancer, terminal, stage four, death.

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And he says, You know, I think you're just not getting enough sleep.

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You need to exercise a little bit more. Maybe take some multivitamins and drink more water.

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That'll clear some stuff up, right? What would we think of this doctor when three months later you drop dead?

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What kind of person is this? Who does that? But that's what we want our pastors to do. Stop telling us it's terminal.

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Stop saying we're sinners. Stop making it sound like I can't climb to heaven on my good works and please

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God by fixing things myself. Stop telling me the diagnosis is terminal.

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You keep labeling me as a sinner. Every time you open up the Scripture, you keep making me feel bad about myself.

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Here's the thing. I'm just telling you what Jesus said. Blame it on Him.

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I'm just the messenger. He's the one saying to you, you're a sinner.

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You don't measure up. You are defiled. And the problem isn't just a small one, it's a big one.

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It's so huge that you are defiled and it begins from the inside. And when we see it manifest in your actions, oh, those are just the tip of the iceberg.

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You all know how icebergs work. That part that sticks out, that's the small part. The big part's what's under the surface.

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And Jesus is saying that about your sin problem. The little stuff we see coming out in your actions, oh man, that's the least of your worries.

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That shows that underneath the surface, yuck. So what do we do?

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What do we do? I gotta do something to fix this problem because we all know we're gonna stand before God someday and have to explain all of this to Him and have to explain it to Him from the inside out.

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Jesus isn't gonna sit there with an inventory of your deeds. Oh, you did this, this, this, this, this, and this.

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That's the short list. Jesus is gonna say, hey, let's talk about these thoughts you had over here. And it's dark.

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And it's wicked. It's damnable. And Jesus talked about hell.

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Because hell is real. We didn't get to vote it away. You see, Jesus is

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Lord of the church. He gets to decide what's true and not true. We don't get to vote on it.

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So that hell thing is real. So what do we do? If you notice, there was no gospel in our gospel text.

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So what do we do? Just try harder? Maybe read my Bible more.

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That'll fix it. Maybe I should go and give a sandwich to a homeless person. That'll get me into heaven.

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No. You're stuck. You're absolutely stuck.

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You wanna know what the application of this sermon text is? Repent. Repent means to say,

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God, you're right. I'm wrong. God, I'm not good.

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I'm evil. God, I'm not sinless. I'm defiled.

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That's what it means to repent. And with that, I think, comes a lot of feelings.

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Feelings of recognizing that you have sinned against the very God who created you and sustains you. Sinned against His holiness.

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And it doesn't make you feel good about yourself. It's not supposed to. It's supposed to make you feel correctly about yourself.

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To see you for what you really are. But thankfully, the Bible in cross -references helps us get to the gospel today.

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Flip over to Romans chapter 5. Let's take a look, starting at verse 12. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all have sinned.

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You see, because we were all in Adam, Adam's transgression is imputed to us.

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We are born with a sinful nature. And because of his sin, each and every one of us was made to be a sinner.

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For 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.

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And listen to what it says. That Adam was a type of the one who was to come. All that type and shadow talk that I keep giving here from the pulpit in the

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Sunday school sermons, it's all over the New Testament. And so Adam prefigured the one who was to come, and that's

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Christ. And here's what it says. Important words. The free gift is not like the trespass.

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Tell me about that free gift. Because right now,

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I need something like that. For if many died through one man's trespass, how much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man

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Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin.

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For judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

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Justification is a fancy Biblical word that means to be declared not guilty.

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To be declared righteous. For if because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of the righteousness of Christ reign in life through the one man

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Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, you and me included, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

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For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, and there it says it.

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The reason you sin is because you were made to be a sinner. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

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So here's the idea. This is an important doctrine. This is an important doctrine that shows and takes us all the way back so that we can rightly deal with our condition.

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There is none who are righteous. Not one. Each and every one of us fell in Adam's fall.

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We were all made to be sinners. And the solution to our problem is outside of our reach.

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There is no way to fix what has been broken by us.

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Instead, God has chosen to solve the problem by not giving us what we deserve.

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And there's that talk of the free gift. You see, Jesus is the second Adam. And Jesus, unlike Adam, kept

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God's law perfectly. He kept it perfectly in His thoughts, in His words, and in His deeds.

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And He kept it perfectly for you. And so the free gift of God is this.

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The forgiveness of our sins. And the giving of Jesus' righteousness to cover our sins.

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It's all a gift. And God wills to give this to you by His grace, because of His great love and His mercy.

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There is nothing you can do to earn it. Nothing you can do to purchase it. It can only be received as it is.

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As a gift. So when Jesus talks about the fact that we sin and are guilty of murder, and adultery, and all kinds of defiling sins, and that it begins within our heart, let us again be reminded that this is true.

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But the sure and certain word is not the last word from the law, but the last word from Christ.

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And the last word from Christ is forgiven. Absolved.

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So that we do not have to face the fires of hell as we deserve. Instead, because of God's great love and mercy, we don't get what we deserve.

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We get life. Because Christ took on Himself our sins and the punishment that we deserved was literally wrought on Him for us.

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Sobering words. Important thoughts. And so, brothers and sisters, what do you do?

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How do you apply this text? Repent. Acknowledge that it shows you for what you are.

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And believe that because Christ, the second Adam, has bled and died for your sins and kept the law perfectly for you, that you have a hope of eternal life, not condemnation.

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And you have the forgiveness of your sins now. You receive those forgiveness of sins which were won on the cross in the waters of your baptism.

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Last week, when we had the Lord's Supper, you received that forgiveness in your mouth, the body and blood.

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And today you heard that forgiveness of your sins in the absolution when I said, I forgive you all of your sins.

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Don't look in here for this. All of this comes to you from out here.

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In here is the problem. Out here is the solution. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 470th

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Avenue, NW, Oslo, MN, 56744 And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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

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