After the Victory Comes Peace

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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Luke, Chapter 24, verses 36 -49. While they were still talking about this,

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Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. They were startled and frightened thinking they saw a ghost and he said to them, why are you troubled and why do doubts rise in your minds?

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Look at my hands and my feet, it is I myself. Touch me and see, a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

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And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet and while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, do you have anything here to eat?

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And they gave him a piece of broiled fish. And he took it and ate it in their presence. And he said to them, this is what

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I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the

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Psalms. And then he opened their minds so that they could understand the scripture and he told them, this is what is written.

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The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead and on the third day, on the third day and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations beginning at Jerusalem.

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You are witnesses of these things. I'm going to send you what my father has promised, but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.

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In the name of Jesus. So our text this morning is the gospel text and we'll walk back through it if you want to have your

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Bibles open. And I'll be reading it from the ESV because for particular reasons. But here's what it says.

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As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace to you.

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Now real quick, by way of historical reminder, I have some visual aids.

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This is a scan, if you would, of a newspaper on VE day, victory, right?

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Germany surrenders. And you think about that, okay? You think about the war that began in, what, 1938 and continued on into 44, 45?

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And of the millions of people that died. This was a terrible, horrific war.

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And many of us, our parents fought in this war or they participated in this war.

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We know relatives, we might even have some people out here in the graveyard. Never know who perished in that battle, right?

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It was epic. And so when victory finally came, it was a big deal. And then here's a scan, if you would, of the

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Indianapolis Star on VJ day. The war has ended,

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Truman. And that was also, not only did they get news that the war had ended, but they also got news that the

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USS Indianapolis had been sunk and 883 people were killed.

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So big news. But the headline, the big headline is peace, peace. And of course, we've all seen this photograph.

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This is like a famous photograph from Life Magazine at the time, right? Of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square.

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Peace is a big deal. And so when we hear Jesus' words this morning, as they were talking about these things,

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Jesus himself stood among them and he said to them, peace to you. Think of it as that kind of peace.

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The kind of peace that comes after a major victory. The end of hostilities.

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That's what's going on here. And this is so because of the fact that God himself has torn down the wall of hostilities and was in Christ reconciling the world to ourself.

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A good cross -reference that helps us understand this is 2 Corinthians 5 17 -21.

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Here's what it says. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away.

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Behold, the new has come. And all of this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

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That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

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So in a sense, think of it this way. We as Christians, as the church, get to go out and do this and tell people, victory has been won, the war is over,

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Christ has won, and peace has been declared, peace between you and God.

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That's what it means to talk about the ministry of reconciliation. So Sunday after Sunday after Sunday here, what do we hear?

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We hear about this peace won for us by Christ, the kind of peace that comes after a long, epic, drawn -out war.

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And so therefore, the text continues, we are ambassadors for Christ.

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That's right. We Christians, we're the ones who are ambassadors for Christ. I was reading about evangelism during the time of the earliest

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Christians. Did you know that the earliest congregations never had evangelism

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Sunday? It's just true, it's the weirdest thing. No, when you read about how Christianity spread before, well, churches were legal, think about it, okay, your job is to go and proclaim something about Jesus, and somebody's going to believe this about Jesus, and join the

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Christian church, and be catechized, and learn what Christ taught. All with the knowledge of knowing that they could, at any moment, without warning, be called to deny

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Christ, and worship Caesar, and if they refused, they could be martyred. That's how dire things were.

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And yet, the church grew. How did it grow then? People weren't coming to church, and if you came to church, and they found you out, you could die.

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In fact, there's a story in the Church Fathers of a congregation that met, well, in a cemetery of all places.

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And when the pastor would consecrate the Lord's Supper, and he would say, take, you know, basically, on the night when our

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Lord was betrayed, he took bread, and when he'd given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, take, eat. This is my body, which is given for you.

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And then, he consecrates the wine, and says, you know, on the same night also, he took the cup after supper, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, take, drink.

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This is the blood of the New Testament, in my blood, given for you, for the forgiveness of your sins. And then, he would say, you know, you know, peace be with you.

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And they would say, amen. But they were so joyful and joyous about the fact that Christ was coming to them in his body and blood, in, with, and under the bread and wine, that when they said the amen, it was really loud, a loud, joyous amen.

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It wasn't, amen. It was, amen, yeah. And they got found out as a result of that, and some of them died.

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But how did Christianity spread under those circumstances? Well, the way it spread was in workshops.

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It spread in kitchens. It spread out at the park.

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It spread as people were going about their daily business and doing their work. Slaves talking to other slaves.

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Bankers talking to bankers. You know, sailors talking with other sailors. Christianity spread because the people who had the good news, they took this idea of being an ambassador seriously.

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And so, they were ambassadors going out and proclaiming Christ's victory and peace with God.

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And so, the text says this, therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, and God himself is making his appeal through us.

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So, we implore you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him. God made

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Jesus to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

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You want the church to grow? Tell everybody what Christ has done.

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Tell them about the victory. Let them know that peace has been declared between us and God because of what

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Christ has done for us. Then the church will grow. But our text then continues.

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But they were startled. The apostles were startled and frightened, and they thought they saw a spirit or a ghost.

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And he said to them, why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet, that it is

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I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.

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What an amazing savior. He considers the wounds that he received on the cross as tokens, as marks, as battle scars to be shown off to people.

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You ever been in company of men when they're trying to show off their scars? Yeah, I got this one while I was fighting a

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Mako shark in Hawaii. And then somebody has another. Jesus' scars are on his hands and in his side.

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And these are not tokens that he shuns. In fact, these are the best scars ever.

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Jesus trumps everything. Because these are the scars he sustained in that epic battle for our salvation, in which by dying he won.

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And so he keeps these, not only to show them to people, but to comfort us with them.

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And he comforts the disciples. See, it's I, all right? Don't have any doubts. So when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

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And while they still disbelieved for joy, they were marveling and he said to them, have you anything here to eat?

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And they gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them. So it's really me.

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Ghosts don't eat fish, by the way. It's true. I mean, I've never seen one of those paranormal shows where they put fish out and the ghost eats it up.

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It just doesn't happen. It's kind of a weird thing to do. Now, this is kind of a funny little side note. And as I was preparing for this sermon,

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I actually checked to see how some of the church fathers had handled this text in their sermons.

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And every single one of them thought that there was some kind of important spiritual significance to the fact that Jesus ate fish.

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But none of them agree as to why that's so. And so it's kind of funny.

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And so I've decided that I'm gonna go ahead and hazard a guess as to what the spiritual significance is to the fact that Jesus ate fish.

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John doesn't put details in here like this just to throw them away, right? So maybe there's some kind of spiritual significance.

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And so take this for what it's worth. But I think there's a connection here between Jesus and Jonah.

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This is what's going on here. So you think of Jonah, type and shadow, pointing us to Jesus. Well, take a look at this.

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In Jonah chapter one, here's what it says. Now the word of Yahweh came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise and go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.

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But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of Yahweh. He went down to Joppa, found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the

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Lord. And if you know the punchline, there's a very specific reason why Jonah fled.

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And the reason why he fled, according to this book itself, is because he didn't want the

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Ninevites to be forgiven. He knew that God was merciful. He knew that he was forgiving.

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And the last thing he wanted was those dirty, rotten Ninevites, those evil, blood -sucking war criminals that they are, who make the

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Nazis look like schoolgirls, right? The last thing he wanted them to be is forgiven. That's why he fled.

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It's true. So here's what happens. The Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea.

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Good luck running from God. That never works out, by the way. So there was a mighty tempest on the sea so that the ship threatened to break up.

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Then the mariners were afraid, and each one cried out to his God, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them.

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But Jonah had gone down into the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said to him, what do you mean, you sleeper?

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Arise, call out to your God. Notice Jonah isn't afraid at all. If I die, perfect, those

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Ninevites will never be forgiven. So, perhaps the God will give a thought to us that we may not perish.

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So they said to one another, come, let us cast lots so that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us. Casting lots, we see that happening at Jesus' cross.

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I think there's a parallel here, right? So they cast lots, the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, tell us, on whose account this evil has come upon us.

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What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? Out of what people are you? Question after question,

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I'm grasping at stuff. He says, all right. He says, I'm a Hebrew, I fear

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Yahweh, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. Then the men were exceedingly afraid and said to him, what is this that you have done?

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For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of Yahweh because he had told them. So then they said to him, what shall we do to you that the sea may quiet down for us?

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For the sea grew more and more tempestuous. It's as if, you know, as the story's developing and the sea's getting more hungry, right?

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Feed me, feed me, give me Jonah, right? So Jonah said, pick me up, hurl me into the sea, and then the sea will be quiet.

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It'll quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.

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Nevertheless, the men rode hard to get back to dry land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more tempestuous against us.

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And God's saying, uh -uh, you're not getting away. Therefore, they called out to Yahweh. Oh, Yahweh, let us not perish for this man's life and lay not on us innocent blood.

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For you, oh Yahweh, have done as it pleased you. I hear Pontius Pilate's words in these words, where Pontius Pilate pulls out that bowl and washes his hands, and he says,

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I'm innocent of this man's blood. So they picked up Jonah, hurled him into the sea, and the sea ceased from its raging.

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Then the men feared Yahweh exceedingly, and they offered a sacrifice to Yahweh, and they made vows.

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And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

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Jesus, in Matthew chapter 12, when he was challenged about what he was doing, he said this, for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the

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Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Think of it this way. Jonah kind of points us to Jesus, and the sign of Jonah's death and resurrection, and that's really what it was in a sense, right?

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Three days and three nights in the belly of a fish in the heart of the Tohon, the deep. Jesus is

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Jonah in that sense. So there's the tempestuous raging of God's wrath against our sin.

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And we know we're all doomed, despite all of our efforts to safely make it to the promised land, to shore, to safety.

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There's no way around it. It doesn't matter if we take the boat north or south or east or west, whichever direction we're gonna go.

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The raging of God's anger and wrath against our sin gets even wilder.

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And so what do we do? We take Jesus, and we throw him overboard to certain death, and then the fish swallows him up.

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That's what death is. It swallows him up whole. And then there's peace and calm.

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It's miraculous, right? And see, that's what Jesus did. He was our sacrifice for our sins.

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And he spent three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, the belly of the fish, the deep, the

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Tohon. And so I think the reason why Jesus is eating fish here on this account is because it's kind of like this.

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Have you ever seen one of those comedies where the hero does something epic, but it's kind of ridiculous that he did it?

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You know, you think about some comic movie where maybe like, yeah, like a

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Chevy Chase character, right? He's out in the woods, and there's a bear. And so rather than run, he decides to stand his ground.

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And you know that Chevy Chase can't defeat a bear, but they don't show what happens. It just looks like they're getting ready to clash.

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And then the next scene, they show Chevy Chase wearing a big bearskin rug, right? Yeah, it's kind of like that.

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So Jesus here, the reason he's eating fish, because he's chewing on death.

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He's chewing on the big fish that swallowed up Jonah. I think it's typologically in some sense connected to that.

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Now that may be a little bit of a stretch. Regardless of what the spiritual meaning is, we do know that the story of Jonah is all about Christ and his victory over death.

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And here, Jesus is comforting his disciples. And not with words of, you know, you guys really blew it.

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You messed up. Instead, it's all about peace. And that's the peace that comes through Christ's victory.

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So Jesus then reminds them. He says, then he said to them, these are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law and the prophets and the

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Psalms must be fulfilled. Who's the Old Testament about? Jesus.

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In fact, Jesus here, just so you know, this is the same day as Jesus' resurrection.

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This is Easter Sunday, but it's in the evening. And Jesus had just spent some time with several of the disciples as they traveled to Emmaus.

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And he held their eyes so they couldn't recognize them. And he opened to them the Scriptures to show them that the

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Christ must suffer and die and rise again, and that the Scriptures were about Jesus. In fact, you can always tell somebody whose mind has been opened by the

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Holy Spirit to know what the Scriptures are about because they realize it's really all about Jesus and what he's done in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the

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Psalms. So he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, thus it is written that the Messiah should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations.

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Repentance and the forgiveness of sins. There's many churches today that err on one side or the other.

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They will preach repentance and it's all law. And you leave wondering, will

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I make it? Is there any way for me to be saved? And then you have other churches, they preach all love, but they don't ever mention the law.

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And that's an error too. We're to preach both repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

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Law, gospel, sin, grace. Because you truly do not understand the grace of God until you understand your dire condition because of your sin, that you've earned hell by all of your sin and your breaking of God's commandments.

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When you truly understand that that's what you deserve and that Christ paid that for you, then you're ready for grace.

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You're ready to hear the good news of what Christ has done. You're ready to hear about Christ's victory and the peace that Jesus is talking about then truly becomes good news.

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Because in this sense, if you were to look at it this way, think of it historically and in parallel, you were born a

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Nazi. And remember who won the war? It wasn't the Nazis. But see, you were born a

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Nazi and despite all of your war crimes, you were granted a pardon by what

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Christ has done for you. You see, that's kind of the idea. So then Jesus says, you are witnesses of these things and behold,

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I'm sending the promise of my father upon you, but stay in the city till you are clothed with power on high.

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And so because of what Christ has done, Jesus here appears to the disciples on the evening of Easter and tells them peace.

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And he shows them his hands and shows them the wound in his side, eats fish with them.

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And in the same way, kind of a similar way, on the eve of the end of the world, when this day of creation, if you would, is finished,

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Jesus will appear to us as well. And he will appear to us bodily. And his words to us, because we are in him and we are forgiven and we are baptized, his words to us are gonna be the same, peace to you.

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That peace that he won on the cross is for you and you will see him with your eyes. And you will see the mail marks in his hands.

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And you will see where the spear was thrust in his side in the same exact way. And his words to you will be the same, peace, peace.

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Here then again, the words of the epistle reading. See what kind of love the

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Father has given to us that we, that's me and you, that we should be called children of God.

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And so we are. And the reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

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Beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared.

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But we know that when Jesus appears, we will be like him because we shall see him as he is.

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Behold, what kind of love the Father has lavished on us. Peace, Jesus says, peace, peace to you.

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He's won, he suffered for your sins. The breach between God and man has been fixed.

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The war is over, the hostilities are ended, he is won. You are pardoned, you are in Christ, you are forgiven.

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And Jesus says to you today, peace. In Jesus' name, 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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