The Lion of Judah is On the Move

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

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

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. Holy Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 3, verses 1 through 14.

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother

Philip, Tetrarch of Iturria and Trachonitis, and Lysanias, the Tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the desert, and he went out into all the country around the

Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, a voice of one calling in the desert, prepare the way for the

Lord, make straight paths for Him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low, the crooked road shall become straight, the rough ways smooth, and all mankind will see

God's salvation. John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by Him, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you that out of these stones

God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

What should we do then? The crowd asked. John answered, the man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same.

Tax collectors also came to be baptized. Teacher, they asked, what should we do?

Don't collect any more than you are required to. He told them. Then some of the soldiers asked him, what should we do?

And he replied, don't extort money, and don't accuse people falsely. Be content with your pay.

In the name of Jesus. And when the Apostle Paul arrived at Antioch and Pisidia on his first missionary journey, he went to the synagogue as part of his proclamation of the gospel, and he reminded the people of the history and the story of the people of Israel.

So this morning, to start off with, I'm going to borrow a little bit of Paul's retelling of that story. I'll add to it at the end here so that we can understand the historical context for our gospel text this morning.

I'll be reading from Acts chapter 13. I'll start at verse 16 and go to 22. Here's what the

Apostle Paul said to the people in the synagogue at Antioch and Pisidia. Men of Israel, you who fear

God, listen. The God of this people, Israel, chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt.

And with uplifted arm, he led them out of it. And for about 40 years, he put up with them in the wilderness.

And after destroying seven nations in the land of Canaan, he gave them their land as an inheritance. And all of this took about 450 years.

And after that, he gave them judges until Samuel, the prophet. Then they asked for a king.

God gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin for 40 years. And when he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, of whom he testified and said,

I have found in David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do my will.

Now, the rest of the Old Testament reveals that the people of Israel then went on to forsake the

God who had delivered them from slavery. And in the time of the kings, they end up worshipping the false gods

Baal, Molech, Ashtoreth and others. So God sent them prophets to call them to repent of their idolatry and to be forgiven.

But they refused to listen and they refused to repent. So God, in judgment, raised up Nebuchadnezzar and he destroyed

Jerusalem, 90 percent of the inhabitants of Israel. He also destroyed Solomon's temple and drug the remnant of Israel, the survivors, into exile and captivity in Babylon.

After 70 years had passed, the children of Israel returned to the land. And shortly after the return,

God spoke through the final Old Testament prophet and his name is Malachi.

Malachi prophesied the appearance of both John the Baptist as well as the

Messiah. So let me return again and read a portion of our Old Testament text this morning.

Malachi chapter three. Behold, I send my messenger. He will prepare the way before me and the

Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.

Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears?

And then the very final words of the prophet Malachi are these. Behold, I will send you

Elijah, the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes, and he will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children in the hearts of the children to the fathers.

Lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction. And then after the prophet

Malachi records these words given to him by God himself, then the

Lord says nothing. Nothing, nothing was heard from God for 400 years, complete silence from the throne of heaven as Israel was conquered by the

Persians, complete silence from God as they were then conquered by the Greeks, complete silence from God as they were then subjugated to the

Roman Empire. But despite God's silence and despite the fact that Israel lost its freedom and was subjugated to occupation by a pagan empire during the interim,

God's written word still spoke and God preserved the people of Israel. And he remembered his promises to Israel and to the world and to the

Old Testament patriarchs of the seed of the woman who would come to crush the head of the serpent. And so in this today's gospel text,

God breaks his silence and he signals that he's about to do something incredible.

It is like the story of the inhabitants of Narnia. Now, I apologize.

I have to use a little bit of a metaphor here and hopefully you have all read the Chronicles of Narnia. The first book is absolutely brilliant.

It's entitled The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And we find in this story that the land of Narnia has been subjugated to an evil, wicked witch named

Jadis and she has made it always winter in Narnia, but never Christmas. That's got to really be awful.

Right. Could you imagine winter here without Christmas? And so, but there was a prophecy. There was a prophecy that there would be four children, four descendants of Adam and Eve, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, who would be put on the throne at Kerperavel and the witch's spell would be broken.

So we pick up in the story here in the Chronicles of Narnia where the children have come into Narnia, but they have not yet been, well, enthroned as kings and queens.

In fact, they've got a harrowing battle to fight and deathly things could happen to them.

And so they're at the home of Beaver, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, having dinner with them.

I'm not sure what beavers eat, but I'm sure it's not as well. It might be better than lutefisk. But anyway, let me pick up some of the dialogue here.

Peter says, not meaning to be rude, Mr. Beaver, but you see, we're strangers. Quite right, quite right, said the beaver.

Here's my token. And with these words, he held up to them a little white object. They all took it, looked at it in surprise until suddenly

Lucy said, oh, of course, it's my handkerchief, the one that I gave to poor Mr. Tumnus. That's right, said the beaver, poor fellow.

He got wind of the arrest before it actually happened and handed this over to me. He said that if anything happened to him,

I must meet you here and take you on to. And here the beaver's voice sank into silence and it gave one or two mysterious nods and then signaling to the children to stand as close around as they possibly could so that their faces were actually tickled by its whiskers.

It added in a low whisper. They say Aslan is on the move.

Perhaps he's already landed. And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who

Aslan was any more than you do. But the moment the beaver had spoken these words, everyone felt quite different.

Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand.

But in the dream feels as if it had some enormous meaning, either a terrifying one, which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or also lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all of your life and are always wishing that you could get into that dream again.

It was like that. Now, at the name of Aslan, each one of the children felt something jump in its inside.

Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous.

Susan felt as if some delicious smell had some delightful and or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her.

And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it's the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.

And so in our gospel text this morning, it's like the inhabitants of Narnia, the people of Israel with the arrival of the promised

Elijah began to stir, their hearts began to hope. Maybe just maybe the lion of the tribe of Judah was on the move and perhaps had already landed on their shores.

Finally, our redemption has drawn nigh and indeed it has.

He has. And just as he had promised, the Lord sent his messenger ahead of him, a messenger who would signal his eminent appearing, but who would also prepare them for his arrival.

Which then begs the question, how are people prepared for the arrival of their merciful, forgiving and pardoning savior?

Answer. They're prepared through the preaching of God's law and they're called to repent.

You see, you're not ready to be forgiven until you know that you're a sinner. You're not.

Jesus has come to save the ungodly, and unless you understand that you're one of them, he's got nothing to offer you.

So they're prepared the same way that we are prepared for Jesus's arrival. They're prepared through the preaching of repentance.

And this is why Advent has always historically been a penitential season, because this is how you prepare for the arrival of your savior.

And so we return now to our text and I'll be reading from my translation. Now in the 15th year of the government of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being

Tetrarch of Galilee, Philip, his brother, being Tetrarch of the region of Echeria and Trachonitis, and Licinius being

Tetrarch of Abilene. In the time of the high priest Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

Two notes here. One, you'll notice that this didn't take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away in the foggy, misty time of mythology.

This happened in human history. But you also notice here that much like the prophets of the

Old Testament over and again, it would say the word of the Lord came to the prophet Malachi, the word of the

Lord came to the prophet Isaiah, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Hosea, the word of the Lord came to John, the son of Zechariah.

This is a man who has one foot in the Old Testament and one foot in the new. He's part prophet and part preacher of the gospel.

It's kind of a transition figure, if you would. And so he went into all the surrounding region of the

Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of, listen carefully, repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

This is odd. This is really odd. The reason why is because how did people get their sins dealt with?

In this time, they take an animal to the temple and sacrifice it, but John's not pointing them to the temple.

He's pointing them to the waters of baptism, something completely new. And so it continues, as it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah, the prophet, a voice of one shouting in the wilderness, prepare the way of the

Lord, be making his path straight. Every valley will be filled in every mountain and hill will be made low.

The crooked paths will become straight and the rough will become smooth paths and all flesh will see the salvation of God.

And so our sin here is likened to crooked paths, likened to mountains, likened to all things that aren't straight and flat and perfect.

And so this prophet, preacher, Baptist is going to prepare the way of the

Lord and fill in all the mountains and valleys, make all the paths rather than rambling and running this way and that straighten them all out, referring to our sin.

And then it says this, all flesh will see the salvation of God. Hold on to that sentence, we'll come back to it.

Therefore, he was saying to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him. This is not a feel good message.

You ready? Here's his message. You brood of vipers who showed you to flee from the wrath to come.

I don't think any church council would call this guy as their pastor. Right?

Yeah. Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come, produce fruits worthy of repentance.

And don't begin to say within yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. Notice he's countering their religious claims.

We're children of Israel. We're descendants of Abraham. We are, we have an inside track with God. Not so, not so.

For I say to you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones and indeed the ax is already lying at the root of the trees.

Therefore, every tree not producing good fruit as cut down and thrown into the what fire referring to the fires of hell.

So let me pull a little John the Baptist here. So do you think that because you've shown up to church that makes you a

Christian? Do you think that maybe because you put a few coins in the plate when it's passed around Sunday after Sunday, that makes you a

Christian? If that's what you think makes you a Christian, you need to repent. You need to repent.

God owns the cattle on a thousand Hills. He doesn't need your measly coins. If you think the things you do are the things that save you, you are wicked and still in your sins.

Don't think for a second that you can be saved by what you're doing. The text continues. So the crowds were questioning him saying, what then shall we do?

And this is important that the next couple of verses make it clear that they're asking this question after they're baptized.

If you don't understand that, you're going to confuse and think, well, the thing I got to do in order to be saved is to do right things.

That's not what he's saying. He was baptizing them for the forgiveness of their sins. They're coming up out of the water going now what?

Right. Whereas in the book of Acts chapter two, remember that great preaching of the apostle Peter on the day of Pentecost, he preaches law and gospel.

Everyone's cut to the quick. And then they said, brothers, what shall we do? And what does Peter say? Repent and be baptized.

Every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins. So the people on the day of Pentecost are asking prior to baptism.

These people are asking after they've been baptized, after they've been forgiven. This is what's going on.

So the crowds were questioning him saying, what should we do? And having responded, he was saying to them, all right, let the one having two tunics give to the one not having.

And the one having food be doing likewise and tax collectors also came to be baptized.

And they said to him, teacher, what should we do? And the one said to them, be collecting nothing more than the amount having been commanded.

In other words, you've now been forgiven of your sins, set free from bondage to sin, death, and the devil.

You want to know what freedom looks like? Stop living for yourself. Start thinking about others.

Love them, serve them. So the one serving as soldiers, they were also questioning him and us.

What should we do? He said to them, don't violently extort anyone or extort with false charges and be content with your wages.

So like these soldiers, tax collectors and people coming to be baptized, we need to remember that we ought not think for a second that doing good works out of fear or punishment or an expectation of a reward from God is a good work.

The reason why you're doing your good works is because you fear his punishment and because you're expecting a reward. Then those works are selfish works and they're done only for yourself and they're not for the good of your neighbor.

Keeping a tally sheet saying, you know, the way I figure it, God, is that, you know, based on all of these great things

I've done for other people, I'm thinking maybe eight or 10 lanes on my Olympic sized swimming pool in my heavenly mansion.

You haven't done a single good work then for anyone else. You've done every single one of them for you.

Those are not good works. In fact, keep this in mind.

You don't have to have faith to obey God's law. Anybody can do it if they try it hard enough.

Not perfectly, but make some progress at it. Pagans do things written in God's law and they have no faith in God.

Do you think God's going to sit there and say, well, I understand that you didn't believe in Jesus and that your sins were never forgiven, but man, you were like in the 80th percentile of moral people, you know, at the end of the day,

I'm going to go ahead and let you in. That's not how that works. There's no other name given under heaven by which men must be saved.

So good works apart from faith are wicked. Good works done because you are forgiven and have faith are truly good works.

You see the difference? You don't do your good works in order to receive God's forgiveness.

You do them because you have God's forgiveness. So those works, if you're doing them out of fear from God or an expectation of reward, they're selfish and they're not done for your neighbor.

Even worse, those kinds of works do not require faith in God. Those types of works are worthless before God because they are thinly veiled attempts to save and justify yourself rather than receive salvation as a gift.

So repent, God is not so cheaply bought off. The price of your salvation is not some measly grovely works done by you so that you can save your own skin or bargain with God for better rewards in heaven.

If you think that's what's your good works are for, you need to repent. The price of your salvation are not the plastic, cheap

Chinese trinkets of your good works. The price of your salvation is the very blood of a perfect and spotless sacrifice, and that sacrifice is

Christ. So we need to repent. The people baptized by John asked, what then shall we do?

They were not asking this in order to be forgiven. Verse three says that John was proclaiming a baptism of the forgiveness of sins.

So the reason they asked what shall we do was because they were forgiven. So I asked the question,

I knew this was going to be rough. Are you prepared for the arrival of the line of the tribe of Judah?

Are you prepared for his advent? He's on the move. He will arrive very shortly and his winnowing fork is in his hand.

And when he arrives, he will thresh the wheat, separate the wheat from the chaff. The wheat he will gather into his barn, but the chaff will be burned up with unquenchable fire.

Repent. Therefore, stop trying to bargain with God. He cannot be bargained with. He's not coming to negotiate with you.

He's not coming to negotiate the terms of your surrender. He's coming to judge you. See the difference?

So remember, read what we read in verse three, all flesh will see the salvation of God.

And you have heard the salvation proclaimed to you. Let me read it from the gospel of John chapter six.

They came to Jesus and said, what must we be doing to do the works of God? Chapter six, verse 28,

Jesus answered them. This is the work of God that you believe in him who he has sent.

So stop believing that you're good and that you can do enough good things to placate God. You're not good.

And if that is the reason that you're doing your good works, your good works will be the very thing that damn you, not your sins.

So repent, change your mind and instead believe in the one whom the father has sent to save you to die for your sins.

The one who washes away your sins in the waters of your baptism and the one who feeds you with his very body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins.

All of this he does as a gift out of his great love and mercy and compassion for you.

Repent, believe, be forgiven, and then do your good works for your neighbor, not for you.

You don't need them to bargain with God. You have Jesus and he's paid your debt and for in full for you already 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

Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota 56744. And again, that address is

Kungsvinger Lutheran Church 15950 470th

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

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