Trinity and Incarnation

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 16th chapter.

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Jesus said, There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen, who feasted sumptuously every day.

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And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table.

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Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abram's side.

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And the rich man also died and was buried. And in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw

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Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, Father Abraham, have mercy on me.

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Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.

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But Abraham said, Child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things. Lazarus, in like manner, bad things.

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But now he is comforted here and you are in anguish. And besides all of this, between us and you is a great chasm that has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.

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And he said, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

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But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them. And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

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And he said to him, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. A couple of notes up front.

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I keep saying and I'll keep reiterating, have you noticed how fast this life goes? Man it's terrifying.

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You know, like I've said in the past, yesterday, it was yesterday, I was 18 years old, 28 inch waist, six pack abs, and look what has happened to me in a day.

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It's terrifying if you think about it, right? We are all under the judgment of God. The wages of sin is death.

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And we must take our gospel text today soberingly, seriously.

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You'll note that in our day, there seems to be a lot of people who are backtalkers. You remember when you were raising your kids when they were little, and, you know, you tell them to clean their room, and the kid says back to you, you go clean your room.

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That's when discipline comes into play, right? And you have to restrain yourself so you don't kill the child when they do this.

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This is how this goes. But there's a lot of backtalkers in our day, in the visible church. And they'll say things like, you know, this idea of hell, it's just so unbecoming.

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And this is how they talk, right? And they'll say things like, if God is love, then he would never send anybody to hell.

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Well, I beg to differ with you, right? Since when did you have a lofty opinion where your opinion supersedes the actual revelation of God and Jesus Christ?

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You'll note that of all the teachers in all of the scriptures that teach the doctrine of hell,

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Jesus is the one who teaches it the most. We best pay attention to what he says.

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That being the case, just mentioning hell and noticing how short this life is, this can cause anxiety in you and in me, right?

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This idea, you sit there and go, you know, it's not going to be too long before I'm the guy whose body is in the box for the funeral, right?

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It's just really not that far away. It could be tomorrow. In fact, it will feel like it.

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That's the point. And then this idea, well, someday I have to stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

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And all of a sudden, the anxiety levels go, ah, fear not, fear not, we're going to work this out.

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So we're going to start, we're going to do an extensive study on this text. So Jesus tells a story, and I will note, in no way ever does this seem like it is a parable.

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When Jesus teaches a parable, it usually starts off something like this, the kingdom of God may be compared to, right, and he says something like, it may be compared to a sower who sowed good seed in his field, or the kingdom of God is like, you know, you get the idea.

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Jesus isn't doing that here. In fact, all the indications are that this is knowledge that Jesus has by virtue of the fact that he is

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God in human flesh, he is the divine judge. And so he says there was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen who feasted sumptuously every day.

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Let's consider this concept here. Clothed in fine purple, ah, yes, you know, he wears designer clothing.

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There are people like this today, by the way. And by the way, purple and I don't really get along. I have more of a winter palette, so, you know,

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I'll wear it from time to time, especially as part of the vestments.

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But this guy is wearing, for what reason, why is he wearing purple? Because he has delusions of grandeur.

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He thinks he's a king, he's a prince. And purple back in the ancient day was a super -de -duper expensive color to have on your clothing.

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Not an easy color to produce like it is today. And he feasted sumptuously every day.

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And it's here we're going to note something. This hints at the idea that he may have been a glutton.

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Now let me explain something here. Gluttony in the Bible has nothing to do with obesity per se.

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You know, so people, they have anxiety, they sit there and go, you know, I'm a little overweight, I wonder if I'm a glutton. Most of the reason why people are overweight today, myself especially, is because we don't move enough, all right?

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That's kind of the problem. We don't get out, we don't exercise, and we work jobs where we sit in front of a computer screen all day long.

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I assure you, if I were a farmer, I'd be as skinny as a rail, okay? Instead, I'm a pastor, so I'm plump and I have to get out and do something about these things, right?

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But that being the case, gluttony has a very real meaning. And the idea behind gluttony,

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Paul says it in Philippians 3 so clearly. He talks about people who are pagans whose

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God is their stomach, whose God is their belly. They have no restraint regarding the things that they feel like they want, especially in relations to food.

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And you'll note that in the Scripture, the very first sin has an eating thing going on with it.

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Lack of self -restraint regarding eating something you should not eat.

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You can say that the first sin kind of steers into the sin of gluttony. In Genesis 3, always and again we return to the scene of the crime, it says 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 may 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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She added that little part at the end about touching it, but she's in the ballpark, right? So the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

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In other words, God's a liar, I'm here to tell you the truth. That's never how that works, by the way. God is always the one telling us the truth, and when somebody contradicts

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God, they're lying. All right, lesson number one. 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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So the woman goes all internal with her feelings and her passions, and when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that's an internal feeling, that it was a delight to the eyes, again, a feeling, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, again, a feeling.

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No restraint here. She took its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

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That is a problem, right? And this is what has plunged us into the misery that we have. But along these same lines, you notice that this rich man, who dresses really nicely, he eats really well, and we know from our reading of the gospel text that Lazarus doesn't eat so well, right?

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And you'll note that there's no compassion in this fellow. Isn't that how it is with all of us?

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Each of us are born dead in trespasses and sins. We are bent in on ourselves, and who do we look out for?

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Well, that unholy trinity of me, myself, and I. It's all about me, and we care nothing about other people.

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In fact, caring for other people is kind of like pulling teeth, and usually when people actually engage in philanthropic endeavors, they're doing so to avoid paying taxes.

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Let's just be blunt here. So much of what passes for philanthropy is really about self -interest.

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I can pay less in my taxes if I give some of that money over to those people over there. And so we all look after ourselves, and here's where we consider another text as it relates to this concept of sin of gluttony and the mindset behind it.

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This idolatry that goes with it. In the book of Ezekiel, we learn a little bit more about Sodom and Gomorrah, and I will note that the liberals and the so -called woke left, they like to look at this text and somehow use it to obliterate this idea that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with homosexuality.

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This is a lie, by the way. That's not true. And so they say something like this. Really the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is that they engaged in the sin of not having good hospitality.

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To which I would say, right, it's usually not very hospitable to gang -rape homosexually the people who are guests in your town.

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That's for sure. That's bad hospitality, but that doesn't take away from the sin of sodomy itself.

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But listen to this mindset and listen to what goes with this. In Ezekiel chapter 16, Ezekiel is prophesying to the exiles of Judah who are in captivity in Babylon.

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And he is reminding them of their past sins, which they still haven't quite really repented of.

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And you'll note there's a mindset behind all of this. And so Ezekiel writes in chapter 16, starting at verse 44,

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Behold, everyone who uses proverbs will use this proverb about you.

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Like mother, like daughter. You are the daughter of your mother who loathed her husband and her children.

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And you are the sister of your sisters who loathed their husbands and their children. Your mother was a

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Hittite. Your father was an Amorite. Your father was an, uh, nevermind. Your mother smelt of elderberries.

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I just had to throw that in there. I got the response

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I wanted. Thank you, Josh. Your mother, your father was a hamster. Your mother smelt of elderberries, right?

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That's not in the text. I added that. So your sister is Samaria who lived with her daughters to the north of you.

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And your younger sister who lived to the south of you is Sodom with her daughters.

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Now a little bit of a note, Ezekiel isn't saying that Sodom is existing at that day.

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He's not. He is likening, well, probably the Egyptians or also possibly the

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Moabites. He's likening them to Sodom and noting the parallels in their sinful thinking.

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So your younger sister who lived to the south of you is Sodom along with her daughters. Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations, within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all of their ways.

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Now that's quite the indictment. Judah, the tribe of Judah, more wicked in abominations than Sodom was?

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Yeah, that's true. And listen to what he says. As I live, declares the Lord God, your sister

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Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. Behold, this was the guilt of your sister

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Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and the needy.

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Ouch. They were haughty and did an abomination before me, so I removed them when

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I saw it. You'll note that one of the things we're suffering from here in the

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United States is that having decades of prosperity, this sounds just like us.

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We have an excess of food, prosperous ease, and few, if any, really care about the poor and the needy.

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This is all the sin of idolatry. This is a first commandment issue. When people trust in, well, the good gifts that God gives us to provide for them the comfort and the assurance that God gives, rather than looking to God to give us those things, the gift giver, if you would.

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Making an idol out of money, out of food, out of drink, out of the nice things that God provides us in this life.

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And that's always the case. In fact, Luther makes it clear that an idol is the thing that you look to in your life to provide good for you.

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And that's what this fellow is doing. He is exceedingly wicked in the excess of food, prosperous ease, does not aid the poor or the needy.

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And James goes on to say in his epistle, in his rebuke of the rich, and we're going to note kind of an interesting connection here.

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In James 5, James writes, Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

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Your riches have rotted, your garments are moth -eating, your gold and your silver, they have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire.

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You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, they're crying out against you.

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And the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived in the earth in luxury and in self -indulgence.

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You have fattened your hearts in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person, and he does not resist you.

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Have you noticed that it's the rich who always have attorneys on retainer? And they're very litigious.

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They like to use those attorneys. What's the point of keeping an attorney on retainer if you can't use them to file a lawsuit against somebody and stuff like this?

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And you'll always note that the wicked, idolatrous rich, they're the last people you really want to work for or do any business for because they are really slow to pay, and they always find little nitpicky things to discount the price because they're super stingy with the resource that God has given him.

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And James here notes that this type of pride, this type of idolatry, murder also goes along with it.

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And there's a reason for that, if you were to think about it from the point of view of the commandments. Here's a commandment we should consider, the fifth commandment.

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The fifth commandment, we all know this, you shall not murder. And you sit there and go, well, thank God I haven't done that, right?

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You sit there and go, yeah, I've never actually plunged a knife into the heart of somebody I was angry with. Well, good on you.

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Good on you. Yeah, I don't know of any murderers here in the congregation, but I would note that that's not a proper way of understanding this.

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It's not merely about not plunging a knife into someone's heart. Instead, listen to what Luther says when he explains the fifth commandment.

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It says that we should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.

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And although this rich man did not shoot or stab or poison

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Lazarus, he murdered him. Because Lazarus was in great physical need.

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And by the way, I point this out every time I get to this text, every single time, what's the name of that rich guy again?

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What's his face? Yeah, you see, there's a reason why his name isn't written, and it's a terrifying one.

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And this again gets to the reality of hell. Everybody who is damned, their names are not written in the

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Lamb's Book of Life. Everybody in hell goes to hell without a name.

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Jesus says, depart from me, I never knew you. So we don't know who this fellow is.

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He's not given a name. His name is not written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And yet the text says here, at this rich man's gate was laid a poor man named

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Lazarus, covered with sores. But did this rich man care a thing about Lazarus?

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Did he care anything for his neighbor? Did he love him? Or did he even love a fear God? No, none of the above.

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And Lazarus desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. In other words,

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Lazarus was treated more poorly than the dogs that this rich man kept as pets.

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Because at least they got to eat what fell from his table, but Lazarus didn't.

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And he was in dire need of medical attention. So much so that the dogs came and licked the sores off of Lazarus.

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But the rich man didn't even lift a finger to help him. Didn't send a meal out to him, didn't offer anything to assist.

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And yet he had all the means to do so, to feed him and to care for him, to love him. And you'll note, in the short life that we live, you would think that as a race we would have had this figured out.

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That we are all here for such a short amount of time, it's best if we all start looking out for each other instead of looking out for ourselves.

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That would ease the suffering here. But we don't. We are always looking out for number one.

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And we get angry with our politicians when they would dare to make us think about anyone else other than ourselves, right?

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So, the poor man died. That's Lazarus. He was carried by the angels to Abraham's side, or Abraham's bosom.

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This was a portion of what's in the Old Testament called Sheol. The rich man also died and he was buried in Hades.

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You can say hell if you want. Being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and he saw

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Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. Yeah, this nameless rich man is now in hell.

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And you'll note, it is described as torment. But you're going to note this. A lot of people, for whatever reason, like to think that somehow hell is like a place like purgatory or something.

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That having been faced with and experienced in the actual judgment of God in the fires of hell, that one would have time to think about the bad decisions of their life and that they would amend their ways.

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This man has not amended his way of thinking at all. So he cries out to Abraham, Father Abraham, have mercy on me.

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Send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and to cool my tongue for I am in anguish in this flame.

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What a jerk. He literally is asking Abraham to treat

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Lazarus as a servant. You say the word, Abraham. You're the important guy and he's not that important.

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You say the word and send that guy to me to assist me. As if Abraham would somehow recognize that this fire and this man who's in torment in the fires of hell is somehow important.

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Again, wealth and human importance is a delusion. We are all sinners.

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And the one thing we know about Lazarus is despite the suffering that he went through, he had faith in the one true

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God. Yeah, it's true. Because without faith, it's impossible to please

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God. And Lazarus, despite his suffering, he had faith. That's why he's experiencing paradise rather than hell.

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So Abraham responds, child, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus and like man are bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in anguish.

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Besides all of this, between us and you, there's a great chasm that has been fixed in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able and none may cross from there to us.

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And then he said, then I beg you, Father, send Lazarus to my father's house for I have five brothers so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment.

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Wants a miracle, you know, Lazarus, back from the dead. That would make the headlines, don't you think, that'd be kind of cool.

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But here's the thing. When you read your Bible, have you noticed that the

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Bible actually explicitly warns us against the fires of hell? Explicitly calls us to repent?

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Explicitly preaches to us the good news that Christ has bled and died for our sins? And you're going to note, this is not just in the

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New Testament, it is prophesied in the Old. All the scriptures are telling us how to avoid that place of torment.

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From Moses to the prophets to the apostles, every page of scripture is dripping with the love and mercy and forgiveness of God for penitent sinners and threatening

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God's wrath for those who persist in sin and unbelief. You'd think that God kind of went out of his way to make it so that nobody would end up in hell.

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But what's the problem here? People don't care to read the word of God.

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That's the problem. So that first commandment thing, you will have no other gods.

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People make money, or food, or sex, or drugs, or alcohol, or you can turn anything into a god if you think about it.

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You can turn crafting on Pinterest into a god if you wanted to.

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It sounds weird, but it's true. That's a first commandment issue, but also closely associated with that failure to love

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God and to recognize him as God also comes that third commandment. Remember the

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Sabbath day by keeping it holy. How does Luther explain what that commandment means? We should fear and love

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God so that we do not despise preaching in his word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.

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See the fault is with us. We don't want to hear the word of God. Too busy.

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How can I be expected to go to church? Don't you see how good the weather is? I mean, we've only got two weeks of warm weather here in Minnesota.

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You gotta get out there and experience it and enjoy it, right? Drink it to the dregs. Sorry, I've gotta go to the car show.

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I've gotta go. You get the idea, right? And that's the problem. So this unnamed rich man is begging,

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I don't want my brothers to end up here in this place of torment. So Abraham says, listen, they have

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Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

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This is what the scripture says, right? Let they have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

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He says, no, Father Abraham, if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

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This guy is, you know, he's in the NAR apparently, you know, he believes that in order to do evangelism, you need signs and wonders.

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That'll clinch it. You just send somebody back from the dead and they'll go, woo, we gotta repent, right?

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But Abraham says, listen, if they don't hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced that someone should rise from the dead.

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Case in point, Jesus actually rose from the dead third day after they crucified him.

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Did those who crucify him sit there and go, you know, I think we may have got this wrong. No.

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They came up with some lame excuse. Oh, I know, the disciples stole the body.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how it went down. That's the ticket, right? They didn't repent at all.

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Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Abraham has a point. In fact, that's kind of the point of our

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Old Testament text. You'll note that the punchline in Genesis 15 were these words,

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Abraham believed Yahweh and God counted it to him as righteousness.

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You see, Abraham heard the word of God. The circumstances in his life where God promised him children, he's getting old, his wife's gone through menopause, he still has no children, right?

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Hello, God, how much longer do you think we're gonna be here, right? We're kind of drying up.

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And he points this out to God and God takes him outside of his tent and says, look up in the stars in the sky.

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And he says that, count them if you're able, your descendants will be like them.

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And what does it say? Abraham believed God. Abraham believed the Lord and God counted it to him as righteousness.

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And you're gonna note then that in the book of Romans chapter four, in Romans chapter four, those same words are taken up as comfort to us as Christians because we also have the word of God and we have very specific promises.

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Now, I am not promised that my descendants will be as numerous as the stars of heaven. However, this is where it gets really practical because I talked about that anxiety that we all have as it relates to how quickly this life goes and how soon we're all gonna be dead and standing before Christ.

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So those words, it was counted to him as righteousness, they're written for our comfort as well.

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Here's what Romans four says. So what should we say then was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh?

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If Abraham was justified by his works, then he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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And here's where I need to give a little bit of an explanation. And the explanation is this. When you talk about the word justified in the scripture, justified, oftentimes we hear it as English speakers and we think about somebody justifying their bad behavior.

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Well, the reason why I beat up my brother is because he's a jerk. Okay, that's not what we're talking about here.

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The word justified here is talking kind of in courtroom language. Justified here means

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God has slapped down the gavel, he's the judge, and he's declared you to be not guilty.

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And this is what you and I need because examine your life in light of the Ten Commandments and you realize, oh boy,

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I'm a very gifted commandment breaker and so are you.

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And each and every one of us, we all have this same pride and arrogance and gluttonous attitude and lack of compassion and love for each other that that rich man had.

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And we can see that his fate is a warning to us. And this is where we must listen.

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If Abraham was justified, declared not guilty by God, by his works, then, well, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

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But what does the scripture say? It says this, Abraham believed

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God and it was credited to him or counted to him as righteousness.

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Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as is due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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Listen to those words again. To the one who does not work, try to earn a salvation by being gooder or trying harder and doing better -ish, right?

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But instead, believes in him who justifies, declares righteous, the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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To put it more succinctly, you want to alleviate the anxiety of having to face

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Christ on the day of judgment? It's real simple. Confess that you are ungodly.

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Cry out to God for mercy. The one who believes is that God justifies the ungodly by faith, they are clothed in the righteousness of God.

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Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, believed the good news of the gospel that Christ died for your sins, and this faith that even was given to you as a gift is now credited to you as righteousness.

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Though your sins be as scarlet, Christ makes them as white as snow. Though you are as guilty as sin, and you are,

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God declares you to be not guilty for the sake of Christ. All of this as a free gift.

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Ah, now the anxiety begins to be alleviated. And that's the point.

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That's the point. And when we consider then our epistle text in this context then, listen to some of the words from our epistle text.

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So we have come to know and we've come to believe the love that God has for us.

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This is an allusion to the gospel. What is the love that God has for us? God demonstrates his love for us in that while we are yet sinners,

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Christ dies for our sins. You see, God is love.

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That's his nature. That's what he's really like. Whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.

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And by this then is love perfected in us so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment. We do not need to fear that we will suffer the same fate as nameless, what's his face, the rich guy, because instead we have been baptized into Christ.

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Our sins have been washed away. We have been forgiven. God in his great love and mercy has sent Christ to bleed and to die for our sins so that we would never have to die eternally and be in torment like that nameless rich man.

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All of this because of his great love for us. Therefore, we have confidence for the day of judgment.

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In the waters of baptism, Christ has put his name, the name of the Holy Trinity, on each and every one of us.

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We are not nameless. We bear the name of Christ. That happened today for Bella.

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What a great day for her, right? So therefore, we have confidence on the day of judgment that just as God had mercy on Lazarus and he was comforted and Abraham sighed, we too, when we die, we will be with Abraham and Lazarus and Isaac and Jacob and with Christ himself because of this great gift that God has given us in forgiving us of our sins.

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There is no fear then in love. Instead, perfect love casts out fear.

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You see, fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. Whoever fears the judgment of God doesn't understand the gospel and the love of God for us and is instead trying to placate the wrath of God by their paltry, weak, and sinful good works.

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And we love, though, because Christ first loved us. So as a result of this then, because we have been forgiven in love by God, we love

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God and now by the power of the Holy Spirit, we also love each other. Where somebody says, well,

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I am a Christian, I believe in Jesus, and they treat everyone like garbage, excuse me, that doesn't seem to fit.

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If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he's a liar. They know nothing about God.

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They know nothing about the love of God and the gospel. For he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love

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God, whom he has not seen. But you don't understand, my brother is such a jerk. Yeah, sounds like you two are related.

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Right? Yeah. And so this is the commandment then that we have from him, whoever loves

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God must also love his brother. This is a natural consequence of the gospel itself.

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So brothers and sisters, fear of judgment creates anxiety, but Christ has bled and died for us and taken away that so that we have confidence on the day of judgment so that we do not need to fear and all of this because of the great love of Christ.

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As it says in our Old Testament text, Abram believed God and was credited to him as righteousness. Trust the promises of Christ for you.

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Faith grabs a hold of these promises and then note then, Christ credits this also then to you as righteousness.