A Glimpse into Paradise Restored

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Our reading tonight, this third Wednesday in Advent, we will be finishing up the

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Epistle to the Colossians. We'll back up a little bit and look at Colossians chapter three, starting at verse one, and then all the way through chapter four, verse 18.

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If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God.

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When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

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On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

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Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

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Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.

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Here there is not Greek, Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, scythian, slave, free.

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But Christ is in all. Christ is all and in all. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another.

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And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you.

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So you must also forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

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And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts in which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful.

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Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thanks, thankfulness in your hearts to God.

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And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the

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Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the

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Lord. Husbands love your wives and do not be harsh with them. Children obey your parents in everything for this pleases the

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Lord. Fathers do not provoke your children lest they become discouraged.

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Bond servants obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of an eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the

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Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the

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Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ for the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done.

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There is no partiality. Masters, treat your bond servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven.

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Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving. At the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which

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I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak. Walk in wisdom towards outsiders, making the best use of the time.

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Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

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Tychicus will tell you all about my activities. He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the

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Lord. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are and that you may encourage your hearts.

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And with him, Onesimus, our faithful and beloved brother, who is one of you. They will tell you of everything that has taken place here.

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Aristarchus, my fellow prisoner, greets you. And Mark, the cousin of Barnabas, concerning whom you have received instructions.

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If he continues to, if he comes to you, welcome him. And Jesus, who is called justice. These are the only men of the circumcision among my fellow workers for the kingdom of God, and they have been a comfort to me.

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Epaphras, who is one of you, servant of Christ Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers, that you may stand mature and fully assured in all the will of God.

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For I bear him witness that he has worked hard for you. And those in Laodicea and Hierapolis, Luke, the beloved physician, greets you as does

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Demas. Give my greetings to the brothers at Laodicea and to Nympha and the church in her house.

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And when this letter has been read among you, have it also read in the church of the Laodiceans and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea and say to Archippus, see that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the

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Lord. I, Paul, write this greeting with you with my own hand. Remember my chains.

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Grace be with you. In the name of Jesus. Our text tonight,

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I'd like to do something that may seem a little bit exotic, at least for me.

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You know, when it comes to rightly handling God's word, I don't want to stray too far from what the text is saying.

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But I see something in this text that is very much in the main theme of the sermon hymn that we just sang.

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Let me read to you the lyrics again from Stephen Starkey. What hope, an

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Eden prophesied, where tame live with the wild, the lamb and the lion side by side, led by a little child.

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That's a prophecy in Isaiah. A shoot will sprout from Jesse's stem, a branch from David's line, a prince of peace in Bethlehem, the fruit of God's design, a banner of God's love unfurled,

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Christ came to suffer loss that by his death, the dying world would rally to the cross.

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Final stanza, come, Jesus, come, Messiah, Lord, lost paradise, restore, lead past the angel's flaming sword, come open heaven's door.

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Paradise restored, this is the ultimate hope, this is the ultimate hope of Christmas, it's the ultimate hope of Advent, Christ's second advent.

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And with this text in Colossians chapter three and four, we get a glimpse of paradise restored.

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And I think many of us, because of the battles that have waged in Christianity over whether or not works are necessary for salvation and all this talk, have lost sight of something very profound, and that is that all of our works are done eschatologically.

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They're done in light of the fact that the new creation has already broken into our planet and is here among us now.

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Let me remind you of what was lost, Genesis chapter three. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast, the field that the

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Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, did God really say you shall not eat of the 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 did say you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst, the middle of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

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Actually, that's not what, but the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.

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For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you'll be like God knowing good and evil.

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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes, that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and she ate.

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She also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths and they heard the sound of the

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Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves in the presence of the

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Lord God among the trees of the garden. The man and the woman created in the image of God now hiding from God.

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Something terrible had happened. It's akin to, if I can pull on another pop culture reference, it's akin to what we think about in the lore of vampires, right?

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How is a vampire made? Well, a perfectly fine human being is bitten by one and in the biting, they become a vampire.

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And here you can say that Adam and Eve were snake bit, but they're the ones who bit into the fruit that they shouldn't have ate.

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And as a result of it, they were twisted, twisted hard.

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And now they have sin. Now they are sinners. I think a good way to think about sin is this.

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We're all familiar with people who have healthy bodies. At one time we were all 18 and we all looked great, right?

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But you ever had the chicken pox or some kind of a major rash, some kind of a major outbreak, right?

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Well, that outbreak isn't you, but it becomes part of you and it corrupts you.

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Think of leprosy or some kind of a disease like that. Sin is like that. It's now corrupted our nature and is a part of us.

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And try as we might, we cannot shake the disease. And so the disease set in immediately upon their biting and eating the fruit that they were told not to eat.

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And the impact is severe. Genesis 4 records this.

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Adam knew his wife Eve. She conceived and bore Cain saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the

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Lord. And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain, a worker of the ground.

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In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground.

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And Abel also brought the first fruit of his flock and the fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering.

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But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell.

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And the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?

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And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.

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So Cain spoke to his brother Abel. And when they were in the field,

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Cain rose up against his brother and murdered him. The first brothers of our race were at war and one of them was murdered.

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The impact of sin had set in. And see, that's the thing. We all know this.

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We all know that if you say certain words, you're going to get somebody really mad. And we all know that if you agitate somebody just the right way, that person might strike you.

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And if you persist in that, oh, that person will probably have you murdered. Right?

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It's the stories that we watch on television every night, is it not? Murder mysteries, crime scene investigative reporters, right?

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All of our stories have this kind of drama. And have you ever stopped and just taken a step back and said, what an absolutely, horrifically awful species we are?

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Not only do those stories reflect how we really are, we watch these stories to entertain us.

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Something has terribly gone wrong. Something is really, really off. Genesis 5 says this, verses 1 through 3.

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This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in his likeness, in the likeness of God.

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Male and female, he created them and blessed them and named the man when they were created. And when

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Adam lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, not in the likeness of God.

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Each of us was born in that likeness, dead in trespasses and sins, wracked with evil desires.

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None of us are capable of saving ourselves from this. And so what we heard last week was that God had cancelled the debt that stood against us because of our sin, nailed it to the cross, written in blood, paid in full.

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The week before that, we heard that God himself has transferred us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into his glorious kingdom of light, the kingdom of his son.

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All of this, God has done for us as a gift. And we heard that in the waters of our baptism, our hearts were circumcised and we were buried and raised with Christ.

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And see, Jesus is the first fruits of the what? The new creation.

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And you are in him. The new world is here now and not yet.

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It's here now. You are in it. You are a part of it. And all of our good works are done not because we're trying to placate an angry

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God so that we can get into heaven. All of our good works are done because we're already a part of it.

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We are in Christ. We have been transferred from the dominion of darkness.

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We have had the debt canceled against us. We have died and we have risen again.

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This is not allegory. This is eschatological truth.

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It is now and it is not yet. And so all of our good works are done with the eschaton and the end that is in the present.

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That's why we do our good works, because you is alive. You are no longer dead.

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So we return to our text. If then you have been raised with Christ, Colossians 3 verse 1.

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Is that true? Have you been raised with Christ? Well, yeah, unless God was lying in the waters of your baptism and didn't really mean what he said, that you've been buried and raised with Christ in the waters of your baptism.

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If then you have been raised with Christ and Jesus is the first fruits of the what the new creation.

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Well, then this seek the things that are above seek paradise where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on the earth. Why? Because you're dead.

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You've died. Your life is now hidden with Christ in God. And when

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Christ, who is your life, appears, you're going to appear with him also in glory.

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This is why we do our good works, because we're alive, because the end has broken into the now.

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The new creation paradise restored is now here among us.

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We are in it and we bear its fruits even now in this present and cursed creation.

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Therefore, put to death what is earthly in you. And these are all the sins stuff.

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This is the diseased part. This includes sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires and covetousness, which is idolatry.

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Yeah, that's right, farmers. You got to stop looking at the combine down the highway and coveting it, right?

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This is idolatry. It's on account of these that the wrath of God is coming.

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You see, the wrath of God is coming because of sexual immorality, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry.

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God's wrath is coming against all of that. In these, you too once walked.

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Not now. You're dead. You died. You once walked like this.

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Not anymore. In these, you once walked when you were living in them.

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But now you must put them all away.

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We're part of the new creation and we're dead to the old. So we put away anger, we put away wrath, we put away malice, slander and obscene talk.

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We put it this way, on that great last day when Jesus returns in glory and we are straining to see his face for the first time and he establishes his kingdom, new heavens, new earth, world without end.

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In that world, there will be no anger, no wrath, no malice, no slander, no obscene talk.

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There will be no lying. There will be no sexual immorality. There will be no evil desires.

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All of our good works give us a little bit of a glimpse into paradise restored.

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So do not lie, seeing that you've put off the old self with its practices and you've put on the new self.

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See, it's not a matter of earning brownie points with God, it's about being what you is. You're dead to this world.

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You're alive in Christ. He is the first fruits of the new creation.

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Therefore, we must live paradise here, now.

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In the new creation, there is no Greek, no Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian,

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Scythian, slave, free, Native American, African American, Norwegian American, but Christ.

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Christ is all. He's in all. So put on, then, as God's chosen ones.

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And you are chosen, and you are in Christ, and you are holy and beloved. So put these on, and here's that glimpse again into paradise.

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Compassionate hearts. Kindness. Humility. Meekness.

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Patience. Bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other.

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All of these are good works in light of the eschaton that has broken into now in our baptism.

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So when there's harmony in your family, and you're compassionate and kind, humble, meek, patient, and bearing with one another, you have a foretaste of the world to come and paradise that is being restored.

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And it's being restored among us now, the whole world later.

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Right? Above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

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And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

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Be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

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And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the

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Father. So when you see in these lists the way we ought to live, in light of the fact that we have been raised from the dead, notice that it's not to earn.

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It's to be what you are. You are in Christ.

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You have died. You have risen from the grave. Your sins have been washed away.

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You've been transferred from the dominion of darkness. Your debt has been canceled. And you now have a new nature.

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And that new nature, when it brings forth its fruits, it brings paradise into the present, even before Christ's return.

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And this is how we're to live. And I know that as you read these lists, you sit there and go,

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Oh, but Pastor, oh, but Pastor, if only you'd saw the fight

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I had yesterday or the words that I spoke or the conversation or the thing that I did or the thoughts that I had.

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I've lived not as, well, one who lives in paradise now. I've lived as one who's got one foot in the present world and maybe a toe from time to time in the eschaton.

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Yeah, I get it. I do. And see, that's the thing about God's law.

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When we get a glimpse of this, we can't glimpse it without looking at the law, and the law always accuses us and shows us where we've fallen short.

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I get it. So repent. Say, God, you're right.

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It's wrong for me to live as one who has not died and raised to new life.

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Forgive me for living in this present world rather than in the world to come. Have mercy on me,

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Lord, as I have woefully fallen short. Rather than create paradise,

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I've just added more sin to this already broken world. And I can tell you this,

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Christ has bled and died even for these sins that you've committed as his washed and redeemed ones.

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The Christian life is one of repentance, daily repentance, here and now. If only in this life we could find a way to have paradise perfectly, but then we wouldn't need

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Christ to return then, would we? Because right now, our nature as Christians is a little jumbled.

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It feels a lot like being at war with yourself. Because on the one hand, the new has come, the old has passed away.

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And on the other hand, you still have your old sinful nature to deal with. And that old sinful nature of yours is really not about being kind, humble, meek, patient, not coveting, and all the other things.

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It's the exact opposite. So, Lord, have mercy on us.

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Even we, Christians, who so feebly walk in this paradise that you've restored among us.

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Strengthen us through your word, Lord Jesus. Strengthen us with your body and your blood.

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Strengthen us in the words of the absolution. Give us great faith, Lord, to trust in your mercy and forgiveness.

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And give us strength through your spirit, that your spirit may bear fruit in us, so that we can walk in love and kindness and humility and meekness and patience and bear with one another and forgive one another as we sojourn here in these wilderness wanderings, as we journey towards that new eternal kingdom that is here now and yet to come.

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And then, Lord, when you have us finally cross the Jordan into the promised land, strip us of all this and finally put to death all that is evil within us, so that we may rise to a new world and to new life.

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A world without end. A world without strife. A world without malice.

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A world without lies. A world without sexual immorality. A world of kindness and humility and love and forgiveness and compassion that perfectly, again, reflects what we lost when we bit that fruit.

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In the name of Jesus, Amen. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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