No Need for Embellishment

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 Saint Matthew, the 14th chapter.

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That when Jesus heard about the death of John, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.

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But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, and he healed their sick.

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Now, when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, This is a desolate place, and the day is now over.

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Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves. But Jesus said,

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Well, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. And they said to him, We have only five loaves here and two fish.

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And he said, Bring them to me. So he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing.

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And then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied.

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And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. And those who ate were about five thousand men besides women and children.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Now, in case you haven't figured it out,

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I think a good way to talk about my past is that I'm a recovering evangelical. I'm also a recovering

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Californian, although never going to repent of In -N -Out Burger. In fact, I'm looking forward to enjoying it tomorrow.

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But alas. But all of that being said, when I was an evangelical, I noted that because they misunderstood the scriptures and didn't rightly distinguish between law and gospel.

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And oftentimes, well, they preached the law very well, but they didn't preach the gospel to Christians.

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And also, they had a false understanding of Israel. Because of this, this led to some weird senses, feelings of guilt or feelings of insufficiency.

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Let me explain. By the way, I hate that feeling of insufficiency. You ever feel like, man, I just don't measure up.

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Well, here's an example. Back in the day, this was over 10 years ago, there was a fellow by the name of Ergen Kanner.

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And he succumbed to this feeling of insufficiency that exists in evangelicalism, at least the first one.

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And that is that feeling that if you don't have one of those spectacular personal testimonies, that somehow your

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Christianity isn't compelling enough for other people to take you seriously as it relates to talking about Jesus.

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Let me explain. In evangelicalism, like the best kind of testimony that you can have is like, yeah,

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I grew up in a gang -banging family, I entered the mafia, was selling drugs, and then

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I met Jesus, and now I've left that all behind. And everyone goes, ooh, ah, right? But then if you say, well, my experience is kind of like, you know,

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I was raised in a really good family and baptized as a kid, and I've always been a Christian, and I went to college and didn't do drugs, and waited to have sex until I was married, and now

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I'm happily married, and we're all going to church, and there's been no serious things like that in my life.

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And people go, hmm, are you really saved? And so because of this, because of this, there's this pressure to enhance, to bolster, to fudge a little bit on the details regarding your personal testimony.

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And back in the day, we came up with a false product, and the false product, we called it, Ergen Kanner's Testimony Enhancement Spray.

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And the reason why we came up with this is because Ergen Kanner, this guy legitimately flat -out made up his personal testimony.

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This guy's personal testimony was as bland and vanilla as anyone else's. His parents were basically immigrants from Switzerland.

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They moved to Ohio. He went to high school in Ohio, did all the normal things that people do.

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Of course, he's of Arab descent, but the way he told the story after 9 -11 is that he was raised in a very strict

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Muslim family, and that he was radicalized by terrorists, and was considering strapping a bomb to himself and blowing up people.

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Nothing could be further from the truth. That was completely false, and people did their work and found out that that's not true.

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And as a result of it, Ergen Kanner experienced a lot of public shaming. Now another pressure that is on evangelicals, where you feel insufficient, is because they hold out this idea that Israel is somehow special in God's eyes.

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That we Christians, yeah, we are forgiven by Jesus, but we're not as special as the special, special people who happen to be genetically

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Jewish. And as a result of it, you always have this sense of reading the Bible and going, man, you know,

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I feel like I've kind of lost the genetic lottery because I have no

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Jewishness in me. I have no Jewish blood at all. And when you listen to the beginning of our epistle text, talking about the

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Israelites, to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises.

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To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the

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Christ or the Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever, amen. You sit there and go, man,

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I feel like I've just missed all of this because I look at my DNA results from Ancestry .com,

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and it says I'm really Irish, I'm really Welsh, I'm also part German and something else and Polish, and any scant traces of Jewish blood in me?

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Not at all. And I sit there and go, man, you know, I kind of missed out. Now, when this pressure comes to bear, it leads people to fudge regarding their own ancestry.

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A good example of this is a fellow who goes by the name of Jacob Prash. Jacob is not his name.

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His actual birth name, given to him by his parents, is James Aloysius Prash.

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James Aloysius Prash comes from Irish stock, all right?

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That's his ancestry. His mom, full Irish Catholic. His dad,

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Irish Catholic too. But see, he figured out that in evangelicalism, if he fudged things a little bit, he can actually get some, like, brownie points that he never earned.

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And so he used to tell the tale that his dad was actually a lapsed Jew and that he encouraged his son to go to the

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Jewish community center, and so he was raised in the Catholic church and the Jewish community center, and he claims that he has all this

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Jewish blood. Well, it turns out his own family paid a genealogist to actually do one of those full -blown ancestry .com

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reports on his family, and you know what? He doesn't have a drop of Jewish blood in him.

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In fact, he's so Irish that, you know, we can dance a jig talking about how

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Irish he is, but the one thing he isn't is Jewish. In fact, he's as Jewish as the

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Lucky Charms leprechaun, right? Are we having a problem?

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I'm good? Okay, just check, just checking in here because I'm seeing heads looking at the technology center as if there's some kind of major problem.

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I'll try not to draw too much attention to it. But like I said, James Prash is as Jewish as the

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Lucky Charms leprechaun, and that being the case, you'll note that he's also been shamed for enhancing things, but you'll note the pressure in evangelicalism is to enhance things like this because of their misreading of scripture.

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That being the case, I think we should consider the longer reading of our epistle text today and then see if we can tie it into our gospel text, and I'll even throw in the

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Old Testament text as a bonus. I won't even charge you extra for that, right? So here's what it says in the longer reading of our text.

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It's not as though the Word of God has failed. And then listen to what the Apostle Paul writes.

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For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Let that sentence roll around in your mind for a minute.

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Not all who belong to Israel are of Israel or belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring.

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And then he says this, through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

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Now, here's where we're going to have to do a little pause and kind of think this out a second here. If we were to travel to Jerusalem today, have you guys noticed that there seems to be like hostility between Jews and Muslims in Israel today, right?

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Have you noticed that, right? And if you were to sit down with a Muslim and say, so what's the beef? What's your beef with the

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Jews? And you were to ask the same question to the Jews, one of the things that would come up in the list of things that they would air as grievances against the other, the

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Muslims would say, we Muslims are the true descendants of Abraham. We are the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael.

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Now, are they genetically related to Abraham through Ishmael? Probably a good number of them are.

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That's not an incorrect argument. So then you ask the

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Jew, well, what's the beef? Well, we're the ones who are the descendants of Noah because we are the ones who are descended from Isaac.

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Ah, okay. So you're descended from Isaac. And we look at our biblical text here and it would tend to lend the idea that, well, the

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Jews have the better claim, right? You read the rest of the Bible, the Jews have the better claim. But now the

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Christians come along and we have to, according to this text, sit them both down and say,

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I've got really bad news for you. And that is that neither of you are actually the children of Abraham.

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Now, you may be genetically related to him, all well and good, but that is not the thing that matters.

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Instead, the idea here is this, is that there is a reason why those who are the children of Abraham are counted as children of Abraham through Isaac because Isaac was the son of the promise.

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You and I are children of the promise as well. In fact, if we were to swing on over to the book of Galatians chapter four,

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Paul writing in verse 21 to the Judaizers in Galatia, he says, tell me, you who desire to be under the

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Torah, do you not listen to the Torah? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman.

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Now, note here, if you know the book of Genesis, okay, we can all sit there and go, we know exactly who was the son of the free woman and we know who was the son of the slave woman, right?

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Hagar is the slave. She bears Ishmael. Sarah is the one who bears Isaac. But watch what

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God the Holy Spirit does through the apostle Paul in explaining to us what this all means. The son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh.

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Indeed, he was. While the son of the free woman was born through promise.

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Now, this may be interpreted allegorically. And note where Paul goes here. He doesn't sit there and say the children of the slave woman are the

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Muslims. They didn't even exist at the time. Watch where he goes with this. Now, this may be interpreted allegorically.

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These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai. What covenant was established at Mount Sinai?

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Mosaic covenant, right? So watch where he goes with this. And the people of that covenant, they're bearing children for slavery.

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And she is Hagar. Now, Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. And she corresponds to the present

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Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. Say what?

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So note what Paul does here. Every single genetic descendant of Abraham who denies that Jesus is the

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Messiah. Refuse to repent of their sins and call out to the son of David to have mercy on them.

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They are not counted as children of according to Isaac. They are counted as children of Hagar.

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Work that out in your mind and sit there and go, oh boy, this is way more complicated than I ever thought.

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It is, right? So Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem.

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She is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free. And she is our mother talking to Christians.

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For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear. Break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor.

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For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.

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Now you brothers, like Isaac, you are children of promise.

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And all of this has to do with the fact that we have been, well, promised a few things because of the gospel.

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Number one, the forgiveness of all of our sins. And you'll note in our congregation here and those of you joining us online, we have a multi -ethnic group, right?

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We have folks from different far -flung portions of planet Earth, including Norway.

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We always have to give honorable mention to Norway and Congs of Angleutheran Church. And we have

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Swedes and we have Germans and we have folks of Chinese descent. We have folks of African descent joining us online and in other places.

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So you get this idea here. But here's the idea. And that is that despite all of that, one of the things that we have been promised is though we are

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Gentiles reading on in Romans chapter 10 and 11, we find out that we

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Gentiles have been grafted into Israel. And the analogy that is given is wild olive branches grafted into the cultivated olive tree.

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So each and every one of us, we truly are now counted as descendants of Abraham.

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That's what the scripture says. So listen again to what Paul writes. It's not as though the word of God has failed.

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Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but it is through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

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This means it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God.

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Your DNA cannot save you. It is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise.

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They are counted as offspring for this is what the promise says. About this time next year,

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I will return and Sarah shall have a son. And not only so, but also when Rebecca had conceived children by one man, our forefather

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Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls.

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She was told the older will serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob I loved, Esau I hated.

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So you'll note that each and every one of us, when we were brought to the waters of baptism, we were united with Christ in his death and his resurrection.

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We were given the gift of faith. And that faith clings to the promises of the forgiveness of sins because Jesus has borne your sins and mine on the cross.

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So that being the case, we being forgiven, we now are the children of Abraham.

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And it's not the genetic Jews who have the blessings and curses. It is we who have the blessings because of the gospel.

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We are the ones who are the descendants of Abraham through promise like Isaac.

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That being the case, we should consider then our gospel text. And in our gospel text, something important is happening.

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And since all of us have been grafted into Israel, we better start doing our homework and get a good grasp on the

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Old Testament. You might want to learn a few Hebrew words and stuff like this, because that's just being polite now that you're part of the family, right?

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So when we look at our gospel text, we find this account of Jesus who, what does he do?

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He, well, feeds a multitude of people with just a scant amount of food.

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He multiplies food and everybody has a big meal, a crowd of people, 5 ,000 men and then there were women and children.

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Kind of do the math on that. There were 5 ,000 men. There was probably a good 5 ,000 or more women.

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And then children were also present. And back in the day, they didn't have birth control. So families were a little larger than they were today.

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So how many people do you think were there? Good 15, 20 ,000 people.

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And where exactly were they? The text actually says it very clearly. It says that they were in a desolate place.

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The disciples came up to Jesus after this crowd had listened to Jesus, been healed by Jesus, and he was teaching them.

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And they said, this is a desolate place. The day is now over. Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.

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And Jesus said, you need not go away. You give them something to eat. They said to him, well, we only have five loaves here and two fish.

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And he said, bring them here to me. He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Kind of like that Psalm, Psalm 23, he makes me lie down in green pastures.

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Jesus truly is the good shepherd. He has them lie down on the green grass. And he takes the five loaves and two fishes.

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He looks up to heaven, said a blessing. And then he broke the loaves, gave it to the disciples. And the disciples gave it to the crowds.

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And they all ate and they were satisfied. They took up the 12 baskets full of broken pieces that were left over.

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And Matthew doesn't give us the what happened next.

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But John does. In the gospel of John chapter 6, we legitimately hear what happens after all of the food and the leftovers are put together in the doggy bags.

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And here's what it says in verse 14. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, this is indeed the prophet who has come into the world.

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How? Why this miracle? Why does this miracle make them realize who

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Jesus is? By the way, they're not wrong. What they are wrong is that they were at this point about ready to take

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Jesus and march him against his will to Jerusalem and force him to become the king of Israel.

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That's not going to happen because he's not here to be a bread king. But why is this important?

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Because this invokes the Exodus. The Exodus. You think all the way back there. You remember the details.

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Here's a quick summary of it. The book of Exodus opens with the children of Israel in Egypt. They have been enslaved by the guy who wears the snake hat.

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Pharaoh. Right? And the reason I say that is because he looks exactly like somebody who's wearing a snake hat because that's the headdress for pharaohs.

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He has enslaved these people. He's had them murder their own children. He's oppressed them.

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And God remembers his promises. Sends a deliverer, Moses. Ten plagues resulting in the final plague, the plague of the

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Passover where the destroyer comes through Egypt. And everybody who has the blood of the lamb over their doorpost is saved.

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Everybody who doesn't have the blood of the lamb over their doorpost, their firstborn, Starting to sound familiar, right?

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Blood of the lamb. And you'll note then that the story of the Exodus is your story and mine.

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This is our history. And not only is it our history because we've been grafted into Israel, this is our present day because the whole point of the

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Exodus is to point us to the reality that we find ourselves in. When you were born and conceived, you were born dead in trespasses and sins under the dominion of darkness.

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Satan makes Pharaoh look like a schoolgirl and he's far worse of a tyrant. And God through mighty acts of judgment upon Christ and him bleeding and dying for your sins has set you free, has washed you in the red sea of baptism.

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And now you'll know, what are we doing week after week, day after day? We're wandering through this life.

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Is this the place where we can put down a foundation and build a home and live forever?

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No, we're just sojourning here. The wilderness is the world that we find ourselves in.

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The promised land is the new heaven and earth which Christ says that he will bring with us. He will bring with him when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

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He has given us all of this. So when we see this account, we must read it through that Jewish lens and see it for what it is.

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A food miracle where God feeds his multitude in the wilderness with miraculous food.

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And is that not what God does for us today? Today we will eat the body and blood of Christ given and shed for the forgiveness of our sins.

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In fact, Jesus goes on in John 6 to make it very clear that he is the true bread of God that comes down from heaven and that we are to feast upon him.

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And you can't make these connections until you embrace the fact that you are all now

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Israelites. I remember years ago I preached a similar message and Mike DeGraw was in this congregation.

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And so as soon as I said that, congratulations, you are all Israelites, he blurted out in church, mazel tov, which

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I think is kind of appropriate. Indeed, but we shouldn't break out and sing

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Hava Nagila. That's a whole other thing. But all of that being said, we are truly grafted into Christ. He is the one who feeds us with his body and blood.

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He feeds us today. This is why our sermon hymn was talking about the bread of heaven, and it's a communion hymn.

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So brothers and sisters, as we consider all of this, note then that it is true that you and I are insufficient.

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And it doesn't matter if you have a spectacular, gory story of how you went from living like a pagan outlaw to being a

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Christian. It doesn't matter if your testimony is one of just bland ordinariness growing up in church all your life and never having anything super exciting happen along those lines.

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We have all been made sufficient by Christ. And we don't need to pretend to be

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Israelites. Even though we are not genetically Israelites, we have been grafted into Israel. This is our history.

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This is our present reality. And all of this by the Jesus who feeds us with his body and blood and miraculously sustains us in our wilderness while we are heading towards the real promised land.

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Again, that promised new heaven and new earth when he returns. So brothers and sisters, note that you are made sufficient in Christ.

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You need not feel like you have anything missing. And you need not look at people who are genetically Jewish and sit there and go, oh, if only.

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You've all already been adopted into the family. So as Mikey said, mazel tov. In the name of Jesus.