The Creator Joins His Creation

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. John, chapter 1, verses 1 to 14.

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In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. And without Him was not anything made that was made.

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In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness.

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The darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was

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John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him.

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He was not the light, but He came to bear witness about the light. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

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He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know

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Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him, but to all who did receive

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Him. Who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God. Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory.

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Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

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In the name of Jesus. Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free.

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In fact, the deep, deep love of Jesus is immeasurable. And our text tonight, and the concept we're looking at, really helps bear this out.

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Now, it says in the book of Genesis, chapter 1, starting at verse 1,

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

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The earth was without form, and void and darkness was over the face of the deep. And see, even there, in Genesis, we begin to see one of the major themes of Scripture, and it's a wonderful theme.

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It's the theme of darkness and light. And so there's God in the darkness, over the

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Tohu Abohu, in the Hebrew. Darkness was over the face of the deep, and the

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Spirit of God was brooding like a, well, like a mother hen over the face of the waters.

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And there's the idea. And God, by the way, at this point, calls out, let there be light, and there was light.

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God saw that the light was good, and then God separated the light and the darkness. God called the light day, the darkness he called night, and there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.

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There's the account, the first day of creation, darkness and light. And yet, in our

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Gospel text tonight, we hear these words, The true light which gives light to everyone, that's

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Jesus, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him.

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That's right. He made us. We're his creation. And if you think about it, what are we that God would be mindful of us?

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Consider the vast expanse of the universe itself, how many billions of light years it is to travel across one side of the universe to the other.

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And then when you see on the internet the photographs from the Hubble telescope of all these galaxies and nebulae and all the amazing things out there in the heavens.

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And on a good, clear winter night, when the moon is not out, you go outside here, and it seems like you can just see nothing but star after star after star as the cool, cold, fresh wind blows on your face, and you take it all in.

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And you realize just how small and insignificant we must be.

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And yet, this God, this powerful God, so powerful, that when he speaks, things happen.

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The one who said, let there be light, and there was light.

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I think it's fascinating that when you read the atheists on this text, they always sit there and say, see, God doesn't know what he's doing, because he said, let there be light, but he didn't even create the sun until like three days later.

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Let me cross -reference that for you from John, the true light which gives light to everyone, that's

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Jesus. He was coming into the world. You see, when God said, let there be light, it's like Jesus said, oh, oh, wait, hang on a second.

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And there was light. And he sat there and go, are you sure? Well, I would cross -reference the

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Mount of Transfiguration. Jesus seems to have a tendency to shine. In fact, I think there's a song about it.

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Shine, Jesus, shine. Fits in here, right? So you'll notice then that this amazing, powerful

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God, who really has all of these stars named, names all of the galaxies, has every one of them numbered, not one of them is missing.

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He is the one who loves us so much that he decides to get into the muck and the mire of the curse that we find ourselves in because we sided with darkness rather than light.

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By listening to the serpent and disobeying God, we brought darkness upon ourselves.

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And so now our lives are a mix, a mix between good and evil, blessings and curses.

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And you never can tell what's just around the corner. Maybe what's around the corner is something amazing, something wonderful, something you never could have imagined.

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But what could also be around the corner is something so awful, filled with so much suffering, that it makes you realize that we are mortal and that we are sinful and in need of a

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Savior. And God, knowing that we are languishing under the curse, this great and powerful

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God, who is light and in whom there is no darkness, he joins us in our creation for our sake.

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And so we hear again these amazing words from our gospel text. In the beginning was the

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Word, and that's Jesus. And the Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, and all things were made through him.

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And without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

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Indeed, it cannot. And so here in this great mystery of the

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God who is there in the beginning, the God who spoke everything into existence, the

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God who said, let there be light, and Christ shined in the darkness, this same

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God, not standing aloof from his creation and just basically saying, you rebelled against me?

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Well, to hell with you. You listened to the devil, sided with him?

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Well, you can join him in the lake of fire. No, for our sake, because of his, well, how does the song say it again?

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Deep, deep love. Because of his deep, deep love for us, he is born of the

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Virgin Mary. He suffers under Pontius Pilate. He joins his creation.

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The Creator steps in to creation. It seems like an oxymoron.

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It doesn't even seem possible. How does the Creator become creation?

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How does the uncaused one, the one who has no beginning, has no end?

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How does he then have a beginning? Time and space has a beginning.

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We have a beginning. But the beginningless one now has a beginning.

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The one who has no mother now has a mommy for us. It's amazing when you think about it and consider it.

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But we'll play with the text a little bit here, because the text is over and again playing on this theme of light.

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The true light which gives light to everyone is coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

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He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. Philippians describes it this way in chapter 2.

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Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the very nature of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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Instead, he emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant. The king becoming a servant.

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Being born in the likeness of men, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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It just seems so amazingly, well, unfathomable.

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How do you measure such love that God would go from the highest high place that there ever is or ever will be, his glorious throne, to the manger in Bethlehem.

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From there to the cross on Golgotha. It doesn't seem possible and yet there it is, this complete strange reversal, the paradox of God.

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And so, because of his deep, deep love for us, he becomes obedient to the point of death on a cross.

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And in another text that kind of begins Jesus' sufferings, we read in Luke chapter 22, here's what it says starting at verse 47.

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While Jesus was in a garden, similar to a garden like in Eden, think of it that way.

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While he was still speaking, there came a crowd and the man called

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Judas, one of the 12, was leading them. He drew near to Jesus to kiss him.

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But Jesus said to him, Judas, would you betray the son of man with a kiss? And when those who were around him saw what would follow, they said,

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Lord, what shall we strike? Shall we strike with a sword? And one of them struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his right ear.

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But Jesus said, no more of this. He touched his ear and he healed him. Then Jesus said to the chief priests and the officers of the temple and the elders who had come out against him, have you come out as against a robber with swords and clubs?

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When I was with you, day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour and the power of darkness.

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And the man called Judas, one of the 12, was leading them. The power of darkness.

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You see, scripture then describes the light who has come into the world. He submits himself to the power of darkness because of his deep, deep love for us.

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You see, it's so strange if you think about it. I mean, how many of you really like those movies where the good guy dies?

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Do any of you like those movies? Some of them are okay and some of them are pretty decent. I remember years and years and years ago, my son wanted to watch

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Gladiator. I had to wait for him to get old enough to be able to watch that. And then I told him

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I would only let him watch it if I was watching it with him. So the two of us had a man day together and we watched

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Gladiator. And the very end of the movie, the hero dies.

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Maximus dies. And there's my son just coming unglued. He said, dad, dad,

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Maximus died. It's not supposed to end this way, dad. And I said, yeah,

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I know. It's kind of awful. He won by losing or in winning he lost.

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It's a lot like Jesus. And see, that's the deep, deep love of Jesus.

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He goes from the throne of God to the manger of Bethlehem. And now literally without any resistance at all, let the power of darkness have its way with him.

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And he does this for us. The ultimate good guy.

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Dies. And if you think about it, you think, well, the bad guy is

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Judas. At least it's not me. Well, don't think that Judas doesn't in many ways apply to us.

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In many ways he does. Now, granted, none of us have betrayed Jesus with a kiss. But in reality, each of us was born dead in trespasses and sins under the dominion of darkness.

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And each and every one of us in the sins that we commit daily show that we do not love

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God with our whole heart. And we still continue to betray Jesus in our idolatries, in our, well, laziness and inattentiveness to hear the word of God, in our not keeping the

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Lord's day holy, or in our insubordination against our parents or our bosses.

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And then you could talk about our murders, our adulteries, our covenants, our lies, our thefts, all of the different ways in which we betray

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Jesus by not keeping his law, by not doing his will, but instead going after what our sinful desires really want.

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These are the ways in which we betray Jesus. And see, this is why

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Peter in Acts 3, when he's preaching to the crowd in Jerusalem, well after the day of Pentecost, well after the day of Pentecost, Peter takes his bony apostolic finger and he points it at the crowd that he is preaching to.

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And he says to them, you denied the holy and the righteous one.

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You asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the author of life.

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I seriously doubt there were many people in that crowd that day who were physically there when

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Jesus was on trial, yelling crucify him. And yet Peter, by holding them culpable for murdering the author of life, which again is a paradox if you think about it, the author of life murdered?

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It's all over scripture when you start to look for these things. The author of life is murdered, and we are the ones who, like Judas, are the ones responsible for this murder.

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And if you think, well no, I'm a Christian. I'm like Peter. I would have tried to stop it.

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I would have you note that Peter's attempt to step in and solve the problem that only

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God can solve led to him being rebuked by Jesus. Enough of this.

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And I'm pretty sure that cutting off the ear of Malchus was not considered by Christ to be a way of loving his neighbor.

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So whether you're Peter or Judas, you're guilty in this thing. But you're not

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Peter, and you're not Judas. You know your name. We all are guilty in our own ways, and we're all guilty of murdering the author of life.

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But 2 Corinthians says this, for our sake God made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin.

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Another paradox if you think about it, the sinless one became the sinner, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

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Again, here the words of our gospel text, the true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. And so Colossians, putting a fine point then on this deep, deep love of Jesus, says this in Colossians 1 -12.

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So we give thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

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There's that light again. Light, darkness. You see, God the Father, he's qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, in the light of Christ.

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Because he has delivered us from the dominion of darkness, and he has transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved

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Son, in whom we have, and here are the important words, redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

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What an amazing thing. And so I find it fascinating that in talking about the creator who joins his creation, the gospel of John immediately connects the creator in his creation with light and darkness, and over and again we see that wonderful theme in scripture, where in the beginning

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God separated the light and the darkness, which is what God does, always separating light from darkness.

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But God here separates light from darkness, and rather than bunching us up with those who are in darkness, he steps into our darkness in order to deliver us from the dominion of darkness, so that he can qualify us through Christ's death on the cross, so that we can share in the inheritance of the holy ones, that's what saints are, in light.

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All of this is because Christ submitted himself to the forces of darkness, let them have their way with him, spitting in his face, punching him in the face, pressing a crown of thorns into his head, scourging his back, nailing him to the tree, and leaving him there to die, which he did.

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The author of life died because of the deep, deep love of Jesus for you, so that your lawless, sinful deeds, my lawless, sinful deeds, could be forgiven, absolved, and pardoned, so that we would no longer have to be under the power of darkness, but would be set free to walk in the light.

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And so Jesus will have the last words in our sermon tonight, when he said, I am the light of the world.

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Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life, which is a very polite way of saying they will have him, because Jesus is the light of life, and when you consider his marvelous deeds, not only as creator, that's amazing enough, but when you consider his deeds as our savior, it shows his great love for us, which is what scripture says.

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God demonstrates his love for us, and that while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for our sins. So whoever follows Jesus will no longer walk in darkness, but they will have

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Jesus, who is the light of life, the creator, who joined his creation because of his deep, deep love for those who are even his enemies.

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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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