The Signs of the New Covenant

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 13, verses 1 -17 and 31 -35.

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Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world, having loved

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His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it in the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray

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Him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hand and that He had come from God and was going back to God, rose from the supper.

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He laid aside His outer garments and, taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him.

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He came to Simon Peter who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? Jesus answered him,

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What I am doing you will understand. Peter said to him, You shall never wash my feet.

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Jesus answered him, If I do not wash you, you do not have share with me.

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Simon Peter said to him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

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Jesus said to him, The one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean.

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And you are clean, but not every one of you. For he knew who was to betray him, and that was why he said,

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Not all of you are clean. When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garment and resumed his place, he said to them,

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Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am.

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If I, then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.

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For I have given you an example that you should do just as I have done to you.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

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If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. And when he had gone out,

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Jesus said, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him,

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God will also glorify him in himself and glorify him at once. Little children, yet a little while while I am with you, you will seek me, and just as I said to the

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Jews, so now I also say to you, where I am going, you cannot come. A new commandment

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I give you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. But you also are to love one another.

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By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

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This is the Gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. There stood

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Moses in Pharaoh's court, sent by God, commissioned at the burning bush.

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And he stood in Pharaoh's court, and he said these words, Yahweh says, let my people go.

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Pharaoh says, who is this Yahweh that I should obey him?

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And thus began the ultimate showdown. The showdown between a false god king, a false god king who had enslaved

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God's people. Held them in bondage for 400 years.

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And so God, looking down on the misery of his people in slavery, had compassion on them.

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And he remembered his promise. His promise to set them free.

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And see, here's the fun part. This isn't a story about them.

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This is a story about you. And about me. Because each and every one of us, we were born under the dominion of darkness.

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A false god king had exalted himself and enslaved humanity by convincing our first parents to break covenant with God.

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And now in the Passover, this amazing feast where a sacrificial lamb is slaughtered and is the substitute for all the firstborn in all of Egypt.

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And his blood is put over the doorpost. And when the destroyer comes through and he sees the blood, he passes over and moves on to the next house.

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And the inhabitants are not destroyed. We all know this story.

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But it's really important, if you think about this, because nobody talks, and I want you to think about this with me, nobody talks about the

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Passover covenant. And there's a reason why, because technically there was no covenant made in the

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Passover. Which is weird, because it has all of the hallmarks of a covenant ready to be instituted, but not.

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Now review with me kind of the basic concepts here of a covenant. I know you didn't come here for a legal briefing, and my apologies,

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I don't mean to bore you. But some of the drama is actually caught up in the legal ease of scripture, if you would.

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It's in that six point Helvetica font that you can't, I can't read it anymore. But when I was a kid, I could look at it without my glasses.

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Now I can barely see it, even with my glasses. But what is a covenant? A covenant is like a contract.

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And it says it very explicitly that Adam broke his covenant with God.

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And when you look in scripture, contracts are made where promises are given.

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Remember Abraham. God says to him, I promise you that your descendants will be as vast as the stars in heaven.

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They will be so many, they will be like the sand on the seashore. Who can count the grains?

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This is what God says to a man who is childless. And at one point,

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Abraham practically despairs, and God cuts a covenant with Abraham.

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That's the way they talked in the Old Testament. Covenants were cut. And so he cuts a covenant with Abraham.

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And, well, this is while he was still called Abram, not Abraham. And God told him, go take these animals, cut them in half.

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And what did God do to Abram while God established the Abrahamic covenant?

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What did he do? He made Abraham fall asleep because God was going to make all of the promises, and Abraham had nothing to do except for sleep.

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I mean, don't you remember when important things were happening in your house? Maybe somebody came over when you were a wee little lad or a wee little lass, right?

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Somebody came over and they were talking important words with your parents. And what did you do? Well, you wanted to be in on it, and your parents, oh, you're just in the way.

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Go to your room. And so what did you do when you were in your room? You put your ear to the door to listen in, right?

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Because we kids, we want to understand what's going on. But then eventually, the murmurs that we hear through the door kind of start to fade all together, and we hop in our bed and we go to sleep.

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And important decisions were made while we slept. And then we ask our parents what happened, and they tell us what happened.

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And we had nothing to do with it whatsoever. This is what's happening with Abram. God tells him to go to your room, oh, and fall asleep.

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Don't worry about it. We'll take care of this for you. And so Abram, he went to sleep, and God promised him on a solemn oath that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through the seed of Abraham.

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And what's very interesting is that Scripture skips a chapter before we learn the sign of the covenant.

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You see, in Scripture, if there's a covenant, there's something you can visibly look at that's a sign of the covenant.

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Think with me, if you would. Adam and Eve, Garden of Eden. God said, says of Adam that he broke his covenant.

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What do you think was the sign of God's covenant with Adam and Eve? Think tree.

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Think tree of knowledge of good and evil. The tree itself was the sign of the covenant. What was the sign of the covenant that God made with Abraham?

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Answer, circumcision. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant.

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And it was meant that all of Abram's descendants who were male on the eighth day, oh, man, is that important stuff.

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On the eighth day, they were circumcised. Now, keep in mind,

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God knows what He's doing. He's made us. And so He specifically makes it so these little boys do not have that little procedure done on them until they are eight days old.

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And the reason why is quite simple. Do it to a child who's six days old, and he has no vitamin

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K in his system, and he'll bleed out. But on the eighth day, the eighth day, hmm, how many days did it take

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God to make the heavens and the earth? Six, and He rested on the seventh.

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What's this eighth day stuff? Answer, eighth day is the beginning of the new creation, if you would.

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Think about that. Jesus goes into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, first day of the week, and He's crucified on Friday, and on the third day rises again.

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And you can think of Jesus' resurrection on Sunday as the eighth day.

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Start to put it all together. So, the sign of the

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Abrahamic covenant is circumcision. And the idea is this, is that when a young lad sees the circumcision, he remembers the promises of God because it was all part of a covenant.

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But most importantly, God also sees the sign of the covenant, and He remembers

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His promises to Abraham as well. It's important stuff. And then you think of the

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Mosaic covenant. There's the children of Israel camped at the base of Mount Sinai, and God enacts a covenant, the

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Mosaic covenant. And they hear the voice thundering off the flaming mountain.

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You will have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image.

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You will remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, but you will not blaspheme My name. I put those in wrongly.

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You will honor your father and mother. What is the sign of that covenant?

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Moses brought the sign down with him. It was pretty heavy.

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There were two of them. The two stone tablets. They were the sign of the covenant.

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When Noah and his family got into the ark, and the world was destroyed in a flood, and there they were in that coffin, that floating coffin, safely tucked away with all of creation, waiting for the rains to subside and the waters to recede.

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And when they get out, God makes a covenant. Remember? He makes a covenant with all of the earth.

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Not only with humans, but He also makes a covenant promising even the animals themselves, all the way down to the creepy crawly things.

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And the promise was that He would not destroy the entire earth again by a flood.

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And the sign of the covenant was what? The rainbow.

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And so now, when we see the rainbow, we say, look, Mom, there's that promise that God will never destroy the entire earth by a flood.

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Very good. You get to go to the front of the Sunday school class. But who also sees this sign?

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God does. And when God sees it, the text specifically says,

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He sees it, and He remembers His promises. But here, this

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Maundy Thursday, as we consider the Passover, it has all of the fixings of a covenant.

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It even has a sign. But yet, nobody talks about the

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Passover covenant. And there's a reason why. It's because everything was laid out, if you will pardon the pun, the table was set.

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We were waiting for the one to show up who would make the covenant with that table.

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And it's Christ. Let's take a look back at Exodus 12. Verse 1.

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Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be for you the beginning of months.

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It's always fascinated me that, well, Jews don't celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year, at the time of the

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Passover. That's way later. But here, God says, this is going to be the first month of the year for you.

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And yet, Jews don't celebrate New Years with Passover. Keep that in mind. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household, and if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons.

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Now, keep in mind, this is the month in the Hebrew calendar of Nisan. And he says, on day ten, you take your lamb.

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Day ten. What day is the lamb sacrificed? Fourteen.

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So for four days, you're going to keep this little fella. So we got him picked out. You got to have him picked out on day ten.

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If a household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons.

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According to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb.

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Your lamb shall be without blemish. A male, a year old, without... I seem to know about a spotless lamb.

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Remember, how is Jesus oftentimes referred to in Scripture? What does John say about him?

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Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Or the Apostle Paul says,

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Behold, Christ, our Passover Lamb has been slain. And then, you see in the book of Revelation this wonderful vision of the

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Lamb who was slain and yet is alive. To be without blemish.

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A male, a year old. This sounds like a sacrifice. Hmm. You may take it from the sheep or the goats.

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You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

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Twilight. When is that? Three p .m.

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Three p .m. is the time of the evening sacrifice. Three p .m.

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is the time when you are to kill all their lambs at twilight. When did

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Jesus die? Three p .m. Starting to see the connections?

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There's a lot going on here. Then, they shall take some of the blood, put it on the two door posts and the lintel of the house in which they eat it.

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And it's oh so fascinating that as the blood begins to run down because of gravity, you can begin to see the outlines of a cross on each of these doors.

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They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire. So let me ask you this question.

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What are you to do with your Passover lamb? You eat it.

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This is important stuff. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts.

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You shall let none of it remain until morning. Anything that remains until the morning, you shall burn.

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In this manner, you shall eat it with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand.

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You shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. I will pass through the land of Egypt that night.

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I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast.

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And on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord.

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Now I want to remind you, Scripture is explicitly clear on this.

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Our battle is not against flesh and blood. It isn't.

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Who is our battle against? The principalities of darkness.

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And so here we see one of the themes of Christ's death sitting right here in Exodus 12.

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It is the theme known as Christus Victor. Christ the victor.

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And the idea is through His death and His resurrection, He has conquered.

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He has basically overthrown all of the principalities and authorities that have kept us in bondage and basically made a spectacle of them.

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Well, the Epistle of Colossians says, I will execute judgments.

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I am the Lord. Now watch this. The blood shall be a sign for you.

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What's the sign? The blood. The blood is the sign. Keep this in mind.

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The blood is the sign. The blood is the sign for you. On the houses where you are, when

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I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you.

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When I strike the land of Egypt, we confess in the creeds,

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I believe that Jesus Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

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We say it when we confess these creeds. When Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, will we be fine?

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Will we be just fine on that day? For those outside of Christ who persist in sin and unbelief, what will the day of judgment be like?

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The worst day of their life which kicks off the worst day of their life without end.

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And so he says, when I see the blood, I will pass over you, no plague will befall you to destroy you.

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When I strike the land of Egypt, what's the sign? The blood. Now listen to this.

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This day shall be for you a zikaron, a memorial, a remembrance day.

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This will be a memorial day. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute.

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Forever you shall keep it as a feast. And there you have it.

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We have a sacrifice. We have a sign. We have the, well, you've got to remember this.

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This is a memorial feast, if you would. It has all of the fixings of a covenant.

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And yet there's no covenant. The table's set. We have a sign.

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We have promises. We have the memorial talk and no covenant.

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And here it sits for 1 ,500 years until, well, not this night, but this night that we remember what happened on this night.

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So I go back to our epistle text. For I received from the

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Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night that he was betrayed took bread.

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What night was that? Let's look at our gospel text real quick. It helps us out here.

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Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that the hour had come to depart out of this world, now, was

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Jesus, back this up, was the Lord's Supper instituted on the day when the

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Passover lambs were sacrificed? No. This is Nisan 13.

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The sacrifice is on Nisan 14. So you'll notice that Jesus is celebrating the

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Passover one day early. One day early.

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They are celebrating the Passover together Jesus has wound the clock up just a little bit, moved things back, because he is now going to hijack everything.

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And he takes the cup of blessing. There's several cups in the liturgy.

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He takes the cup of blessing, and when he had given thanks, actually, he's taking the bread first.

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When he had given thanks, he broke it and said, listen, this is my body which is for you.

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Do this in remembrance of me. This is covenant talk.

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This is my body which is for you. Do this, and the Greek is kind of fascinating.

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It's a weird construct. Do this into the remembrance of me. Christ, our

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Passover lamb, has been slain. So, when he hands us this, and he says this is my body, what is it?

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It's his body. Then it says, in the same way he took the cup after supper, saying, and listen, this cup is the new covenant, and there it is, in my blood, covenant.

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What is Jesus doing this night? He's establishing the new covenant.

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What are the signs of this covenant? Bread, wine, if you want to be even more specific, it's the blood.

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This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it into the remembrance of me.

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And what has Jesus now done? He's established the new covenant. And let me ask you, brothers and sisters, what is the promise of the new covenant?

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Think back to Exodus 12. When the destroyer sees the blood, he will pass over.

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And brothers and sisters, tonight when we come to this feast, because this is what this is,

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I want you to think of this. This here is the blood of the

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Passover lamb. And now, rather than this being put on the doorpost of your home, this is now on your lips and on your tongue.

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And who is remembering now? God is remembering

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His promise. And so every time we have the Lord's Supper, these signs remind us of the promise of the forgiveness of our sins.

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The promise that on the last day when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, the destroyer will see the blood.

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And where will he see the blood? Right here. You think of Isaiah when he had that vision.

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He's in the temple, right? People think that Isaiah may have been a priest. And so he was performing his priestly duties.

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And then he shouts out this wonderful thing in Isaiah in the opening chapters. He says,

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I saw the Lord high and lifted up. And the train of His robe filled the temple.

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And I saw the seraphim, the burning ones, crying, Kadosh! Kadosh!

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Kadosh! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.

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And what does Isaiah say when he sees all this? Oh, woe is me! I'm undone for I'm a man of unclean lips.

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That's me. And that's you. And what happens?

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One of the seraphim goes to the altar where there's a sacrifice still roasting.

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Grabs one of the coals from the altar and takes this hot coal and touches his lips.

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And he says, This has touched your lips. Your sins are atoned for.

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Brothers and sisters, Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.

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He is roasted in the wrath of God for your sins and mine.

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And when you come to the table tonight, this, the blood, is a sign for you so that you can say,

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It has touched your lips. This is the blood of the sacrifice for the forgiveness of your sins.

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It has touched your lips. Your sins are atoned for. You will not die.

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And on that great and terrible day, should we live to see it with our own eyes without dying, or whether we return with Christ when

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He comes back, the destroyer will see this blood on your lips and pass over.

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And you will live. The Lord's Supper is that important.

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It is all wrapped up in the establishing of the new covenant.

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The table was set in Exodus 12. And then with each

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Gospel account of Christ's establishing of the Lord's Supper, Christ takes the set table and now brings into human history the new covenant.

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The promise of the forgiveness of sins. The promise of God's mercy, grace, eternal life, a new body, face -to -face relationship with God in the new heavens and the new earth.

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And all of this happened while you were still asleep, before you were even born.

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God did all of this for you without your consent, for your benefit.

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And the only thing we do, and it's not even a work, is receive it all by faith.

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So when you hear me, when it comes time for the Lord's Supper, say, do this in remembrance of me.

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Understand this is sign talk. You see bread and wine.

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God sees the body and blood of Christ broken and shed for you. He sees the sign of the covenant, of the new covenant.

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And He says to you, forgiven. You will not die.

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The destroyer will not touch you. Your sins are atoned for. The Lord's Supper is that.

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In the name of Jesus, Amen. 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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