Moses and The Ark

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. A reading from Exodus chapters 1 and 2.

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Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people,

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Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.

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Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities

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Pithom and Ramesses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad.

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And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel, so they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field.

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In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Then the king of Egypt said to the

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Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah, and the other Puah, When you serve as midwife to the

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Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.

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But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.

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So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this?

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And let the male children live. The midwives said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the

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Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very strong.

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And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people,

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Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.

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Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

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When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch.

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She put the child in and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank, and his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him.

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Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river.

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She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying.

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She took pity on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall

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I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go.

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So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.

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So the woman took the child and nursed him, and when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.

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She named him Moses because, she said, I drew him out of the water.

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One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an

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Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that to see no one.

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He struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two

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Hebrews were struggling together, and he said to the man in the wrong, why do you strike your companion?

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He answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? So then

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Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

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Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.

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The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock.

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When they came home to their father, Ruel, he said, how is it that you have come home so soon today?

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They said, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.

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He said to his daughters, then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him that he may eat.

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And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She gave birth to a son, and he called his name

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Gershom. For he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.

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Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham and with Isaac and with Jacob.

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And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. Lord, have mercy on us.

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Thanks be to God. In the name of Jesus. Amen. During those many days, the king of Egypt died, the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery, cried out for help.

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Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

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God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. Now, it's really easy for us, I mean, we're all kind of Europeans here.

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It's easy for us to sit there and go, well, that's their story, right? Got some Norwegians and some, well, there's a

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German here, too. And we got some people who are Welsh and others who are

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Celtic, right? It's easy for us to say, that's their story. But let me remind you that all of us

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European Gentiles, we have been grafted into Israel. This is our story. We have been grafted into this story.

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And this story of the Exodus is the grand picture, the big narrative in type and shadow of our story, of our

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Exodus, our being born in slavery, us being rescued by the mighty hand of God, and us being led by the hand by God to the real promised land, the new earth.

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That's really what the Exodus is about. It shows us in type and shadow the picture that we find ourselves in.

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May I remind you that each of us truly were born in slavery. Jesus says in the Gospel of John chapter 8, he said to the

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Jews who had believed in him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. You'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

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And the unbelieving Jews, hearing Jesus talk like this, they were always really quick to respond, kind of sharply.

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They said, we're offspring of Abraham. We've never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say that you'll become free?

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And so Jesus said, amen, amen. I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.

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The slave does not remain forever, doesn't remain in the house forever. The son remains. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

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And so you can see here, the story of the Exodus in type and shadow, it points us again to our story.

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And so we'll note that if you were to kind of pick the parts and the pieces here, there's some interesting things going on.

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If you remember back to your class that you had to take, Western Civilization. Maybe you had to take it in eighth grade, or I think we took it in ninth.

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And we learned about Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent. Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers.

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And what was the notable thing about the, well, the monarchs that lived during that time?

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Well, they were all considered gods on Earth, right? And what a terrible god Pharaoh made.

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And he's kind of a stand -in for the devil. And he's just as, he's a liar, he's murderous, he has no mercy.

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Yeah, just like the devil. And so the children of Israel, they find themselves under the burden of slavery, under a heavy, heavy yoke, one that they cannot rescue themselves from.

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But there was promises that were given to the people of Israel, promises that were given long before they were enslaved, that they would eventually be taken out.

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God let them know what was gonna happen ahead of time, and that he would remember them, and that he would remember his covenant, and that he would come to save them.

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And so at this time, then, we learn about a man who had a wife. He was from the tribe of Levi, Moses is a

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Levi. She conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

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And remember, Moses is born in slavery just like everybody else at this time.

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And so when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a, and I know the

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ESV says basket, but the Hebrew says ark. It really does, it says ark.

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She took for him an ark made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and with pitch.

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This sounds a lot like Noah's ark. It's the same word, it's the same concept. And so you're gonna note here, here we've got a water salvation.

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And Moses, just like Noah, is saved through water in an ark.

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But notice what ends up happening here. So she put the child in its place and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank.

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The sister stood a distance to know what would be done to him. So now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river.

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And while her young woman walked beside the river, she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it.

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And when she opened it, she saw the child and behold, the baby was crying and she took pity on him.

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Isn't it that God takes pity on us as well? And then the most amazing thing happens. You can kind of think of it this way.

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Moses has now been baptized. He's now died. He's now risen again.

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And let me ask you this, according to the scriptures, if we have died and risen again, are we still slaves?

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No, we're not. And so you're going to note here, Moses is the first guy to be set free from slavery via baptism.

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A water rescue, if you would. And you'll note that this royal princess takes pity on him in much the same way

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God takes pity on us. She said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. So his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall

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I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go.

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So the girl went and called the child's mother. Can you believe this? She sends her son into the

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Nile in an ark. And not only is he saved, not only is he saved from slavery, but his own mother gets to be the one who raises him.

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Isn't that the way it is with all of our children when we baptize them? They are baptized into Christ's death and his resurrection.

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You were baptized into Christ's death and his resurrection. You were placed into the ark of Jesus's body.

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And you were also raised from the dead because God took pity on you. And what did

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God then do? He then handed you back to your parents and said, you go ahead and raise them. You go ahead and take care of them.

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It's the same picture. It's beautiful when you kind of consider the implications of it. So she went and Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away.

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Nurse him for me and I'll give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him, her own son.

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And when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.

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And so she named him Moshe because she said, I drew him out of the water.

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I wonder, shouldn't we all be considered just like that, Moses? We've been drawn out of the water too.

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Isn't that interesting? Out of the water that flowed from Christ's side, the water mixed with the blood.

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And oh yeah, we'll get to that miracle where water and blood kind of come together in the Nile, but that's for another week.

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And so we'll note here that Moses set free from slavery, now grows up in royalty.

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But he, well, decided that he was going to have mercy on his own people and thought maybe the best way to free them was to make sure that Egyptians died.

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That's not the way it goes when it comes to setting people free. And so his plot didn't work out very well and Moses ended up having to flee

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Egypt. And of course, for a long, long time then, his, well, his ugly mug was on every post office in Egypt.

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I always like to point that out. That every Saturday night on Egypt's Most Wanted, they would have you seen this man, he's on the run.

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But again, we note here that in the midst of all of this, God has had mercy on us. So as we look at this first part of Exodus, consider then the fact that we have so much in common with Moses.

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So much in common. Romans chapter 6 kind of puts it this way.

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So what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound?

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Remember what Christ said, the one who practices sin is a slave to sin. Each and every one of us were born enslaved to sin, death, and the devil.

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So because Christ has died for us, because we are saved by grace through faith, should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?

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Well, no. How can we who died still live in it? Do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ?

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Christ is our ark. You were baptized into his death. We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death.

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In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

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For if we've been united with him in a death like his, and we have, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his, and we most certainly will.

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We know that our old self was crucified with Christ in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be, and here's the phrase, enslaved to sin.

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So the story of Moses and that basket which is actually an ark, and him being drawn out of the water and saved, dying and rising again and no longer being a slave, it just is a picture of our own baptisms.

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And how because we have been drawn out of the water by Christ, we are no longer enslaved to sin.

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For one who has died has been set free from sin. So if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

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We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin.

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Once for all the life he lives, he lives to God. So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.

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So let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

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For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law, but you are under grace.

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So what then, are we to sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? No, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, over obedience, which leads to life and righteousness.

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But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.

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And having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.

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And so you're gonna note here that this penitential season, as we reflect on these themes, this wonderful idea that in our baptisms, we have been set free from slavery in the same way that Moses had been set free from slavery, then note then that walking out our

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Christian life is not a matter of striving, it's a matter of believing. Believing that you truly are already free, and acting accordingly.

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And if we should sin, we have an advocate with the Father, the same one who is our ark of our salvation, he'll forgive us.

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So let us daily return to our baptisms and our identity in Christ and know that we have already been set free.

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We are not slaves to sin, to death, or the devil, and let us then walk defiantly, walk defiantly in freedom.

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The freedom of the light that comes as a result of that fact that we have already been set free. So repent of your sins, it's slavery.

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Be forgiven, walk in that freedom, because you, like Moses, have been drawn out of the water.

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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 Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support.

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