Who Are You Going to Listen To?

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Date: Reformation Sunday Text: John 8:31-36 www.kongsvingerchurch.org

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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 in 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, the 8th chapter.
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So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
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They answered Him, We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free?
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Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
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The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Alright, here are the words of our
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Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him, If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
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So I'm going to ask you a question. Who should you be listening to? I think it was Abraham Lincoln, centuries ago, who wrote that you should not believe everything that you read on the internet.
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So I want you to keep this in mind. So the question comes down to who should you be listening to?
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Because you're going to know when it comes to religious opinions and speculations, oh the world is filled with them.
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In fact, you're probably engaged in some of that yourself. And over and again, you'll note that when we start doing that, oftentimes we find our speculations and our opinions being at odds with Christ.
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So I ask the question, who should you be listening to? Have you ever noticed that if you say something to the effect of,
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I absolutely believe that salvation is by grace through faith, apart from works, somebody sits there and goes, you know, they say something different.
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Now, I don't know who they are, okay, but always it's they, and I'm not talking about the people who have issues with gender pronouns.
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I'm talking about they, you know, them, right? Those people. They say, no, no, no, no, salvation can't be that free.
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It's got to be, you've got to do something, right? They say that you've got to make sure that you light candles, that you, well, burn incense.
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They say that you've got to make sure that you don't use contraception. Oh, and they also say that you need to pray to saints, the
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Virgin Mary, and if your house is not selling, then you buy a statue of St. Joseph and bury it in your yard and that thing will sell quick.
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That's what they say, right? My question is, when do we start listening to them, all right?
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Because Christ said, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
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And since it's Reformation Sunday, I, you know, always and again, you know, I don't knock on the pastors who want to give a history of the
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Reformation. There's some important things that happened in the Reformation, but have you noticed the Reformation continues to this day and vitally so because Christianity, the best way
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I can say it, it had a fantastic start. Did you note that on the day of Pentecost, people who didn't even know, well, how to speak
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Aramaic or Hebrew, that on the day of Pentecost, they heard the gospel in their own native languages.
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Kind of, you know, I think God wants people to hear the gospel in their own native languages. And Christianity starts off, and Paul writes in Koine Greek, there's a wonderful translation of the
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Old Testament called the Septuagint, and people are hearing the gospel, hearing that Christ has bled and died for their sins, that salvation is a gift given by God and we're not justified by our works or our obedience to God's law, and it just takes off like wildfire.
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Well, along the way, a fellow by the name of Jerome, he translated the Bible into Latin, which was a good thing because in the
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Roman Empire, guess what everybody spoke? You know, Latin, right? And so people were hearing the gospel in Latin.
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But then, well, the Roman Empire crumbled from within, and humanity was plunged into the
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Dark Ages. And you know what happened? That initial move to make sure that everybody heard the gospel in their own languages kind of came to a grinding halt as people kind of weathered the storm of the medieval period.
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And as a result of it, well, the scriptures were kind of locked up in Latin. In fact,
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I would note that it was the Roman Catholics who were the first KJV -only people, except for it wasn't the
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KJV -only, it was the Vulgate -only, all right? If it's not in the Vulgate, then it's not true, and you can't translate it into the vernacular of the common people, you know, the peasants and the unwashed masses.
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And so if you wanted to hear the Bible and actually hear the word of God, you better have some money because you're going to need to go to school, and you're going to need to learn
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Latin. You're going to have to study, and, well, the peasants didn't have the ability to pay for that.
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So the only people who can hear the Bible, the only people who can hear it at that time were the wealthy or the learned.
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And it was during that time you have this great theological creep. You know, in that period, then you have the ascendancy of indulgences, this weird belief that if you make a pilgrimage to such -and -such a castle cathedral and you view the knucklebone of St.
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Teresa that you'll get a thousand years off of purgatory, and all this weird stuff.
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Where did that come from, right? Answer, it came from our own sinful imaginations.
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That's where it came from. Coming back to the point, who are you going to be listening to? There are speculations and theological opinions aplenty, and I'm not talking about Rome anymore.
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Have you ever watched, well, Christian television, right? Send in a thousand -dollar seed offering and God's going to make you a millionaire.
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I don't think so, right? Let me put it in less flattering terms, all right?
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Everybody has religious opinions and speculations, just like everybody has a rear end, and they all smell.
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Let's make that right, okay? You get it? That's a little blunt in your face. But the point is that Christ says, if you listen to my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
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And so one of the major pillars of the Reformation, if you think about the solas of the
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Reformation, sola gratia, sola fide, sola gratia is by grace alone, sola fide, by faith alone.
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There's another one, sola scriptura, the scripture alone. It is only in the scriptures that we hear the words of Christ so that we can be his disciples.
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And so I assure you, you're not my disciples. I don't have any. If you think you're one of mine, well, just banish the thought.
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I don't have any disciples. We together are disciples of Christ, and so we're here to study his words.
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And Jesus himself, in the Great Commission, says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the
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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them all that I have commanded you. Now, how many books did
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Jesus write while he was on earth? None, zero. Well, how are we supposed to find out his words?
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Well, here's where it kind of gets fun, if you think about it. You pay attention to the biblical text, it'll walk you through this.
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So the Father sends the Son, right? That's what we hear from Jesus. Well, Jesus says to his disciples, who would become his apostles, just as the
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Father sent me, I'm sending you. And he says these words, the one who hears you, hears me.
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The one who hears me, hears the one who sent me. Ah, okay, so Jesus is apostles.
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Jesus sent them to preach Jesus' words, and you know what? They did, and they wrote it all down for us.
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It's in the scripture. So we don't need to have any religious opinions. In fact, have you noticed that on social media, there's this phenomenon, everyone's talking about Karens.
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I feel bad for anybody who has the name Karen nowadays, but Karen is this outrageous, bizarre neighbor woman who, if you put your trash can six inches onto her property line, she's gonna come and she's gonna scream in your face, you can't do that,
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I'm gonna call the association and they're gonna make you move, this weird stuff like this, right?
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But when it comes to Christianity, every one of us have a
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Karen inside of us, that's our own sinful nature. And there's our Karen inside of us screaming, it can't be free, you have to do something, come on,
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I don't want my mind to have to be conformed to his words, I just need a little bit of my own ideas on top of that.
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Maybe we should make TikTok videos about our own inner Karens. But the problem is, we need to silence that woman, we need to, my inner woman, yeah,
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I need to silence her, yeah, yeah, just kind of work through the implications of that, you betcha, amen, right?
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So with that, we recognize then, Christ's words, if you abide in my words, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
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And it's in that regard then, we consider then the words of the apostle Paul in our epistle text.
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And here's the point I would like to kind of make ahead of time, have you ever told somebody that women can't be pastors?
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And the person says to you, yeah, well, that's what the apostle Paul wrote, and well, we don't really listen to the apostle
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Paul, because everybody knows that the apostle Paul hated women. Really?
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So you're going to slander the man, right? Now, we're going to note something here, Paul is an apostle of Jesus Christ.
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He was commissioned, set aside for this apostolic ministry, he's the apostle abnormally born.
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And again, I'm not a rocket surgeon, but I would note this, when it comes to whether or not Paul's words are scripture,
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I don't think I'm smarter than Peter. The reason why I say that is because Peter's that guy who actually hung out with Jesus, and he was restored into the apostolic ministry by Jesus himself.
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And in 2 Peter chapter 3, you can look this up, the apostle Peter says that Paul's writings are scripture.
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That's what he says. So you can sit there and you can slander Paul all you want, I'm still going to listen to him because I'm not going to listen to your
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Karen. Your Karen is out of line here saying, the apostle Paul, he was just a woman hater.
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No, he wasn't. He was an apostle of Jesus Christ. And he's the one who tells us in our epistle text, that wonderful good news that we are saved by grace apart from works.
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Here's what the text says. Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God.
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Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. See, if you listen to the scriptures, the scriptures are going to tell you what the purpose of the law is.
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If you think that the 10 commandments and all the things that God requires of you form some kind of a list with a check box next to it, and all you got to do is check off the boxes, right?
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I did that. I did that. I did that. Ooh, I'm going to heaven. You have no clue what the law is about.
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Listen to the words of the apostle of Jesus Christ, Paul. He says the purpose of the law is to silence you.
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Always and again, I'm still working through therapy issues regarding my childhood. I've told you about my best friend.
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He was a son of a Cuban immigrant, a guy who actually was tortured by Fidel Castro and had the scars to prove it.
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But always and again, I don't think his dad liked me very much, because whenever I would say something stupid, and I would do that often as a kid, whenever I would say something stupid, he would kind of say, not under his breath, but loud enough for me to hear him, even if he was in the kitchen.
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He would say, callate gringo. Loose translation.
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We'll forget the gringo part, because that's a slur. Loose translation from the Italian, shut up of your face, okay?
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That's the purpose of the law, to silence you.
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But I'm a good person. No, you're not. You're out of control. You're out of line here.
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I'm really not that bad. It's worse than you think, right? So the purpose of the law is to silence you and hold you accountable to God.
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But that doesn't make my self -esteem feel good. Good. Your self -esteem's a problem.
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You have way too high of an opinion of yourself. Well, you're not going to grow a church doing that.
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I don't grow the church. Christ does. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified.
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That means to be declared righteous or declared innocent in God's sight. By works of the law, not one human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
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That law was not given as a list for you to follow to save yourself. It was given as a list to check off and sit there and go, oh boy,
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I'm in trouble. I'm a sinner. And then, best word in all of scripture, but.
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But now, the righteousness of God, whose righteousness is it?
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God's righteousness. The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.
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The law and the prophets, they bear witness to it. And this is the righteousness of God, and watch your connecting words here.
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The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, and here's a super important word, for, for all who believe.
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If you think about in these terms, the great exchange, on the cross, Christ takes your sin upon himself, and he bears your sin on the cross.
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He suffers and bleeds and dies in your place, experiencing the wrath of God to the full, so that you can be forgiven.
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And when you are brought to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit working this in you, then you are clothed with Jesus' perfect, sinless righteousness.
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That's what the righteousness of God is. So the righteousness of God, it is for all who believe.
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And then we get these, and you'll note that, all have sinned, all fall short of the glory of God, including your inner
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Karen, and are justified then by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
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And it was this text, this exact text, that Martin Luther was working his way through when he had the big kind of aha gospel moment.
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He was legitimately trying to save himself by working his body to the bone as a monk in Roman Catholicism.
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I've said it before, Luther has quoted, has said, if anybody could have been saved by monkery, it was me.
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But we can't be saved by our righteousness. We can't be saved by our good works. The purpose of the law is to show us our sin, and the good news tells us that Christ died for our sins.
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He bled for your sins and mine. And all of us, we have fallen short of the glory of God, and then we are declared righteous then by his grace as a gift.
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Every time I preach to this text, I ask the question, how much do you pay people to give you Christmas gifts?
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You don't. It's not a gift if you pay for it. And that's the point. It's free.
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The whole kit and caboodle, salvation, reconciliation with God, forgiveness of your sins, well, the promise of an inheritance in the new earth,
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I mean, a good way to think about an inheritance is inheritance is a gift given by somebody who died. So Jesus is our rich heavenly uncle.
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He died, and he's written us into the will and given us the whole estate, all as a gift of his great love, mercy, and grace.
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In fact, God himself put Jesus forward as an atoning sacrifice by his blood to be received by faith.
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And so then you'll note that, well, if you believe the words of Jesus, the words of his apostles, the ones he sent, the ones he said of, the one who hears you hears me.
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If you listen to his apostles and you recognize salvation is totally 100 % free, what do you got to boast about then?
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One of the last words of Martin Luther was, we're all beggars. As a beggar, am
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I going to boast about the fact I found where the bread is? No, I'm going to go tell the other beggars I know where the bread is.
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You need a meal? Let's go get fed. That's the whole point. So you'll note that boasting is out of place.
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It's excluded because we hold, and listen to the final words of the epistle text, we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
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And then they, they go crazy. They lose their minds. No, it can't be that free.
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If you start saying that, then people are going to use that good news to go out and sin and formal caboodle late.
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You know, you're telling me a lot more about yourself than you are telling me about what the scripture says. In fact, the apostle
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Paul, when you read the book of Acts, when he preaches the gospel as a missionary, planting churches, goes into synagogues and proclaims
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Christ, free forgiveness of sins, he has detractors. And in the book of Romans itself, in Romans 6,
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Paul takes up some of the Karen talk from the people who were slandering him.
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Well, well, you're saying that if we, because of grace, we can sin so that grace may abound.
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That's literally what these people were saying of Paul. And so he asked the question, what should we say? Are we to continue in sin so the grace may abound?
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By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? And see, there's the next bit.
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If you think about our gospel text, Christ says, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.
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And the Jews hearing the words of Christ here in John 8, they were scratching their heads trying to figure out what he meant that they would be set free because they're not slaves.
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And so they look at Jesus and they say, we're the offspring of Abraham. We've never been enslaved to anyone.
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How is it that you say you will become free? They legitimately don't get it. And so Jesus kindly explains, truly, truly, amen, amen,
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I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever.
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So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. Oh, wait a second, now
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I'm starting to get it. What have I been set free from? You've been set free from slavery to sin. Sin is
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Egypt. Sin is slavery. Sin is not freedom. Jesus doesn't set you free so that you can be a slave to sin.
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That doesn't make any sense. And that is all through the gospel, not the law.
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The law doesn't set you free from slavery to sin. It shows you you're a sinner. It's only the gospel, only the forgiveness of sins that sets you free from it.
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And this is why Paul then goes on, again, an apostle of Jesus Christ.
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How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, we were baptized into his death?
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We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
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Father, we too might walk in newness of life. You'll note, same theological topic, slavery to sin, freedom from sin.
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And here the apostle of Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul, points us to a very important moment in all of our lives as Christians, that day when we were baptized in the name of the
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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Now, I know there are those within the visible church who say, well, it's just a symbol.
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But Paul's not arguing here as a symbol. He's pointing us back to that because what did Jesus say?
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If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. The question is, have you been set free?
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The answer is, yeah. You who are baptized, you were baptized into Christ's death and into his resurrection so that you might walk in newness of life.
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This is not a symbol. This is a reality given. Christ has set you free.
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In fact, Paul goes on to say, if we have been united with him in a death like his, and we have, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
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And by the way, we will. We know then that our old self was crucified with Christ in order that the body of sin may be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
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For one who has died has been set free from sin. Let me read verse seven again.
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One who has died has already been set free from sin.
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So are you dead or not? And I'm not talking about like mostly dead.
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That's not what I'm talking about. I know everyone's mind goes there. Mine does too. The answer is, if you've been baptized, you have already died.
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You have been tucked away into Christ's death and his resurrection. Death no longer has dominion over you,
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Paul says. For the death Christ died, he died to sin once for all. The life he lives, he lives to God.
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So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God and Christ. And what does that require, by the way?
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Faith. It requires faith. Do you believe these words or not?
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That Christ has set you free? You are free indeed. Paul goes on to say in verse 15,
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What then, are we to sin because we're not under the law but under grace? You just hear him going, oy vey.
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No, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, your slaves are the one to whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.
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But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and you have been set free from sin and have become instead slaves of righteousness.
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This is all true. You see, brothers and sisters, I'm here to proclaim to you the Reformation continues to this day because the number of theological opinions hasn't gotten smaller since the
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Reformation, it's gotten greater. The cacophony of voices that would lead you away from the voice of Christ, and Christ makes it very clear, the one who abides in his word is his disciples.
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And that person will know the truth, and the truth will set them free. Today we have heard that Christ has set us free in the waters of baptism, that he has borne our sin on the cross, that he was the propitiation put forward by God so that we can be forgiven, so that we can be set free from slavery to sin, and all of this is a gift given by God.
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Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave doesn't remain forever, the son remains forever, and that's what you have been made in the waters of baptism, the sons, the daughters, the children of God.
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So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed, and you are indeed free.
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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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