Blessed

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.

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Luke chapter 2, verse 21. At the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called

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Jesus. The name given by the angels before he was conceived in the womb.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Wow, long text today.

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I should be able to get through this in about 50 -60 minutes, I think. So one verse, let's see if we can unpack this because this is one of those passages of scripture that looks deceptively simple.

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But, when you take the time to kind of dig in and see what's under the surface and see how it all connects, then you find one of the most amazing things.

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And that is that this is all hooked in to the comfort of the gospel and gives us a lot of assurance.

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So it is now the eighth day since Jesus has been born. And according to the

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Mosaic Covenant, male children on the eighth day after they are born are to undergo a cosmetic procedure.

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A cosmetic procedure that we will learn from one of our cross -references today in the sermon typologically points to the cutting away of our sinful flesh.

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So the question at hand is, what is Jesus up to? He's been around now visibly for us to see, seven days, we're in the eighth day, what's he up to?

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He's up to quite a bit. And I'm not talking about the normal stuff that infants do. Now we all know that there takes, well, if you have children, there's a little bit of an adjustment period that you go through when you have your first child.

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The adjustment period goes from being able to sleep all night, you know, kind of having a lot of freedom, to all of a sudden everything in your whole life is ordered by this tiny little person.

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And this tiny little person is a bit on the cranky side at times, I don't know if you've noticed these things.

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And so your whole life then revolves around, well, round -the -clock feedings, and when it comes feeding time, they don't ask politely,

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Father, I think I'm hungry now, would you mind picking me up and taking me over to Mom?

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I'd like to eat. No, that's not how that goes. We all know how it goes, right? And then you have, well, diapers, and then spewy rags.

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I loved the spewy rags, because when you have babies this small, you never hand them off to somebody without some protective gear.

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And the protective gear we had for all of our children when they were this small was the spewy rag. And so you take them and you hold them, and then you kind of watch carefully, because if they have that look, you know it's going to be like Old Faithful.

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And so you want to try to catch everything so that it doesn't end up on the carpet, but it always ends, it's just, you understand what

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I'm saying, but this is not what I'm talking about. Jesus is up to a lot of things right now, and I'm going to note this.

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What is he doing? He is obeying God's law for you.

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Remember, Jesus keeps the law perfectly. So the fact that Jesus is circumcised on the eighth day is an important thing.

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This harkens to the new creation. Now if I were to ask you how many days did it take God to create the heavens and the earth, if you said seven, you would be wrong.

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It took six. He rested on the seventh. Jesus is raised from the grave on the eighth day.

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Eighth day harkens to, well, the new creation. And with this kind of in mind, it's important to note that the circumcision of the old covenant is the type and shadow that gives way to the substance in the new covenant, which is baptism.

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And so eighth day, new creation talk, Jesus is circumcised, cutting away of the flesh, the sinful flesh, but then kind of begs the question, why is

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Jesus being circumcised? He's not sinful. There is no sinful flesh to cut away for the sake of Christ.

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Well, I would argue that this is similar to what we see when Jesus is baptized.

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Remember when Jesus is baptized, there's the sinless, spotless lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

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John the Baptist is out in the wilderness at the Jordan River. People are coming and confessing their sins.

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And it's a sinner's baptism, the baptism of repentance. And there's Jesus striding into the

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Jordan and John's going, whoa, dude, I need to be baptized by you, right?

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And what's Jesus' response? Let it be so now in order to fulfill all righteousness. But Jesus has no sinful flesh to cut away.

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Why is he permitting himself to be circumcised? One, to fulfill God's law, but two, because he is showing us through the circumcision and his baptism that Christ is numbered with sinners.

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Ultimately, he has come to bear the sins of the world, to die in our place.

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And although he has no sinful flesh, he undergoes circumcision in order to fulfill the law.

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And in fulfilling the law, he numbers himself with the transgressors. And we also see here that Jesus is given a name.

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His birth certificate is filled out. What will the child's name be? His name is Yeshua, which means

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Yahweh saves, the Lord saves. Good stuff here. Now, let's see if we can unpack the theology of what's going on with Jesus' circumcision by looking at our cross -references today from both the

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Old Testament and the Epistle text. Now, in our Old Testament reading, Numbers chapter 6, verses 22 through 27, this is one of the places in Scripture where we hear the

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Aaronic blessing of the Old Covenant. This is what we hear the benediction every Sunday.

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May the Lord bless you and keep you, make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you. Let's walk through these words, and I want you to pay attention to the nouns, who's the subject of the sentence, and the verbs.

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So here's what it says. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to Aaron and to the sons of Israel, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel, and you shall say to them.

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So notice that this blessing is coming from God through men. And here's the blessing.

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Yahweh bless you and Yahweh keep you. Yahweh make his face to shine on you and be gracious to you.

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So who's doing all this stuff? Well, the Lord is. And may the Lord, Yahweh, lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

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So the Lord is blessing you. The Lord is keeping you. The Lord is making his face to shine upon you.

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The Lord is lifting up his countenance upon you, and he, the Lord, is giving you peace. You are the recipients of these blessings.

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And our text ends with these important words. So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.

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So in this Aaronic blessing, the name of the Lord is put on the people of Israel.

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Important words. Now, let's do a little eschatological remembering, if you would.

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We all know how the thing goes down at the end, right? The man of lawlessness shows up, and there's a mark that is given to people.

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It's called the mark of the beast. And you can't buy or sell without this mark of the beast.

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The mark of the beast is the satanic opposite of this. You see, when the

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Lord puts his name on you, he blesses you. You are his. The mark of the beast marks you as, well, somebody who belongs to the devil.

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So the question I would have for you in the new covenant, where is it that God puts his name on us?

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Let's see. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing, teaching all that I've commanded them, baptizing in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. There's where God's name is placed on you, right there.

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You see, what Jesus accomplishes over here, you can't go back in time, by the way. I know we like those movies, you know, or those television shows where they have the

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DeLorean that can go back in time, or the TARDIS that can do its thing, although it's bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside.

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It's amazing, all of these time travel things, but you can't travel back in time and gather up the blood of Christ shed for you on the cross.

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So the question is, how is what Jesus accomplished delivered to you? How are you blessed by what he's accomplished on the cross?

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Well, one of the means is right there. What he accomplished is delivered to you in the font.

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When you are baptized, God places his name on you, which is why

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Lutherans, historically, do not frown upon those who feel the freedom, and notice what

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I'm saying here, this is not a rule, feel the freedom to cross themselves. Crossing yourself is a remembrance that you are baptized in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When little children come to the rail here, I give them a little blessing.

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And if I know that they're baptized, I'd say, may the Lord continue to bless you and keep you in the faith given to you in the waters of your baptism and preserve you to life everlasting.

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I make the little sign of the cross over their heads. And the reason being, this is a remembrance of when God placed his name on them, on you.

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And so God has placed his name on you and he has blessed you. Now, what does it mean to be blessed by God?

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Psalm 32 helps us out here. Psalm 32 states, Now that is a blessing.

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You see, to be blessed by God, first and foremost, is to be forgiven, to have your sins covered, to know that God will remember your sins no more.

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He casts them as far away as the east is from the west. And I'm pretty sure that's a far way away. Or as they like to say,

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God takes your sins, casts them into the ocean of his forgetfulness and puts up a no fishing sign.

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This is what it means to be blessed, to be forgiven. And see, ultimately, we realize that we

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Christians are not praying that we receive God's justice. For if we all received what it is that we deserved, we would not be blessed, we would be cursed.

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From the pastor all the way down to the smallest among us, we would all be cursed. But to be blessed is to be forgiven.

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And that's what happens in the waters of baptism. And so the psalmist then goes on in that psalm to say,

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And I did not cover my iniquity. I said, I will confess my transgressions to the

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Lord. And you forgave the, and I'm going to retranslate the word here.

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You forgave the guilt of my sin. I think in this context, the Hebrew word for iniquity that's translated in the

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ESV might be better translated as guilt. Because each and every one of us understands that, well, we've sinned, we've fallen short.

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We've done it today, yesterday, the day before. And oftentimes there's guilt associated with our sin.

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And yet the scripture says, And the Lord forgave the guilt of my sin.

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Not just the sin itself, but also the guilt associated with it. So that we can truly stand in a blessed state.

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Yes, I have fallen short, but I am blessed because I am forgiven. I don't need to live in guilt and shame.

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I can live in peace and freedom because of Christ's forgiveness. He has placed his name on me, washed away my sins.

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And that's what Galatians is talking about in our epistle text. Before faith came, we were held captive under the law.

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And the law can't save you, by the way. It can only point its bony fingers at you and say, Ah, you've fallen short.

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Here's the standard. You keep coming up short. Try harder.

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Yeah, that'll help, right? It's almost like a form of waterboarding. So we were in prison until the coming faith would be revealed.

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So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

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Justified means to be declared righteous. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

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For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. Now listen to these words.

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For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ.

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There is neither Jew nor Greek, Norwegian or Polish. Had to say that.

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There is neither Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian. Name the thing.

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There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male or female. Instead, you are all one in Christ.

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And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.

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Fascinating words. In the old covenant, what was it that marked a young man as being an offspring of Abraham?

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Circumcision. It was circumcision. But here this text says that you are an offspring of Abraham and an heir according to the promise when you have been baptized into Christ.

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You see, circumcision now gives way to the real thing itself, baptism.

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And it's not just for men. It's for men and women. And it's important to note here that the scripture says that even females are sons of God.

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Important reason for this is quite simple. Women don't have the right to an inheritance.

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And so by God declaring all men and women to be sons of God, he is saying that everybody, regardless of gender, has an inheritance in his kingdom.

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Does that make sense? Fascinating stuff. You see, when you start to unpack what it is that God has done for us in the waters of baptism, you begin to marvel at this, well, the power of it all.

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Because God is promising things. So if you have been baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ, and indeed you have.

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And Colossians 2 kind of closes the circle then to make the connection between circumcision and baptism.

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When it says this in Colossians 2, starting at verse 11, in him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by the putting off of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.

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And you sit there and go, well, when was I circumcised again? What is this referring to? And here's what it says.

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Having been buried with Christ in baptism. You see, your baptism is your circumcision.

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Your baptism is the true cutting away of the sinful flesh, not by the hands of humanity, but by the hands of Christ himself.

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Being united with him in his death and his resurrection, having your sins washed away. And it says this, in your baptism, you are also raised with Christ through faith and the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead.

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And you, you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,

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God has made alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.

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All of this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. Wow. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.

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Blessed is the man or the woman against whom the Lord counts no iniquity and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

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So I would point you again, the fact that although our gospel text is tiny and small, that when you unpack its meaning and how it relates to the fact that we have been united with Christ, the one who has kept

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God's law perfectly for us, that we have been put, the name of Christ has been put on us in the waters of baptism, that our hearts were circumcised, that we were united with him, buried with him, raised with him, and forgiven.

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Then we see that it's no small deal, no small thing indeed, that Jesus at the end of eight days was circumcised and named

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Yeshua, the one who saves. In the name of Jesus, Amen.