Immeasurable Riches of His Grace

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 3, verses 14 through 21.

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Jesus said, And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the

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Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave

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His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send

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His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned.

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Whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only

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Son of God. And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world. The people love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.

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For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

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But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.

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This is the Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. So, believe it or not, we're going to actually work through all three texts today.

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And in order to frame it, you're going to note here something that's going on in Numbers chapter 21.

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Numbers chapter 21, we get this bizarre story of Moses making a bronze serpent in the middle of the wilderness.

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And that's going to actually be the glue to help us get around all of this. But in order to help us get the biblical metaphor, the type and shadow that is being revealed here, it's important for us to remember that our first parents,

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Adam and Eve, and yes, they were literal people. They were literal people, and how do I know? Because Jesus believed in them and he rose from the grave, and I think it's kind of silly to contradict

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Jesus. I just think that doesn't make any sense. So I'm just going to go with Jesus. He believed in them.

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He's God in human flesh. We should believe in them too. So the idea then is that back in the

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Garden of Eden, if you remember, the temptation came through Satan in the form of a serpent.

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Serpent lied, literally deceived and tempted our first parents.

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And they ate of the fruit. And a good way to think of it is that the words of the devil, that is like being envenomated by the serpent.

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So each and every one of us who have descended from Adam and Eve, with one exception, Christ, have had the venom of this serpent running through our bodies.

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We are all, literally, kind of talking in these terms, snake bit. And we're going to find out just how bad the snake bite is.

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So let's first take a look at Ephesians chapter 2. The opening verses of Ephesians chapter 2 describe the devastation of this snake venom as it has impacted us all.

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First three verses. And here's how it reads. And you, talking to Christians, you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

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And so it's important for us to note that that snake bite that our parents experienced in the Garden of Eden, it resulted in our death.

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We were all born dead in trespasses and sins. In fact, every human being born today, just like you and I, we were the literally walking dead.

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It's kind of sad, but that's the case. So you were dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked.

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This has to do with how you conduct your life. Following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

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And here's the status words. And we were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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Wrath referring to God's wrath himself. Last week I made a point of saying that when we talk about salvation, it's important for us to recognize that we are saved from the wrath of God.

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And so the serpent's bite, all of us being snake bit, caused us to be born dead in trespasses and sins.

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And now we have been under the sway, literally the control, enslaved to our own sinful passions, the temptations of the world and the devil himself.

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And this all kind of bears out in our own life. I like to think of the doctrine of original sin is what we're talking about here as one of these things we can objectively verify.

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Have any of you had any children that you had to teach them how to be bad? Marla scoffs at the thought, not my kids.

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We have something in common, sister. We have something in common. Yeah. I never had to teach my kids how to be bad.

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None of you ever had to teach your kids how to be bad. The reason for this is that the thing that we know how to do quite well from the moment we're born is actually be selfish and be bad.

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It's teaching and training our children to not be selfish, to actually care for others and to be, well, good.

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That takes a lot of work, blood, sweat, literal tears, weeping, and then a lot of praying because even when you're done after they turn 18 and they go off to college, you are seriously on your knees praying that some of this stuff stuck because you're just not sure.

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And then consider the fact how we treat each other. I don't know if you've noticed this, but Christians, although we are new creations in Christ, we still have sinful natures, and it's our sinful natures that cause us to actually be kind of ornery with each other.

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I don't know if you've noticed, two human beings living together in close proximity, this could be an explosive combination.

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Have you ever seen betta fish? Maybe you've been to Walmart and they sell betta fish. You'll notice they're always in individual cups.

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Why don't they ever put two betta fish together? Because one of them would be killed. They don't get along.

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And we don't get along with each other very well either. Oftentimes we scheme, we covet, we lie, we slander, we do all kinds of horrible passive aggressive controlling abusive behaviors to each other.

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And on the other hand, we receive those exact same abusive controlling manipulative gossipy slandering behaviors from other people.

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We are quite the mess. And this is because each and every one of us, we were born snakebit.

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This is the reality of the situation. Now with that, let's take a look now at Numbers 21, because the story will make sense as we look through this.

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And by the way, the interpretation that I'm going to give you is not mine. The interpretation I'm going to give you is Jesus's interpretation.

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And how do I know this? Because of our gospel text. And you'll see what we're talking about here. We like to talk about types and shadows.

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But in Numbers 21, here's the story. Children of Israel are in their wilderness wanderings. From Mount Hor, they set out by the way to the

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Red Sea to go around the land of Edom. So this is a marching day for the children of Israel.

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They've got to pack up their tents, get all their supplies going, and that means little ones and sheep and old people and everybody, they've all got to do a march.

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And the people became impatient on the way. Yep, that sounds about right for human beings.

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And the people spoke against God and against Moses. And I can still hear my wife when we would have

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Bible study with the kids at the dinner table whenever we'd read a story like this. She'd always say, poor

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Moses, poor Moses. So you're going to know they became impatient with God and they spoke against God and Moses.

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Oftentimes, that's how that works. And so here it comes. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?

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Which is just absurd if you think about it. These are the people who with their own eyes witnessed the 10 plagues that God wrought on Egypt in order to set them free from slavery.

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They were all born slaves. They are now free. They actually walked on the bottom of the

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Red Sea as if it was dry land with two walls of water on each side, witnessed the armies of Pharaoh and the chariots of Pharaoh being swallowed up when they tried to do the same.

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And here they are, they've got one day of marching and already they're accusing God of wanting to kill them.

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This is a little bit worse than when my kids would say, are we there yet? You know what

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I'm talking about, right? Are we there yet, right? So here's what happens next.

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So what have you brought us out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? There's no food, there's no water, and we loathe this worthless manna.

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Wow, God's even feeding them every single day. And the only thing they can do is grumble.

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They're all snakebit. And so God decides he's going to do something.

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He's going to punish them in a way that in type and shadow is going to reveal just how much we have in common with these folks, but also reveal what

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Christ was going to do for us at the time, will do, but he's already done for us now,

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I'll explain. So then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many of the people of Israel died.

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The Hebrew here is actually kind of fun, there's a little bit of a word play with the word fiery serpents. These are the nechashim seraphim, and you've got to have to get the phlegm up for the kh part, the nechashim.

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If you want to repeat with me later, we'll give you a Hebrew lesson. But the nechashim seraphim, these are fiery bronze adders, is really what they are.

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And they bit the people so that many of the people of Israel died. And so God acting in judgment, and oftentimes when

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God acts in judgment, that's his law at work, prompting people to realize that they are in the wrong and that God is in the right.

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And so God mercifully grants them repentance, and here's what it says, the people came to Moses and they said, we have sinned, for we have spoken against Yahweh and against you.

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This is a good confession of sin, indeed they have. They have spoken against God, they've spoken against Moses, and Moses didn't do anything wrong by the way, and neither did

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God. And so they say, pray to Yahweh that he might take away the serpents from us. And here's where the story gets a little bit interesting.

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God doesn't remove the curse. He doesn't take it away. And funny enough, that's the same situation that we find ourselves in.

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Instead, what God does, and watch this, he creates a sacrament. You're going, what?

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I'll explain in a second. But he creates a sacrament, and the sacrament is given by God in his grace and mercy as a means of his grace so that they can be saved not from the curse, but saved through it.

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We too, by the way, have you ever wondered why is it that when people are baptized or when people are brought to penitent faith in Christ, that the angels don't show up and whisk them away to heaven?

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Well, it'd be really nice if they did, you know, please, sometime soon, right? But the idea is that God hasn't saved us from the curse.

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Each and every one of us is still under the curse. If you don't believe it, how many of you women are into the whole natural childbirth thing?

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You're not. It's no, please give me as many meds as you can possibly give me so that I don't have to endure this.

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That's all part of the curse. He hasn't saved us from it. He's saving us through it.

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And so a sacrament, a sacrament is when God takes his word and his promises and attaches it to something earthly.

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In this case, it's going to be a bronze serpent, a piece of really weird artwork.

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He's going to take his, take that earthly matter, and he's now going to attach his word to it and a promise to it.

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And if you believe you receive the benefits. If you don't, you don't. That's kind of how a sacrament works.

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Baptism is a sacrament. It's water and the word. Without the word, it becomes a bath.

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The Lord's Supper, it's a sacrament, wine and bread. Without the word of God, it's just a meal, an incomplete meal.

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You need steak with it. But with the word of God, it's the body and blood of Christ given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

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You see the idea? So this is what's going on here. God says, all right, make a bronze serpent.

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And here's the promise of God. This is what God adds, his word, that anyone who looks at it will not die.

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Now I don't know about you guys, but I have, you know, I've seen some of those medical shows where someone's out hiking in the wilderness, or maybe they live in Arizona and they come into their house and they didn't see the rattlesnake behind the bush or something like that.

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And it bit them. And so they were rushed to the hospital. I don't know if you've noticed this, but they don't pull out little statues of bronze serpents and say, quick, look at this and you'll be healed.

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And everybody knows that's not how this works. But in this particular case, it works this way.

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So that what was required then is faith, just simple faith.

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If you believe the promise of God, that if you look at the serpent, you will be healed.

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If you're bit, then you're going to look at it. If you don't believe the word of God, you will be stubborn and you won't look at it.

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And by being stubborn and not looking at it because you don't believe the word of God, it's real simple.

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You going to die. That's just how it works. So live, look and live, disbelieve and don't look, die.

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That's how that works. So, the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent, set it on a pole.

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Everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, set it on a pole.

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If a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. And then you scratch your head and you sit there and go, what does it all mean?

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Thankfully, Jesus explains that to us. Now our gospel text, John chapter three.

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Everybody knows John 3 .16, for God so loved the world. I always like to point out that John 3 .16, probably one of the most well -known verses in scripture, thanks to the crazy guy with the rainbow wig who used to sit behind the uprights and the football games on Monday night football.

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But that's a different story. So Jesus says this, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

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And now you start to get it. Think about it. We're snake bit, deceived by the serpent.

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Because of this, we complain against God. We complain against the people God sends. We are ornery and terrible with each other.

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We can't even handle a small day's hike without thinking that God's trying to kill us. That's kind of the idea.

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So that's all the result of sins, dead and trespasses and sins under the sway of the world, the devil and our own sinful flesh.

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It's a mess. So what does God do? He sends his son and Jesus becomes a curse.

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Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree, the scripture says. And that serpent on the pole is kind of a curse.

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So Jesus, if you would, takes on all of the snake venom inside of himself for us.

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And like the serpent that was hung up, suspended between heaven and earth, Christ himself becomes that curse, suspended between heaven and earth.

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And in a very real way, if we look to him, all of us who are snake bit, we too will live.

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That's the picture. And see, scripture, Jesus teaches us to understand that story in this way.

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And here's the reason why. And are you ready for this? This is the best part. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

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And when you examine your lives in light of what God has commanded and how you see how far short you fall every day, it's really easy to say,

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I don't have what it takes in order to be saved. Which is exactly the right place to be in.

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You don't. And see, God sees you in your sinful state and rather than despise you and hate you and give you what you want, you're going to know

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Jesus doesn't come into the world to pick you up by your carcass and throw you into the pit of hell.

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He comes into the world so that you can live. And all of this is because of God's great love for you.

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And so when you see the words, God so loved the world, you're part of that world.

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God so loved Marlis and Ruben and well, all of you and Arlen and Gloria and David and Michael and Brenda and Deanna, Joshua, Don and Marilyn, Faith, Mikey and Cliff and Renee, all of you.

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He loved you so that he gave his only begotten son.

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And all that's needed is for you to believe, to believe. And we're going to see in the rest of our epistle text, even that belief, the ability to have faith is given to you as a gift.

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Because remember, the snake venom having run its course, you were dead, not alive.

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See, God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that you should not perish but have eternal life.

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God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

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Now whoever believes in him is not condemned. And whoever does not believe is condemned already.

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And the reason for this is quite simple. You don't want to be loved by God. You don't want to be forgiven.

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You don't want eternal life. Okay. Nobody has to be loved by God.

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Nobody has to be forgiven. Nobody has to live.

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You can die if you want. But what a foolish thing. What a terrible and foolish thing.

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But that's how badly we are turned around because of the venom of the serpent that runs through all of us.

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So let's return, Ben, back to our epistle text. And we're going to note that the first three verses lay out for us just how horrible our condition is, dead in trespasses and sins.

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And verse four begins with probably one of the most amazing words in all of Scripture. And the word is but.

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And this is the type of but that erases the stuff that was before it. And you're going to note, listen to these words, but God.

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You see, you were dead. You were under the power of the devil, following the course of this world, following your own sinful passions.

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But see, but God, because of his great love for you. Being rich in mercy, not rich in wrath, rich in mercy.

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Because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses,

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God has made us alive together with Christ. You see, by grace, you have been already saved.

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And see, God raised us up with him. God seated us up with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

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God is the one who did this for us. You couldn't do it for yourself, so God did it.

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And you sit there and go, when did that happen? That's one of the places it happens.

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It's one of the places. When people are united with Christ and his death and his resurrection and their sins are washed away,

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God raises them up. It's a washing of regeneration. That's what Paul says in Titus 3.

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Another place this happens is when you hear the word of God, law and gospel, and hear

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Christ proclaim for you for the forgiveness of your sins. And you recognize you have fallen short.

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And you cry out to God, Lord, have mercy on me, I'm a sinner. You are made alive and regenerated.

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And see, all of this is because of God's rich mercy, his great love.

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And so he's raised us up with Christ, seated us with Christ in heavenly places, in order that in the coming ages,

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I always find it fascinating that it's ages plural. When you're reading this in the Greek, there's several times in the

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Greek in the epistles where it talks about from the ages into the ages.

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And it makes you wonder, if eternal life doesn't have chapters, if you would, there'll be one age that'll last maybe 100 ,000 years.

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And then it'll give way to the next age. And that'll be forever, you know, for this amount of period.

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But it talks about ages in the plural. I always find it fascinating. I'm not sure what it means, but I think it's kind of provocative.

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But here's the idea. So that in the coming ages, God might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

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Immeasurable kindness, riches of his grace, kindness seems to be one of those things that we, as snakebit sinners, kind of piecemeal out.

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You treat me OK, I'll give you a little kindness. This is because we're snakebit. But God, he wants to and will in the coming ages, demonstrate, show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ.

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In other words, you haven't seen nothing yet. And this is what gives me hope going back to one of the portions of scripture that we read in the midweek service from Lamentations chapter three.

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If you've ever had that feeling where this Christian thing, I mean, I know

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I'm forgiven. I know that Jesus has died for me, but can that really be enough? Isn't there something more

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I'm supposed to be doing here because it just seems like I keep messing up.

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But then you get this wonderful promise in Lamentations chapter three, and here's the promise. The steadfast love of the

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Lord never ceases. Next words, his mercies never come to an end, never.

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And if you're thinking, but I can exhaust them, then it says this, they are new every morning, that inexhaustible grace, immeasurable kindness and mercy, it renews itself every morning.

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And great is the faithfulness of the Lord. This is the kind of assurance and you're going to note

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God goes over the top to let us know this is the reality so that we don't despair, because it seems like not only were we born snake bit, but for some really stupid reason, we like playing with snakes figuratively, figuratively, sister, figuratively, and we like keeping them as pets and we're always getting bit by them again.

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But the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His grace and his kindness is immeasurable, and then these words for by grace, not by your works, by grace, you have already been saved through faith, important words, then, and this is not your own doing.

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What's not my own doing? The grace, the faith. The whole package, salvation, this is not your own doing, all of it was given to you, even the ability to believe in Jesus and to trust him and look to him and have eternal life.

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It's not your own doing. It was given to you by God, and it's not a result of works so that no one may boast.

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And see, verse 10, you see, we are God's workmanship. God is the one who's created us.

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God who's made us alive in Christ. He seated us with Christ. He's regenerated us. We are his workmanship and we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which

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God has prepared beforehand that we should conduct our lives in them. So what does it all mean?

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Brothers and sisters, let us recognize that we were born snakebit, that we still have this venom running through our system.

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And we are new creations in Christ. Let us recognize that our sinful passions cause us to not trust

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God rightly, cause us to not love God with all our heart and cause us to not love our neighbors as ourselves.

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None of us has perfected this to the point where we've got nothing to work on, nothing to be forgiven of.

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So let us recognize again that we are snakebit and let us look to Christ and him crucified for our sins.

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And let us believe because Jesus said anyone who looks to him and believes because of the great love of God will not perish, but presently already has eternal life in the name of Jesus.

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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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