The Light of Grace and Truth

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, the first chapter.

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In the beginning was the

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Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

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All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was

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John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through Him.

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He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world.

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He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not receive

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Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

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And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only

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Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. This is the Gospel of the

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Lord. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Merry Christmas. It's great to see you all this wonderful, wonderful day.

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You'll note that there's a lot of noise as it relates to Christmas. This is an interesting way to start, but I've tweaked a few things in my sermons since the last service.

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But here's the idea. Have you noticed there's a bunch of people out there, I call them Christmas Karens. I feel bad for anybody named

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Karen nowadays. These are people who sit there and say, you, you can't celebrate Christmas.

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It's a pagan holiday. Jesus wasn't really born on December 25th, and on and on and on they go.

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I always like to point them to the liturgy, point them to the hymns we're going to sing, point them to the biblical texts we're going to read.

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And I say, could you point out the pagan part for me? Just let me know which part's the pagan part. When you see it, let me know.

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And of course, that never really satisfies them. And they say, well, we are nowhere commanded to celebrate

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Christmas. To which I say, and we're nowhere forbidden to celebrate Christmas either.

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So there, right? We're not Jehovah's Witnesses, we're something different. And so over and again, this is kind of a fascinating thing.

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Here's the thing. This isn't about December 25th. This isn't about paganism at all.

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In fact, if anything, paganism can only like mimic, can only like pervert, can only like counterfeit the real thing.

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This is about the celebration, the hopeful and repentant celebration of the incarnation of the

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Son of God. And He has come as the brightest light in all of the darkness that we find ourselves in.

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You'll note that when God created the heavens and the earth, everything was in darkness.

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And that's really kind of the point of our gospel text. John chapter 1 is referred to in some places as, well, the

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Genesis 1 of the New Testament. It is. And it reveals something kind of behind the scenes in Genesis 1 that we wouldn't get anywhere else.

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No unbelieving Jew, no Jew who doesn't believe that Jesus is the Messiah would have this other information.

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In fact, they can't quite understand the doctrine of the Trinity, nor do they understand how to deal with those verses in the biblical text in the

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Old Testament that talk about God, God in a plurality of persons, kind of a fascinating thing.

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But the very first sentence, very first sentence of the Bible begins with these fantastic words.

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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

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And it goes on and says, the earth was without form and void.

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And listen to the word. And darkness was over the face of the deep, the Hebrew word to home.

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There's the spirit of God, the Ruach Elohim was hovering, was brooding, was hovering over the face of the waters, like a, well, like a bird getting ready to what we're protecting its clutch of eggs, something to that effect.

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And so the very first thing we learn about the creation is itself is there's chaos.

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There's the Tohu Vabohu. There's the to home and the deep, and there God is at work in the darkness and the

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Holy Spirit itself is hovering like a bird. Merikaphet, it's an interesting verb in Hebrew.

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It's only used of birds and the Holy Spirit, kind of a fascinating thing.

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And then the first thing that happens is the Logos, the word of God, the

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Devar Elohim, the word of God, the Devar Yahweh, he then speaks, let there be light.

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And there was light. Oh man. And you see, that's kind of the thing.

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And so if you were to just take that little part, God spoke,

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God spoke and said, let there be light. Well, in our gospel text, it begins with these words,

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Enarche and Halagas, Kai Halagas and Prostonteo and Kaitheos and Halagas. In the beginning was

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Halagas, the word, and the word was Prostonteo, face to face with God, was with God and the word was

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God. And now your mind is blown because the scriptures say, there's only one

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God. I know there's only one God. And yet there are three persons in the one true God.

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And here we see two of the persons of the Trinity in action. God, the father, God, the son, in the beginning, going all the way back to where Genesis begins, in the beginning, there was the word of God, Jesus, the second person of the

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Holy Trinity face to face with the father. And not only is he with God, he is

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God. And he was in the beginning with God and all things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made.

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And in him was life and listen to these words. And the life was the light of men.

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And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

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In fact, I think a good way to think about it is that since none of this are fallen to sin, the complete destruction and the pandemonium that we've brought upon ourselves, none of it is caught

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God off guard. In fact, he knew it was coming. And the very darkness that God creates the earth, the heavens and the earth in is a foreshadow.

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It's a foreshadow of where we find ourselves. Think of it this way. You and I were all conceived and born in sin.

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As King David says, in sin did my mother conceive me. Paul makes it clear that none is righteous.

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Quoting from the Psalms and the Psalms say this in two other parts, that none is righteous.

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No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. They have become worthless.

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And this worthlessness of sin, have you noticed that sin just leaves you empty?

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It hollows you out. It doesn't make you a human being. It makes you less than a human being.

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How many of you can look back on your sin and sit there and go, yeah, that was the best thing ever, man.

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Yeah, that sin was so great. None of us can do that. In fact, every one of us look back at our sin and sit there and go, boy, what was

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I thinking? Right? We look back with shame and guilt.

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And the scriptures describe sin as what? Darkness. But see, this is what makes

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Christmas so amazing, is that Christ, he is the light. And he is the one that shines in the darkness.

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If you were to kind of think of it in these terms, we've all received, or probably even given those Christmas cards that kind of wonderfully sentimentally depict.

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There's the city of Bethlehem on the night that Jesus is born, right? And the stars are twinkling.

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And then you got that one ginormous supernova star out in the sky, right?

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Jesus is that light. You see, scripture says it this way, that when we have been strengthened with all power because of Christ, according to God's glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy, therefore, we give thanks to the

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Father. Why do we give thanks to the Father? Because he has qualified you.

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He's qualified me through the shed blood of Christ, through the vicarious sufferings of our great

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God and Savior for us on the cross. He has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

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You see, in the earth that is coming, the new creation, the new heavens, the new earth, not only is there no sin, we are described as existing in an inheritance that is bathed, that is marked by nothing but light.

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It goes on. He, Christ, he has delivered us from the dominion, from the kingdom of darkness.

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Yeah, that's right. He has. You see, we were born in the darkness of sin, conceived in it.

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We've all lived in it. I hate to say this, but many times we're guilty of like adjusting ourselves to the darkness and thriving in it, enjoying it.

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But see, Christ has delivered us from the dominion of darkness. He has transferred us to the kingdom, his own kingdom, in whom then we have redemption and the forgiveness of our sins.

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We have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness. And we all know a thing or two about the darkness.

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Think of it this way. How many of you, like, see here, it's the dead of winter now in North Dakota.

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And, oh, I was like, at the end of the day, getting into bed in the wintertime.

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Why? Because the bed's just a little cool. The sheets are a little cold, right?

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And, you know, there it is. It's dark at night. We've got the shades drawn. And I pour myself into bed and, oh, it's just a little cold at first.

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But then my body heat catches up and then I've got this nice, cozy, little warm spot, right?

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And there I am just enjoying my little warm spot in the darkness. And then somebody turns on the light in the hallway.

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What? What? Turn that thing off. I'm trying to sleep here. I was enjoying all those.

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And here's the thing is that in a similar way, like the hallway light annoys you in the middle of the night when you're trying to sleep.

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Sadly, the light of Christ annoys us sinners. Because we've grown accustomed to the dark.

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We like the dark. And as scary as it is, we've become, well, monsters of the dark because of sin.

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And so the light of Christ is the thing that shines at Christmas. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

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And, oh, the darkness tries. Oh, the darkness tries to overcome the light. Man, I've been saying this since COVID.

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Have you noticed that the world has completely collectively lost its mind? Right? So, you know, here in the

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United States, our Congress and our Senate, they just recently passed a bill supposedly to protect the sanctity of marriage.

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And by that, what they mean is they're protecting the sanctity of marriage for people who marry, who are of the same sex.

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And the lawmakers in Washington are talking about taking this gender ideology that says, you know, it doesn't matter what your plumbing is.

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It doesn't matter what you were assigned at birth. You know, that you can choose your gender, you know, and you got to choose your pronouns.

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And they're going to take this ideology and ram it down our throats. You can see this coming in the days ahead, which will create all kinds of conflict in the earth.

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But here's the thing. The darkness always tries to overcome the light and it never succeeds.

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I think of the assigned psalm for Christmas today, and the assigned psalm is an appropriate one, a good one, if you were to think about it.

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It is Psalm 2. It tells the story of the kings of the earth plotting against God and against Jesus Christ, the

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Messiah. Here's how it goes. It says, it says, why do the nations rage?

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Why do the peoples plot in vain? And it is in vain if you're plotting against God, right?

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The kings of the earth, they have set themselves and the rulers, they take counsel together against Yahweh and against his

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Messiah saying, let us burst their bonds apart. Let us cast away their cords from us.

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And you just sit there and go, that's happening today. Listen, this is a time honored tradition for humanity, sinful as we are, born in the dark that we are in the darkness of sin under the power of the dominion, the kingdom of darkness.

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We don't want God to tell us what to do at all. In fact, we don't even want

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God defining what we are or who we are, okay? Not only do we not want God telling us what to do, we don't want him telling us what we are.

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If I want to be a cabbage, then I'm going to be a cabbage and you can't stop me, right?

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This is how this goes. But the psalmist is clear on this. This is just nonsense.

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Why are the nations raging? Why are the peoples plotting in vain saying, let us burst their bonds apart.

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Let's cast apart the cords of God. But he who sits in the heavens, he laughs.

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The Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath. He will terrify them in his fury, saying, as for me,

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I have set my King on Zion and on my holy hill.

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Well, uh -oh, now we've got a problem here. At least the gender people who are down with the patriarchy and all this kind of nonsense.

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Have you ever stopped to consider that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords? He sits on the throne of David forever.

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That means he's a King. And yes, he definitely is a King. That means the universe is run by a patriarch, the grand patriarch of all patriarchs,

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Jesus Christ himself. Oh man, the nation's raging right now in all of their darkness and annoyed by the light.

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They've got another thing coming when that light becomes visible to them, right? So I will tell of the decree.

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Yahweh said to me, you are my son today. I've begotten you. Ask me, ask of me and I will make the nations, your heritage, the ends of the earth, your possession.

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You shall break them with a rod of iron, dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Now, therefore, oh Kings, be wise.

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Be warned, oh rulers of the earth, serve Yahweh with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry and you perish in the way for his wrath is quickly kindled and blessed are those who take refuge in him.

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And that is us. We are truly those who are blessed, who take refuge in God. And so we'll note the light of Christ this

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Christmas and every Christmas, every Lord's day, every day, as the gospel continues to go out to all nations, announcing to them pardon and grace and forgiveness in Jesus Christ, the light continues to shine and the darkness will never overcome it, even though it tries.

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In fact, if you were to think about it, when Jesus was hanging dead on the cross, darkness couldn't say that it won because Jesus says,

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I freely lay down my life. Nobody takes it from me, but I lay it down for my friends, for you, for me.

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And so now our gospel text reminds us of the messages we heard during Advent. There was a man sent from God whose name was

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John. He came as a witness to bear witness about what? The light. That's Jesus. So that all might believe through him.

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He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light, but the true light, which enlightens everyone.

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It was coming into the world and he was in the world. And though the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.

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What a strange thing. If you think about it, that I've said it before,

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I'll just keep saying it. If Jesus were walking down the streets of downtown Grand Forks here in North Dakota, and I was driving by in my pickup truck,

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I wouldn't stop. I wouldn't recognize him. I wouldn't sit there and go, oh wow, there's my creator.

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There's Jesus. Right? I think about that song that was all the way back in the nineties, terrible lyrics, by the way.

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What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us, just like a stranger on the bus, trying to find his way home.

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Every time that song would come on the radio, I'd sit there and go, he is, he became one of us. That's the whole point of Christmas.

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That's the whole point of the incarnation. God has become one of us. Why? To save us, to live that sinless life for you and for me so that he can impute his righteousness to us as a gift.

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He received our sin, our iniquity, bore it in his own body on the cross.

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That's why he came. If you think about it, there's a certain sadness to the celebration of Christmas.

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And that is that we can all picture little baby Jesus wrapped up in swaddling claws, lying in a manger.

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And we know exactly how this is going to end. Remember the movie

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Back to the Future? Right? When Marty McFly goes back in time to the 1950s and he sees his uncle, right?

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He sees his uncle and his uncle is still an infant and he's in one of those play pins. He's in one of those kid play pins.

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And back in the 50s, they made them out of wood and they look like little prisons. And he says to his uncle, who's this infant, he says, get used to these bars.

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You know why? Because you're going to spend a lot of time in prison. He knows the future.

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But when it comes to Jesus, we know how the story ends. This infant, this completely helpless infant, born under these mean circumstances in abject poverty, who's going to about have his life snuffed out by Herod, who has to flee to Egypt.

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His parents have to flee, take him. And then he grows up in obscurity in Nazareth. We know how the story ends.

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It ends with him on a... Wait a second. That's not where the story ends, is it?

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It ends with him walking out of the grave on the third day, just as he said, proving that he is who he claimed to be.

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God of God, light of light, very God of very God, Emmanuel, God with us.

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That's the point. And so even though he comes to his own creation, although the world was made through him, the world didn't know him.

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I didn't know him. That's because of the darkness of our sin. He came to his own people, the people of Israel.

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If anyone would have recognized him, it would have been the Jews, right? Who is this man that he even forgives sins was one of the first questions out of the mouth of the people who are the chosen tribe of the world.

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The people of Israel came to his own people, his own people didn't receive him. But to all who did receive him, to all, that's including you.

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Yes, you Aussies too. That includes you Aussies. Can you believe it? Right? To all who believe him, who received him, he gave the right to become children of God.

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You and I now adopted being united with Christ and his death and his resurrection in the waters of baptism.

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We being forgiven by God, we are the children of God. And we were not born of blood, nor of the flesh, nor the will of a man, but we were born of God.

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As Jesus says in John chapter three, that which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the spirit is spirit.

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And you, anyone who is born of water in the spirit baptism, truly, truly is born from above.

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He came to give us that second birth born of God. And so the word, the logos became flesh.

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He has dwelt among us. We've seen his glory, glories of the only son from the father.

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And listen to these last words of our gospel text, because it tells us everything about Jesus. Jesus, he's full of grace and truth.

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Have you noticed that we human beings, because of the darkness of sin, we can't really say of each other,

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I can't say this of any of us, that we're full of grace and full of truth. Right?

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We human beings are full of rancor, of hatred, of malice and lies.

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That's kind of the way it goes. And especially so of all of our politicians, just saying, right?

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You get the idea that, but Jesus is not like us at all.

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And thank God, he is instead full of grace and truth.

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So this Christmas, as we contemplate the mystery of the incarnation, the great rejoicing that we, that we go through today, as we, as we share with each other gifts and we sing to each other, these great

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Christmas hymns, let us remember that we were all born in darkness, but God said to you, he said to me, let there be light.

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In fact, not only did he say, let there be light, he is the light that has come to us. So that we can now be transferred from the dominion of darkness, have an inheritance in the kingdom that he has established, and there will be no darkness in what is coming.

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And finally, the darkness that's even in you and me because of our sin will be driven out of us on that day that he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

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Let this be the Christmas of lights because Christ is the light that has come 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 NW, Oslo, MN 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744. We thank you for your support.

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