Two Options... Death or Death

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. Luke, the 20th chapter.

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Jesus began to tell the people this parable. A man planted a vineyard and led it out to tenants and went into another country for a long while.

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When the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard.

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But the tenants beat him and sent him away empty -handed. And then he sent another servant. And they also beat and treated him shamefully and sent him away empty -handed.

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And he sent yet a third. And this one they also wounded and cast out. And then the owner of the vineyard said,

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Well, what shall I do? I'll send my beloved son. Perhaps they will respect him. But the tenants saw him and they said to themselves,

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This is the heir. Let us kill him so that the inheritance may be ours. So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

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Well, what then will the owner of the vineyard do to them? He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.

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And when they heard this, they said, Surely not. But he looked directly at them and said, Well, what then is this that is written?

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The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces.

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And when it falls on anyone, it'll crush him. The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on Jesus at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

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So they watched him and sent spies who pretended to be sincere that they might catch him in something he said so as to deliver him over to the authority and the jurisdiction of the governor.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. All right. This is an interesting parable. Kind of a crazy one if you think about it.

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Now, before I came up here to Kongsvinger, I knew nothing about farming.

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I still pretty much know nothing. I know just this much. And one of the things

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I've learned, that there are people who own large acreages out here, and they don't even farm it.

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They have other guys farm it for them. So they go into business. So there's guys with combines and all this other equipment.

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And so they will farm the land for somebody else. And that being the case,

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I find this parable to be fascinating because whatever has gotten into these tenants who are farming this land for this other fellow, they somehow think that by killing the son of the guy who owns the property, that somehow they'll get the inheritance, they'll be in the will, and that the land will be theirs.

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I mean, I don't have to tell you guys. That's just silly. That's not how that works. But such is the insanity, and I mean this, the utter insanity of self -righteousness.

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Now, a little bit of a note. There are only two religions in the whole world, and you sit there and go, wait a second, Pastor. That's just nuts.

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Okay, so we got Christianity, we got Judaism, we got Islam, we got Buddhism, we got Hinduism.

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That's five right there. Clearly, when you say you don't know how to do math, you are not lying.

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Well, let me kind of explain. The two religions in the world work this way.

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There is one religion which takes on all kinds of different forms, but at its core, it's still the same religion, and that is the religion of works.

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The idea here is you go and you do good things, and the good things all have different lists.

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So you go and you feed the poor, you go to church, or you go to the mosque, or you go and you pray your prayers, and you do these things, and all of your good works then become a currency.

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They become like dollars and large amounts of money, which then you can take and purchase from God your salvation.

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You do enough stuff, save up enough of the good works and the money that it creates in your heavenly bank account, and then when you get to heaven and you stand there on the day of judgment, you look at your balance and you go, all right,

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Jesus, how big is that check that I need to write you? That's the religion of works.

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And here's the thing. There ain't no way you can do any things, enough things, to even remotely begin to save yourself using that method.

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It won't work. And the other thing is that Scripture makes this very clear in Paul's epistle to the

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Galatians, that those who are trying to justify themselves, save themselves by their good works, they are damned.

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And if somebody's damned, they're dead in trespasses and sins, they're hostile to Christ, and the one thing

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I've noted is that the self -righteous, not only do they hate Jesus, I mean, down deep they really hate him, they invent their own

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Jesus, but they are absolutely incensed and just really upset that real sinners who've committed real sins are really forgiven by Jesus and that he gives all of salvation and the inheritance of the new earth away as a gift.

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They can't earn it or whatever, and it just really bugs them down deep.

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Now, that being the case, that's in play here, but I would remind you of what Jesus said at the end of our parable, and listen to these words, everyone who falls on that stone, referring to himself, by the way, everyone who falls on that stone, which stone?

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Well, the stone that the builders rejected, that one that has become the cornerstone. You see, the builders rejected

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Christ because they wanted to attain heaven by their own works. So everyone who falls on that cornerstone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.

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Now, that seems like kind of a weird option. Let me say, you ever been on a game show, right? And so we've got two curtains, one curtain over here, we got another curtain over here, and the game show host says, all right, you get to choose which of these you want, and let's go ahead and show what's behind the curtains, and the curtains raise up, and over here, death, and over here, death.

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These are your two options. Which will you choose? Both of them, you're gonna end up dead. I'll take death for 500.

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You know, it's just kind of a weird thing, but that's what Jesus is saying, but note here, the deaths differ, but it's still a death.

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Everyone who falls on the cornerstone, Christ, will be broken to pieces. Everyone on which it falls will be crushed.

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You see, there's the two different deaths here. The one who comes to Jesus and said, Lord Jesus, I have sinned grievously against heaven and against you.

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I've sinned grievously against my neighbor, and I am not worthy of eternal life.

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Please have mercy on me, a sinner. This is the one who dies to himself.

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This is the one, upon hearing God's law preached, recognizes that he's guilty, and there will be no attempts on the part of this fellow to justify himself by saying, yeah, but.

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Instead, just a complete coming clean and saying, yes, I'm guilty. And so that is the one who then falls on Christ, and although they are broken to pieces,

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Christ raises them up on the last day. Christ gives them faith. Christ pardons them. But the one who persists in self -righteousness, the one who persists in the insanity that goes with self -righteousness, well, that's the one on whom that cornerstone will crush.

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And when that crushing takes place, there is no coming back from that. That is an eternal death.

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So your options are death and death. Those are your options. Either way, you're gonna die.

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And you'll note then, after hearing this parable, we'll kind of start at the end and work our way back through. The end of this parable, the chief priests, they sought to lay hands on Jesus.

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Oh, they were really upset, so upset that now their murderous plan, they've really decided to throw this into overdrive.

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Yeah, their goal is to murder Jesus. So they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people.

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Yeah, isn't it fascinating? I remember when I was a little kid, and I'd get bullied at school, and of course, being a nerdy, scrawny kid, that's just how it goes.

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You just have to get used to it. But I remember one time being called all kinds of names by some fellow, and my mother explained to me that, yes,

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I understand that Johnny called you a goober head, but you have to understand that being called a goober head is not that big of a deal.

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And then she taught me this important thing that we all learned. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

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But apparently, these scribes and Pharisees haven't heard that, and they are just furious that Jesus would tell this parable against them, and so we've got to take our murderous plot, and we need to ramp this up.

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We need to make this happen. You need to die, Jesus. How dare you say words that we disagree with?

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How dare you take our self -righteousness and not take it seriously? Uh -huh.

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And so with the insanity that goes with that, they watched Jesus. They even sent spies, spies, who pretended to be sincere.

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Oh, Jesus, yeah, you're telling some good truth here. Let me write that down in my journal. That's some good life advice right there.

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But the whole point of these spies was they wanted to catch Jesus in something that He said in order to deliver

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Him up to the authority in the jurisdiction of the governor. In order for Him to die, He's got to die.

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Which kind of begs the question, what was going on in that parable, man? What was going on in that parable? But before we take a look back through that parable, let me show you that self -righteousness has always been murderous.

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And this goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Consider what it says in Genesis 4.

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Adam knew Eve, his wife. This is after they had eaten of the fruit that they were not supposed to eat of.

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God has now cursed the ground, and they're going to live by the toil and sweat of their brows.

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And so Adam knew his wife Eve. She conceived, bore Cain, saying, I've gotten a man with the help of the

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Lord. And then she bore his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of the sheep, Cain a worker of the ground.

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And in the course of time, verse 3 says, Cain brought to Yahweh an offering of the fruit of the ground.

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It doesn't say he was compelled to do so. You'll note he had religious activity.

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He was pious on the outside. But we learn from Hebrews 11 that unlike Abel, his brother,

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Cain did not have any faith. And so his religious activity was for the purpose of, well, earning brownie points with God, getting that currency so that he can put

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God in his debt. Kind of think of it this way. Self -righteousness is the ultimate form of idolatry because it tries to make you the deity.

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It tries to make it so the one true God is now indebted to you. It's a form of control. But God is not going to have anything to do with that.

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So it also says that Abel then brought the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

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And we learn again from Hebrews 11 that Abel had faith, unlike Cain. And then it says the

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Lord had regard for Abel. Notice he has regard for the person first. He has regard for Abel.

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Why? Because without faith, it's impossible to please God. So the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering.

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But for Cain and his offering, he had no regard. None whatsoever. Cain has zero faith.

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And the epistle of Jude holds Cain up as an archetype of a false teacher.

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Somebody with all kinds of religious pious activity but no faith in the heart at all. So, as a result of this,

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Cain was really angry. Totally hacked off.

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How dare you God have regard for my miserable younger brother and not have regard to me?

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I'm the one who brought you this offering of the firstfruits of my harvest and you have no regard for me?

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You have no regard for my activity? How... And he's just furious and his face falls.

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And now murder comes up in his heart. And so the Lord says to Cain, why are you angry?

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Why is your face falling? If you do well, will you not be accepted? Is that an interesting question?

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It's a question. If you do well, will you not be accepted? God cranking the law up for Cain to make him recognize that he's a sinner in need of God's mercy and grace.

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And he says, and if you do not do well, well then sin's crouching at the door. It's desire is contrary to you.

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You must rule over it. Get busy, get cracking. Right?

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God cranks the law up on Cain in order to make him recognize that sin is already having dominion over him.

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So Cain then spoke to Abel, his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and he killed him.

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First murder. Didn't take long, did it? First family, first sins, and now the first murder happens with...

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Of all things, it happens over religion. Is it any wonder we don't like talking about religion and politics at Thanksgiving?

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We're afraid a murder will take place in our house. Right? So he murdered his brother.

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So then the Lord said to Cain, where's Abel, your brother? And this is just insanity. This is nuts.

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Do you think for a second that Cain's going to get away with this? That God doesn't know what has happened?

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But that's the insanity of self -righteousness. He says, I don't know. Am I my brother's keeper?

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Really? That's going to be your defense. So the Lord basically puts a stop to that.

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He says, what have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground, and now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

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And when you were at the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength, and you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.

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That is the insanity of self -righteousness. That somehow you think you can hoodwink

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God. So coming then back to our parable that Jesus tells, and Jesus tells this parable against unbelieving

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Jews, unbelieving Israel. These are people who've heard the Word of God, and yet they persist in self -righteousness.

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And the weird thing is that they profess to worship the exact same

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God that Jesus is. That's the weird part about this. So Jesus told this parable, and we know that he told this against Israel, told this against the unbelieving

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Jews. A man planted a vineyard, led it out to tenants, went into another country for a long while.

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Everybody knows what he's talking about here. He's talking about the fact that God had given the children of Israel the land of Israel, the promised land.

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He's led it out to them. In fact, the Mosaic Covenant is a land lease agreement, if you would.

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And when the time came, he sent a servant to the tenants so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. Sounds totally reasonable to me.

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He owns the property. They're farming it for him. He gets his cut. That's how the agreement worked.

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But the tenants, they beat him, and they sent him away empty -handed. Well, that's not good.

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So he sent another servant. And they also beat and treated him shamefully and sent him away empty -handed.

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I'm getting the feeling there's something wrong with these tenants. So he sent a third. This one they also wounded, and they cast him out.

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And then the owner of the vineyard said, well, what shall I do? I'll send my beloved son. Perhaps they will respect him.

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But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Let's kill him so that the inheritance may be ours.

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And they threw him out of the vineyard, killed him. What then will the owner of the vineyard do to them?

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He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Huh. So you'll note here the dichotomy between real penitent faith and self -righteousness.

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Now in our Epistle text, the Apostle Paul recounts for us he knows full well this distinction.

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And this is a fellow who positioned himself perfectly, by the way, to be crushed by Christ the cornerstone because of his self -righteousness.

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And he even describes the insanity that goes on with self -righteousness and its hatred towards God and Christ and those who believe in him.

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And a little bit of a note here. For those of you who might be tempted to save yourself by your good works, you're going to note that the list that Paul gives us here is a truly biblical list.

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And here's what I mean by that. There are lots of lists created by the religion of works.

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Lots of lists. But the list that Paul gives, although it is a twisting of Scripture, if there ever was anybody who would be saved by his good works, it's the

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Apostle Paul. And Luther once made a statement that if anybody could have been saved by his monkery, talking about the fact that he was a

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Roman Catholic monk, that it would have been him. But note that being a Roman Catholic monk and the list that goes along with that, prayers to the saints, vigils, beating your own skin, pilgrimages to Rome, purchasing of indulgences, viewing of sacred relics and stuff like that, there is no list like that in the

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Bible. So Paul's list is way better than Luther's list. And he notes here that at one point he was totally sold out for this self -righteousness and he was quite zealous about it.

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And he says if anyone thinks that he has confidence in the flesh, confidence in the flesh for like can save yourself by your good works,

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Paul says, listen, I have more. I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

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Hebrew of the Hebrews. As to the law, a Pharisee. As to zeal, a persecutor of the church.

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As to righteousness under the law, blameless, utterly blameless.

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That's a good list. Today's lists are a little bit different. And it kind of depends on whether you're a conservative or a liberal.

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So conservative self -righteousness goes something like this. I made a decision to ask

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Jesus in my heart at a Billy Graham crusade. Since then, I've stopped listening to all secular music.

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I no longer drink any alcohol, even given up caffeine, because my body's a temple.

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I never watch anything rated over PG, except for maybe occasionally on Netflix because their whole rating system is a little sketchy.

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But I never do anything like that on purpose. I vote Republican. And then the liberal list would be

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I recycle, I participate in Earth Day activities. I stand against social injustices.

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And the list goes on and on and on. And you'll note, it doesn't matter what the list is. Islam's list would include praying towards Mecca five times a day, making your pilgrimage, giving your alms, and things like this.

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They're all lists. And all of these lists are designed to do one thing. You check them off, and now you are saved.

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God owes you salvation. But Paul says, listen, if anyone thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I have more than anybody else reason to have confidence in the flesh.

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Here's my pedigree, and his pedigree is biblically flawless. But here's what Paul says.

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Whatever gain I had, gain in that self -righteousness, I now count as a loss for the sake of Christ.

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Indeed, I count everything as a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my

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Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them.

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What's the them there? I count them as rubbish. I count them as rubbish.

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Them. Answer. It's in the context. All of His righteous works under the

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Mosaic Covenant, His circumcision, His zeal, His keeping of Torah, He considers all of that rubbish.

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And by the way, I keep having to make this point. Rubbish here is not strong enough. The Greek word is skubalon.

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And the best way to understand what that is, is think of it this way. Have any of you ever had somebody walking their dog in front of your house, and the dog decides to leave a warm, steamy deposit on your nice, clean, mown grass?

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I particularly hate when that happens because it's not my dog. But when that happens, that lawn deposit is skubalon.

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So notice what Paul is saying here. I count all of my self -righteous works under the law,

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I count them as a hot, steamy lawn deposit so that I might gain

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Christ and be found in Him. Next words are important. Not having a righteousness of my own.

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Well, if you don't have your own righteousness, whose righteousness do you have? Because only the righteous are saved,

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Paul. He says, listen, not having a righteousness of my own. A righteousness that comes from the law.

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Instead, that which comes through faith in Christ. Note then, the righteousness required for salvation is given to us by God.

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The righteousness that comes through faith in Christ. It's the righteousness that comes from God, and that righteousness depends on faith.

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Now remember, when Jesus is on the cross, He is bleeding and dying for your sins and for mine.

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He is the righteous one whom God makes to be the sinner. God lays on Him the iniquity of us all.

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So all of our unrighteousness is given to Jesus. He bleeds and dies for it.

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He is the unrighteous one now. But when you are brought to faith in Christ, His perfect, sinless righteousness is given to you as if you're the one who did it.

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And that is given to you as a gift, by grace, through faith. You can't earn it, you can't buy it.

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There's nothing you can do to get it. It's given and it's received as a gift. So, not having a righteousness of my own that comes through the law, but a righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.

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A righteousness that is from God and depends on faith. So that I might know

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Him and the power of His resurrection may share in His sufferings and become like Him in His death.

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So that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Wow. So are you saying that I do not have to try to be a perfect good boy in order to be saved?

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What I am saying and what Scripture is saying that if you're trying to be saved by being a good boy, you're damned.

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But, if you will fall on the rock, the cornerstone that the builders have rejected and repent and recognize your sinfulness and your inability to save yourself, although you will die and die to yourself, you will be saved as a gift.

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Persist in sin and unbelief and you're going to be crushed by Christ on the day of judgment. Crushed in the winepress of God's wrath.

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So you'll note here then, it's not a mistake, it's not a coincidence, when Jesus is on trial, that when

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He's on trial, Pilate wants to let Him go. And he says, listen, it's the normal custom here for the

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Passover to release one prisoner to you, Barabbas, the guy's a murderer, and Jesus, who's done nothing wrong.

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And what does the crowd want? The crowd wants the murderer. They want one of their own. Best way

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I can put it. Because that's the insanity of the self -righteous. But God then does the ultimate jiu -jitsu move.

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And now, I've got to tell you, I know less about jiu -jitsu than I know about farming.

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But the one thing I have learned about jiu -jitsu is that there's this fascinating thing that happens with people who understand how this martial art works.

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So if I were to come at a guy who knows jiu -jitsu, you know,

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I lunged at him, you know, tried to grab hold of him or something like that. These guys are trained to basically take the inertia and the momentum of the guy who's attacking and use that as the weapon against them so that if I were to attack somebody who knows jiu -jitsu, it would take about .4

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seconds before I was flat on my back looking up at the sky with the wind knocked out of me going,

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I'm done. You win. Right? And so here's the best part.

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And this is what Jesus is getting at. The stone that the builders rejected, he's that stone. It has become the cornerstone.

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In the ultimate act of murder, see these self -righteous, unbelieving people who hate

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Jesus and want him to go away. Their murderous plot, this is going to be the end of him.

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And so Christ allows himself, lays down his life, permits himself to be murdered by them.

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And in murdering the Son of God, he then takes all of that evil and reverses it and works for us salvation.

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It's the ultimate jiu -jitsu move. Taking their evil and working it for good.

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Working it for your salvation. You and I, we're all part of those people who by nature were born dead in trespasses and sins and our default mode is to think that we can save ourselves by our works.

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And we can not. So, repentance being the buzzword of Lent, let us recognize those ways in which we have tried to hold up our good works to God as a currency that we can purchase from him things.

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As if somehow we can put God in our debt. We can't. And you can always see it in yourselves. I don't know if you've ever had stretches where you felt like your piety was actually kind of good.

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You have stretches where you feel like the devil's really beating up on you hard and your sinful flesh is just not submitting and everything just is going wrong and you come to church all bruised and beaten.

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But then you have these little periods where it's like, well, you know, I've been reading my Bible. I haven't missed a day for three weeks.

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In fact, I even decided that I was gonna do some fasting. I've been fasting for a few days for Lent. You know, man,

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I'm actually doing pretty good. Oh, you gotta knock that off.

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You gotta knock that off. Keep in mind that Jesus makes it clear that even when you do everything that you are commanded by God, you are to say,

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I am still a wicked and unworthy servant because I have only done what I've been told to do.

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So stop feeling all hot about yourself that somehow you're the next best thing in religious pieties to slice bread.

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We're not. None of us are. So we need to repent of our self -righteousness and understand that when it comes to the great divide between the saved and the damned, this is the big distinction.

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The damned are those who think that they do not need Christ. The damned are those who do not believe that they are among those who need to be forgiven.

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They do not consider themselves as sinners. They consider themselves as righteous. They are spiritually insane.

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Nothing they believe, teach, or confess makes a lick of sense. It's a complete denial of reality.

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But Christ is very clear. Everyone who falls on Him, although broken to pieces, will be forgiven.

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Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord and says, Lord, have mercy on me, I'm a sinner, will be forgiven and receives eternal life as a gift.

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But persist in self -righteousness. Persist in trying to make God your debtor and you will have

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Christ crush you. This is most certainly true. So repent.

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Be forgiven even of your self -righteousness. Your great God and Savior, although murdered, laid down His life so that you can be forgiven in order to work all things together for good for those who believe and trust and love

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Him. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Kungsvinger Lutheran Church We thank you for your support.

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