Book of Nehemiah Part 7

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Book of Nehemiah Part 8

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Let's pray and then we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word to study what you have revealed, we pray that as we hear your voice in the scriptures, that you would continue the task of the

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Holy Spirit to convict us of our sin. In the places where we have erred in our beliefs, we ask that you would bring our thoughts and our desires in accordance with your word, and that all that we say and do would be glorifying to you.

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We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, there was a follow -up question that I received here at Kongsvinger from the sermon, and this is the type of question that could lead to other questions, so I want everybody to know that we are open to the idea of having one of those let's -ask -questions -of -pastor kind of days.

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Those are good, right, and salutary from time to time. And if that doesn't turn out, then we will continue with our study of Nehemiah.

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But there is something that I want to talk about as well, because I think this is the time to introduce that concept.

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But the question came up is that, what do you do when you proclaim biblical truth, especially you'll note that the month of June, I legitimately do not look forward to June anymore, because it's pride month, and I was really, really despondent over what the

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Los Angeles Dodgers decided to do, and I thought it was an act of God that after they recognized the

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Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, that the day after that they got a shellacking by the San Francisco Giants, and it was the worst loss that they had suffered in 125 years.

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I consider stuff like that to be an act of God. But all of that being said, the question comes up is that on social media, you note that we all kind of bump into each other, and when you express biblical truth in light of Pride Month and stuff like that, what are you to do when your family members accuse you of hating people?

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Isn't that always the charge? If you defend and proclaim biblical truth, you are going to be shouted at and told that you are promoting hatred, absolutely promoting hatred.

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And so that was the question as it was put forward. So here's the issue, is that it is not hatred at all to proclaim biblical truth.

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Now you can proclaim biblical truth in a hate -filled way. So you'll note that we have to be careful when we are proclaiming biblical truth so that we don't do so in a way that legitimately would be repugnant even to people who believe the same thing as you do, who believe the same as Scripture.

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So I think of a group like Westboro Baptist. You guys remember

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Westboro Baptist? It's been about a decade since they were making the headlines, and one of the things that they were famous for is that they would go and protest different places and people, and they were famous for their signs that says,

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God hates blank. Just fill in the blank. So they were always out there proclaiming a message of how angry and ticked off God is.

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And the thing is that that's an incomplete message. It legitimately is.

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And so I, on my podcast about a decade ago, invited Shirley Phelps Roper to come on to Fighting for the

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Faith to talk about what Westboro Baptist was up to. And in the early parts of the interview,

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I got her to admit, quite handily, that she was a sinner and that she was saved by the blood of Christ.

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And that she is not righteous in and of herself to be able to earn salvation. She believes all of those things.

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And then what I noted later in the interview was that her behavior was only focusing on the law and didn't bring the gospel to bear.

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And as a result of it, she was forgetting that she had admitted that she herself was a sinner in need of a savior.

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And when I brought that up, she hung up on me. It's the only interview that I did that the guest decided that they were done and she just bailed.

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So it's... The moment where she hangs up on me is still in the podcast.

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If you go to fightingforthefaith .com and look up Shirley Phelps Roper, I think she only lasts like 20, 25 minutes before.

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Then I heard a click, and I went, Shirley, hello? She was gone. So the idea then is that we have a big problem.

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And that is that the world has redefined what love is. And so as Christians, we have to recognize something, that love is defined according to God's commands.

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So when we talk about God's commands in this way, remember, Christ says that all of the commandments of God, all the law and the prophets hang on two commands.

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Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

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So you'll note then that when people are engaging in behavior that is contrary to the commandments, that the very definition of what they are doing is not loving but selfish.

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Let me give you an example that I think that we could all readily agree with, although you can't take anything for granted nowadays.

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And that is that if I decided that I were to walk into Hugo's and just load up my cart, skip the checkout line, and just go straight to my truck and put my groceries in my truck and drive away, there's a word for that, right?

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It's theft. The commandment says, thou shall not steal.

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And if somebody were to come up to me and say, Roseboro, what are you doing? You're stealing.

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You didn't pay for those groceries. They don't belong to you. And I would say, how dare you be so hateful?

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Who are you to judge me, right? I've got to feed my family. Love is love, don't you know?

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You'll note here that you kind of can begin to see the problem, and that is this, is that theft is selfish.

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And it is a failure to love neighbor. You see, my neighbor, the owner of Hugo's, purchased those groceries on the retail market, not retail, but the wholesale market, and they marked it up.

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And they are the ones who are paying the employees and the forklift drivers and the truck drivers who come in and deliver those groceries and things like this.

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And it all belongs to them, and it becomes mine only after I purchase it.

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Now, same then applies to sex. And we have to talk about this topic here, because you'll note that sexual morality has been on the skids legitimately for a long time, but you could say it's accelerated since the so -called sexual revolution, right?

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And nowadays, I think back to that song that I heard on the radio growing up.

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You guys remember the song, Love the One You're With? Isn't that the morality of the world today?

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Okay, you can't tell me who I can or cannot have sex with, is how their attitude is.

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And it's none of your business. This is a private matter. And if I decide that I want to have sex with somebody who is not my wife, you just need to see your way out of the conversation.

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You need to be gone, because love is love after all. But here's the thing.

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Adultery is not love. It's lust. And adultery is not selfless.

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It's selfish. And you'll note that when we steal or when we commit a sexual sin, we are guilty of not loving our neighbor as ourselves.

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We are guilty of only loving ourselves. And on top of it, we are guilty of not loving

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God. We break both commandments, the have no other gods commandment, and we also end up breaking the command as it relates to our love for neighbor.

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And so when we point out, correctly so, that listen, as a

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Christian, I cannot, nor will I ever, celebrate same -sex relationships,

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I will not celebrate them in the same way that I refuse to celebrate heterosexual relationships that are not marriage.

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In fact, you show up at Kung's Vinegar and you're shacking up with your honey, you're not getting the

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Lord's Supper. You're getting a rebuke. And it is not a failure to love you.

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In fact, because I love you and I fear the God who is going to judge us all, the true love here is telling you the truth and calling you to repentance.

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And I would note here, there's a great passage along these lines, and we'll take a look at it.

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It's 1 Corinthians chapter six. Hang on a second here. One core, six.

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Why am I having a hard time with this? I cannot type today. All right, what is going on?

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One core. Here we go. No, it's the brain is going.

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It's your hair we're going. Yeah. All right.

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All right. So consider what scripture says here. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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Think this through for a second here. On the last day, the last thing you want to hear from Christ is depart from me into the lake of fire.

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I never knew you. That's going to be a bad outcome. Like a legitimately horrifying outcome.

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And we as Christians know that we have all deserved that outcome ourselves. And the only way we're able to avert that outcome is by the grace, the mercy, the forgiveness and pardon of our

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God because of his great love for us who does not desire that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.

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That's the desire of God. But the reality is this, is that there's going to be too many people on the last day who are going to hear other words.

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And the idea here is this, is that if you live for only today and you don't consider what's coming tomorrow, you are living your life poorly.

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I mean, legitimately poorly. And I can think back to when

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I was in high school. Now, I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe, but when

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I was in high school, the first few years of high school, I didn't apply myself very much at all. I didn't want to.

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And as a result of it, I got Bs and maybe an occasional C, but it was rare for me to get an

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A. And my parents were just absolutely frustrated with my performance in school because I had no motivation whatsoever.

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None. And finally, one of my teachers sat me down and said, you know,

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Chris, you are a lot smarter than your grades reflect. You are capable of doing more than what you are doing.

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And that was a conversation that kind of stuck with me. And so the last part of my high school career,

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I actually dedicated myself, and wouldn't you know it, I got straight As. But here's the thing.

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Again, when you go two years of sloughing off and two years of applying yourself, what do you think your

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GPA is going to be at the end of that thing, right? Still kind of mediocre because the two end up kind of melding together.

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Well, when we got to graduation, my wife, who applied herself very diligently all four years of high school, she graduated with honors.

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And she was allowed to have something on her graduation gown that reflected that she had earned those honors.

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I missed it by this much. And here's the thing. At the time,

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I remember thinking, you know what, if I had really even known that this was how a graduation works and that there's these things called honors and not honors and how

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I would have felt if I had just missed it, I wouldn't have done the things that I did my freshman and sophomore years.

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I would have applied myself in school. But it was too late. I couldn't go back. I couldn't change history.

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I couldn't change what had happened. And as a result of it, I had to kind of sit there stewing in my own stupidity, recognizing that I was living for the moment back then when

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I should have had a broader view and a bigger understanding of what it is that I needed to accomplish academically and why.

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Now, when we get to the day of judgment, here's the thing. That is the decisive day.

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And how you spend eternity, either in the lake of fire in torment for eternity.

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Okay, I don't even like it when I hit my toe against my bedpost because it kills.

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It's so much pain. I can't fathom an eternity in the lake of fire.

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But here's the thing. We know what the end is. And we know that the end of this earth is not the end, that there is a continuation, but the continuation occurs on either two paths.

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Therefore, since we know what reality is and we know that there's a day coming, do we love our neighbor enough to tell them the truth or do we love our own lives, our own reputations, and our own non -Rockabodist lifestyle?

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We don't want to rock the boat. So that we remain silent rather than speak the truth.

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And you'll note then, it is love to tell the truth, but you have to tell it in love.

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So Paul says, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

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Now note where the emphasis here is. Don't be deceived. Who's deceiving what? About whom? What's this deception going on?

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Neither the sexually immoral nor the idolaters nor the adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor revilers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

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You're going to note, that's a list. And the list includes a lot of people.

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In fact, that's quite an extensive list. How much do you want to bet that probably all of you fit somewhere on this list?

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Is it loving for the apostle Paul to remind them that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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It is the truest form of love to speak this truth. But note he doesn't just end there.

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Apostle Paul is not Shirley Phelps Rober. God hates idolaters and God hates the sexually immoral.

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God hates the adulterers. God hates the homosexuals. God hates the thieves and the greedy and the drunkards. You better get your act together.

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Right? That's not where he ends. I may have heard that sermon somewhere.

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But watch where he goes. And such were some of you.

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Such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified.

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You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our

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God. And so the idea here is that how's the song go?

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The hymn, Chief of sinners though I be, Jesus shed his blood for me. Right?

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That's something that we all say. And one of the biggest tragedies that I see happening right now in the church today is the rise of something called

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Christian nationalism. Okay? Or white Christian nationalism which is a racist version of this thing.

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And all these guys talk about is God's judgment. And these guys want to have laws that would result in the death penalty for people who break these particular commandments.

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Right? And of course I just sit there and go, do you not know that you guys would then be put to death because you've broken these commandments and you've earned the death penalty according to the

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Mosaic Covenant. Do you not understand this? Right? And they somehow think that what's really called for here is for us to crack the whip and just you people, whoever you are, label the group, right?

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We're going to send you to hell. But what is the church called to do?

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Now granted, government's called to punish evil doers. That's true. And unfortunately our government right now is celebrating evil doers.

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And that is a big problem. But the church is called to do what?

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Call sinners to repentance. We are called as Christians to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name. So you'll note that, are any of you government officials?

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I don't think so, right? So as citizens of the United States, I would note that's the lesser citizens of citizenship.

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As citizens of the kingdom of God, we are all given the privilege of proclaiming the excellencies of the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

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And so we have to make sure as Christians that when we are speaking against evil, that we are also pointing to the one who pardons and forgives those who commit these evils.

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And that begins with us being forgiven. Over and again, a lot of times people hear a

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Christian speak out, and the only thing they hear is Dana Carvey's church lady character.

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Could it be Satan, right? And they think that the church is hypocritical.

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And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are hypocritical who call themselves Christians. They legitimately are guilty of the very things that they are condemning.

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Does the name Jimmy Swaggart ring a bell to anybody here? I'm showing my age. But Jimmy Swaggart, I mean, he was this assemblies of God, hellfire, brimstone kind of preacher, preaching against formal caboodling and all that kind of sexual sin and stuff like that.

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And after church, he was out trolling for hookers. And he got caught in a prostitution sting.

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And what does the world think of that? How is it okay for you, but it's not okay for us, is the way the world says.

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So when we're communicating the truth of Scripture, as Christians who understand that we are forgiven, we must always have the salt of the gospel in mind.

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We oppose evil for sure. And we must call for our government to be a government of law and order because right now, it's a government of complete lawlessness.

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So when we call the government to repent and we call our neighbors to repent, we need to add into that call that there is forgiveness in Christ.

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You see, it is true that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom. And you'll note then that regardless of whether you are guilty of any of the sins in the list, whether it be idolatry, sexual immorality, adultery, homosexuality, theft, greed, drunkenness, reviling, swindling, if you're guilty of any of these things, note how in Christ that is taken away from you and such were some of you.

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In the eyes of Christ, the forgiven are not any of those things. But for the impenitent, you're gonna note something.

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Have you noticed the terrifying thing, how people identify now with their sin?

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That's part of their true identity. And you know what though?

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They're not wrong. Sinners sin because they're sinners. And so when they're sitting there embracing this reality and saying this is true to their self, we shouldn't sit there and go, no, no, no, no, no, you're something different.

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No, no, as Christians, we recognize everybody's born dead and trespasses and sins. And so when you hear a sinner say, this is my identity, you sit there and go, yep, that's right.

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That is your identity. And the reality is this, it's a false identity.

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It's an identity of sin and rebellion. But in Christ, Christ will give you a new identity. Not one of sinner, but of forgiven saint.

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Well, I'm no saint. Well, you can be. But you can't earn that. That's something given as a gift.

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So we talk about these things. We recognize this. And then watch where Paul goes now. Paul says, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.

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All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. Food is meant for the stomach. And the stomach is meant for food.

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And God will destroy both one and the other. And then listen to what he says. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the

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Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.

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Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?

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Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?

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For as it is written, the two will become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.

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So flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body.

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But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the

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Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You're not your own, for you were bought with a price.

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So glorify God in your body. Now, have you noticed how completely unsatisfied the sexually immoral are with their sexual immorality?

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Right? It's absolutely true because here's the thing.

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Their sinful nature and the temptations of the devil basically would tell you, oh, in order for you to be satisfied, in order for you to have what you're really yearning for and striving for and really want and need so badly, just go ahead and take that forbidden person.

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At the end of the day, it's completely hollow. At the end of the day, it doesn't bring you joy.

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It brings you regret. It doesn't bring you something that you are proud of.

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It brings you something that you are ashamed of. And that's the terrifying bit of all of this.

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And you think about the people who are self -identifying as something else, right?

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And then when they transition and they have the surgery, what are the chances that they're going to commit suicide at the end of that?

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They are so much greater. So when we are opposing these things, we're not doing so because we hate people.

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When a Christian opposes evil, it's because they love people.

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And the true definition of love is ordered by God's commands. Love your neighbor, love yourself, and those are expressed in the

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Ten Commandments. Freedom is to obey God's commands. Slavery is to disobey

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God's commands. That's what slavery is. Freedom is to be set free from these false desires.

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You're going to note, the devil cannot create a single thing. The devil hasn't created anything.

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All he's done is taking the good and beautiful gifts that God has given us and caused us to twist them.

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And we have participated in that. But the reality is this. There's nothing better than a great marriage.

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And there's nothing worse than an adulterous affair. There's nothing better than working hard and earning the money so that you can pay for the food and put it on your table.

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There's nothing worse than living your life with your constantly looking over your shoulder to fearing that the cops are going to show up and take you away when they figure out you're the guy who's been stealing those things from such and such a place, right?

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There's nothing worse than all of that. In fact, many people who've been caught in sin, when they finally get caught, their first response is, thank

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God. Why? Because living a double life is ridiculously difficult, right?

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And so we as Christians are calling for people to stop living a double life, to stop expecting that evil is going to give you the good that only

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God can give you, to stop living your life in rebellion to the good that God has given us, and instead have true satisfaction, true joy, true happiness, which cannot be found in rebellion against God.

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It's just not there. It's all empty. And so if you really want to take this to its ultimate level, read the book of Ecclesiastes.

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And don't do so if you're depressed and suicidal, though. You have to kind of say that.

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But how does Ecclesiastes go? The whole premise of Ecclesiastes is that Solomon, in his wisdom, decided that he was going to not forbid himself from anything.

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He was going to allow himself to kind of go down all the different rabbit trails to see where they lead, right?

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And his conclusion after doing all of that was, the whole thing is meaningless. Right? I think of the tragedy that exists today, where you have all of these young people, and they are not in meaningful relationships with each other.

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And the number of youth that are actually getting married, that number is dwindling. And instead, what's happened is that there's been a big rise in addiction to pornography.

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But do you think a digital image on a screen can give you any kind of a meaningful relationship?

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You're exchanging reality for a bunch of pixels. And at the end of the day, those pixels don't care a wink about you, right?

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Think of Marlis and Ruben. They were married for, what, 62 years? 62 years.

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And the one thing I can tell you about Ruben Kleven is that even though he retired long ago, when he was able, you know what he was doing?

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He was caring for his bride. Tell me that's not meaningful.

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It's absolutely meaningful. Because there's nothing worse than going through life alone.

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Right? But that's what's happening to people. They're going through life alone. And then you kind of think of the hookup culture that's out there.

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I mean, let's talk about that for a second. Hookup culture. You get onto one of these apps and it's just basically a dog and pony show based upon who looks the most attractive, right?

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And it's like, and they kind of figured it out that like 8 % of the guys have the looks that all the girls want and they're getting all the action, okay?

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Because girls are throwing themselves at those guys. The rest of them, they're not even interested in them. And what are these women doing?

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They're lining up for one night stands with these fellows who care nothing about them.

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And when a woman or a man goes through 20, 30, 40, 50, they call it a body count now.

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What's your body count? That's an appropriate name, don't you think? Body count usually has to deal with death. What's your body count?

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Oh, my body count's 34. When you've done that, you've legitimately short circuited your entire body and have made it almost impossible for yourself to have a well -connected, meaningful marriage.

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And the people who do that to themselves, they become suicidal as well. It's all a big farce.

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This isn't freedom. This is complete slavery. These people are not helping themselves.

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They are hurting themselves. When you sin sexually, you sin against your own body.

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So don't tell me it's hateful for me to tell you this truth because the reality is this.

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Not only does the Scripture say it, we all already know it. We all already know this.

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And some people choose to deal with what they know to be true by behaving like three -year -olds.

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They stick their fingers in their ears and they go, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

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I can't hear you. Or worse, they act like the schoolyard bully.

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You tell them that they're doing something wrong and that they're hurting themselves and they come up and they punch you in the face because they don't want to hear it.

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Or they get you arrested nowadays. In Canada, they can get you arrested for this kind of stuff, right?

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Because we don't want to be rebuked. We want happiness and joy and fulfillment on our own terms.

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But the reality is this. None of those things are accomplishable on our own terms.

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God is our God and he created us a particular way. And when we sin, we hurt ourselves and we hurt other people.

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And we grieve our God. It is the exact opposite of love. It is total selfishness.

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And so they've tried to flip the script and say, why are you being so hateful? Why aren't you? Why are you so unloving?

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You just need to stand your ground and say, dude, what you're promoting isn't love. It's selfishness.

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True love is found in selflessness. No greater love is there than this that one lay down his life for his friends.

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God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for our sins. Do you want to know what love looks like?

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It's not selfishness. It's the exact opposite. Real freedom, real freedom that's found only by the power of the

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Holy Spirit because of the gospel and it's found in Jesus Christ. Real freedom comes when you go a day where you don't think anything about yourself.

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The only thing you're thinking about and the only people you're thinking about are those neighbors that you are serving on that day and meeting their needs.

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Legitimately almost making it so that you are blind to your own needs and you're only meeting the needs of others.

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And when other people are doing that, your needs are still going to be met. I've thought about this for a long time and it's kind of a weird analogy but the story of Narcissus, if you know how the

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Greek mythology works, is the guy who saw his reflection in the pool of water and fell in love with himself. I find it fascinating that there is nothing on my body naturally for me to be able to see my own face.

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The only way I can see my own face is if I look in the mirror and that's because I want to see my own face.

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But have you noticed that God made us with two eyeballs sticking out so the only thing that we can see is not ourselves but other people?

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And the only thing that we have to remind us within our line of sight is that we're there is a nose, right?

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That's it. It's the only bit you get to see about yourself and you kind of have to do this with your eyes to see it. I think there's something significant about that.

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Real love is the ability to not see yourself but to see others. And when others are seeing you and taking care of you, that's real love.

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I want you to think about it. Take the Ten Commandments and I want you to project what life is going to be like on the new earth.

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Think about it for a second. Christ has come. New heavens, new earth, we are all still completely blown away by what it is that we're seeing, hearing, smelling, experiencing on the new earth.

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And by the way, get used to the group that you're with right now. These are the folks that you're going to be spending eternity with.

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We're going to be coming to your house for a barbecue and stuff like that. Seriously, get used to each other here because that's who you're going to be spending eternity with.

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But all that being said, take sin completely out of the picture.

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And now we live in a new heaven and a new earth where there is no sin, which means we perfectly love

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God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Perfectly, every day, every minute, every second of every day.

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None of us would ever dare to speak blasphemous words or lies about our

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God. We all desire to hear God's word. We do it perfectly. In fact, we're constantly talking with each other about the things that Christ has been saying.

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And we're mulling these over and considering it and just blown away by it. We're all excited about the things of God.

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But now get to the second table. Parents, your children in the new earth will never sass you.

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Right? Wow, I can't imagine that. I didn't have to teach my children how to be bad.

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I never said to Josh, hey Josh, let me show you how to sin. Let's work this out. We gotta get your technique improved here because you're doing it wrong.

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He was doing it right from the womb. So were

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Christina and Faye. But now get to the next part.

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There is no hatred. There is no murder. There is nothing of any discord with any human being on the planet.

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We all love each other perfectly. The idea of murdering somebody or not meeting their needs is not even an option.

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There are no hungry people on the new earth. There are no naked people on the new earth.

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There are none who live in poverty. All share what they have equally and joyfully with each other.

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And as far as sexual immorality, it's not even heard of. There will never be, listen to me, there will never be a couple who have, well, oops, got pregnant when they shouldn't have been together.

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There will be no homosexuality There will be no adultery.

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We will love each other purely. And in that world, there will never even be a hint of any of these things.

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In fact, whatever the relationship that men and women will have, and yes, there will be some relationship.

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I don't know what it's going to be called because Christ makes it clear there ain't no marriage in the new earth. Yet Isaiah makes it very clear that there are babies in the new earth.

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So I don't know what the relationship is. But I can tell you, there will never be a woman who hires a private investigator to check to see if her spouse or whatever the equivalence in the new earth is, if that person's cheating on her.

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There will never be a husband weeping because his wife has left him for another man.

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There will never be anything like that. There will be no stealing, and wonderfully, there will never ever again be a single person picking up the telephone to share a hot, juicy bit of gossip about so -and -so doing such -and -such with you -know -who, right?

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None of that. And we will never covet anything that our neighbor has.

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Now does that sound like a world filled with love, or does that sound like a world filled with hate? I'll take that world any day.

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Because the one we have sucks. It's filled with hatred, and it starts with me.

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And it's in you too, right? Now Dave, I don't know if you were expecting an entire conversation that long about your question.

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Did I answer it? Part of it. Part of it.

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Yeah. So you get the idea. To stand up for the truth is not hatred, it's love.

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But for those who are perishing, it will seem like hatred, because what they want you to do is affirm them in their sin, and we can't.

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That we cannot do. Now, I have a request. I made a commitment to myself this year.

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In fact, before I became the pastor of Kongsvinger, there was a bit of advice that was given to me by one of my former pastors.

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He's now gone to be with Christ. He died of a heart attack last year on his boat. But one of the things he told me, he said that being a pastor requires a lot of patience.

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A lot of patience. And that if you feel that a congregation needs some changes, he recommended that you take the approach that you're driving an aircraft carrier with a really, really unresponsive helm.

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And he says, in order to make a change, you have to plan on that change taking place over a long period of time.

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Once you make a change in direction from the helm, don't expect the boat to get in line immediately as you're not driving a

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Ferrari or driving an aircraft carrier. Different thing altogether. But that being said, there's something that has been bothering me for a while about one of the practices that Lutherans have engaged in for a long time, and I cannot figure out where it came from.

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And that is the practice of commuting kids for the first time only upon their finishing of confirmation.

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That's a Roman Catholic practice. First communion and things like this.

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But the scriptures give a different standard when it comes to those who should be receiving the

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Lord's Supper. And so as a result of that, I've been in contact with a lot of pastors and had a lot of conversations with other confessional pastors who are all asking the question, are we serving our children right when we're barring them from the

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Lord's Supper when they are capable and do understand what it is that they're receiving at the

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Lord's table? And this arbitrarily saying, well, you have to wait until you're about eighth grade until you finish two years of confirmation before you can have the

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Lord's Supper, at the end of the day, that's a man -made tradition. And I know for a fact that there are children in our congregation who if I sat down with them and asked them, what are you receiving in the

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Lord's Supper? What do you receive? They would be able to not only tell me correctly what it is that people are receiving in the

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Lord's Supper, that's not just merely an accurate answer that they can give. They actually also believe it.

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And as a result of that, I do not understand the arbitrary man -made rule that bars children from the

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Lord's Supper. Now granted, a small child who cannot examine themselves and doesn't understand what the

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Lord's Supper is, that makes no sense to me, okay? Because, and I'll show you the text in question that I think is kind of in play here.

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Why is this happening? I don't want words. I want, hang on a second here.

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It keeps going to that. There we go. It's man -made. Right, uh -huh. I see what you did there, sir.

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Okay. Why is this doing this? Core 11.

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I don't want words. I want flesh. There we go. So here's the text in question, and I'll kind of walk through how this all works, and I want to put it in context.

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1 Corinthians 11. In the following instructions, I do not commend you because when you come together, it's not for the better, it's for the worse.

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Let me explain the problem that was at the Church of Corinth. The rich, if you know Roman culture, there was no middle class.

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You were the richer, you were poor. And among the poor, you had the really hardworking folks or the slaves.

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And here's the issue, is that when you come together as a church, do you make a distinction between the rich and the poor?

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You shouldn't, right? At Kahn's Vineyard, do we have the wealthy sit up front and the poor sit in the back? No. Of course not.

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Okay. But here's what... All Lutherans sit in the back. All Lutherans sit in the back. That's correct.

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Every Sunday, the structural integrity of our foundation is compromised by the overweight that is put on the back of the church.

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I'm surprised we don't pop a wheelie. Okay. I keep removing pews, but it doesn't help.

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Right? All Lutherans sit in the back. It's the weirdest thing. But here's what was happening in the

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Church of Corinth. The rich were keeping the poor of the congregation from having the Lord's Supper.

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Because to have a meal with somebody in the ancient world means that you are recognizing that they are on an equal plane with you.

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And to have a meal like the Lord's Supper, the rich would have to say that the poor are their equals.

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And that's a hard cultural norm to get rid of, but the scriptures do not permit such a thing.

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So the rich of the Church of Corinth came up with this clever idea. They were going to take the bread and the wine.

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They were going to go up for the first setting, and then they hogged up and consumed everything in order to keep the poor from having the

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Lord's Supper. Does that sound like love to you? That doesn't sound like love to me. In fact, there were some people at the

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Church of Corinth who would say, hey, I'll take the wine. And they would chug all of it.

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And as a result of it, they were getting drunk off the communion wine. Which, by the way, is proof that the church was drinking wine and not grape juice.

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Just saying, because I've never gotten drunk off of welches before. But all of that being said, watch what happens here.

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In the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear there are divisions among you. I believe it in part. For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.

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But when you come together, it's not the Lord's Supper you eat. For in eating, one goes ahead with his own meal.

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One goes hungry, and then another gets drunk. What? Do you not have houses to eat in, to drink in?

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Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?

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What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? Nope, I will not.

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So, Paul now has to go back to catechism class and pull out the basics of the

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Lord's Supper. He says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread.

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And then when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

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In the same way also, he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is in the covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

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For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. And all the Lutherans said, Amen.

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Come, Lord Jesus. Right? Good liturgy here. So whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the

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Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. So note, to take the

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Lord's supper in an unworthy manner makes you guilty of sinning against Christ's very body and blood. Which is one of the reasons why we sit there and go,

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It's exactly what Jesus says it is. It's his body and it's his blood because if you're taking it in an unworthy manner, you're guilty of sinning against the very body and blood that are present in the

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Lord's supper, which is what the folks at the Church of Corinth were doing. So then he says,

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Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. This is where we recognize that for somebody to have the

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Lord's supper in an unworthy manner requires that they have the cognitive ability to be able to examine themselves.

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Right? And I would note, this is not set at 8th grade.

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I will be blunt. I know some kids that are 5 and 6 that are capable of this kind of examination.

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I also know some kids that are 7 and 8 that are not. Okay? This comes different for each child depending on their aptitudes and the way

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God has made them. But I would note that I haven't known a single child that wasn't capable of properly examining themselves in this regard until they were in 9th or 10th grade.

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I don't know any kid like that. And so I would note that when it comes to barring children from the

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Lord's supper, I think this is the standard not a practice that is man -made.

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And I'm pinching this idea because I want you guys to think this out. I don't want to make a change without you understanding my thinking behind it or giving you the ability to have some input into it.

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What I would really like to see happen by the fall of this year, Lord willing, would be for me to sit down with those kids who our

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Sunday school directors believe are capable of rightly examining themselves in this regard and understand what they're receiving in the

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Lord's supper, and I would like to welcome them to the table. Because one of the things

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I remember when I first got here, and this is a truth regarding Lutheranism as a whole, is that a lot of kids, we lose them once they're confirmed.

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I remember my first year here, there was a weird occurrence that happened. We had a swallow that came in and was flying around in here, going from the sanctuary all the way through to the

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Fellowship Hall and then back on through. And Ila Lin shouted out, Just confirm it!

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It'll go away and never come back! Ouch.

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And I think part of the reason why that happens is because when we hold this precious gift of Christ's body and blood from those who should be receiving it, and we save it up for their first communion once upon their confirmation, that what we end up doing is we create a mentality where they feel like they're graduating from Christianity rather than graduating into it.

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And so I'm not the only pastor who believes this way. I would note that I'm now part of a growing number of confessional pastors who are making the same appeal.

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But the reality is this, is that what I'm asking you to do is to not look at the Church's historic practice, but instead look at the

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Scriptures. Don't look at the man -made thing that we've come up with, but instead go back to the

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Scriptures and ask yourself this question. Should we really legitimately be keeping our children who are capable of understanding and know what the

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Lord's Supper is, should we be barring them from the table? I legitimately have gotten to the point where I don't think this makes any sense.

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And so this will be the first time where I'll talk about it. But I'm not going to make a rapid decision.

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I want you all to think biblically along with me. And if you can think of something that I haven't thought of, something that I'm not considering, and think that as a result of that the biblical thing to do would be to continue with the practice that we've had,

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I'm open to hearing it. But I would like you to think it out. Yes? I would note that we've got to remember where Lutheranism came from.

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Lutheranism comes out of medieval Catholicism. And as a result of that, many of the church's practices, the ones that were contrary to the

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Gospel were stripped away for sure. But this is, I think, one that is just a holdover. And so I think there are people who think that it's been good practice and it's served the church well.

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But I still struggle with this idea why are we barring these believers, these baptized children, who we are instructing in the

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Christian faith and can rightly tell me what it is that they're receiving. Why are we keeping them from the

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Lord's table? So I think it's a holdover from the fact that we've come out of Catholicism.

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That would be my guess. Yes, Don? I think it was the easy way out. You just draw the line in confirmation.

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You don't have to think about it. I would say this, that what I'm proposing requires a lot more work on my part.

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Okay? A lot more work. Which I'm totally up for. I don't mind wearing myself out if it means that those kids can have the body and blood of Christ and have the assurance of the forgiveness of their sins in that way.

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At that age, they were coming into adulthood. Yeah. At 13. Yeah, that's right.

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A hundred years ago, at 13, you might as well have been an adult. It became the

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Christian version of the Bar Mitzvah. Yes, David? How are you going to tell the ones yet to go?

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I will positively sit down and say, you're not ready yet, and I would love to talk to you when you are.

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And so I will be working very closely with the Sunday school directors who I'm going to rely heavily on to kind of at least give me the initial list of who they believe is ready.

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And also rely on them to assist me in telling me who's now ready as we're moving forward.

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But this is going to require me to have an individual conversation with each of these children, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

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Yeah. Yes? I think the churches that are gone, they have a pre -conservation training, education program for those pre -communion.

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Yeah. Yeah. And I would note that our Sunday school directors are completely already teaching pre -confirmation stuff.

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In fact, I know kids downstairs right now who already know the Ten Commandments, their meanings, and the

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Creed by heart. Okay? Whereas teaching some of the kids that I had to teach over the past couple of years, they were still struggling with that at the end of two years.

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These are kids, if I sat them down, they'd just be able to do this like this. So, DeBoer kids. But, you get the idea.

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Alright, listen, my apologies. I have to go because I'm like, I haven't been this late in a long time.