Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

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 Minnesota.

We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 9th and 10th chapters.

Jesus went throughout all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and

healing every disease and every affliction.

When He saw the crowds, He had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

And then He said to His disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

And He called to Him His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them

out and to heal every disease and every affliction.

The names of the twelve apostles are these.

First, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his

brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew, the tax collector, James, the son of Alphaeus

and Thaddaeus, Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

These twelve Jesus sent out instructing them, Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no

town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep without the visible, and proclaim as you go, saying,

The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons you received without paying,

give without pay.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Have you all ever had the unfortunate experience of biting off more than you can chew?

I'm not talking about having a big burrito over at Paradiso.

That's not what I'm talking about.

Although those are spectacular on particular nights, especially when the margaritas are like half off, but that's a whole

other thing.

But I'm talking about something that we men do.

We men, when a problem faces us, what do we tend to do?

If we don't know how to fix the problem, we say these fateful words,

I'll figure it out.

These are stupid words.

Stupid only more by words like this.

Hold my beer.

In both cases, you know that a bad outcome is about to come your way.

Because despite the fact that we men like to think that we can figure things out, the reality

is that there are some things that are beyond our skill levels, and it's really tough

for us to admit that's the case.

And so when we say I'll figure it out and then proceed to head down the road of fixing whatever it is that we're supposed to

fix, it's not too long before the professionals are called in.

And the thing to fix is now more expensive to fix because in our attempts to fix it, we've made it worse.

Does this resonate with anybody?

Maybe it's just me.

But all of that being said, when we consider our Old Testament text here,

there are some fateful words spoken by the children of Israel.

These are people who had just been set free from slavery in Egypt.

God had judged the false gods of Egypt and Pharaoh himself, who was also a false god king.

With the ten plagues, they have been victoriously marched out of Egypt.

They have crossed the Red Sea on dry ground with water on the right, water on the

left.

This is where the inspiration for aquariums came from.

I always like to point this out.

And then when Pharaoh and his armies tried to do the same thing, crossing the Red Sea on the dry

ground, well, God wouldn't have that, and so the entire army of Pharaoh was drowned in the Red

Sea.

And the children of Israel sang that song about how Yahweh has triumphed gloriously.

The horse and the rider he has cast into the sea.

And then, of course, prior to this chapter that we're reading in our Old Testament text, they did have the incident

where they were thirsty and they grumbled against God and they needed food and they grumbled against God and

Moses, and so God split the rock.

Actually, Moses split the rock and out came water.

God began feeding them with manna, even gave them a little quail to up their protein.

All of that being said, they've seen some things, and now they are at the base of Mount Sinai.

And they are about, in the next chapter, to receive the Ten Commandments, and

Moses has gone up and had a little conversation with God in anticipation of what's

coming next.

And here God makes some interesting promises, but watch the conditional statements.

God says to the children of Israel, you yourselves have seen what I did to the

Egyptians, how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself.

Now, therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice, keep my covenant, you

shall be my treasured possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine.

You shall be to me a kingdom of priests.

Hold on to those words.

And you shall be to me a holy nation.

These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.

So if they obey, that's a big if, by the way, if they obey,

they will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

And so Moses called all the elders of the people of Israel and set before them

these words that the Lord had commanded him.

Think of it like a holy huddle, if you would.

And all the people answered together these fateful words, all that Yahweh has spoken we will

do.

Is that how it went down?

You'll note that despite all of their verbal assent and

commitment to keeping God's commands and obeying his law, the

children of Israel, I mean, 40 days from here, are going to inaugurate Burning Man 1, all

right, with a golden calf out in the wilderness in just an unholy pagan

event.

And a lot of them are going to end up dying because of their revelry and immorality, shall we

put it, right?

It's the story of Israel in the Old Testament, a story of obedience,

of honoring God, obeying his word, listening to his voice.

No, in fact, if you think of it really kind of honestly, their story is a lot

like ours.

How well are you guys doing on your obedience bits, right?

I heard you guys confessing sins today.

I'm assuming that there was necessary reasons for doing so.

You'll note that we've got a problem here, and the problem is only amplified when we get

a New Testament explanation.

Here's the issue.

In Romans 8, it says these words, starting at verse 6, to

set the mind on the flesh.

We're talking about the sinful flesh, its passions, its desires.

Have you noticed that the desire to do evil actually burbles up from within inside of you?

That's where sin begins for each of us.

To set the mind on the flesh is death.

To set the mind on the spirit, well, that's life and peace.

The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God.

It does not submit to God's law.

Indeed, it cannot.

Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Okay?

This past week, I watched a documentary.

I needed to watch it.

It's important to watch things like this because it impacts my work as a pastor and also as a pirate.

The name of the documentary, you can find it on Amazon Prime, is Shiny Happy People.

This is a train wreck of a documentary because it's all about the Duggar family and

also Bill Gothard and his Institutes of Basic Life Principles seminars, which

back in the day, in fact, this is going to sound really crazy, but back in the day when my wife and I lived in

Seattle, we were invited to a Bill Gothard seminar.

He packed out a very large venue in Seattle for this thing.

We ended up getting a book, but I thought this stuff was just super heavy -handed, and I was a

Nazarene at the time.

And so for me to sit there and go,.

Boy, that sure does...

It seems like it's super tightly wound.

What does that tell you?

But here's the issue.

What are we talking about here?

We talk about the Duggar family and their fall.

We talk about Bill Gothard and their fall, and now this four -part docuseries, which is just

a train wreck to watch because there are people who grew up in this movement who've pretty much

abandoned the faith altogether if they were even taught it at all.

And their stories are nothing but law, law, more law, a

little bit law on top of that with a big dollop of law on top of that, and they couldn't live up to the

standards.

And here's the thing.

Bill Gothard didn't either.

Bill Gothard, the head of that Institutes of Basic Life Principles organization,

there are now women who, when they were girls, were claiming that he was inappropriately

making advances on them when they were minors.

And this is supposed to be the premier Christian organization to

teach people how to live victoriously.

In fact, in Bill Gothard's way of thinking, he would say things like this.

It was all about authority and being sure that you were under the authority that you were supposed to be under.

You have the authority of Christ like a big umbrella, then you have Father's authority, you have Mom's authority, and then the

children are all under that.

And as long as you stay under all the authority, you're never going to have any problems with sinning and living victoriously.

In fact, he taught kind of a version of the prosperity gospel, basically telling people

do good things.

Do good things and obey, and God will bless you.

Now you sit there and go, are you saying that God's law is bad?

Not at all.

But the purpose of God's law is not for us to receive God's blessings.

The reason why is because you and I, our sickness and sin is way, way worse than you can

possibly imagine.

So there are the children of Israel at the base of Mount Sinai.

They proclaim everything Yahweh has said we will do.

We will obey, and they didn't.

They got in over their heads.

They bit off more than they can chew.

This was a project that they were not qualified for at all.

And then when we read in the Scriptures in Romans chapter 3, well, if the law doesn't make us

righteous, if our intent to keep it and our desire to seek after and do the right thing

doesn't make us right with God, then what's the purpose of the law in the first place?

The law was never given to save you, nor was it given to save me.

The law was given so that we would see that we are sinners

and that we would see something about ourselves that we desperately all

need to see.

And that is that none is righteous.

Not me.

Not you.

Not anyone.

In fact, our Epistle text begins with these words.

While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ

died for the ungodly.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Christ died for the ungodly.

Isn't it true, Scripture teaches us, that Christ died for the sins of the whole world?

If that's the case, then here's the inescapable

conclusion.

The inescapable conclusion is that every single one of us, we are

ungodly.

And we are fooling ourselves, deceiving ourselves, and deceiving others

poorly, I would note here, when we claim that we are righteous, that we are

sinless, that we're pulling it off, that we are going from victory to victory and earning God's blessing

by how good we are, how obedient we are.

Belag na.

Again, that's the proper way of saying it.

That you are not good.

You are not righteous.

Each and every one of us, we are all ungodly.

And at the end of our Epistle text, it explains why.

In Romans 5, 12, it says, Sin came into the world through one man, and death through

sin.

And so death spread to all men because all have sinned.

Sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, but was a type of

the one who was to come.

In Adam, we have all fallen.

And there's no escaping it in this lifetime.

Even though you are baptized, you are forgiven, filled with the Holy Spirit, you still have a

sinful nature to wrestle with.

And as a result of that, your sanctification is always going

to be imperfect in this lifetime.

It's a terrible thing to come to grips with.

There will never be a day until Christ returns or when you join Him upon your death

where you will not need to pray, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass

against us.

Which then leads to a very important thing for us to consider here.

And that is that Christians,.

They live a life.

Where they have peace with God, not because of their obedience, but because of the obedience of Christ.

But the experience of being a Christian is not an easy one.

The reason being is because each and every one of us, the more days we live on this

earth, the larger the pile of sin is that's right behind us.

And so when I look back across my life, I think about my childhood.

I think about when I was a teenager.

I think about when hormones kicked in and I discovered girls.

And then I think about my 20s as a young married man with small kids.

And then I think about my 30s and my 40s.

Another set.

50s.

It's annoying to have to say those words.

Right?

And in my 50s, I can legitimately say looking across the entirety of my life, there has never

been a point in my life where I can say I had it all together.

This was the high watermark.

I really achieved righteousness.

Instead, when I look back across my life, you know what I see?

Sin.

And if you're honest, so do you.

And that's really the point.

Is it any wonder that the Israelites never really got to be God's precious possession?

They were never really a holy nation?

That they were never truly a kingdom of priests?

The reason being is because sin impacts us all.

And their commitment to obeying God's law, these were hollow words.

They may have intended to do so, but the reality is is that we still war with our sinful

nature and it's just a horrible conflict.

So, as Christians then, we need to not despair because

the experience of recognizing our sin and guilt is real.

But we cannot put it away by our good works.

And here's where a lot of people go off the rails.

They try to take that big pile of sin that's increasingly growing day by day

behind them and find a way to build a facade around it.

To distract people.

To find a way to pretend that it's not there.

And the whole time, the stench is just offending everybody within whiff

of the pile of sin.

And have you noticed then that those who really act like they're pulling it off are legitimately the most annoying

and fake people to ever be around.

Right?

But as Christians then, it's easy for us to despair and say, you know, I think God made a

mistake.

I mean, clearly, I don't deserve salvation.

I think that when I look at my life, there had to be some kind of a clerical error.

How is it that I am among the group of people who are forgiven, pardoned,

reconciled to God and are bound for the new earth rather than held like I

deserve.

And so when that happens, when those doubts come up, and they do, you cannot look

inside yourself to solve the problem.

The reality is this.

Is that Christ died for the ungodly.

That's you.

And that's me.

And there are no other types of people on planet earth except for Jesus.

And he was the one who was righteous.

And so it goes on to say this, that God, God is the one who sent Christ

to bleed and die for each and every one of us.

And that this is the great demonstration of God's love.

So Paul notes, one will scarcely die for a righteous person.

Perhaps for a good person, one might even dare to die.

And it's true.

You think about people in our time who've laid down their lives so that others can live.

Most notably we think of soldiers fighting in the battlefield.

Guys taking one for the team so that their platoon can carry on and fight another day

although they have given up their life on the battlefield.

These are stories that we're familiar with.

But here's the thing.

God demonstrates.

God shows his love for us.

And these are important words because when we talk about love, words are kind of cheap if you think about it.

God didn't send us a cheesy poem with a precious moments figurine depicted on the front

of it.

I can't even think about the sappy things.

That I've seen.

Roses are red, violets are blue, I think I love you so much and God is true.

None of this nonsense.

It just never works out, right?

God actually doesn't cover us.

With platitudes.

He doesn't speak to us in flowery language.

God himself, second person of the Trinity, took on human flesh as we confessed in the Creed

that he was born of the Virgin Mary, that he suffered under Pontius Pilate.

And all of this was God demonstrating his love for us.

And he does this not when we were at our best as if there's any point in your life you can point to

and say there's the time I really got it together.

Instead,.

God demonstrates his love for us while we were still sinners.

That's when Christ died for us.

When we were all dead in trespasses and sins.

And since therefore we have now been justified, declared righteous by the blood of Christ,

we as Christians need to take comfort in this fact.

If God went through all of that to save us while we were at our worst.

Now that we are saved, we need to take comfort and confidence in the fact

that we are truly going to be saved.

Not because of what we've done but because of what God has done in Christ and continues to do for us.

Having been justified by his blood, how much more now shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God?

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God and indeed we were by the death of his son,

how much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by Christ's life, by his

resurrection from the dead?

And as a result of this then, we rejoice in God to our Lord Jesus Christ through whom

we have received, received as a gift, reconciliation and pardon with God.

Is it any wonder then that in 1 Peter, Peter then picks

up some of these words that we heard from Exodus 19 and he doesn't apply

them to genetic Israel, to the people of Israel.

Instead, Peter applies words that we hear in Exodus 19 that

Israel never fulfilled.

They never fulfilled the covenant and we hear them applied to Christians for the sake of

Christ.

And so it says in 1 Peter 2,.

It says,.

As you come to him, a living stone, that's Jesus, rejected by men,

but in the sight of God chosen and precious.

Ah, Jesus is the one who is precious.

You remember when Christ was baptized, he comes out of the water and the voice of the Father is heard from heaven.

This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Where Israel failed, where they were disobedient, did not keep God's law, Jesus

succeeded gloriously.

And over and again, we are admonished in Scripture to think of Jesus as all of Israel squished

down into one human being.

Where they failed, Jesus succeeds.

So he is chosen.

He is precious before the Father.

But you yourselves, each and every one of us, we are like living stones.

We're being now built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood,

to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For it stands in Scripture, behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone, chosen and

precious.

Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

Listen again to the words.

Whoever believes in Jesus will not be put to shame.

What shame are we talking about here?

We're talking about the shame of eternal condemnation, of hearing the voice of Christ on the

day of judgment, saying to you, depart from me, I never knew you.

That's the eternal shame that we do not face.

Why?

Because we're so obedient?

No, we're not.

But because we believe.

We believe in Jesus Christ, the one who died for the ungodly, and we recognize that we

fit in that category.

So the honor, then, is for you who believe.

But for those who don't believe, the stone the builders rejected, that's become the cornerstone, a

stone of stumbling, a rock of offense.

And they stumble because they disobey the Word as they were destined to do.

But now listen to the words.

You who are in Christ, you who are forgiven, pardoned, and reconciled, you who

are, well, and were ungodly in your trespasses and sins, and have been forgiven

totally, completely by the shed blood of Christ, you are a chosen race.

You are a royal priesthood.

You are a holy nation.

And you are a people for God's own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who

called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.

Where Israel failed in their disobedience to obey the commands of God, Christ

has succeeded for you.

He is the one who obeyed all of God's commands perfectly for you.

And He, God, laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all, all of our ungodliness

and all of our sin.

And Christ bore that in His body and then went to the cross, was nailed to the cross, and suffered,

bled, and died so that you can be forgiven pardoned and reconciled to God.

And He did this for you.

And Jesus then on the third day rose victoriously bodily from the grave for

you.

And now what Israel could not attain, the project that was too hard for them, the one that they

had bitten off way more than they can chew, and the one that they said that they could figure it out, and they never did,

Christ succeeds for us.

And as a result of that, we now are the ones who are the holy nation.

We are the chosen race.

We are a people for God's own possession, not because of our obedience, but because of Christ's.

And because we believe and trust in Him, we will not be put to shame.

And as a result of that, then Peter says these words, that each and every one of us now

can proclaim the excellencies of God, who has called each and every one of us out of

darkness into His marvelous light.

I would note here, a little side note, we all have the

privilege of proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ, of unburdening people

from the false belief that they have to save themselves by being good, by being obedient.

We can proclaim to them the good news that Christ has bled and died for their sins, and that in Jesus there is

full forgiveness and pardon and grace.

In fact, in our gospel text, Jesus says, the harvest is plentiful, the laborers

are few.

Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

Today is the ninth anniversary of my installation here at Kongsvinger.

This is the gospel text that Dr. Curtis Lyons preached on at my installation service.

And his call then and his earnest prayer, and ours too, is that God would

continue to send laborers into the harvest field.

I can tell you as a pastor, we are severely shorthanded.

Not only in the pastoral office, but shorthanded when it comes to faithful laypeople

who know the gospel and freely share that gospel with others.

Note, this labor that Christ is calling us to is not merely for pastors.

We, each and every one of us, have the privilege and the responsibility of proclaiming the excellencies of Him who

called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

So let us pray then as the world is confused and so many people have had their lives ruined

by false forms of Christianity that focus only on the law, but do not focus on both law and

gospel.

They have made promises of blessing for obedience, but then all the while they hide their disobedience and

shame.

And as a result of it, documentaries have to be put together to warn people of the damage done by

those who do not know how to rightly handle God's word.

Let us recognize that we are saved not because we're good.

We are saved because God sent Christ who bled and died for us when we were at our worst.

Rather than giving us what we deserve, He gave us mercy, forgiveness, pardon, grace,

and the gift of salvation and eternal life all for the sake of Jesus because of God's great

love.

And let us pray also that God would send more laborers into the harvest field.

Even as the day gets long and the imminent return of Christ draws closer and closer, let us

continue to work while it's still day because today is the day of salvation.

In the name of Jesus,.

Amen.

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