The Fool on the Hill?

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. Matthew, the fifth chapter.

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Seeing the crowds, Jesus went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

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He opened his mouth, and he taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

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Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

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And blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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And blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

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Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, you guys remember, recent history, recent history, we saw the launching of the

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Artemis rocket, sent a capsule around the moon, it was kind of a big deal, right?

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But did you notice that the rocket, did it blast off the first time that it was on the launch pad? No, no, there were problems, right?

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I remember kind of tuning in to see whether or not it would be launching, I always, these are the kinds of things that nerds like, so you know, you have to kind of pay attention to these things.

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I'm thinking, man, I haven't seen a moon launch since I was a kid. I remember in, was I in kindergarten or first grade, it was one or the other, it was in the early 70s.

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But we were gathered around our television set, this whole black and white thing in a class that I was, and we were watching

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Neil Armstrong walking on the moon, and it was a big deal, right? So with the Artemis launch, it was like one of these things where I gotta tune in, and the countdown is going, going, going, stop.

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All right, what's wrong? And so they start talking in rocket speak, okay?

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And in this particular case, based on what they were saying was wrong, I knew it would require a rocket surgeon to fix it.

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Okay, yep, this is actual rocket science, and it requires a rocket surgeon, and what they have to do, they had to scrub the launch.

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Now, you'll note that at that point, we can say the Artemis rocket was broken, and it needed to be fixed.

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And some people who were really smart needed to get together and work the problem and fix what was wrong with it, and eventually they did, and they sent that thing, and they sent that capsule up, and it went around the moon, and boy, this is an interesting day that we're living in.

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In the very near future, we'll see other human beings walking on the moon, haven't seen that in a while. But all that being said,

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I want you to think about this. When the Artemis rocket was broken and wasn't going to be fixed, you'll note that they had a crack team of people working on the problem in order to get this thing up safely, and it took some time.

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Now, have you ever stopped to consider that the world itself is broken, and it is broken by sin?

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Now, here's the question, who's going to fix it? Have you noticed that all the crack teams that we've put together, they never seem to really solve the problem, do they, right?

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And so the world, the world history is littered with the remains of teams that were assembled to solve the problems of humanity, right?

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And the thing is, is that you can't solve this problem. I would note that back in the ancient world, you had the philosophers, and the philosophers were saying things like, we just need to be moral, we need to build a moral society.

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How do you build a moral society when the gods you worship, or the deities you worship are even false? I mean, how does one do that?

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And so, well, you've got Plato that was followed by Aristotle, and the philosophers all the way down to our age, have any of them solved the problems, okay?

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How about those politicians, are they any good at solving this? Nope. I would note that the current crop of politicians do not look to me like they're going to be able to solve anything, right?

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I have zero hope that the problems of humanity are going to be solved. And as for worldly wisdom nowadays, you're going to note that I have zero faith in worldly wisdom because at the moment, they can't even figure out the difference between a boy and a girl.

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So this is a problem. And that is that worldly wisdom doesn't seem to be able to solve the problem of sin.

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And you'll note, why is there poverty in the world? Sin. Why do people die? Sin. Why do people get sick and have to go to hospitals and rack up huge hospital bills?

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Sin. Right? The wages of sin is death. Why do we not get along so well with each other?

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Have you noticed that, the rancor and the acrimony that's just rising and rising?

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Why is there all this violence and people who legitimately hate other people based on skin color and things like this?

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You know why? It's because of sin, right? And so, assemble the crack team that you want, none of them are going to solve the problem because even if you were to find a way to kind of keep it at bay, which is, by the way, the job of the government, the government exists,

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God has instituted for the purpose of what? Punishing the evildoer, right? God's solution is to basically keep it under wraps by punishing evil.

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But that doesn't even solve the problem, does it? Nope, not even close. So what is it that's going to solve the problem?

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Answer, Christ and Him crucified for our sins. That's the solution.

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And I know that people are listening going, come on, it's got to be something different than that. Really? That's all you've got?

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Yep, that's all I got. So we can just wrap up this sermon right here and you've got, you now know the solution to the problem, right?

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But the point is this, is that God has chosen, listen to this, the word of the cross, which the world considers to be folly.

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Let me give you a different word, moronic. That's a little closer to what the Greek is getting at. The word of the cross is moronic, but who is it moronic to?

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Those who are perishing. But to us who are being saved, the word of the cross is the power of God.

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What does Paul say in Romans 1? I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it, the gospel, is the power of God unto salvation, right?

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So the solution to our problem is a message that the world considers to be utterly moronic.

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This, by the way, is the real reason why the, well, the unbelieving world is going to think that the church is irrelevant, because they think the word of the cross is folly.

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So all those people out there who are trying to figure out how to make Christianity relevant so that pagans are interested in it, you'll know what they end up having to do.

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They kind of have to take that gospel message and find a way to, well, let's put it over here and we'll only pull this out a few times a year and we don't want to draw too much attention to it because the world thinks it's folly.

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What is the world looking for today? I don't know. They want influencers to help them make their lives better, to help them find success in their chosen, well, field of study or interests or things like this.

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They want to be powerful. They want to be successful. Oh, and by the way, people don't want to be religious.

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They want to be spiritual, right? This is what the world wants. People want to be spiritual.

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They don't want to be religious. I mean, so we're never, ever going to be loved by the world or considered relevant.

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But note here, the word of the cross, the good news that Christ has bled and died for our sins, this is the word that is the power of God that saves us.

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You know, I was thinking about an analogy. One of the things I do is I teach international men, men who are internationally studying for the pastoral office, and I've been teaching them how to preach recently.

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And one of my students, I had him prepare a sermon on this particular text, and he made a great analogy, and I'm thinking, mm,

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I'd want to steal it, but no, I'm going to give him credit. It was so good, though. He likened it to the

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Beatles' song, The Fool on a Hill. And boy, have you ever listened and kind of read out the lyrics to the

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Beatles' song, The Fool on a Hill? It's about somebody who's wise that the people in his town think is stupid.

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And he's actually the one that's the smart one. He's the wise one. And that's a great way of talking about Jesus, because if you think about it, here's

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God in human flesh. What has he come to do? He's come to save us. He's come to deliver us from slavery to sin, death, and the devil.

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He is the one who's going to finally, finally set us free so that we're no longer under the bondage of sin.

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And what does he do? He climbs a hill with a cross, and he allows himself to be nailed to it.

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Hmm. Jesus is the fool on the hill, is he not? At least by the world standards, he is.

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But note here, Jesus climbing Mount Moriah, going up Golgotha, being nailed to a cross so that you and I can be forgiven is the only solution that there is for the sin problem that you and I all experience in our lives.

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And note, God chose to do this for a reason. The goal was to destroy the wisdom of the wise.

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The goal was to destroy the discernment of the discerning and to thwart it. That's part of what he was up to.

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A good way to think of it is this way, is that when we talk about salvation by grace through faith apart from works,

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Paul asks the question, where then is there room for boasting? The answer is that there is no room for boasting.

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But when I was a self -righteous legalist, man was I good at boasting, right?

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I was just this smug, arrogant idiot who really legitimately thought that he had his

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Christian life together and that others should model their Christian lives after my great example, right?

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Boy, the thing is, is I was deluding myself when I spoke this way. And you'll note that if salvation were by works, then we would have something to boast about, right?

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And that would make us exactly like the devil. And so there is no boasting allowed in ourselves when it comes to God.

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Not in our righteousness, not in our wisdom, not in our discernment, not in our spirituality.

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All of that is out. We all come to God as Christ describes in the

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Sermon on the Mount when he says this, blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Poor in spirit, I always like to say the Roseboro paraphrase of this is blessed are the spiritually bankrupt.

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And until you recognize that God's law has not come to give you ten easy steps, ten easy principles, if you just apply them to your life, you are going to be righteous.

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The purpose of the law is to condemn you and to show you your sin. And when the law has done its killing work, at the end of it, you say,

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I got nothing. And that's the point. Blessed are those who mourn and lament, and I would note this is the mourning and lamenting over your own sin.

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And blessed are the meek, the humble who say to them, say to God, Lord, have mercy on me a sinner, right?

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So you'll note then that God knows what he's doing. He chose the message of the cross.

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He chose the good news that Christ died for our sins, this foolish, moronic message for the purpose of furthering the task of destroying the self -righteousness and the wisdom and man's propensity to boast like the devil.

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When somebody sits there and goes, really, you think that Jesus and him crucified for our sins is the solution to the world's problems, and you sit there and go, yup, and then they despise and loathe you, and they no longer invite you to their

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Christmas parties. What do you know about them, right? They're buying into the world's wisdom.

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And here's the thing. Here's where we have to really be honest. And that is that these words were not written for the pagan world.

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These words were written to a Christian church, the church at Corinth. Why? Because we're always being tempted to abandon the folly of the cross in order to embrace the wisdom of the current age.

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Do you notice that the world is not satisfied to leave the church alone, but the world is absolutely hell -bent on getting the church to capitulate to its way of thinking?

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And every time you turn on the television and you're watching television, you're being bombarded with these messages and worldly wisdom.

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I can barely watch television anymore. I have to be careful what programs I put on.

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Part of the reason why is because, have you noticed that television programs that seem kind of generic and safe and stuff like this, what are they doing?

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They're, well, they have love interests that are of the same sex and they show these things.

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This is all an affront to God. And it's designed to catechize you into the world's way of thinking, you and your children.

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This past summer, I had to stop, literally stop watching one of my favorite summer programs,

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America's Got Talent. How can there be anything wrong with America's Got Talent, right?

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Well, worldly wisdom showed up when somebody got, well, made it through and they got all four votes from the judges.

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And when they were asking him about his personal life, he brought his wife and his girlfriend on stage because they were a polyamorous couple.

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Not even a couple, a thruple. I mean, what do you call that thing, right? So you'll note that we are being bombarded with the world's wisdom constantly.

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And over and again, we are feeling the pressure to give up on that old biblical way of thinking and that old dusty story about some guy bleeding and dying for our sins and stop calling people to repent and can't we all just get along, as the prophet

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Rodney King said, right? But God says,

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I will destroy the wisdom of the wise. The discernment of the discerning, I will thwart. So where then is the one who's wise?

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Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

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Yes, he has. And I would note that the delusion that our current worldly wisdom is under, where they legitimately think that men can actually get pregnant and give birth, okay, that is

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God's judgment making their discernment, their wisdom look like complete and utter folly, which is what it is.

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For since in the wisdom of God the world didn't know God, through wisdom it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

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Jews demand signs. So do charismatics, by the way. Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach

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Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. No, in order to get along with people of this mindset, of a worldly mindset or a spiritual mindset like the

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Jews of the past, in order to get along, we'd have to get rid of the gospel. Right?

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But that's not negotiable. You get rid of the gospel, you get rid of Jesus.

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You get rid of Jesus, you don't have salvation. All you have is a moralizing religion.

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But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and he is the wisdom of God.

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For the foolishness of God, by the way, is wiser than men. God knows what he's doing. Have you noticed that?

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He really legitimately knows what he's doing. In fact, for us to sit here and say that we know better how to run the universe and what messages we should hear would be like a bunch of rednecks sitting in their driveway drinking

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Schlitz, okay, because rednecks do stuff like this. Drinking Schlitz, looking at their television going, you know,

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I could fix that Artemis rocket. Just give me a wrench. It couldn't be any harder than fixing a carburetor on a 64

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Impala. Right? You have any hope of that ever happening? No.

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Okay? So believe me when I tell you, when we all say we know better than God how to run the world and what needs to happen, you sound like those rednecks thinking they can fix the

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Artemis rocket. Good luck on that. Right? They're not even going to let you on the property, let alone let you touch it with a wrench.

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So note, the foolishness of God, God at his most foolish, is still wiser than all men in humanity.

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And the weakness of God, it's stronger than men. So consider your calling, brothers, sisters.

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Not many of you are wise according to worldly standards. I can look at Kongsvinger and say, yeah, that's true of all of us.

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You know, I think Paul's being polite here. Right? Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble birth.

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Yeah, not me either. But God, you see, he chose what's foolish in the world in order to shame the wise.

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Because God's not going to allow anybody to stand in his presence and boast. If the wise could figure out how to solve the problems of this world, they would be intolerable in eternity.

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But God chose what is low and despised in the world, even the things that are not, in order to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no human being might boast in God's presence.

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He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus. God is, not you. Whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

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Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. So brothers and sisters, we all feel the tug.

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We all feel the pressure. We all feel the pressure to shut up, just adopt the world's wisdom, and to no longer start, keep talking about Jesus and him crucified for our sins.

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And note here, to every degree in which you've capitulated to the wisdom of the world, you have sinned grievously against God and committed idolatry.

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And every time you've been tempted to say, you know what, the church just needs to stop talking like this, and stop being so biblical, and we just need to figure out how to get along with everybody and be more affirming.

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Well, you've again, you've committed the sin of idolatry. Note here, this temptation faces us all, each and every one of us.

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This is a call back to repentance, a call back to the foolishness of the gospel itself, a call back for us to recognize that God knows exactly what he's doing.

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And for us, rather than to despise being despised, instead, what are we to do?

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We are to embrace what Christ has told us in our gospel text. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake.

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Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

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Rejoice and be glad, your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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You see, the world sits there and says, you guys are idiots, you're stupid, you're foolish, you're backwards, you're a bunch of bigoted people who hate humanity, right?

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You're nothing but a hate religion. When they start talking like this, listen to the one who is wise,

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Jesus, your Messiah, your Savior, your God. When they speak this way of us, we're not moronic, nor are we cursed.

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No, when they start saying these things against us, and they already are, we are truly blessed, right?

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So this is a call for us to not have our knees knocking, not to worry about our reputation.

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Believe me, your reputation before human beings is nothing. The reputation you need to keep in mind is what does

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Christ think of you, right? And you'll note then, in the book of Revelation, when it talks about those who are thrown into the lake of fire, cowards are near the top of the list, right?

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And we all face that temptation to cower. We all want to be liked.

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We don't like being despised. We don't like being treated like fools. But note, God has chosen the foolish things in the world to shame the wise.

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That's why the gospel is such an offense. So brothers and sisters, we need to continue to repent.

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Repent of our own idolatry, our own desire to save our own reputations. We've got to repent of refusing to be branded as idiots for Jesus.

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Embrace it instead and see that we are blessed. But when it comes to knowing this, where do we go then?

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Where do we go then for forgiveness, because each of us have broken these commandments. Each of us are guilty of being tempted in this way, and not only that, in some degree or another, giving in to those temptations.

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Well, remember the question that Micah asks. What will please the Lord? Shall I give the

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Lord 10 ,000 rams or rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression and the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

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It's a great question that Micah asks. The reality is that neither your children nor your own body are sufficient to atone for your sins.

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So think back to the fool on the hill, Jesus, your Lord and Savior, the one who took your sin upon himself.

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And by the way he chose to rescue you was to lay down his life and die in your place on the cross so that you can be forgiven.

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Even forgiven of the idolatry of self and your refusal to be branded as a fool for believing

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Jesus. In the name of Jesus, amen. And again that address is...

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