It is Finished!

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. We now read the

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Passion narrative from the Gospel of John, chapter 18, starting at verse 1.

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We'll break this into two pieces, all the way through 19, verse 16. When Jesus had spoken these words,

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He went out with His disciples across the brook Kidron. There was a garden, which

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He and His disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed Him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with His disciples.

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So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons.

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Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to Him, came forward and said to them, Whom do you seek?

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They answered Him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I am.

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Judas, who betrayed Him, was standing with them, and when Jesus said to them, I am, they drew back and they fell to the ground.

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So He asked them again, Whom do you seek? They said, Jesus of Nazareth.

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Jesus answered, I told you that I am He. So if you seek Me, let these men go.

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This was to fulfill the word that He had spoken, of those whom you gave Me, I have not lost one.

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Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it, struck the high priest's servant, cut off his right ear.

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The servant's name was Malchus. So Jesus said to Peter, Put your sword into its sheath.

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Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given Me? So the band of soldiers and their captain and the officers of the

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Jews arrested Jesus and bound Him. First they led Him to Annas, for he was the father -in -law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year.

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It was Caiaphas who had advised the Jews that it would be expedient that one man should die for the people.

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Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Since that disciple was known to the high priest, he entered with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest.

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But Peter stood outside at the door. So the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to the servant girl who kept watch at the door and brought

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Peter in. The servant girl at the door said to Peter, You also are not one of this man's disciples, are you?

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He said, I am not. Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves.

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Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself. The high priest then questioned

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Jesus about His disciples and His teaching. Jesus answered him, I have spoken openly to the world.

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I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret.

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Why do you ask me? Ask those who have heard me what I said to them. They know what

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I said. When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by struck Jesus with his hand saying,

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Is that how you answer the high priest? Jesus answered him, If what

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I said is wrong, bear witness about the wrong. But if what I said is right, why do you strike me?

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Annas then sent him bound to Caiaphas, the high priest. Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself, so they said to him,

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You also are not one of his disciples, are you? He denied it and said, I am not.

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One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, Did I not see you in the garden with him?

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Peter again denied it, and at once the rooster crowed. Then they led

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Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the governor's headquarters. It was early morning. They themselves did not enter the governor's headquarters so that they would not be defiled but could eat the

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Passover. So Pilate went outside to them and said, What accusation do you bring against this man?

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They answered him, If this man were not doing evil, we would not have delivered him over to you.

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Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law. The Jew said to him,

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It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death. This was to fulfill the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die.

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So Pilate entered his headquarters again and called Jesus and said to him,

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Are you the king of the Jews? Jesus answered, Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to you about me?

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Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you over to me.

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What have you done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the

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Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world. Then Pilate said to him, So you are a king?

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Jesus answered, You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose

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I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

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Pilate said to him, What is truth? And he said this. He went back outside to the

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Jews and told them, I find no guilt in him. But you have a custom that I should release one man for you at the

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Passover. So do you want me to release to you the king of the Jews? They cried out, Again, not this man, but Barabbas.

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Now Barabbas was a robber. Then Pilate took Jesus, flogged him, and the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe.

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They came up to him saying, Hail, king of the Jews! And then struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them,

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See, I am bringing him out to you, that you may know that I find no guilt in him. So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe.

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Pilate said to them, Behold the man! When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out,

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Crucify him! Crucify him! Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.

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The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the

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Son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid.

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He entered the headquarters again and said to Jesus, Where are you from? But Jesus gave him no answer.

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So Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?

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Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above.

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Therefore, he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on,

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Pilate sought to release Jesus, but the Jews cried out, If you release this man, you are not

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Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar. So when

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Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the judgment seat at the place called the stone pavement in Aramaic called

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Gabbatha. That was the day of the preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour, and he said to the

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Jews, Behold your king! They cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!

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Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priests answered,

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We have no king but Caesar. So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. We continue with the

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Passion narrative from the Gospel of John 19, finishing verse 16.

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So they took Jesus, and He went out bearing His own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called

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Golgotha. There they crucified Him and with Him two others, one on either side and Jesus between them.

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Pilate also wrote an inscription, put it on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the

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King of the Jews. Many of the Jews read the inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic and in Latin and in Greek.

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So the chief priests and the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the King of the Jews, but rather that this man said,

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I am the King of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written,

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I have written. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took His garments, divided them into four parts.

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One part for each soldier, also His tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.

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So they said to one another, Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.

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This was to fulfill the Scripture, which says, They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

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So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus were His mother,

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His mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw

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His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, Woman, behold your son.

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Then He said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home.

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After this, Jesus knowing that all was now finished,

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He said to fulfill the Scriptures, I thirst. A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to His mouth.

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When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, It is finished. And He bowed

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His head and He gave up His spirit. Since it was the day of preparation so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the

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Sabbath, for the Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

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So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with Him.

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But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs. But one of the soldiers pierced

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His side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. And he who saw it has borne witness.

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His testimony is true. And he knows that what he is telling is the truth, that you may also believe.

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For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Not one of His bones will be broken.

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And again in other Scripture, they will look on Him whom they have pierced. After these things,

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Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked

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Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus. And Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away

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His body. Nicodemus also, who had earlier come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds in weight.

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So they took the body of Jesus, bound it in linen cloths with the spices as is burial custom of the

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Jews. Now in the place where He was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid.

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So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid

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Jesus there. In the name of Jesus. So we've all heard the saying, and it sounds a little odd to say it on a day like this, thank

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God it's Friday. Seems a little out of place in the service, does it not?

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And I think it is. Fridays here in America, well, if you've worked in the corporate world, they can be a pretty easy work day for some people.

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Many companies allow their employees to dress casually, allow them to let down their hair, and if it happens to be a

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Friday before a three -day weekend, well, many companies oftentimes allow their employees to leave a little early to get a head start on their holiday.

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And for many companies, Friday is also payday. There are few things better than heading out for a three -day weekend with your bank account refilled so that you can enjoy your weekend to the fullest.

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Thank God it's Friday. Today, however, is

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Good Friday. Today is the day that we remember Jesus' Friday of Fridays.

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The Friday when He did His greatest work, worked overtime, by the way, and received the wages of our sin, that being a shameful, painful, ignominious, suffering death.

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If you think about death, death is that thing that all of us fear the most.

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We do. Death, if you look at our movies, it's fascinating, death always seems to be one of the invisible characters in the movies that we go to watch.

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I always think it fascinating that when they roll the credits, Clint Eastwood, Martin Sheen, name the actor who was the primary character.

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Why do they never put death in the cast? Because death is always part of the cast, is it not?

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At least in the big movies. Hollywood, which is weird, treats death ghibli, or glibly.

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They do this with movies that not only have a rating of PG or R, but also movies that rack up large body counts.

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It's as if, well, it's an everyday occurrence for special agents and good guys who wear white cowboy hats to coolly gun down 5, 10, 15 people in a four minute time span.

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You notice those movies never show you the aftermath of those deaths. The person is killed, and then the hero just moves on.

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They don't show the ambulance, they don't show the people sitting there slack -jawed, the people weeping or crying, and they never show the funerals either.

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There's nothing sexy about death. Hollywood's treatment of death is fantasy.

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It's make -believe. Stand graveside as someone is burying a loved one.

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You'll see. Death is truly awful. Harken back to the terrorist attacks in Europe.

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If you were standing in the streets of Paris or at the Brussels airport during the latest terror attacks, well, then you saw people fleeing not

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ISIS. They weren't fleeing terrorists. They were running for their lives.

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They were fleeing death. Those of us here, we pray that we do not experience an awful death.

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We don't want a bloody death. We prefer not to suffer a shameful death. As best as humanly possible, we pray that we will die well or that we will die quickly, knowing that death visits all of us because the wages of sin is death.

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Payday is coming, by the way. And we've all sinned, and we've all fallen far, far, far, far, far short of the glory of God.

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But each and every one of us all secretly hope that we will quietly just pass away in our sleep.

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That's not how Jesus died. That's not how He died. The prophet

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Isaiah, writing of Jesus' crucifixion hundreds of years before it actually took place, said this of Jesus, His appearance was so marred beyond human semblance and His form beyond that of the children of mankind.

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The reason for this was simple. He was stripped naked, suspended between heaven and earth.

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His body was ruined. It was ruined by the scourging. His flesh was ripped and torn from His back.

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Behold, these are the wages of sin. These are the wages of your sin and mine.

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Verse 3 of the opening hymn that we sang reads thus, Ye who think of sin but lightly, nor supposed the evil great, here may view its nature rightly, here its guilt may estimate.

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You want to know what the wages of sin is? Take a look at Jesus.

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Mark the sacrifice appointed. See who bears the awful load. It is the word of the Lord's anointed, the

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Son of Man, the Son of God. Isaiah continues, Jesus was despised.

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Jesus was rejected by men. Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

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And as one from whom men hid their faces, He was despised. And we esteemed

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Him not. And see, there's the irony. There's really weird irony of all of this.

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We men despised Jesus. But Jesus was there to save us the whole time.

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That's why He came. So Isaiah then says this, Surely He, Jesus, has borne our griefs.

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He's carried our sorrows. And in our blindness to who

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He is and what He's doing, we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, not

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His own, yours and mine. He was crushed for our iniquities, not

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His own, but yours and mine. And upon Him was the punishment, the chastisement that brought us peace.

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And the question is peace with whom? Answer, peace with God. Because that's what we needed.

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We're the ones who plunged ourselves into this misery. And in our sin and rebellion, we have earned the wrath of God.

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But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

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The punishment that brought us peace was upon Him. And by His wounds we are healed.

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You see, all we like sheep, we've gone astray. We've turned everyone to His own way.

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But the Lord has laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed.

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He was afflicted. Yet He opened not His mouth. Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so He opened not

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His mouth. He didn't come to defend Himself.

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He didn't come to hire an attorney so that He can be found innocent.

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Because there's the real interesting turn. Even though He committed no sin,

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God laid on Him our sin. By oppression and judgment,

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He was taken away. As for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people?

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And they made His grave with the wicked and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence and there was no deceit in His mouth.

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You can almost see Isaiah as he's writing this out going, what is this that God is revealing?

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How is it that one who has done no violence and whom there is no deceit, how is he dead?

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How is he being punished? The great doctrine, the vicarious penal substitution, is in place.

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Yes, Isaiah writes, and this is scandalous. It was the will of the

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Lord to crush Jesus. God willed this. Christ, by the way, didn't have

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His life taken from Him. He laid it down of His own accord. He despised the shame of the cross for the joy that was set before Him.

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And that joy is to be reconciled to you and to Me.

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So it was the will of the Lord to crush Him. He's put Him to grief. And when a soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring and he shall prolong his days.

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And the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. It's as if Jesus, in the midst of His greatest suffering, can see into the future and see the great wedding feast of the

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Lamb. Everything that He was going through meant nothing, because what meant everything was to be there with you.

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Out of the anguish of His soul, He shall see and He will be satisfied. By His knowledge shall the righteous one,

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My servant, make many to be accounted righteous. And you, brothers and sisters, are among those who have been accounted righteous by faith as a gift.

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He shall bear their iniquities, therefore I will divide Him a portion with the many. He shall divide the spoiled with the strong, because He poured out

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His soul to death. He was numbered with the transgressors, yet He was not one. Yet He bore the sin of many and He makes intercession for transgressors.

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Transgressors as wicked and vile and hardened as you and as me.

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We return now to our Gospel text, the conclusion of Christ's crucifixion.

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There are seven words that Jesus says from the cross. Three of them are recorded in the Gospel of John. Isn't it fascinating to you that the prophets, through the revelation of God, can see so clearly into the future?

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It's always amazing. I mean, their Isaiah says Christ's tomb was with the rich. And so it was.

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David prophesying in Psalm 22. Read it. Read Psalm 22. Stark, vivid detail of the crucifixion.

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Including the casting of lots for the clothes of Christ. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before Jesus was born.

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When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took His garments, divided them into four parts.

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One part for each soldier. Also His tunic. A little side note here.

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When you read the church fathers on this, it's very fascinating what they do with this. They end up using type and shadow of Jesus' garments.

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It goes to four different soldiers. They say that this symbolizes and foreshadows the four

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Gospels. Jesus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then the tunic, the seamless woven in one piece tunic from top to bottom, that's the church herself.

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And for many, many, many years before the church was ever ransomed by schisms and sects and denominations and heretics, the church would always say we must stay unified because we are the seamless woven tunic of Christ.

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A little side note there. But we return.

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So the soldiers said to one another, let us not tear it. Cast lots to see whose it shall be.

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This was to fulfill the Scripture which says they divided My garments among them and for My clothing they cast lots.

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It's in Psalm 22. So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross, and there's

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Jesus. It's not an easy Friday for Him. It's not a casual

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Friday. He's not getting off work early today. There He is, bleeding, suffering, dying for my sins and yours.

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And He still has enough sense about Him to care for His mother.

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When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved, that is John, standing nearby,

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He said to His mother, Woman, behold your son. Then He said to the disciple,

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Behold your mother. And from that hour, the disciple took her to his own home.

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Another historical note. The apostle Paul is the missionary and the apostle who planted the churches in Ephesus.

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Spent a long time there proclaiming Christ and Him crucified for our sins. And the

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Lord brought many people to repentance for many years, many hundreds of years.

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Ephesus was a center of Christianity. But it's also important to note that after the apostle

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Paul moved on, one of the very first other apostles to move into Ephesus was the disciple, the apostle

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John. And he brought Mary with her, church history tells us. So he fulfilled his duty to care for Mary as if Mary was his own mother.

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After this, Jesus knowing that all was now finished.

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I don't know how the math works. He was on the cross for six hours. But see, the thing is that Jesus is an eternal being.

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He's the eternal Son of God. Second Person of the Holy Trinity. So six hours times eternity equals the atonement of all the sins of every human being.

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I don't know how it works. I don't know how it works at all. Of course, then again, I think math is evil. But somehow, there's some mathematics going on here.

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You know there has to be. But you think about it. Jesus is on the cross for six days. And six days was the number of days for the original creation.

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And Jesus, when He dies, He goes into the tomb and has His Sabbath rest. And He raises again on the eighth day, the beginning of a new creation.

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But I'm getting ahead of myself. That's for Sunday. So Jesus, when

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He knew that all was now finished, the awful work done, every sin atoned for, every transgression atoned for, bled for, died for, suffered for, the wrath of God, He drank it down to the dregs.

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And yet even after that, after drinking it down to the dregs, Jesus says this, I thirst.

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What is He thirsty for? So a jar full of sour wine stood there.

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And here's something appears that's out of the blue. So they put a sponge full of sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to His mouth.

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Hyssop makes an appearance once again. Do you remember when the children of Israel were in Egypt for the

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Passover? What is it that the Lord commanded the children of Israel to use to put the blood over the lentils of the doors of their houses in Egypt?

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Hyssop. Hyssop. So now we have hyssop and sour wine, which is blood red.

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And it's held up to Jesus. Kind of a signal here. The Old Testament shadows are now giving way to the reality.

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When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, to tell us, die.

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It is finished. He bowed His head and says,

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He gave up His spirit. He was in charge of this the whole time.

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So who is this God who rather than give us all what we deserve, rather than give us all what we have earned by our sinful rebellion against Him, who is this

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God that satisfies and fulfills His own justice so that we, truly hardened sinners, may live and not die?

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Who is this God who would permit His own

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Son to be ruined so that we would never be ruined in the fires of hell?

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John, later in his epistle, first epistle, wrote this, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows

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God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

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There is no greater love than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.

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And this is what Jesus has done for us, because of His great love for us.

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As Paul writes, God demonstrates His love for us. He doesn't do this in abstract.

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He demonstrates His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for our sin.

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And it all happened via the great exchange. For Paul also writes in 2

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Corinthians 5, For our sake God made Jesus to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

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Who is this God that so lovingly pursues wretched, ungrateful, rebellious sinners like me and like you?

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One thing's for sure, John is right. We love

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God because He first loved us. O Lord, if You kept a record of wrongs, who could stand?

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Not one of us could. But with You there is forgiveness because of Christ.

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Therefore, You are feared. In the name of Jesus. If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax -free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744 And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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