The Voice of God Through the Pastor

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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

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And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke the 10th chapter.

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After this the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them on ahead of him two by two into every town and place where he himself was about to go.

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And he said to them the harvest is plentiful but the labors are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the

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Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way behold I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.

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Carry no money sack, no knapsack, no sandals. Greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter first say peace be to this house and if a son of peace is there your peace will rest upon him.

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But if not it will return to you. And remain in the same house eating and drinking what they provide for the laborer deserves his wages.

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Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you eat what is set before you.

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Heal the sick in it and say to them the kingdom of God has come near to you. But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you go to its streets and say even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you.

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Nevertheless know this that the kingdom of God has come near. I tell you it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

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Woe to you Chorazin! Woe to you Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you have been done in Tyre and Sidon they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

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But it will be more bearable on the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you Capernaum will you be exalted to heaven?

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You shall be brought down to Hades. The one who hears you hears me. The one who rejects you rejects me.

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And the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. So the 72 returned with joy saying

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Lord even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them I saw

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Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And behold I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you.

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Nevertheless do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

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

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Here again these words from our gospel text. Jesus said the one who hears you hears me. The one who rejects you rejects me.

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And the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. Now this is an important thing of Christ's teaching that we must kind of sort out properly because this is the teaching that when people embrace it, pastors embrace it, oftentimes they will be accused of being a little too uppity or being cult leaders or something like that.

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Let's make this perfectly clear. A cult leader is one who deviates from sound biblical doctrine and claims to have a special track with God.

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That they have knowledge that nobody else has and may be even able to communicate directly to God conversationally and God talks to them and then in so doing then they reveal new doctrines.

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You think of cult leaders like Joseph Smith of Mormonism. They have all this other biblical revelation.

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But in properly understanding the office of the ministry, the office of the pastoral office, think of it this way.

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When a pastor is correctly exegeting God's Word and proclaiming to you what

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God's Word really says, proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins and is rightly dividing the

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Word of God, then you can say in a very real way that you're not hearing that pastor's voice.

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You're hearing the voice of God. God is speaking to you through that sinful man.

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And that's exactly what Christ is saying here. The one who hears you hears me. The one who rejects you rejects me.

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The one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. Notice it goes all the way up the chain of command if you would.

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Now by way of kind of giving you a negative way of not understanding this correctly, have any of you ever heard someone say,

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I don't need a man to tell me that my sins are forgiven? Have any of you ever heard somebody talk like that?

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Maybe you've said that. I've said it before, right? I don't need a man to tell me that my sins are forgiven. Or how about this idea?

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Listen, I can take my Bible and go out into nature. I can confess my sins and pray and commune with God all by myself.

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And that song comes back to mind. All by myself. Well, now

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I want to make something clear. You definitely can pray to God all by yourself. This is most certainly true.

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But there's something off here and then we'll see if we can put our finger on it. Think of the the late Frank Lloyd Wright.

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He had a quote that he is famous for. He said, I attend the greatest of all churches and I put a capital

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N on nature and I call it my church. Hmm.

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This one's a little bit more mystical. Maybe you've heard somebody talk this way. Maybe you've seen the bumper sticker, nature is my church and love is my religion.

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You have to say it that way, by the way. Love. All right. So then of course we've already talked about people say, well,

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I don't need to go to church to pray. I don't need to go to church to worship God. And this is correct.

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And then I think of the blogger, Pastor Karl Vaters. And he's an evangelical pastor.

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And listen to this quote of his from a blog post from last year. He says, listen, I don't go to church to worship

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Jesus. Now, hold on a second here. Let's put this in context because he knows that this is a stirring the pot kind of statement.

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He says, now hear me out. It's not as bad as it sounds. Anyone can worship Jesus anywhere at any time.

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We don't need a special building, a special day, or a special time to do it. We don't come into the presence of God when we enter a church building and we don't leave his presence when the service is over.

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So you note here there's something off. And the question is, how do we pin this down? Because what he's saying is technically true, but it's like one of those statements where you say you're putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable.

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Something's off here. And then note what he says. He says, since the day of Pentecost, all believers have the

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Holy Spirit. Yeah, that's true. He says, and that Holy Spirit lives in us from the moment of salvation. And so we carry his presence with us.

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Emphasis on the wrong syllable. This means that every act of our lives, whether alone or in the company of others, can and should be an act of worship.

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You see, but we note that something interesting, you know, how does the church service begin here?

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In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And what did Jesus say? Where two or more are gathered in my name,

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I am present among them. And then today, oh yeah, this is something interesting. Something interesting is going to happen today.

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Because today you're going to hear me say these words. Take, eat. This is the true body of Christ given for you.

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Take, drink. This is the true blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

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So there is a way in which we can talk about the sacramental presence of Christ. Or the presence of Christ as Christ has promised where two or more are gathered in his name.

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And that's a little bit different than the omnipresence of God or even the indwelling

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Spirit, the Holy Spirit. So something's off here. And you're going to note that the direction is always running in this in one way when people are talking this way.

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So he says, listen, I go to church every weekend, several times a week actually. And I would go that regularly even if I wasn't a pastor.

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Why? And then he says, I don't go to church to worship Jesus. I go to church to worship Jesus with other people.

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Yeah, okay. And so because I need to worship Jesus in the company of others, we all do,

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I need to worship Jesus along with people I know, people I don't know, people who know me, and people

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I share life with, people I share common beliefs with, and people I disagree with, and people who love me anyway, and people

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I have to love anyway. Now granted, we are not to despise or forsake the gathering of the saints, the communion of the saints.

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This is most certainly true. But again, it's like when my wife makes one of these wonderful dishes and she says,

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Chris, I need you to come down and taste this. So I taste it. It's like, yeah, you know, there's something missing here.

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And she goes, what do I need to add? I go, mmm, salt and pepper. And how much?

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A lot. It's running really flat here. So this stew here is missing an ingredient, and the ingredient is this.

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And again, here are the words of Jesus, the one who hears you hears me. So you'll note the direction in all of these things is from us to God.

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So my question for somebody who believes in this way is, where do you go to hear the voice of God?

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Definitively, authoritatively, where do you go to hear God's voice? I mean, it's great that he hears from you, but when do you get to hear from him?

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And you'll note that that's a missing component in their theology. Everything runs only in one direction, from us to him.

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And so that's the problem. Now, all of that is just to frame what we're going to be working on in our text today.

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So in Luke chapter 10, our text says, Jesus appointed 72 others, sent them on ahead of him two by two into every town and place where he himself was about to go.

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Why 72? Why not a hundred? Why not that amazing number, 42?

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That's the answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Why not 42? How come he didn't send 12?

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97? Why didn't he send that? There's actually a reason for this biblically, and this takes us to one of those dry, gravelly portions of Scripture that every year when you make that New Year's commitment that you're going to read through the

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Bible in the year, you get to this chapter and you skim it because it's dry.

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You just skim it. Let me give you an example. Genesis chapter 10 and 11 are the texts that I'm referring to. And so it's early in January.

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You're now to that part where you're dedicated, I'm going to read all the way through the Bible. You hit this chapter and it reads this way.

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These are the generations of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, sons who were born after the flood, the son of Japheth, Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javin, Tubal, Meshach, Tiraz, the sons of Gomer, Ashkenaz, Riphath, Torgamah, the sons of Javan, Elisha, Tarshish, Ketim, Dodonin, and from these...

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Right? Maybe it's just me. But here's the idea.

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If you read the ancients on this, everybody refers to chapters 10 and 11 as the table of nations.

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And when you count up the nations that are mentioned here of the descendants of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, you come up with the number 72.

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There were 72 nations. So when Jesus says, go and make disciples of all nations, funny enough, he's not referring to the

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United States of America as a nation. That's a nation state. His antecedent are the 72 nations in the table of nations in Genesis.

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And so we see then in this text something quite brilliant, and that is that Christ here in the sending out of the 72, this is kind of a symbolic precursor to the

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Great Commission. You know, it's depicting the work of the church as it goes and proclaims the gospel to all nations.

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72. Now a little bit of a note. Here's what Martin Luther talked about regarding Genesis 10 and 11, the table of nations.

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He says, whenever I read these names, I think of the wretched state of the human race. Even though we have the most excellent gift of reason, we are nevertheless so overwhelmed by misfortunes that we are ignorant not only of our own origin and the lineal descent of our ancestors, but even of God himself, our

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Creator. Look into the historical accounts of all the nations. If it were not for Moses alone, what would you know about the origin of man?

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That's a great quote. What would you know about...the answer is nothing. I mean, my wife decided to do that two -week free thing on Ancestry .com.

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I'm looking at the prices and going, oh please, you know, cut that thing off before the two weeks is over, right?

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But the thing is, Ancestry .com, and look at all the people who are dedicated to trying to figure out their genealogies.

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Who are you? Where did you come from? Who are your ancestors? How far back can you go?

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I've already talked about how sketchy my ancestors are, and it's just, it's not a pretty picture.

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I'm just saying. And there's Irish involved, too. We haven't talked about that side, okay?

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But the idea then is that all of the nations then find themselves, because of sin, in total darkness under the dominion of the devil, so much so that we not only don't know where we came from, you know, you might generically know, well,

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I'm Norwegian, but how far back can you name your grandparents, right? But then worse than that, we don't even know where we came from.

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How did we get to be on this planet in the first place? And if it were not for Moses and God writing the book of Genesis through him, we wouldn't know any of this stuff.

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And so that's the message that goes out. The gospel goes out then to these nations who are in darkness, and God chose from one nation, the nation that is named

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Eber. This is where we get the word Hebrew from.

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Can you hear it? Right? Who are descendants of Shem, which is why they're called Semites, right?

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It is through that one nation that God chose that the Messiah would come through, the promised one who would crush the head of the serpent.

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So then, coming back to our text here, we kind of see what's going on. Jesus is sending 72 out, and so the 72, the sending of them, is one of the foundation stones of the concept, biblically, of the office of the

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Holy Ministry. His words are their words. In other words, as a pastor,

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I'm called to preach the word. I'm not authorized to give you my opinions. I'm not authorized to claim that I'm receiving direct revelation from God, or God laying things on my heart that I'm supposed to share from the pulpit.

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Nope. I'm to preach the word. So when I'm preaching His words, you're hearing Him, not me.

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Same, by the way, when you go and you preach the gospel and you proclaim what Christ has done for people, and call them to repent and to be forgiven in Christ, your words are no longer your words.

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You are speaking the words of Christ, and then God is making His appeal to them through you.

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In fact, Scripture talks explicitly, exactly in those terms. So the idea, then, is that the office of the

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Holy Ministry, the one who hears the pastor, hears Christ, if he's preaching the word correctly, as a called and ordained servant of the word, you heard me say this, as a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by His authority,

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I forgive you all of your sins. It's not because I'm special. I'm really not. So the idea here is, when you hear me say,

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I forgive you all of your sins, I'm just saying what Jesus said, because Jesus said, the sins you forgive will have already been forgiven.

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The sins you retain are already retained. So I just get to be the mouth of Jesus, saying

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His words, so that you can hear Him, hear from Him. So the 72 then signify the fullness of the church, which is scattered throughout the world, and it embraces all nations.

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They're sending, then, as a snapshot of the church sent after the Great Commission, after Christ's ascension, sent to make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching, preaching repentance, and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name.

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And then note, then, that being the case, consider the urgency with which Christ is talking here.

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He says, listen, the harvest is plentiful, but the labors are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the

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Lord of the harvest to send out the laborers into His harvest. Now, a little bit of a note. Grew up in Southern California.

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I know this much. No, wait. It's smaller. That much about farming, all right? But the one thing

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I've noticed here is that every time the harvest comes around, it's an all -hands -on -deck affair.

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You know, just, you know, can I help? Yes, go! Get out there and help. We've got to get the stuff out of the ground. We've got to bring it into wherever we need to bring it into.

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And there's a whole people who have this huge portion of their income supplemented during the harvest time, but again, it comes at a cost.

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Because oftentimes, I've seen here, the farmers are working around the clock. I mean, come out here on a late

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September evening at midnight, and you're likely to see three combines. They look like spaceships have landed.

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We're being invaded by Mars. And they're out there harvesting beans and stuff, right? In the middle of the night.

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Because when the harvest is out, when the harvest is plentiful, you need as many laborers as you can.

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Consider the urgency. And then note this. There's danger involved as well.

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Behold, I'm sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Could we please work on this,

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Jesus? Because I don't know if you've noticed, lambs have like zero natural defenses against wolves.

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So we get to do this harvesting thing as little lambies among wolves.

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Yay! That's fun. Okay. So note the danger involved. And then also note this.

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That the expectation then is, as it says in other passages, that those who preach the gospel, that it is

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God's will, that they make their living from preaching the gospel. So carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals.

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Greet no one on the road. And that's the idea, you know. The worker is worth his wages.

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So bring nothing with you. Make your living from the preaching of the gospel. And then also then note that those who are going out and preaching the kingdom, preaching the good news of Christ, that they are considered by Christ to be ambassadors of peace.

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Shalom! And shalom is a lot more than just peace as we understand it. A ceasing of hostilities.

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Shalom is a more holistic way of looking at peace. Peace in your body. Peace in your relationships.

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It's kind of like the Hawaiian word aloha, right? So shalom aloha.

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I need to work on my delivery. Anyway, and so he says this. Whatever house you enter, say to it, shalom!

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Peace be to this house. And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it's gonna remain, it's gonna return to you.

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So remain in the house. And then notice the reiteration. Eating and drinking what they provide, the laborer deserves his wages.

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You make your living from the gospel. So do not go from house to house. And then important to note here, kind of a nuance here, and this is important for us to keep in mind, that human beings do not build the kingdom of God.

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We don't. That's just how it is. We get to preach it. We get to proclaim it.

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But we're not the ones building it. What does Paul say? The one who plants, the one who waters, are nothing.

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It's God who gives the increase. So whenever you enter a town and they receive you, he says, heal the sick in it.

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Say to them, the kingdom of God has come near you. So we're not the ones who build the kingdom of God.

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We proclaim it. And there's a big difference, by the way, huge difference. Sometimes one gets the impression that the kingdom of God is some building or project of our own doing, and that's not the case at all.

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The kingdom of God is not built on our efforts. The kingdom of God is built on the efforts and the works of Christ.

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A good way to put it is this way. It is not with our blood. It is not with our sweat, our tears that the kingdom is built.

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It is built by the shed blood of Christ. And you think of the blood that he sweat in the garden on Mount of Olives on the night that he was betrayed, and the tears that he cried in his prayers for all of his saints and the ones whom the

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Father had given him. You see, the kingdom is built by the blood, the sweat, and the tears of Jesus.

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He does the work. We are called to announce the good news and to declare his victory and that it is finished in him.

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But also then note that peace is rejectable. It's rejectable.

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If you're not clear on this, remember the lambs and wolves thingy. Okay, it's rejectable.

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So whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, which is a real possibility, you go into the streets and you say, even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you.

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You don't sit there and go, well maybe I need to work on my delivery. Maybe I can figure out how to make the message a little bit more relevant so that they'll accept it.

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No. All right? I mean, seriously, think about this for a second. You go and you proclaim, in Christ there is forgiveness of sins and eternal life.

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It's all given as a gift. Repent. Be forgiven. And they go, meh.

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Nah. No way. Get out. Let me take another crack at it. You know,

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Jesus can make your life at work better. You're boring me now, right? You're not you're not authorized to do this.

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So what do you do when people reject the message, the good news of Christ? Remember, the one who hears you hears

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Christ. You are an ambassador. God is making his appeal through you to them.

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And they go, nope. So when that happens, remember, it's harvest time. We've got a lot of work to do.

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This part of the field is going to spoil. There's no way around it. So Jesus says, shake the dust off your feet.

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Wipe it off. And say, listen, nevertheless, the kingdom of God has come near you. And then

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Jesus says, I tell you, it would be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Whew.

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I mean, Sodom is the archetype of evil. They suffered a destruction of God.

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Fire raining down from heaven. Definitive judgment against their wickedness. And Jesus is saying, yeah, listen, it's gonna be a lot easier on the day of judgment for Sodom than for people who reject the good news of Christ.

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And then, to make the point, Jesus names a few names. Woe to the mighty works done in you have been done in Tyre and Sidon.

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They would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it'll be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and for Sidon than for you.

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Oh, and you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? Nope. You'll be brought down to Hades, to hell itself.

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And then, again, listen to the words. The one who hears you hears me. The one who rejects you rejects me.

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And the one who rejects me, him who sent me. Now you see the context. So consider, then, our question, all right?

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Is the problem here at Kongsvinger that the pastor's uppity and that he's a cult leader because he forgives sins?

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No. I was told to do that by Jesus. So I say these words. I forgive you all of your sins.

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And believe me, there's nothing special about me. The next guy who eventually will follow me here at Kongsvinger, he'll say the same thing.

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I forgive you all of your sins. And then the guy after that guy, he'll say the same thing too, all right?

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And the reason why is simple. Because these are the words that Christ gave us to speak. I forgive you all of your sins.

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So note, then, coming back to the problem, when we think it's all about me and I can worship

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God and I have freedom to pray anywhere, you do, the question is where are you coming? Where has

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God promised that his voice will be there speaking to you? Where do you go to hear from God?

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So today God told you, not me, he did, and I'm not God. So just don't think I'm not.

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But God told you he forgives you all of your sins. He said it through me. Today he will tell you this is the body of Christ broken and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

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And this is the blood of Christ which is shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Note, God is speaking to you.

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These words from Jesus, can you trust them? Yeah, he can.

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So the one who hears you hears me, Christ says.

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And so there the gospel goes out. And then the 72 come back and they say,

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Lord, the demons even are subject to us in your name. We were kicking some major demonic hiney, you know, butt, you know, whatever.

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You get the point. And Jesus said, listen, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven and behold,

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I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.

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Nothing shall hurt you, but nevertheless, don't rejoice in this. Because, note again, who's doing all the flexing of power and muscles here when it comes to the demonic?

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It's not the person doing that. It's Christ. He's doing all the heavy lifting yet again.

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And so Jesus says to rejoice in this instead. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

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That's what we are to rejoice in. So with this picture then of the work of the church as she's sent to go and proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins in Jesus' name, knowing that when people hear us that they are hearing the voice of Christ and God is making his appeal to them through us, then let us be comforted then because we know that we're two or more gathered, that Christ is here present today.

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He is here present today for you, to comfort you. And the words that he speaks to you today are that though your sins be as scarlet, he has made them white as snow.

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Though you have come here falling short in thought, word, deed, by what you've done and by what you've not done, that he has bled and died for you.

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That your sins are forgiven. That you are bled for. That you are died for. And that you are in him.

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And the greatest news of all is by grace through faith as a gift, your names are now written in heaven.

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These are Christ's words to you today to comfort you, to assure you, to feed your faith, to sustain you as you, a little lamb, are among the wolves today in Christ's harvest field urgently working to tell the world the good news that Christ has bled and died for them.

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You are bled and died for. So rest, little church, little lambs of Jesus.

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Rest and know that although the devil rages against you, that nothing will harm you. Nothing will harm you for he has defeated the devil for you and your names are written in heaven.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. 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 Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support.

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