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Date: Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Trinity Text: Matthew 9:18-26 www.kongsvingerchurch.org If you'd like to be on Kongsvinger’s e-mailing list to receive information on how to attend all of our ONLINE discipleship and fellowship opportunities, please email [email protected]. Being on the e-mailing list will also give you access to fellowship time on Sunday mornings as well as Sunday morning Bible study. If you'd like to follow along during the liturgy you can get yourself a copy of the Lutheran Service Book HERE: https://a.co/d/7Jyim02

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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 Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew the 9th chapter.
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While Jesus was saying these things to them behold a ruler came and knelt before him saying my daughter has just died but come lay your hand on her and she will live.
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Jesus rose and followed him with his disciples and behold a woman who had suffered from a discharge of blood for 12 years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his garment for she said to herself if I only touch his garment
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I will be made well. Jesus turned and seeing her said take heart daughter for your faith has made you well.
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And instantly the woman was made well and when Jesus came to the rulers house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion he said go away for the girl is not dead but sleeping.
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But when the crowd had, and they laughed at him, but when the crowd had been put outside he went in and took her by the hand and the girl arose and the report of this went through all that district.
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This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus. You know many times
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I go back and pick through the rubbish, the destruction layer of my spiritual life.
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I've talked about the fact that Barb and I we both went to the same Christian high school together and we also after high school ended up in a cult called the latter rain movement and sometimes
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I have to go back and kind of do a postmortem to figure out what on earth went wrong.
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How on earth were we so deceived into thinking that number one we needed to speak gibberish, number two that there was a prophetess over us and she was actually speaking words from God, number three that we had demons that needed to be cast out of us because we were
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Christians and all the weird nonsense that went on there was just absolutely reprehensible.
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And so you'll note when when I do videos for fighting for the faith I can have compassion on the people who are deceived because I myself have been terribly deceived.
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But in doing a postmortem I keep coming back to kind of the same thing and that is that the church that we attended, the schools that I attended and Barb also attended, they did not help us.
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There's a passage of scripture that talks about those who are ever learning but never able to arrive at a full knowledge of the truth.
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And so when I think back to when I was in high school I can think back to the very steady diet of preaching that I heard not only in Bible class but also in our chapel services which we were required to attend and I got to tell you there was a constant focus and that focus was on me.
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Rather than Christ it was always on me. I needed to obey. I needed to make the sacrifice.
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I needed to pay my tithe. I needed to do this. I needed to conquer. And in one of my
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Bible studies Barb and I were part of something called discipleship core at Maranatha High School.
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So that's kind of the spiritual elite of the high school that we went to. We were part of that discipleship core.
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And over and again we would hear things like you all are the generation that's going to change the world.
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You are the ones who are going to slay your giants. You're going to dare to be a
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Daniel. You're going to get out there. And when we were in the latter rain we were told because we were so young at the time, we were in our early 20s, that we were part of the generation that was going to rise up and be able to perform miracles at will and be able to do all these kinds of crazy things.
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And it was just nonsense. I think back to the fact that when we were in a small group
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Bible study, this small group Bible studies became the thing while we were in high school. And so Barb and I attended a small group
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Bible study. Do we have a pastor leading it? No. Who can lead a small group
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Bible study? Basically anybody who's breathing can lead a Bible study. And over and again the way we were taught to read the
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Scriptures went something like this. You would open up the Bible, the small group leader would read a verse out of context, and then we would go around the room and answer this important question.
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What does this verse mean to you? And it's crazy when you think about it because that being the focus, the focus was always on me.
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Always on me and what I had to do. Never was the focus on what God had done for me, what
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Christ had done for me. That was very foreign stuff. In fact, one of the things I remember from that time is that there was this disconcerting thing that would happen from time to time.
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We were told we had to have daily devotions because the logic went something like this.
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If you are in a personal relationship with Jesus, and we all need to be in a personal relationship with Jesus, well
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Jesus is kind of like a very clingy, nerdy, and needy girlfriend.
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So if you're not texting Jesus like five times a day to let Jesus know how wonderful he is, he'll text back and go, why aren't you spending time with me?
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Why aren't you talking to me? And this kind of stuff like this. And so that being the case, when you would have your devotions, it always felt like it was a to -do item.
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I just, I needed to have my time reading the Bible, so I'd pull out the Bible and I would read one, maybe two chapters, and I would say, there,
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I've done it. Check that off of my list. Now be quiet, Jesus, and stop texting me those clingy, needy things telling me how you miss me and all that kind of stuff.
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This is how I would think about it. It always was something that I just needed to get behind me.
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Do it so that I can say that I've done it. And never did I really apply myself to understanding the
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Scriptures, but I would say this, that whenever I found texts that were, where it told me things that I needed to do,
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I would highlight those. Then I would come to passages that made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever, right?
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And I didn't know what to make of them. And I remember, like, one time, you know, reading a passage regarding salvation and stuff like this, and, or reading a text that talked about what baptism does, and going to my youth pastor and saying,
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I don't understand what this text is saying because it's saying the exact opposite of what it is that we're taught to believe here at this church.
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And the gymnastics that my youth pastor would go through was, like,
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Olympic -level kind of gymnastics. I mean, it was absolutely spectacular, and he would stick the landing, too.
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But the argument would usually go something like this, well, there are some denominations who read it this way, and this is how they understand it.
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And then there's other people who read it, and this is how they understand it. And we understand it differently than the both of them, but who are we to say who's right or wrong when it comes to this text?
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And so, just understand that there's a spectrum, there's a spectrum, a wide spectrum of belief about what this passage means.
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And so, we fall here on the spectrum, but we're not going to condemn anybody else who falls in a different part of the spectrum, because, after all, that would be presumptuous of us to condemn other people along those lines.
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And you sit there and go, what a completely unsatisfactory, ridiculously awful explanation, because at the end of the day,
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I didn't understand the Bible at all. Like, at all.
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And here's the thing, everything that I was catechized into at this time, although I wasn't catechized in the proper sense, everything
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I was catechized into made it so that the focus was on me following my heart.
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What was God telling me inside of here? And I needed to listen to this voice, and the
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Bible, yeah, I read it, but it was an annoying part of a thing that I had to do, and as a result of it, years of being catechized into this way of Scripture, perfectly set
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Barb and I up, and I mean perfectly set us up for the latter rain. And when we came out of it, aside from feeling completely betrayed,
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I mean utterly betrayed, we also felt a lot of shame. Barb's question coming out of that was, who can we trust?
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Where are we supposed to go from here? And the only thing I could say at that time was, I think the
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Bible is true, but I'm beginning to think we don't know what it means. That we don't really understand it.
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And this is despite the fact that we were part of the Discipleship Corps. We had four years of Christian high school under our belts.
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We attended chapel weekly. Barb didn't miss, she almost got perfect attendance, but that's a story.
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Okay, that being the case, what is it that goes wrong when people do this?
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You come back to that third commandment, and you'll note that Christ makes it very clear. If you love me, you will abide, you will keep, you will guard my commands.
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And Christ is the one who's given us the commandments in the Old Testament, especially the Ten Commandments, that we are to follow them.
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So the third commandment is, remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. And when Luther asks the question, what does this mean?
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He answers the question that we should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching or his word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it.
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When you look at the history of Israel, especially the history of Judah, and the apostasy that was taking place at the time of Jeremiah, there's particular passages in Jeremiah's prophecy that really stand out today as an explanation for not only how
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Barb and I were deceived, but I would argue how so many people who call themselves Christians are deceived as well.
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Listen to Jeremiah chapter 7. I'm going to start at verse 23. God says this,
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I gave them this command, obey my voice and I will be your
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God and you shall be my people. Walk in all the way that I command you that it may be well with you.
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And of course my Nazarene self hears this and goes, well that tells me I need to hear God's voice, but the question
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I never asked is where should I expect to hear it? Where does
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God speak today? Right? That's obviously the question that we've got to work out.
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Because there's people running around the Christian landscape today basically claiming that they are hearing the voice of God.
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They've taken their Bibles, they've effectively closed them, and I cannot even begin to tell you how many hundreds if not thousands of sermons
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I have previewed and reviewed of people who claim to be prophets today who are preaching what they say is the voice of God with closed
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Bibles and open notes from whatever fever dream they had the night before that they claim was from God.
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The scripture says obey my voice and you're going to note here the problem is is that we don't want to.
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Let's be blunt, there's a cost to actually hearing the voice of God and hearing it in the scriptures.
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And the cost is your own dignity, your own self -righteousness.
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Because when you read the scriptures, the scriptures do not pat you on the head and say you are such a good boy, you are such a good girl.
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The scriptures instead teach us that we are not giant slayers.
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In fact, I never understood this idea of being a giant slayer because over and again the one thing I was very sure of is that I was not at all like David in the giant slaying department, but I was a lot like Adam in the not keeping
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God's commandments department. And that was the thing. Reading God's word, obeying his voice is going to take away your self -righteousness and that is a scary thing.
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And then God says walk in all that I command you that that it may be well with you. But listen to what God then says about Judah.
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They did not obey or incline their ear. They walked in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their own evil hearts.
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And there's the problem right there. Correct me if I am wrong, but does not everything in our society say follow your heart?
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Be true to yourself. You need to find your authentic self and you need to be true to that self.
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And don't you listen to anybody who would condemn you for who you are, right? You want to be a turnip rather than a male or a female?
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You can be a turnip. Just let your turnip heart lead you into turnipness, right?
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This is how they talk. But God says that following our own counsels, following the stubbornness of our own evil hearts does not bring us forward in God's kingdom.
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It sends us backwards. That's exactly what he says. They went backward and not forward. So from the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt to this day,
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I have persistently, and listen to what God says, I have persistently sent all my servants the prophets to them day after day.
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Now this sentence, I have persistently sent them my servants the prophets, then makes you go, okay, so the
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Old Testament prophets were actually sent by God. That's the voice that God wants me to listen to.
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So for instance, when I'm reading Isaiah or Jeremiah or Micah or Nahum or Zechariah, you get the idea here.
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I'm hearing the voice of God, and that's in the Scriptures. But then he goes on, yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but they stiffened their neck, and they did worse than their fathers.
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And I would note that we have all kinds of ways in which we do this, going back to when I was in small group Bible studies.
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What does this verse mean to you is a complete exact opposite of what
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God wants us to do, and that's an exact exercise in teaching me to follow my own counsels and the own stubbornness of my evil heart, because although I have heard a verse from the
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Bible, I have not asked the question, what does it mean? I have not sought to understand what
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God has revealed there. Instead, I have silenced the voice of God, and then I begin to speak the nonsense of my own heart.
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This verse means to me rainbows and bunnies and care bearers and nonsense like that, right?
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But I'm not hearing the voice of God when I do this. One of the notable things about the so -called Azusa Street Revival, which was very instrumental in bringing the
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Pentecostal movement to bear, is that William Seymour, the guy who led that, in multiple newspaper articles it described what was taking place at the
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Azusa Street Revival. He wasn't reading the Scriptures. He wasn't preaching the
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Scriptures. What he would do is he would open up his Bible and then he would read two words, and this is well documented in the
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Los Angeles Times. It would be like me taking this prophecy from Jeremiah and reading two words, own counsels, and then from there they went into some kind of fevered
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Holy Ghost frenzy, people going out of their minds.
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But they weren't hearing the Word of God, they just heard two words. And then after that fever pitch came down and simmered down a little bit, he'd read two more words, not forward, and everyone would go nuts and stuff like this.
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They weren't hearing the Word of God. And yet people believe that that thing was a revival, that God was restoring the gifts of the
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Spirit at that time. But how can they believe that? Because they were in fact not hearing
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God's voice. They were walking in their own counsels and the stubbornness of their evil hearts. In Jeremiah chapter 8,
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God laments and talks about the treachery of Judah. He says to them in verse 4, you shall say to them, thus says
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Yahweh, when men fall do they not rise again? Well, it depends on if they slipped on the ice and they broke their hip, is kind of the way
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I would look at it here in Minnesota, but that's a different story, right? If one turns away, does he not return?
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Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit, and they refuse to return.
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Is that not exactly what's happening in our day and has been happening all the way back in the times of Jeremiah?
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They've paid attention and they listen, but they have not spoken rightly. No man relents of his evil saying, what have
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I done? Everyone turns to his own course and like a horse plunging headlong into battle.
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Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, the turtle dove, the swallow in the crane keep the time of their coming.
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But my people know not the rules of Yahweh. How can you say we are wise and the law of Yahweh is with us, but behold the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie?
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Fascinating, in Jeremiah's time, the sentence about the lying pen of the scribes, that was a problem back then as it is today.
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I mean, how many of you have heard about Christian books, right, that have gone New York Times bestseller?
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You think of like the Shack or something like that. And the Shack, a Christian bestseller, depicted
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God the Father as Aunt Jemima, right? And the whole book itself was designed to tear down the scriptures and make it so that you didn't trust the
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Word of God. That was a problem all the way back then. But here's where our epistle text comes to kind of save the day.
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You've seen what it is that we're talking about, the sin that that so easily infects all of us, and that is the inattentiveness to God's Word.
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But there's a very good reason why God wants us to hear His Word, to study
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His Word, to read it, to mark it, to inwardly digest it. You'll note that in the
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Eastern meditation way of doing things, what are you supposed to do? You get in the lotus position and you take your fingers and you do this.
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I don't know why, but you do this. You close your eyes and you say, right?
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And the whole idea is to clear your mind, to get your monkey mind to be quiet is how they describe it.
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But you know that meditation in the scripture is the exact opposite. It's reading a passage of God's Word and going back and rereading it, memorizing it, pondering it, thinking it through, not emptying your mind, but filling your mind with His Word.
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And there's a reason for this is because the Word of God is not like any other book.
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There are, there is no other book like it. It is living and active, sharper than a double -edged sword, and only in the
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Word of God are you going to find the gospel. You can't find it anywhere else.
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I love that in the women's Bible study yesterday, Dorothy Bressler, who is just a wonderful saint, and I love the fact that she attends here and she participates so wonderfully in our women's
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Bible studies, Dorothy Bressler pointed out that if humanity were to invent a
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God, and humanity has invented lots of gods, that humanity would never invent the God of scriptures.
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Never. Aside from the complexities of the Trinity, which are mind -bending, the
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God of scriptures is not like any other God. He's not vindictive, he's not capricious.
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You think of like Zeus, right? Zeus on a cranky day might throw a lightning bolt at you, right?
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You know, you don't want to upset him, you want to stay on his good side, and it's hard to figure out what's gonna make him happy, and you're worried that Zeus might wake up on the wrong side of the bed, and that you might find yourself dead in Hades at the end of that day, right?
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But the God of scripture isn't like Zeus. He isn't like the capricious, nonsensical deities that humans have made up.
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Instead, he's forgiving, and he is the one who does it all for us.
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Think about our Old Testament text. Let me pull this up. I'm weaving this into my sermon.
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I'm calling an audible because I didn't actually originally weave this into my sermon, but as I was reading that Old Testament text, it just fits so perfectly with the themes that we're looking at today.
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It does us well to consider this. Our Old Testament text, listen to the focus. The children of Israel are speaking to Yahweh and say,
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Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of Yahweh. Awake, as in the days of old, the generations of long ago.
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Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces that pierced the dragon? Now, those words, by the way, are a little confusing.
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God did not cut Rahab, the prostitute, into pieces. Rahab here is a kind of a reference back to Egypt, and the dragon being referred to may, in fact, be one of the false deities of the
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Egyptian pantheon of gods, right? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea away for the redeemed to pass over?
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Note who's doing the doing, who's running the verbs, and who are they appealing to? Rise up,
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O Lord, put on strength, do what you've done in the past. It was you who did these things.
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And he is the one who, and the ransomed of Yahweh, they shall return and come to Zion then with singing.
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Everlasting joy will be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
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And then God says, I am he who comforts you. You'll note that the one true
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God, the one revealed in Scripture, who has sent his prophets to hear so that we can hear his voice, who sent his only begotten
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Son that we should hear his voice through the apostles that Christ has chosen, that God of Scripture constantly comforts us.
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We who don't even deserve to be on the isle of misfit toys, he has redeemed us and given us everlasting joy.
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He comforts us. So God asks, why then are you afraid of man who dies, the son of man who is made like grass?
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And that you have forgotten Yahweh your maker. And then listen to what else God has done. He has stretched out the heavens, he's laid the foundations of the earth, and you fear continually all the day because of the wrath of the oppressor when he sets himself to destroy.
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But where is the wrath of the oppressor? Who can be compared to Yahweh and the things that he has done with his mighty arm to save us?
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The oppressor is bowed down as speedily. Those who are bowed down under the oppressor will be released.
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He shall not die and go down to the pit, neither shall his bread be lacking. I am Yahweh your God who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar.
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Yahweh of hosts is his name. And I have put my words in your mouth and covered you in the shadow of my hand, establishing the heavens and laying the foundations of the earth, saying to Zion, you are my people.
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When I was in Nazarene, I was taught that it was my job to dry up the Red Sea and to do all these mighty things that are said in Scripture that God has done.
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But I can tell you this, I didn't do a single mighty one of them. The only thing I brought into the equation of my salvation was sin, and so do you.
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Then hear then these comforting words from the Apostle Paul writing to a church that he did not plant.
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The church at Colossae was not a church plant of the Apostle Paul on one of his missionary journeys.
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It was somebody else, and Colossae is near that Laodicea church, and they're not too far from there.
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But listen to these words that Paul says. So from the day that we heard that they had heard about their salvation, that they had received the gospel, the
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Apostle Paul says, we've not ceased to pray for you. Praying for people is kind of important.
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I would note that we have much to learn from the Apostle Paul here. One of the things
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I might suggest for us here at Kongsvinger is that you'll notice that Christ continues to bring us people.
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New people join us online, new people join us here at Kongsvinger, and it seems like there's a new face, a new name always showing up in our
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Bible studies and online services. And that is that I think we need to spend a little more time praying for those who are coming out of darkness into the light of Christ, and pray something to the effect of what the
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Apostle Paul is praying for them. And listen what he says, asking, asking God that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
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And you'll note that Paul here isn't talking about making sure that you have your daily devotion so you can check it off, so that you can just say,
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I did that. No, he's talking about something completely different. Not the self -righteous way of looking at the
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Scriptures as something as a duty that you just need to get over with, but he's praying that they would have a hunger and a thirst for a right understanding of God's Word, and that through a careful study and attending to hear the
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Word preached, that they would be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
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This can only be found in the Scriptures. And then he says this, so as to walk in a manner that is worthy of the
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Lord, fully pleasing to him. Already you are that because of Christ.
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And then note this, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.
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That was a joy this week, working with my Greek students through this passage, because I asked them point -blank here, is that when it talks about bearing fruit in this sentence, what is the fruit that's being born?
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Back when I was in Nazarene, the only thing that mattered was that you bear fruit by obeying the rules that the
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Nazarene Church had come up with. You're all familiar with them, I keep using the litany of this list of man -made commandments over and over again.
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You shall not drink, you shall not dance, you shall not smoke, you shall not chew, you shall not date girls who do, right?
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You shall not play cards and all this other kind of nonsense. And remember the movie Footloose?
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By the way, Footloose is the very first movie that Barb and I went to see together as a couple, okay?
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It took me a little bit of time to convince her that I was the one, but once I did convince her, our first date was to go to the movie theaters and we saw
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Footloose in the movie theater. So technically you can say that's our movie and Footloose is technically our song.
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But I keep reminding Barb that that was a long, long time ago and that we're, she's just four years away from being 60 years old, okay?
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And every time I say that, holy smokes, the volcano erupts and she says, you're gonna be 60 years old, but I'm not, okay?
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But all of that being said, in the movie Footloose, I mean, that may as well have been my experience in the
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Nazarene Church. John Lithgow playing that legalistic preacher who's living somewhere in a small town in the
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Midwest of the United States and Kevin Bacon coming from the cities and he likes to dance.
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He's a dancer, but dancing is not allowed in that city because this preacher has held sway over the entire, over the entire town.
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So the high school students don't get a prom, they don't get to dance, we didn't get to dance either. We had to have somebody have mercy on us and hold a prom for us because our school wouldn't, right?
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And then you have that big collision, you know, this wonderful thing that takes place.
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Kevin Bacon gets to go and speaks to the city council of why they need to have this dance and what does he do?
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He opens up his Bible that somebody had given him and said, you might want to look at these passages over here.
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And Kevin Bacon's atheistic non -christian character quotes the Bible correctly in pointing out that David danced before the
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Lord and that there were Psalms who call for God's people to dance and pointed out the hypocrisy of the man -made rules that they had come up with.
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It just stands out, this is my lived experience. But here's the thing, when you make up rules you become like the
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Pharisees. And remember Jesus's rebuke of the Pharisees in Mark 7, he says you make void the
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Word of God by your commandments. You leave the commandments of God to establish your own tradition.
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We are not to do that, people following their own counsels, making up their own rules, and then calling it
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Christianity. Only in the Scriptures are we going to learn the real knowledge of God and understand his will and grow in spiritual wisdom and understanding.
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And God wills for us to bear fruit in every good work, but also to increase in the knowledge of God.
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God wills for us to do both. And those churches where they'll talk about love but they hate doctrine, they are disobeying
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God's Word here. They are not growing in his will. It is not merely your life, it's your life and your doctrine.
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The two have to go together, and Paul is praying on behalf of the church at Colossae, and we need to pray on behalf of ourselves that we may continue to grow and bear fruit in good work and continue to increase in the knowledge of God through his
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Word. And then he says, may you be strengthened, which means you ain't doing the strengthening,
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God is the one who has to strengthen you. May you be strengthened with all power, not yours, his, according to his glorious might.
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For what? For all endurance and patience with joy. And you'll know, the
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Christian life legitimately requires a lot of patience and a heck of a lot of endurance.
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It's nothing easy. But giving thanks to the Father, and here come the next part of it, the verbs.
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And these are words that you can only find in Scripture, and these are the ones that comfort us.
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You'll note because we have not been attentive to God's Word as we ought to, because we have followed our own hearts and followed our own ways, and even participated with those who have attacked the
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Word of God or held it hostage in order to silence God's voice, rather than hear it and understand it.
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We've all participated in this, and as a result of it, we recognize that God's Word rightly condemns all of us.
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In fact, because of our participation in rebellion against God and refusing to hear his
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Word and obey his voice and walk in his ways, we have earned nothing but God's wrath.
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If anything, we can all say it this way, each and every one of us has been disqualified.
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We have been disqualified from eternal life. We've been disqualified from God's good graces and his gifts.
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But the verbs that follow next, the participles, are beautiful. Giving thanks to the
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Father, he is the one who is qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light.
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You who are disqualified, God says, nope, I qualify you. You don't measure up, so I'm going to send my son and he's going to measure up for you.
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And he's going to give you everything you need so that you are qualified to share in the inheritance of saints and light, because left to your own devices, you will never be qualified, ever.
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It's impossible for you to be qualified. So God, in his great mercy, he has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints and light.
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And then listen to this, he has delivered us from the dominion of darkness. He did it, not you.
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You are not delivered from the dominion of darkness because you've made a freewill decision to walk into the light.
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Baloney. God has taken, well, kind of like a rodeo example here.
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No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me drags him, Jesus says in John chapter 6.
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And so this wonderful rodeo of Christianity, there you were, that little calf that was left loose in the arena, and here comes
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God the Father chasing after you on his horse, throwing his lasso, and he takes you, and he hogties you, and he drags you into his kingdom.
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You are now saved. Right? This is how Christianity works.
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He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness. He has transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved
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Son. And in the kingdom of his beloved Son, in Jesus Christ, we have something unexpected, something amazing, something too good to just let it go.
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We have redemption, which is being set free from slavery, and we also have the forgiveness of all of our sins.
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And you ignore God's Word at the expense of not hearing these comforting words.
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But when you apply yourself to the Scriptures, not because you have to check it off on your list of things to do, but because you recognize that God wills for you as his children to grow in the knowledge of him and spiritual wisdom, that when you apply yourself to the
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Scriptures over and over and over again, page after page, chapter after chapter,
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God reveals himself as the one with the mighty arm who delivers, who is the one who saves, he is the one who qualifies, he is the one who delivers, he is the one who transfers, he is the one who redeems, he is the one who forgives, and he doesn't just do it to some unnamed group of people.
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He does all of this for you. And you can only hear this wonderful, comforting message in the
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Scriptures themselves. So let us then enjoy, seek to grow in the knowledge of God, bearing fruit in keeping with repentance and good works and love towards each other, and as Paul has prayed, that we would increase in the knowledge of God.
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May this be our prayer for us and for all those who are coming to us to hear
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God's Word, that they also may bear fruit in every good work and increase in the knowledge of God through his
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Word, because there we hear that we are forgiven for Christ's sake. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
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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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