Dead Man's Party

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 14th chapter.

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One Sabbath, when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching

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Him carefully. And behold, there was a man before Him who had dropsy. And Jesus responded to the lawyers and the

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Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they remained silent. And then

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He took them and healed them and sent them away. And He said to them, Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a

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Sabbath, they will not immediately pull him out? And they could not reply to these things. Now He told a parable to those who were invited, when

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He noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him.

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And he who invited you both will come and say to you, Give your place to this person. And then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.

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But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, Friend, move up higher.

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Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go, walking with a dead man over my shoulder.

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It's a dead man's party. Who could ask for more? Everybody come and leave your body at the door. Leave your body and soul at the door.

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Is this not the kind of party that is being described here in this text? This is a dead man's party.

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And you'll remember last week we talked about the Bible's definition of dead and the Bible's definitions of life, and we noted that our way of looking at things are very insufficient when it comes to these definitions.

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So as we work our way through this gospel text, we're going to have to come to grips with a couple of things.

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That these men are not only dead in trespasses and sins, as Jesus describes them in the gospel of John, they are of their father, the devil.

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These are little satanic children. And that's the right way to put it.

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In fact, the religion of self -righteousness is the perfect religion for satanic children.

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And I mean it because you are the one who saves yourself. I was shocked back in the day when

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I learned from one of my mentors, and that's Gretchen Pazantino, who happened to be a foremost authority on Satanism.

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She was the one who uncovered the fact and revealed the fact that Mike Warnke, he was lying about being a

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Satanist. It was just a schtick that he created, a backstory about himself that was false. And she was instrumental in bringing to light that he was lying through his teeth.

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And the reason why is because, like I said, she's an expert on Satanism. But I was shocked when I learned from her that Satanists do not worship

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Satan. I know that's going to sound weird. So when you hear all the conspiracy theories about people out there worshiping

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Satan, read the Satanic Bible if you don't believe me. Anton LaVey, the late Anton LaVey, he made it very clear in the

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Satanic Bible that Satanists worship themselves, just like Satan does.

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I would remind you that we recently, in the book of Ezekiel, took a look at a good cross -reference to Isaiah 14 that describes the fall of Satan.

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God describes him in Ezekiel 28 as, You were the signet of perfection. You were full of wisdom.

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You were perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God, and every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle, and crafted in gold, were your settings and your engravings.

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And on the day that you were created, they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub, and I placed you.

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You were on the holy mountain of God, and in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.

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Man, does that sound like a cool place to see. I'm going to grab my camera and go to the mountain of God and look for the stones of fire.

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What a cool thing that has to be, right? You were blameless in all of your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you.

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In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you,

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O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire, for your heart was proud because of your beauty.

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You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. So I cast you to the ground, and I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.

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Hmm. You'll note that if you were to ask a theologian, what's the original sin,

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I would push back and say, which original sin are you talking about? The original sin or the original sin that Adam and Eve first committed?

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The original sin, and I mean the original sin, was actually committed by Satan, and it's self -love.

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It's pride of the conceited, arrogant, vainglorious type. In fact, a good way to put it is that Satan was the original narcissist.

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And you're going to note that the world that we live in is full of them, full of narcissists.

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From the person who legitimately suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, to each and every one of us, our sinful nature is a little narcissist, a little satanic child that wants to be all about me, myself, and I.

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What's the first word that many kids learn after they learn mama or dada? The word they learn is mine, right?

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And boy, they guard what is theirs with murderous intent sometimes, right?

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That being the case, we must recognize then that when Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the garden, what was the temptation?

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On the day that you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan said, you will be like God.

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Now I want you to think about that, how stupid that is for a second here. Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, all creatures, not a single one of them, is by nature equal with God.

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And what did they do in reaching out their hand to take of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? They were grasping not at the fruit.

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They were grasping at becoming equal with God. Ah, if I eat this,

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I will be like God. The narcissism has already poisoned their minds.

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They're already down the path of sin and death. And so that being the case,

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I want you to listen to the description that the Apostle Paul gives of what's going to happen within the visible church in the days leading up to the return of Christ.

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And I would note that this description that he's going to describe fits everybody who is an unbeliever.

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But you'll also note that 2 Thessalonians 2 makes it clear that in the days leading up to the return of Christ, there will be full -blown apostasy within the church.

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And so here's what Paul says the state of the church will be like before the return of Christ.

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Understand this, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

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People will be lovers of self. I would note that everybody who is an unbeliever is probably prone to this, right?

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They will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self -control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.

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Avoid such people. And I would note, this description fits the

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Pharisees perfectly. This is why this party that Jesus is attending is a dead man's party, because these people are just like that.

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And here's where it gets really uncomfortable, and that is that when you look at this description, you sit there and go, whoa, whoa, slow down there, text.

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That's describing me many times, right? So let's take a look at this party, shall we?

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Well, now we kind of understand that narcissism is running rampant in here, and I have to ask a question, and here's the question

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I'm gonna ask you guys. Do narcissists have any need for people who are sick, who have a physical disability?

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In fact, in narcissistic religions, how are people who are sick treated?

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Terribly, right? Oh, God is cursing you because you don't have enough faith, you're not obedient enough, and stuff like this.

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So is Jesus like that, by the way? No, no, Jesus isn't like that.

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So it says this, one Sabbath when Jesus went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.

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What a stupid boneheaded thing for them to be doing. This is Wile E. Coyote trying to catch the roadrunner. Good luck on that one, right?

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So Jesus is invited to not just the Pharisees' house, but one of the chief rulers of the

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Pharisees. I mean, this guy's an important mucky -muck. And we know from Jesus' description of the

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Pharisees that they are all about themselves. They love to have the places of honor at places. They love to be seen in the square, and they pray these long prayers, so everyone goes,

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Oh, how holy and righteous you are, dude, bruh, if only I could be like you, right?

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They aren't low -key self -righteous, they're high -key self -righteous. You get what I'm saying here, right?

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So while Jesus is at this party, a fellow with dropsy is also at the party.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. That's not a word we often use in our modern -day medical terminology.

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So a fellow with dropsy, he's retaining water, and retaining water in a way where he's going to look like a tick about to pop.

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And when this happens to a person, the fluids inside of their chest cavity build to the point where they are this close to having cardiac arrest from congestive heart failure.

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This guy is minutes away from cardiac arrest. And he's been invited, and of course, they're looking for a thing, is

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Jesus going to misbehave? Is he going to give us what we need to condemn him? And of course,

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Jesus knows fully what they're going to do, but he doesn't care. He's going to go right for it, he's going to absolutely do all the things that are going to overturn their narcissistic, self -righteous, nonsensical, dead religion.

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So Jesus said to, now I know the text says the lawyers, but namikos here in the

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Greek is probably better translated as experts in the law. When we think about attorneys, we think of like Saul Goodman, right?

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We think of people who practice law in court. That's not what's being described here.

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What's being described here are people who've dedicated themselves to be specialists in only one part of scripture, the law, the commandments.

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Which I have to ask you guys a question here, okay? Have you ever seen a bodybuilder who doesn't do leg day?

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You know what I'm talking about. This guy, right from the waist up, he can do all this kind of stuff, right?

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But from the waist down, he looks like he's got toothpicks, okay? It's one of the most absurd things ever.

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I would note that somebody who is an expert in the law is like a bodybuilder that never does leg day.

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When it comes to the full counsel of the word of God, they are completely oblivious to the full counsel of the word of God.

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And by focusing in on the law and thinking that somehow they've found the real heart and soul of the

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Bible, you know what they're missing? The gospel, right? The gospel has to come into play here.

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And I would note you find the gospel all over the Old Testament. Hint, hint, look at the Mosaic Covenant sacrificial system that Hebrews says all pointed to the once for all sacrifice of Christ, right?

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So experts on the law, are these the guys that are going to really know their Bibles? No, no, not at all.

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So Jesus said to these experts in the law and to the Pharisees, hey, hey guys,

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I need a ruling from you. I just need to know, you know, here we are at your party, who can ask for more here? But let's consider this question.

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Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? Da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

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And of course you can just see the wheels spinning here because here's the issue. Which of the

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Pharisees or the experts in the law had the ability to heal somebody?

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Not a single one of them. And here's the thing, with the New Testament we can look at Romans 4, and Romans 4 says these important words, where there is no law, there is no sin, right?

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So is it sinful for me to eat Twinkies? The Bible does not forbid eating Twinkies, therefore it is not a sin, okay?

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Twinkies are on the menu, okay? So that being the case, where there is no law, there is no sin.

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Can you guys think of a single passage that says, and if God gives you a special ability to heal people that you cannot heal on the

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Sabbath, thus says the Lord in Deuteronomy chapter 97. No, there is no text like that, right?

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And so Jesus knows full well he sent them on a fool's errand with this question, but the purpose of the question is for them to say, no, there is no law that says that you can't.

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But you'll note when you read the Gospels, what were the Pharisees known for if Jesus was healing people on the

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Sabbath? He's breaking the Sabbath, or people coming to Jesus on the Sabbath. You go away, you come on a different day, don't come on the

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Sabbath, right? And so Jesus asks the question, is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not? But they remained silent, so he took him, he healed him, and then sent him away.

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And that had to be interesting. You could see all the fluid just draining out of him, disappearing, and he goes from looking like a tick that's about to pop to somebody that's actually healthy.

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And he goes, oh, I can breathe again, oh, that pressure in my chest is gone, oh, wow, thank you,

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Jesus, right? And of course, Jesus decides to twist the knife just a little bit more, of course.

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This is what happens when you invite Jesus to a dead man's party. So he says, which of you, having a son or an ox that's fallen into a well on a

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Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out? And in next week's gospel text, you'll note that the gospel text next week,

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Jesus is asked a question regarding what is the greatest commandment, and he rightly answers, to love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to what? Love your neighbor as yourself, right?

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And he says, on these two commandments hang all the rest of them, all the law and the prophets. Well, that being the case, is it loving or unloving to help somebody in dire need on the

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Sabbath? It's loving, it's loving your neighbor. So of course, God didn't give us the

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Sabbath for the purpose of enslaving us to it in such a way that we can't love and help our neighbor.

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That's the point of Jesus' question, and they couldn't reply to any of these things.

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And I would note, what an offensive thing Jesus has done here. Not only is he healed on the Sabbath when the Pharisees say you shouldn't be doing it, but when asked, they didn't say a thing, right?

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Jesus was ready to go, you know, sword against sword with them on this with the Bible, but they didn't even play, they just remained silent.

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But on top of it, people who are sick and ill in the narcissistic religion are abused and often pointed to as examples, this is what will happen to you if you don't obey

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God the way I do. Mm -hmm, okay, right. And you'll note those same people end up dying just like everybody else dies too, weird, right?

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So Jesus healed a person, did it on the Sabbath, broke all their rules. They had an opportunity to, you know, for clarification.

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He asked the right people, the experts in the law, and they couldn't give him a ruling. And so, hmm,

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Jesus has now taken this dead man's party and made it awkward, okay? You know, the caviar and the champagne doesn't quite taste as good as it did before Jesus arrived.

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But then Jesus notices something, and that is is that guys coming in, they are taking most important places, you know, places of honor here at this particular banquet that's being held.

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And so Jesus decides, ha, ha, ha, you guys are just like the little Satanists here, right?

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Think about this for a second here. Is this not what we do in our society, okay? Think back to high school, those of you who've been to high school.

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Do the jocks hang out with the nerds? No, okay, why?

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Because the jocks are better than everybody else, right? Okay, do they ever elect somebody who's a band nerd to be the king and queen of the prom?

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No, we know how this works. They pick high school Barbie and her jock boyfriend, and high school

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Barbie's all about her clothes, and she has her little, you know, her little mean book that she's using to flame and torch everybody and keep them under her thumb, and she thinks she's better than everybody else because her father invented toaster strudel, right?

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All of that being said, we play this game too. We're trained in this world to play this game too.

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Don't think any of us are guilty of not playing this. So Jesus noticed that those who were invited, he noticed that they chose the places of honor for themselves.

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And then almost verbatim, quoting our Old Testament text from Proverbs, Jesus says, hey, listen, when you're invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him.

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Of course, they should sit there and go, oh yeah, he's quoting the Proverbs. They're not interested in that kind of wisdom, right?

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And he who invited you both will come and say to you, give your place to this person, then you'll begin with shame to take the lowest place.

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But when you were invited, go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher, and then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.

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Let me ask you a question. Those of you who've been around narcissists, would a narcissist ever, and I mean ever, sit in the lowest place after they've entered a party?

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No way, Jose. It's not going to happen. Have you ever gone to a restaurant with a narcissist?

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If the waitress is four seconds late with the water, she doesn't get a tip, and she gets told off to her manager, right?

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These people are insufferable. They believe that they are legitimately better than everybody else, and there's no way that they would sit in the lowest place because that's beneath them.

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Let me ask you a question. Are all of us not created by God?

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If we're created by God, is there any of us who is actually better than anyone else?

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Anyone? No, there isn't, but we play this game in society, right?

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The rich and the famous, oh, everybody wants to be like them. When I was in Southern California, I took a day to do some photography, and one of my stops was actually

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Hollywood. Didn't take a lot of photos there. I couldn't stand the smell. It was awful.

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The homeless use Hollywood Boulevard and the Walk of Fame basically as a toilet, and so it wasn't a really fun place to be, and it was super hot.

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The smell with the hot sidewalk, it just was awful. As I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard, I noticed that there was a queue of people lined up to get onto a bus.

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The bus said, tour of the homes of the rich and famous, and everybody looked so excited.

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They were going to go and see the mansion of George Clooney and Brad Pitt and all these really important people, right?

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When people go on a tour like that, what on earth are they telling you about their own value system?

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One of the reasons why people do that is because they like to imagine what it would be like if they were them, if they were the rich and famous.

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They want to vicariously live through their fame and their fortune because they think that they deserve that for themselves, right?

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My question is this, why are there no bus tours, and I mean not a single one, going to the houses of the people who clean the sidewalks and the streets of Hollywood Boulevard?

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Why doesn't nobody go on a tour bus to see the apartments of the people who work in the retail shops on Hollywood Boulevard?

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You're starting to see it, right? That's kind of the point. So Jesus ends this little parable with some very discomforting words.

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Everyone, and by the way, look it up in the Greek, everyone here means everyone. Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

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Do you feel the noose around your neck yet? Are you not guilty of exalting yourself?

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Do we not do this from the time we're children? Mommy, look at me.

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Look what I've done, right? Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

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So how are we, little narcissistic children of the devil that we are by nature because of our fall into sin, how are we supposed to get around this?

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Because Christ just gives an exclusive statement, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

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Well, I would note it's exactly this phrase of Christ that leads us into the gospel.

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We have to use some other passages to do it, but I would note something here. This is the perfect jump -off point to talk about the gospel because each and every one of us, we have deserved

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God's ultimate and eternal humbling because of how we have participated in the sins of Satan, and even though I don't know any of us here who suffers legitimately from narcissistic personality disorder,

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I would say each and every one of us, we are little narcissists. We are little satanic narcissists here.

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That's our sinful nature. Well, there's a great point to be made here.

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In the book of Philippians, the apostle Paul gives this admonition to the

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Christians he's writing to at the church of Philippi. He says this in Philippians 2,

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Now, that's a great admonition, a great thing, but you're going to note here that's a little bit tough for all of us to do.

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You really expect me to think that everybody here at Kongsvinger Lutheran Church is better than me?

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Yeah. That's exactly what the apostle Paul is saying. Consider everybody more significant than yourselves.

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So the pastor of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church is not the most important person at Kongsvinger in my mind.

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Y 'all are, and I would remind you I wear a slave shackle around my neck for a reason.

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It keeps me in my place. So I consider all of you more significant than myself.

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And that's exactly what you're to think of each other. Each and every one of you coming to church today should be thinking,

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I'm just the lowliest of the low at Kongsvinger, and everybody else is so much more significant and important than I am.

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And you sit there and go, how on earth am I supposed to embrace that kind of a mindset? Well, Paul continues.

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Let each of you not only look to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Having this mind among yourselves, which is already yours in Christ Jesus.

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And now we're going to talk about Christ and the gospel. Jesus, who though he was by nature

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God, listened to the words, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.

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That harkens back to the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve thought equality with God was something to be grasped.

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Under the tutelage of Satan, they thought that that was something to be grasped for and sought after. But Jesus, who is the second person of the

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Trinity, the Son of God, he is by nature equal with God.

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Did we not confess that Jesus Christ is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the

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Father, by whom all things were made? If Jesus is all of that, and he is, then don't you think that Jesus is super -de -duper important?

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Would anybody fault Jesus for not humbling himself? There's no reason for him to do so, is there?

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But Jesus isn't like Satan. Satan, a creature, wanted to be like God and depose

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God. And the sick puppy that he is when he was tempting Jesus in the wilderness, that third temptation is,

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I'll give you all the kingdoms of the earth if you'll just bow down and worship me. What a sick, narcissistic, prideful, arrogant puppy that Satan is, right?

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Gross beyond all reason. But Jesus, who is God and is by nature equal with God, he didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, so what did he do?

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In his love and compassion for sinful humanity, Jesus emptied himself.

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He took the form of a servant, and the Greek word here is slave. Being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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And see, that's the difference. Satan wants you to be all that you can be.

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Satan wants you to focus on yourself the way he focuses on himself. But of course, he's going to require you to worship him at the end anyway, because he wants to be the king of the universe of narcissists, the chief of the narcissists.

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But Jesus Christ, who is actually God, didn't even consider his equality with God something to hang on to, and he legitimately condescended.

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He humbled himself. He emptied himself. He took on the form of a servant. Jesus was born in a barn.

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His first cradle is a manger. Jesus was not raised like Moses was in the palace of Pharaoh or in the palace of the emperor of Rome, nor any king or queen or anything like it.

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He grew up in the backwater region in a small little village called Nazareth.

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His dad was a hard -working, hand -calloused construction worker and carpenter.

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That's no place for the king of kings and lord of lords to be, is it? But that's kind of the point.

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It is exactly the place for the king of kings and lord of lords to be, because God is love.

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He's not pride. He's not arrogance. He truly loves and cares and has compassion for you.

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He did all of this for you. He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

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He didn't even consider hanging on to his own life as something, as a worthy endeavor, saving his own skin.

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Instead, he submitted perfectly to the will of the Father and laid down his life so that you and I can be forgiven, pardoned, and reconciled to God, the little satanic narcissist that we all are, undeservedly so, too.

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He did all of this out of his great compassion and love for us. You'll note then that Jesus is the one here who humbled himself, and he humbled himself perfectly for us.

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Remember he said, the one who exalts himself will be humbled. The one who humbles himself will be exalted.

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And so Jesus humbled himself perfectly so that you and I can be reconciled to God, and we are.

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And I would note something here. Everybody is going to be humbled, and I mean everybody.

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Everybody's going to be humbled, but how God humbles us is a little different with certain people.

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Here's what I mean. When the law of God was preached to us, and it is preached to us, what do we say?

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I am guilty. Today we humbled ourselves and confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean.

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We have sinned against God and thoughtward indeed by what we've done and by what we've left undone. We, through the

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Holy Spirit's power, through the preached law of God, rather than exalting ourselves and thinking that we're pulling it off, have been brought to the realization that we are indeed poor, miserable sinners.

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And in humility we have confessed that we have transgressed God's holy law.

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And having been humbled by God's law and crying out to Him for mercy, what does

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God do? He exalts us. He forgives us our sins. He adopts us into His family so we're no longer children of the devil.

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He transfers us from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of His light. And rather than give us eternal death as we deserve,

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He gives us an eternal heritance and gives us eternal life all as a gift. And all of this for the sake of Christ, who humbled

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Himself to the point of death, even death, on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Jesus and has bestowed on Him the name that is above every single name.

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So that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and heaven on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father. But you're going to note here, we have already been made by God to bow the knee to Jesus and to confess that Jesus is

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Lord. It is with the mouth that we confess that Jesus is Lord. With the heart we believe this and we are saved.

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But on the last day, those who persisted in sin and unbelief and continued in their narcissistic, satanic ways, when they are forced to bend the knee to Jesus, it will have no salvific effect for them at all.

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It will be for the purpose of vindicating Christ and securing in their minds the worthiness of the judgment that they will receive from God.

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It's interesting when you put it all together. So there's

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Jesus at this party, at a dead man's party, and He is showing what it's like to be the

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Lord of life. Is it any wonder then that in light of the gospel, in light of the one who humbled

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Himself perfectly for us, that the Apostle Paul in our epistle text gives admonitions and exhortations to the

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Christian church in Ephesus that also hits for us. Paul writes,

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Therefore I a prisoner for the Lord, I urge you to walk, to conduct your life in a manner that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

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And here's the thing. When you hear language like this, it kind of harkens to like, you know, when you're a kid and you're on the baseball field or you're playing, you know, peewee football or something like that, and dad's trying to pump his kid up and say,

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Remember, you're a Rose, bro. You'll get out there and sack him and kill him and all this kind of stuff, right? You know, unfortunately, that's another example of exalting yourself.

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I'm going to teach my kid to exalt myself and take his sports exploits out on your children, right?

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So what does it mean to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called? Well, what have we been called from?

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Darkness into light. We've been called from narcissism into loving each other.

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And so here's what the call looks like. This is the worthiness of how we are conducting our life.

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With all humility, with gentleness, my least favorite word, with patience, right?

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Bearing with one another in love. Eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace.

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In other words, Christian churches should be the best place ever to be, legitimately, in light of the cross, in light of the fact that we're forgiving.

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You'll note the cascading effect of the gospel. We, sinful, self -focused narcissists, being suffered for, bled for, died for by the

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God who's humbled himself and took our place on the cross and forgave us all of our trespasses.

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We then, having been forgiving, God's love for us then cascades down to each other.

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But it doesn't stop with each other. It continues on to those in our neighborhood, those who are friends and family members.

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And it continues even farther down to those who are our avowed enemies. To love them, to be humble in their presence, to serve them and to look out even for their needs and to pray for them.

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You can see here, Jesus is not acting in weakness when he's humbled himself. It demonstrates his perfect strength, and it convicts us of our weakness.

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So let us embrace and hold fast to the good news that we are forgiven in Christ, the one who humbled himself perfectly for us, and he, by humbling us through his word and giving us the comfort of the gospel, will ultimately exalt us.

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Not because we deserve to be exalted, but because we are in him, and God has given him the name that is above every name.

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So let us worship the name of Christ, who doesn't invite us to a dead man's party. He invites us to the wedding feast of the

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Lamb, the true first party where every guest will truly be alive.

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And not only will we be the honored guests, we're the bride. In the name of Jesus, amen.

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