Two Points of Doctrine Converge

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 in salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the sixth chapter.

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Jesus said, No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

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You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will put on.

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Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.

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They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

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And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing?

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Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

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But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you,

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O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat?

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What shall we drink? What shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

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But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.

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Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. So, this is the Gospel of the Lord, in the name of Jesus.

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So last week I made the claim in my sermon that sanctification is kids' stuff, and that we need to go back to our catechism and learn how to brush our teeth every day spiritually by praying the

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Lord's Prayer, and by praying that little prayer that Martin Luther gave us to lead us not into temptation, to, how does he put it, to keep me this day from all sin and every evil, that all my doings in life may be pleasing to you and your hands.

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I commend myself, my body, and soul in all things, and you'll note that we are asking God the Holy Spirit to give us the strength in order to, well, be sanctified, because we do not have the ability in ourselves to produce the fruit of the

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Spirit. Well, working off of that same theme, I'm going to make another outlandishly scandalous claim, and that is that none of us ever graduates from the small catechism.

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I know that sounds crazy, I mean, come on, Pastor Roseboro, it's been 40 years since I was confirmed, and I haven't cracked open my catechism in 40 years.

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I just left all that baby stuff behind after I became an adult, to which I would say, that's not a good way of doing it.

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That's not how it goes. The faith is once for all delivered to the saints, and as a result of it, we never graduate from the basics, ever.

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In fact, I can legitimately say, in 10 years of ministry now as a pastor, the thing that has taught me the most is teaching the catechism, because in order to unpack the catechism,

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I have to be in a lot of God's Word, and I would note, the catechism is rich. That being the case, have you noticed that in our gospel text, there is a collision, if you would, a convergence, a crossroad has appeared between two very important pieces of the catechism, two points of doctrine.

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One is that first commandment, you will have no other gods. What does this mean? We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.

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Well, that's baby stuff. Oh, is it though? Is it really? And then the second point of doctrine is regarding that first article of the

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Apostles' Creed, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Now, that being the case,

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I would point out that when God created the world, at the very end of Genesis chapter 1,

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God declares everything tov ma 'od, very good, and it doesn't stop there, because when you get to chapter 3, the tov ma 'od becomes, well, not that, because of our rebellion and fall into sin.

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And remember the very first temptation, you got to think it back to the words of Satan in the serpent in the

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Garden of Eden, the day you eat of this fruit, you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

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And Eve sits there and goes, I'd make a pretty good deity, right? And so what does she do?

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She eats of the fruit, and she gives some to her husband who was standing right there silent while the serpent was speaking, right?

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And plunged us all into the sin and misery that we experience. And so you'll note that immediately their eyes were opened, and at this point, their tov ma 'od bodies are now corrupted by sin.

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And as a result of it, you'll note that this world has, well, all kinds of problems, but one of them being anxiety, okay?

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And I would note, I have literally in my years of ministry noticed that anxiety seems to be behind a lot of the sin, abuse, manipulation that occurs in families and among people, all right?

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The person who is anxious about whether or not he is influential enough, if he's making enough money, what does he do in order to quell his anxieties?

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He stomps on everybody below him, climbs the back of his coworkers, and climbs to the top of the corporate world, and declares himself dictator over the corporation.

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And his reign is awful, right? And you'll note that anxiety is also at the heart of when it comes to putting food on the table, paying those bills.

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If you remember God, well, what did he do? He cursed us by making it so that we have to toil, okay?

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Before the fall, if Eve said, hey, Adam, I'm feeling kind of hungry, can we have some dinner?

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He'd say, sure, let me get that for you. He'd just reach up and grab something off a tree and toss it to Eve and say, here's some dinner for you.

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Here, I'll have one myself, and let's thank God for this meal. And you'll note that things were a little easier back then, but since the fall, by the sweat of our brow, we have to put food on the table and eat our bread.

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And I would note that it always feels like you're just one paycheck away from complete calamity.

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Have you guys ever noticed that? That's all part of the curse, right?

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That's all part of it. And so sinful, fallen humanity has this interesting thing that it does.

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Number one, it distrusts God. You don't believe me? Just take a look at the account of the children of Israel from the time they left

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Egypt until the time they got to the Promised Land. It is constant stories about, why did

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God bring us here to kill us in the wilderness? And they don't have any faith in God whatsoever, and they think that the reason why

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God brought them out of slavery was to kill them, because apparently there was a shortage of graves in Egypt.

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Who thinks this way about God? Well, sinful humans do. Well, if you distrust God, the question is, whom are you going to trust in, or what are you going to trust in?

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And you'll note that we trust in all kinds of nonsensical, stupid things. And Christ is going to get at the heart of that today in talking in our

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Gospel text about these anxieties, and the fact that some people have come up with a very clever solution, that the thing they're going to worship, the thing that they're going to serve is money.

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And by the way, have you ever been around somebody who is really obsessed with money?

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Have you noticed how ungenerous they are? Have you noticed how completely unhelpful they are?

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And have they ever offered to help you, and then you foolishly accepted the offer? Because you find out that when they offered to help you, what they expected you to say was no.

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And if you say yes, getting them to actually assist you financially is like trying to pull teeth out of a shark during a frenzy.

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It ain't going to happen, right? You have no chance of doing that. So you'll note that we sinful, fallen human beings oftentimes break the first commandment by trusting in money.

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And then we've all note, human history over the past hundred years has proven that trust in money is kind of a foolish thing.

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A foolish thing because how many people have lost everything in the stock market?

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One big hiccup, one big downturn, and the whole thing is gone. You think back to the stock market crash of the 1920s, and when that thing went bad, what were people doing?

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Stockbrokers were throwing themselves off a building and unaliving themselves, right? They had nothing to live for because they'd lost everything.

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So money is not something that you can or should trust in, and that's what Christ is getting at. So Jesus says in our gospel text, no one is able to serve, and I'm going to offer a slightly different translation here.

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I know it says two masters, but the word there in Greek is kurios, it's the same word we use for Lord.

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And I would note, no one's able to serve two Lords, you either serve Lord Jesus or you serve Lord money.

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And money oftentimes, really people serve it in such a way as it is a Lord. For the one he will hate and the other he will love, or the one he will be devoted to and the other he will despise.

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Y 'all are not able to serve God and money. It's impossible to serve

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God and money. And you can always tell somebody who's kind of a servant of money, if you would, because you'll note that in our day and age, as I've been able to travel the world,

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I've noticed that people all over the globe, they walk around like this, right?

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It's like, put this down and take a look around you. But you can always tell the people who are really into certain things.

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If they're into worshiping themselves, oh, they're scrolling through their social media and making sure they got a good selfie of themselves, a fresh one, letting everybody know how they're dressed today and stuff like this.

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Those who are into money, they're constantly looking at this thing where there's these graphs and they either go up or they go down.

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It's called the stock market. And of course, they have to guard their God very carefully because one quick turn of the stock market and they're not paying attention, they could lose thousands, tens of thousands of dollars.

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So they constantly have to keep watch over this thing. Isn't it great that Apple has made it possible for us to keep track of our deity on a day -to -day basis?

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Minute by minute, maybe, right? So Christ says, instead, listen to this, because of this,

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I say to you all, do not be anxious about your life.

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But you don't understand, Jesus, we can barely pay the rent right now.

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We're having a hard time putting food on the table. Or maybe you're at the university and you've discovered that the only thing you can afford is

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Top Ramen and macaroni and cheese. Been there, done that myself too, right? That being the case, there's all kinds of anxiety when it comes to filling your needs and making sure that you're taken care of.

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But Christ says, don't be anxious about it. Anxiety is a sure sign of lack of faith.

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It's just the truth. We'll talk about how the Bible describes, how the saints describe in the

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Bible what we should be thinking here. So do not be anxious about your life, what you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, about your body and what you're going to wear.

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Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Not if your last name is Kardashian, right?

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Isn't that an entire reality television show based on this whole concept? The Kardashians, they're better than you and I, because they're on television.

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They have lots of money. They can afford really expensive food. And don't even get me started about their clothes, because the whole thing about the

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Kardashians is that they're fashion trendsetters, right? And until they get overweight and then they start investing in Spanx, but that's a whole other issue.

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Sorry, insider information there. All that being said, Christ asks the question, is not life much more than food and much more than the body more than clothes?

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And I would say, absolutely. Think about it. Isn't life far more than food?

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Isn't it also about hanging out with friends, maybe a baseball game on a

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Sunday afternoon? Isn't life about, well, tucking your kids in to bed and reading them a story, getting a butterfly kiss on the cheek?

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Isn't life really about things like that as well? I'd say it is.

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Or how about putting in a hard day's work and looking at the product that you have put together with your two hands and going, man, that looks great, right?

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And being satisfied with the work that you've done. Life is far more than food and clothes.

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And then Christ points to something, and we need to consider this, is that in the fall, did you notice that God didn't curse birds with toil?

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Did you notice that? So Christ points to the birds, says, look at the birds of the heaven. They don't sow or gather into barns like y 'all have to, but your

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Father in the heavens feeds them and are y 'all not of more value than them?

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Now what a question. What do you think the answer to that is? Are you not of more value than them? This is not to say that God doesn't care for the birds, because clearly he does.

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God feeds them. And here's where we have to ask this question, well, what have the birds done to earn

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God feeding them? Because you'll note that in our fallen state, the way we think is if I do the right things, if I'm obedient enough,

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I will earn from God the things that I need for this body.

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If that's the case, then why on earth is George Soros as rich as he is? Because that man thinks he's a god.

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In fact, here's where the catechism is super helpful. I said there was a collision between two things.

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First commandment, first article of the creed. Listen to what the first article of the creed says in the catechism.

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I believe in God the Father almighty, the maker of heaven and earth. And of course, Luther asks the question, wasistas, what does this mean?

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I believe that God has made me and all creatures, that he has given me my body and soul, eyes and ears and all my members, my reason and all my senses.

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And he still takes care of them. He gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land and animals and all that I have.

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He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life.

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He defends me against all danger, guards and protects me from all evil. And all of this he does only out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me.

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And for all of this, it is my duty to thank and praise, to serve and obey him. This is most certainly true.

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Have you noticed that the people in Buddhist countries eat, their crops grow?

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The sun comes up, the rain falls, the crops grow, they harvest them. And yet not a single one of them believes in Yahweh, trusts in Christ.

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How is that possible? Because God cares for his creation out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy.

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Work that out. That being the case, did you earn in the truest sense from God the meal that you are about to eat this afternoon or this evening when you have dinner with your family?

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No. God gave it to you. You didn't earn it. He cares for his creation.

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He does so out of fatherly divine goodness and mercy. So we have to keep that in mind.

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One other thing here which I think is fascinating when you consider the depth of what the catechism reveals, and of course this is only just summarizing what the scripture teaches, is that the nation that we live in, the

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United States of America, there were a bunch of Gnostics that were part of the founding fathers.

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And I would note that among them, Thomas Jefferson, this is a fellow who, he embraced what was called deism.

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And if you were to ask Thomas Jefferson, do you believe in miracles? He would say absolutely not.

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And so, and how do I know this is the case? Well because what he did is he went and took an exacto knife to his

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New Testament. And any time Jesus performed a miracle or there's a miracle in the

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New Testament, he just took his little exacto knife and went, and then just plopped it right out.

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His Bible looks like Swiss cheese. And the question is this, why did he do that?

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And it's real simple, because his philosophy, he claims that God cannot do miracles.

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God cannot be part of the creation. And the deists believed that what God did is that he created everything, wound it up like a cuckoo clock, sent it off into space, and now

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God is somewhere off in some other dimension, fishing. And he has no interaction whatsoever with the creation.

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Now I note that this is part of the core beliefs of the Gnostics. The Gnostics believed that God cannot be involved in the creation and that no miracles could truly happen.

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Because if God got involved in the creation, then the creation would be cursed forever in a dichotomy, the dichotomy between the creator and the creature.

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And so they want to have this idea of getting off of the wheel of reincarnation and coming back to being one, monism.

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And so God can't be part of the creation. My hypothesis is that Thomas Jefferson embraced that kind of Gnosticism himself, and that's what was really behind deism.

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But you're gonna note here, we confess what the scripture teaches, that God daily and richly provides me with all that we need to support our body in this life.

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God is intimately involved in his creation. And if you haven't figured it out, he loves you.

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And he cares for you, legitimately. Regardless of the fact that you might have anxiety and think that he wants to squash you like a bug,

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I assure you that's not the case. You might believe, because of the conviction of God's law, that you deserve to be squashed like a bug, and I would say you're not wrong.

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But God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Today is still the day of salvation, and God's mercy and grace extends to us all.

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And so we recognize, then, that God cares for us in our bodily needs, as well as our spiritual needs.

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So Christ, pointing to the birds of the air, says, look at the birds of the heavens.

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They don't sow or gather into barns, yet your Father in heaven feeds them. And are y 'all of not more value than they?

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And absolutely, we can say, yes, we are. Because God so loved the world, he loved you and I, that he gave his only begotten

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Son. The most precious thing to the Father, the Son of God, God gave him up into death to die in your place so that you can be forgiven.

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You are blood -bought, purchased with the very blood of Christ himself.

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And so I would say, that being the case, in God's eyes, we truly have more value than the birds.

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The answer to Christ's question is yes, that's true. And which of you, by worrying, is able to add one hour to his lifespan?

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Well, we know nowadays that anxiety and worry and things like that don't lengthen your life.

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They shorten them significantly. You want to get an autoimmune disease? Oh, just worry yourself to death.

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You want to get cancer? Well, one of the things that they found is that worrying is a direct corollary to breaking out with cancer.

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Now, not always the case, but you increase the risk of cancer and shorten your life significantly by sitting there, chewing on your fingernails, worrying about what's going to happen next, again, showing lack of faith.

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Concerning clothing, yeah, what about that clothing? Yeah, I remember a day when, man, it was important to make sure you had the right clothes.

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I got to tell you this, when I was in junior high, I still hadn't awoken to the idea that there's a different world out there regarding fashion and showing up in seventh grade wearing granimals, if you know, you know.

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That might have been practical and inexpensive, but man, it could get you in trouble with your classmates and get you picked on and things like this.

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By the time I got to eighth grade, there were no more granimals in my wardrobe and things had to change.

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And from like eighth grade all the way through college, it mattered what I wear.

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Now that I'm old, I just don't care. You know, I just got to say, I just don't care. You know, on any given day, shorts and a t -shirt are fine for me.

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And if I have to dress up, ugh. And I love the fact that I have to wear a uniform because then I don't have to pick any fashion choices at all.

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I just put this thing on and come to work and sit in there, oh yeah, yeah, I didn't have to think about it. You know, and by the way, if I were into fashion,

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I would probably torture you guys with my fashion choices, so God be praised for the uniform.

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So Christ says, concerning clothing, why are you all anxious? Observe the lilies of the field, how they grow.

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They don't toil nor spin, but I say to you that Solomon in all of his glory did not dress as these.

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Another good point, Jesus. But if God so dresses in this way the grass of the field, which today is here and then tomorrow is cast into the oven, will he not much more clothe you,

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O ones of little faith? And there it is, little faith. And that's our problem.

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We trust in everything other than God. We look at God with suspicion.

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He says he loves us and he saves us for free and we say there's nothing that comes for free without strings attached.

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And we distrust him and we do not ask him. We look to ourselves to meet our own needs and we, well, fail miserably by doing so.

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So do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we wear? I just lost my job.

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I can't pay my bills. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. If things are getting so expensive, oh, did you see that the price of milk is up again?

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Like, oh my goodness, I couldn't barely pay for it last week and now I can't even pay for it this week. Like, everything is so expensive now and gas prices are going to go up and if somebody wins the election, something's going to go wrong and ahhh.

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The Gentiles seek after these. Your father in heaven knows that you have need of all of these things.

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So what's the solution? Well, the Greek is also helpful here.

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Be seeking first the kingdom of God. I'm going to point out, the

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Greek verb here is a present imperative, which has the implication that it's not just a one -time seeking.

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It's a continual. You'll note that faith is something that persists throughout the rest of our lifetime.

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Be seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

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Now, I want you to think about this for a second. What is Christ saying? Seek first the kingdom of God and be righteous by obeying the commands?

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Well, if that were the case, you wouldn't be seeking His righteousness, you'd be seeking your own. It says, be seeking first His kingdom and His righteousness.

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Well, this then hearkens to the life and death and resurrection and ascension of Christ.

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The Apostle Paul knew full well what it was like to seek the kingdom of God with your own righteousness.

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In Philippians 3, he gives his pedigree and makes it clear that if anyone could be saved by the works of the flesh, it was him, and he was a

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Jew of Jews. He was a Pharisee of Pharisees. And as to righteousness under the law, he was completely blameless, he says.

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But he wanted to be found in Christ not having a righteousness of his own that comes from the law, but the righteousness that is from God and is by faith.

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That's what Christ is referring to. You got to remember that Jesus committed no sin, not even one failing of keeping

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God's command perfectly in His entire lifetime. That being the case, He is perfectly sinless and righteous.

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He was tempted in every way that you and I are tempted, but yet is without sin. That being the case,

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He is righteous. You and I are not. I always remind people that it says in Romans that Christ died for the ungodly.

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If you don't think that's you, you got a problem. You are delusional, or as the kids say nowadays, you're delulu.

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If you don't think that you're ungodly, you are. But you're going to note it says

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Christ died for the ungodly. He died for our sins.

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He was found guilty on your behalf. He was found guilty of the crimes you committed, of the sins that you egregiously and horrifically broke.

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Christ was found guilty of all of that for you, and your unrighteousness and ungodliness was imputed to Him.

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But you're going to note something miraculous has happened. Go back to the waters of baptism. In the waters of baptism, you were united with Christ in His death and His resurrection.

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Your sins were washed away, and you were clothed with His righteousness.

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You see, He took your sin. You are given His righteousness. So be seeking first the kingdom of God, and Christ is that kingdom.

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And be seeking His righteousness, not your own. And that is a call to faith.

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And you'll note that all Christians are not people who can be described as people of little faith, but of great faith.

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How do you figure, Pastor Roseborough? It's kind of simple. What kind of fool would think that he can somehow waltz into heaven being as ungodly as he is?

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I would note all of us are foolish in that way, but we're not foolish because we have it on the sure promises of God that we are clothed in His righteousness.

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And so when we stand before Christ on the day of judgment, we have nothing to be anxious about, but everything to look forward to.

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There is no fear that we need to have standing in the presence of Christ because He has borne all of our sins, and He has taken our unrighteousness upon Himself and suffered in our place and clothed us with His righteousness so that we are now qualified to stand before God and to inherit eternal life in the world to come,

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God having qualified us by grace through faith. It is nothing more than outrageous faith, great, huge faith to say that you are going to be in heaven because Christ has given it to you.

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Oh, you of big faith, right? Great is your faith, you who believe these promises of God.

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And so that's what Christ is getting at, and He's attacking our proclivity to make money a deity and to be anxious about the things of this life and call us to recognize this.

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If Christ has bled and died for your sins, and He has, and He has given you eternal life as a gift, and He has, don't you think

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He's also going to care for your bodily needs in this lifetime? Of course He will.

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So He says this, therefore do not be anxious for tomorrow, tomorrow be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil of it.

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And you'll note that we all have evil that comes to us every day. One way or another, there's always drama to be dealt with.

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Sometimes you create the drama and other things. But I promised you that as part of this sermon, we would take a look at some passages that kind of explain to us what our attitude should be when it comes to these things.

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You'll note that God loves us through thick and thin, and even if the economy completely collapses and we're not able to feed ourselves, and starvation is the thing that is in front of us, well, listen to the words of Habakkuk, and listen to the great faith that he has.

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Habakkuk 3, verse 17, Habakkuk writes, though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herds in the stall, the beet harvest can't happen, and the corn has withered and died, and blight has taken over, right?

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This is describing the complete collapse of an agricultural economy. What should we do in the midst of all of that?

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I know, let's panic, and let's light our hair on fire, and run around in circles going, ah!

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That's not what Habakkuk says. He says this, yet I will rejoice in Yahweh, I will take joy in the

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God of my salvation. Why? Because even if you have absolutely nothing on this planet, and you have

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God, you have everything. You have all that you need. And that's the point.

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God, the Lord, he is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer's, and he makes me tread on the high places.

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Indeed, thus Habakkuk. Consider what Paul says in this regard in Philippians chapter four. Not that I am speaking and being in need,

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Paul writes, for I have learned that in whatever situation I am to be content, content, oh, you're going to note here, that's a word that doesn't fit well in our society.

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Just watch television for an hour. How many commercials are going to teach you to be discontent with what you have?

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How on earth could you possibly be content with last year's iPhone?

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Don't you know that this year's iPhone has some new gizmo, some new thing that it can do that this one can't do?

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How can you be content with last year's technology? I have learned in whatever situation

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I am in to be content. I know how to be brought low. I know how to abound.

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In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.

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I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Now, a little bit of a note here.

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I repeat myself in my sermons. I know you've noticed it. I've noticed it too, and I don't care.

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I'm more like my grandparents every day. That being the case, do you not find it odd that as we get close to the

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Super Bowl and they interview the different linemen from the two opposing teams on the Super Bowl, it seems to be a thing like almost every year you're going to have some

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Christians on there and they'll say, well, what are your thoughts on the upcoming game? Well, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

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We're going to defeat that team and da, da, da, da. And so they interview somebody on the opposite team and he quotes the same verse and says we're going to defeat that team.

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And now both teams are invoking Christ to defeat the enemy in the Super Bowl. I can do all things through a verse taken out of context, right?

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It's nonsense. This is not what this passage is talking about. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me is talking about living in need.

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It's talking about being in those circumstances where you have been brought low, where you don't have anything and you are in need of things that you can't even get.

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I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. So like I said, even when you have nothing, you have everything if you have

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Christ and you have God. That's the point that he's making. And then lastly, consider the prayer of Jonah.

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I would note that there was a point in Jonah's life where he was brought to having nothing and he was this close for three days to actually losing his life.

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And if you remember, God told him to go one place and he decided to go another because he didn't want to have to see the

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Ninevites repent and be forgiven by God. We learn that later in the story. So what does he do? He hops a ship, heads off to the wrong place.

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God causes the Mediterranean to go into a major storm. This poor ship is about to be sunk and they cast lots and the lot falls on Jonah.

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Who are you? What have you done? What's going on? Well, I'm running away from God. Oh no, what are we going to do? He says, well, throw me into the sea.

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So they take Jonah, goodbye Jonah, flick him off into the Mediterranean Sea. And there he is in the middle of the storm -tossed

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Mediterranean Sea. And we learn from this prayer, he thought he was going to die there, just right there in the sea with all the waves tearing over him.

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But then God sends a large, great fish, swallows him, and there he got to sit, thinking about his life choices for three days.

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Consider the circumstance. I can't imagine a more claustrophobic place than being in the stomach of a fish because you're going to note, it's not like you can set a chair up in there and turn on the light.

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I'm sorry, Pinocchio, this is just not how this works. Stomachs expand. So there he is inside the stomach of a fish, probably wrapped around with the stomach membrane all around his body, which had to be just gross.

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Then you got stomach acids, bleaching his hair, bleaching his skin. And don't even get me started on the smell.

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And it's dark. I'm sure that for the rest of his life, he had PTSD anytime he saw sushi, right?

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So he's brought to nothing. And he's this close to death.

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But listen to his prayer. So Jonah prayed to Yahweh, his God, from the belly of the fish.

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Oh yeah, you can pray inside the belly of a fish, anywhere you are, God will hear you. So I called to Yahweh out of my distress.

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And that's an understatement, distress indeed. And he answered me, out of the belly of Sheol, I cried, and you heard my voice.

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For you, God, you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me.

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He knew full well it was God who threw him into the sea, because when the lot is cast, it's

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God who decides what the lot says, the scriptures say. All your waves and your billows passed over me.

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And then I said, I am driven away from your sight. It's the end of me, he's saying, right?

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But then you have this amazing word, and the word is yet. And this is how great faith speaks.

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Yet, I shall look again upon your holy temple. That's not little faith, that's great faith.

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Here he's confessing that even if he perished in the sea, he would still see the holy temple of God. And he's referring to the one that Ezekiel prophesied about, right?

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The heavenly temple. So the waters closed in over me to take my life. The deep surrounded me.

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Weeds were wrapped around my head. Now here you're gonna note, this is starting to sound a little bit like Christ.

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And Christ himself, when challenged, says, I'm not gonna show you any sign except for the sign of Jonah, right?

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Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so I will be in the belly of the earth for three days and three nights, but I will rise again,

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Christ said. So he invokes this as pointing to his own death and resurrection, because Jonah here is in type and shadow of Christ.

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So weeds were wrapped around my head, he says. Wasn't a weed wrapped around Christ's head when he died?

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Crown of thorns. Weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains.

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I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever. Yet, you brought up my life from the pit, oh

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Yahweh my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered Yahweh and my prayer came to you into your holy temple.

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Those who pay regard to vain idols, like money, they forsake their hope of said fast love.

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But I, with the voice of thanksgiving, I will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed,

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I will pay. And then the wonderful conclusion, salvation belongs to Yahweh.

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So if you find yourself in a situation you can't pay your bills, remember Jonah, he was this close to death.

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And of course, the next verse is always hilarious. So Yahweh spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah on the dry land.

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God answered his prayer by turning Jonah into vomit. That's just great, right?

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And as hilarious as it is, it sticks with our memory that here he was reduced to nothing.

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But isn't that exactly what it means to be a creature rather than the creator? Every meal that you have is a foretaste of the big meal that we will have at the end of the world and the beginning of the next one.

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Every meal that you have saves you that day. Today, when you eat your daily bread,

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God saved you. Today, when you feast on the body and blood of Christ, doubly so.

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It's a feast of salvation. Every meal, God is meeting your needs and he's pushing death off one more day and saving you in this life.

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So brothers and sisters, let us not serve money. Let us look instead to the one who loved us, who gave his son for us to die for us.

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As undeserving as we are, and we all are that undeserving, Christ loves us so much that he willingly laid down his life to give us everything that we need.

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And he will be with us even when we are dying. And I would note,

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I've visited people in the hospital who are dying. That's part of my job. And I would note that those on their deathbed have been reduced to nothing.

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You can't take a single thing with you. And I would note there's this thing that we do to people who are dying, which I think is weird.

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We make them wear napkins. Okay, I don't know why the hospital does this, but I've seen plenty of people dying and they don't even have their own clothes, their borrowed clothes, the clothes from the hospital, and they're terrible, right?

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But all that being said, even when you are reduced to that and you have nothing, not even the clothes on your body are your own, you still have everything because Christ has you.

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And though death surrounds you, he will save you. And you will not be fish vomit when he frees you from death.

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He will call you from the grave and clothe you with a new body that is not sinful at all.

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And you will live forever with him in a world without end, where there is no poverty, where there is no want, where there is no lack, where there is no need, where there is no death, where there is no disease, where there is no end.

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There is no goodbye, and only see you later. And all of this he gives you out of his great kindness, love, and mercy.

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So repent of your idols, repent of your anxieties, repent of your suspicions that God somehow has it out for you.

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He doesn't. He did not come into the world to condemn you, but to save you.

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

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

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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