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Date: 18th Sunday of Pentecost Text: Mark 9:38-50
www.kongsvingerchurch.org
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, Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.
And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark the ninth chapter. John said to Jesus, teacher we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.
But Jesus said to him do not stop him for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. For truly I say to you whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will by no means lose his reward.
Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. And if your hand causes you to sin cut it off.
It's better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands and go to hell to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin cut it off. It's better for you to enter life lame than with two feet to be thrown into hell.
And if your eye causes you to sin tear it out. It's better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes and be thrown into hell where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.
For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good. But if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves and be at peace with one another. This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus.
Here again the closing verses of the epistle of James. My brother if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Today I'm gonna preach on our gospel text and I'm gonna do something a little odd. We're gonna talk about what Jesus didn't mean. It's kind of a weird way of going because always the question is what does he mean when he preaches things?
We'll learn what he means for sure. But I have to admit that this is a passage, this our gospel text is a passage that is used to much mischief within the church and has caused all kinds of problems. I don't know if you guys have noticed but in our society the growing unforgivable sin, you know, every culture has an unforgivable sin.
The growing unforgivable sin is the sin of.
Offending someone.
Okay, have you ever told anybody that they were wrong? Whoo, that's a dangerous thing. You can get thrown in prison for that nowadays. You could be put in Facebook prison, in jail, locked out of your Twitter account.
You know, you get the idea here. And so you we're not supposed to offend people and you're gonna note with growing intensity the thing that people do not want to hear is the truth. Right? That's what they don't want to hear.
They don't want to hear these things. And so they want everybody to just don't rock the boat, don't and say anything wrong. And here's how they use this text. So here we have Jesus being confronted by the Apostle John.
That's while he's still in his discipleship training program traipsing around Judea. And it says teacher we saw someone casting out demons in your name. We tried to stop him because he was not following us.
But Jesus said do not stop him for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us. And so here's how this generally works out.
Okay, you see we have to make a distinction here, but let me kind of first say how this gets preached. People sit there and say see, see, so we don't need to concern ourselves with the false teachers out there with you know Kenneth Copeland or Gloria Copeland or you just pick that you know Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen.
No, no, no, no, no. We need to stop saying that these are dangerous people because Jesus said whoever is not against us is for us, right? So you just need to cool your jets you uptight Lutherans. You just need to just relax a little bit.
As they say in evangelicalism, you just need to learn how to well spit the bones while chewing the meat. See this is what Jesus is telling us to do. Take a completely relaxed attitude as it relates to you know false doctrine or people who are twisting up the scriptures.
It's it's no big deal. It isn't. It's not a big deal. You know out of all the books of the New Testament, there is only one that doesn't warn us against false teachers. Only one and it's the it's Philemon.
Every other book like the entire New Testament with the exception of one book warns us about well false teachers. I have to ask a question. Is that what Jesus meant? Cool your jets. Don't worry about doctrine.
It's no big deal, you know, right? Because I mean all somebody has to do is say these words Jesus and see you say the word Jesus and well that means you're a Christian and that everything coming from you out of your mouth from your teaching your doctrine.
Well, we shouldn't be uptight about it. No, that's not how this works. So here's the idea. Scripture interprets scripture and so Jesus didn't mean this in this manner. In fact, let me kind of remind you of the context and when we look then at this passage we have to pay close attention to what he's saying because it's quite the opposite of what how people use this text.
So here's our context. Jesus is still performing his earthly ministry. He's in a state of humiliation. He is the even though he is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made. He has humbled himself and has been born of the Virgin Mary to well his mother and his father are poor.
His dad is a day laborer as a construction guy. And what does he do? He's humbling himself becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross and he's still doing his earthly ministry. And you can kind of fill in the gaps here because we're already up to chapter 9 of the gospel of Mark which means we're well past the halfway point.
And so what has happened? Well, Jesus has been out there doing what? Preaching, teaching, raising the dead, giving sight to the blind, giving hearing to the deaf, casting out demons, cleansing lepers, forgiving sinners, right?
And some poor fellow who was born dead and trespasses and sins hears his God preaching and teaching and sees the signs and wonders and guess what? He believes in Jesus. That's what's going on here. And so when confronted with the forces of darkness, who does he invoke?
His God, Jesus. And you're gonna note this was before there were any church splits, okay? You just we need to make that clear, okay? So when we talk about the church and in fact in a little bit we're going to confess the Apostles Creed.
But if you remember in the Nicene Creed, we hear the words that we should be saying but we don't because you look there's an asterisk, but in our hymnal it says, I believe in one holy, the word is Catholic, the word one holy Catholic and apostolic church.
That's really the words we should be using is Catholic because Catholic means universal, right? But here's the thing, every time we hear the word Catholic we go like this. And then when I say the word Catholic when I'm wearing an alb and a stole into my uniform, people say they go, I knew it.
He's a closet Jesuit. You just can't make this stuff up, okay? But the idea here is that when we confess that we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church, it's important to note this, the church itself is an article of faith.
I want you to think about this. You sit there and go, well, what are you talking about here? I mean, we've got a building, we got people, we have food and we make bars and we have potlucks and things like this.
Of course, the church is an article of faith. I see the church every day. That's not exactly what's going on here. So when we talk about the church, when we confess one holy Catholic and apostolic church, we note then that the church itself is an article of faith is invisible.
And you say, yeah, that's kind of weird, but work with me here. Christ makes it clear that the visible church, that the devil has attacked the visible church, continues to attack the visible church. And what is he doing?
He's sowing weeds among the wheat. So that being the case, when we confess that there is a church, a holy Catholic and apostolic church, it's invisible. And it's important to note, being a member of that invisible church is the most important thing.
Being a member of Kongsvinger, not so much. I'm going to be blunt. There have been historically within the history of Kongsvinger, and I don't know who they are, I'm not naming any particular people, who have been members of this church who were not believers.
Because that's how the devil operates. And think of it this way, in the last day there's going to be some surprises. People you thought believed, didn't believe. People you thought didn't believe, they believed.
So the important thing is, is not your membership at Kongsvinger or any particular ecclesiastical organization per se. Let me explain. If we are not saying that the AALC is the holy Catholic and apostolic church, if we said that, then there's only like 50-something congregations that are preaching the truth.
And if you're not part of the AALC, then, well, it was nice knowing you. Okay. No, that's not how this works, okay. So the idea then is that we recognize by looking at other passages of scripture, that the most important thing is faith in Christ.
And that we will learn here that what the scriptures do say is that as Christ goes on, that whoever causes one of his little ones who believe in me to sin, we oftentimes think about that in terms of like, you know, child abuse or something like that.
And certainly it is. But I want you to think of it. Everybody who is truly saved, Jesus is referring to them as his little ones. You are one of his little ones. You who believe and trust in Christ, you have been raised, regenerated, your sins have been washed away, you've been united with Christ in his death and resurrection, you've been given the seal of the Holy Spirit, and you've received the spirit of adoption.
You are now adopted back into the family of God. And we cry out to God, Abba, Father, or as we will pray later today in the service, our Father who art in heaven. So Jesus says, you are his little ones.
And whoever would cause one of his little ones to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. Sin. Well, when we talk about sin, well, we always have to have a way of defining it.
And when we define sin, we go back to where? The Ten Commandments. Are there not two tables of the law? Two. First table of the law, those first three commandments, all have to do with our relationship with God.
You will have no other gods. You will not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. You will remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. These all have to do with things regarding God. And you'll note then that having no other gods, that first commandment, requires us to not listen to people who are bringing us false doctrines and teaching us about false Jesuses and false gods and things like this, right?
And that those who preach and teach such things, they are causing Jesus's little ones to sin by breaking the first commandment. Ah, okay. So that's not how we meant it. And if you think about it, when you look at our cross references, for instance, Jesus, the same Jesus who says the one who is not against us is for us.
Note that false teachers are actually against Christ. Christ doesn't even know him. In Matthew chapter seven, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says these words, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
Consider the metaphor here. Here you have wolves with sheep's clothing on to camouflage themselves and they're learning how to go, that's bad, right? And Christians hear them and go, oh look, it's a cute little sheep.
Ow, that hurt, right? And think of it this way. Oh man, one of the biggest heretics of our day is Kenneth Copeland. Prosperity preacher extraordinaire. And I saw somebody on the internet a few weeks ago, remember with the fall of Kabul, right?
Well, Kenneth Copeland famously owns several, not one, several private jets. And so what did he do? He, well, loaned his private jets to several pilots who were working with Glenn Beck and they flew those private jets to Kabul and they rescued Americans and flew them home so that they wouldn't be killed by the Taliban, right?
And somebody was saying, I need to apologize to Ken.
Copeland because I thought he was a false teacher, but by saving those Americans, he proved that he.
Was really true. And I'm sitting there going, did your mama drop you on your head? That's the sheep's clothing, okay? Any pagan can do that. And you'll note that the false teachers, do they pray? Yes, right?
That's the sheep's clothing. Christ says they come to you in sheep's clothing. They don't come to you in full wolf garb. They come to you in sheep's clothing. And just because somebody does a good thing or does something in the realm of civic righteousness, I mean, granted, it's a great thing that he loaned out his bazillion dollar jets so that people can come home safely.
Good on you, I mean, but that doesn't prove that you're not a false teacher. Christ says you'll recognize them by their fruits. That's going to include their teaching, by the way. And then Christ asked the question, are grapes gathered from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?
No. So every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. COVID -19, right? The healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can the diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and is thrown into the fire.
Thus, you'll recognize them by their fruits. And by the fire here, Jesus is referring to what? Hell. All right? There's that uncomfortable doctrine that nobody wants to talk about nowadays. And I remember years ago when Rob Bell was the bee's knees.
You remember this guy? His book Velvet Elvis, and he was so cool. He was postmodern, like hipster kind of guy, like before hipster was even hip. And he was like the prototype of it. And evangelical churches were all playing his NUMA videos in their youth groups and stuff like this.
And I knew immediately, just listening to this guy's doctrine, he was a dangerous wolf. And I started warning people, and people were like, Rosemary, you just need to relax. Calm down. Don't be up so uptight.
And I'm saying, that guy is a universalist. He denies the virgin birth of Christ. Next thing you know, he's going to be affirming every kind of sin under the sun. And lo and behold, not only did he start affirming every sin under the sun, including sexual sins, he put out a book called Love Wins.
And in Love Wins, he denies the doctrine of hell. And I would note, search your Bible. Let's just do a little fact checking here. The person who preached the most and the most specific about hell, Jesus.
It's Jesus. And you'll note in our gospel text, Jesus invokes hell. Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, oh, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It's better for you to enter life crippled than it with two hands and go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. Note Jesus said to go to hell with what?
The unquenchable fire. Jesus not only believed in hell, he taught hell. And you know how long he said it lasts? Forever. Okay. Believe me, you don't want to end up there. It is a real place. And there are real human beings who are really there right now.
And the thing is, is that if we're honest with ourselves, we all deserve that. I do. You do. Right? So note that a diseased tree, a wolf, a wolf doesn't preach Christ and him crucified for our sins. A wolf will always tell people what they want to hear.
They generally operate in greed, greed of money or greed of fame, greed of personality, whatever. Okay. They are operating for their own benefit and they don't care which doctrines of Christ they need to cut away or ignore or deny.
You'll not recognize them by their fruits. And then Jesus says these words, and this is how we know for certain that when Jesus says the one who is not against me is for me, that it doesn't mean that anybody who just says Jesus means that you just leave him alone.
Here's what Jesus says in that same chapter, Matthew 7, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven. What is the will of Christ?
What is the will of the father in heaven? The will of the father is that you listen to the son. And what does the son say? Go into all the world, teaching them all that I have commanded you. And you sit there and you go, well, that's a nice suggestion, Jesus.
But the things you taught are kind of irrelevant. We know better how to grow the church than you do, Jesus. So we're just going to take your words and just kind of, you know, we'll let them collect us over here and we'll, don't worry, we'll grow the church, Jesus.
We'll tell them what we want them to hear or what they want to hear. Right? So Jesus says, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father.
And on that day, referring to the day of judgment, they will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? I mean, how many videos did I put out on YouTube, letting people know that their breakthrough was about to come, that they were going to experience a suddenly, that they were going to, you get the point, huh?
Right? Well, did we not prophesy in your name, Lord? Oh, and cast out demons in your name, COVID -19, and do mighty works in your name, you know, like pulling people's legs and lengthening them and stuff, right?
What does Jesus say? I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. All of that's just a flim flam scam show. And they come to us in the name of Jesus, dressed in sheep's clothing. So that being the case, we might want to pay attention to what the scripture says.
God doesn't want us to listen to false teachers. And the one who teaches falsely is opposed to Christ. Jesus in Matthew 24 says, see that no one leads you astray. In the last days, many will come in my name saying, I'm the Messiah, I'm the Christ, and they will lead many astray.
Then I think of John, the same John who was perplexed in our gospel text today because there was a guy out there casting out demons who weren't part of the inner circle of the 12. You know, he had only been catechized by Jesus by hearing his preaching and teaching.
And this same John, he writes a letter in 2 John to a woman who has a church meeting in her home. That's kind of an important bit because when the Christianity got up and running, it wasn't legal. Okay, the Roman emperor hadn't signed off on it, and it would be a few more hundred years before he does.
And so there weren't church buildings like we have today, and they didn't have pigeons and potlucks, and they didn't feed people at the beat piler. They had to stay on the DL, you know what I'm saying, down on the down low.
And so there was a lady who had a church meeting in her home, and the apostle John writes to her, and he says, I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth. Do you think that's kind of important to walk in the truth?
John thinks it's important to walk in the truth. He was rejoicing and praising God that some of the people who were attending the congregation that meets in her home, that they were walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father.
Ah, the Father wants us to what? Walk in the truth. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new command, but the one we have had from the beginning, and here's the commandment, that you should walk in it.
Here we go. This is love, that we walk according to his commandments, and this is the commandment that you've heard from the beginning. Verse six, again, let me kind of rephrase it. This is love, that we walk according to his commandments.
Walk in truth, walk according to God's commandments. Where do we find his commandments? In that book that's collecting dust. The Bible, right? And then he says this, for many deceivers have gone out into the world.
Many, not some, many. Those who do not confess the coming of Christ in the flesh. Such a one is a deceiver, is the antichrist. So watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.
Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching has, whoever abides in the teaching has both the father and the son, and anyone who does not abide does not have either of them. That's Roseboro's paraphrase.
Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Abide in the teaching of Christ. You mean we just need to read the Bible and that's it? Yeah. Why is it that you never really preach anything else?
Because I dare not. And then you follow that lectionary and every three years you're always preaching on the same text. Yeah, and I'll do it again in three years. Yeah, right. You know, we teach the full counsel of the word of God and when we finish we do the whole thing again, right?
Yeah, but I've heard these stories before. Well, if you want to hear different stories, go buy Netflix. You can have a subscription. You can hear all kinds of stories on Netflix. Here in the church, we're going to abide in the teaching of Christ and we're going to preach the word.
If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, don't receive him into your house or into your church or give him a greeting, for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works. Paul says it this way in Romans 16, I appeal to you brothers, watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles that are contrary to the doctrine that you've been taught.
Avoid them. Such persons do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but they serve their own appetites and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. So, note here that those who are most susceptible to false teachers are the naive and if we're honest with ourselves, again, each and every one of us are guilty of listening to some of these false teachers.
I am. If you think about your walk within Christianity, you've listened to a bunch of false teachers too, right? But God has had mercy on us and think back to what James said, those last verses of his epistle.
If anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
And I would remind each and every one of us who have wandered and spent time and listening to false teachers and believing their twisted doctrines that Jesus himself has been faithful. He is the one who, in scripture, says he came to seek and save the lost.
He came to seek and save me. He came to seek and save you. And that he is the one who arranged for you to hear his word and to hear the gospel. And he is the one who sought you and brought you back from your wanderings and idolatry so that your soul can be saved.
And by his death on the cross, suffering and bleeding and dying in your place and mine, he has now covered the entire multitude of every one of your sins and mine. And so you'll note that Jesus is always the good shepherd, the one who lays down his life for the sheep, the one who leaves the 99 to go in search of the one that was wandering.
And if you're honest, you've spent some time wandering. So have I. And so we take comfort in this fact that although we are guilty of grievous sins in listening to the most bizarre of teachings, thinking that it was biblical when it wasn't, that Christ has forgiven us of all of this and that he is the one who is now sustaining us, feeding us with his word, feeding us with his body and blood as we humbly just stay in the word of God, listening to and abiding in what he has preached and taught and what he has commanded.
And we recognize that when scripture teaches against false teachers, that each and every one of us are also guilty of being those false teachers. Yeah, we may have spoken false words about God to our neighbors.
And even Christ has called us to repent of that and to be forgiven. And we recognize that scripture doesn't speak flatteringly of people who do such things. First Timothy Paul says this, if anyone teaches a different doctrine and doesn't agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching then that accords with godliness, he's puffed up with conceit and he understands nothing.
The Greek is actually a little stronger. Have you ever heard of the word ignoramus? Okay, it actually comes out of this text from the Greek. The one who does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ that accords with godliness, he is puffed up in an ignoramus and understands nothing.
That's kind of how the Greek runs in this. The Greek is a little bit more to the point. Well, that doesn't make me feel good. Right. And the thing is, is that stop thinking about them for a second here and think about have you not been guilty like I have of disagreeing with the sound words of scripture?
Sitting there going, yeah, I know the Bible says that, but... Right. We all do it. Okay. And when we're doing this, we're being ignoramuses. The scripture calls us to agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ, they pop the balloon of our puffed up conceit and stupidity and our, well, love and our craving for controversies and quarrels. And instead calls us to humbly recognize that yet again we were wrong and that scripture is right.
And at its core then, we recognize that the job of pastors and the job of all of us then, it is good work to do the work that Christ has done to participate with Jesus in finding those who are wandering from the truth and speaking the words, the sound words of Jesus to them in order to bring them back so that they can be forgiven their sins covered over by Christ and their wanderings brought to an end so that they can instead rest in the pasture of God's word and the good news of Christ and Him crucified for our sins and no longer participate in the weird, bizarre teachings that our sinful nature invents and concocts week after week, day after day, year after year, but instead just humbly abide in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
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