Contempt for Contempt of Salvation

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 10th chapter. The Pharisees.

Came up in order to test Jesus and asked, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And he answered them, what did Moses command you? They said, well Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away.

And Jesus said to them, because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment. But from the beginning of creation God created them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. And in the house the disciples asked Him again about this matter, and He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.

And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. And they were bringing children to Him that He might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, He was indignant and said to them, let the children come to Me.

Do not hinder them, for to such belong the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it. And He took them in His arms and blessed them, laying His hands on them.

This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus. Here again these words from our epistle text, taken from Hebrews chapter two. How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? Neglect. I know a few things about neglect.

Now I've bragged here from the pulpit that I'm the most gifted weed farmer in all of North Dakota. I've got to tell you, I've got quite a crop this year. I don't know. I'm surprised that people aren't stopping and going, how do you do it?

What is your secret? Well, let me tell you what the secret is. The secret is neglect. Let me explain. Because not having a crop of weeds. You'll note that everybody gets those automatically. Thank you, curse.

We all get a crop of weeds. But in order to not get a crop of weeds, you know what you've got to do? You've got to put effort into it. That means you're going to have to get out there and you're going to have to whack the weeds.

You're going to have to spray the weeds. You're going to have to pull the weeds. You're going to have to maintain the status quo. And you know what? I hate doing that. And I loathe the idea of paying somebody else to do it.

I think I'm getting to the point where I'm thinking, you know what, I just need to bite the bullet and pay somebody to do this. Do I have an amen? I have an amen. As far as neglect goes too, we all know how neglect goes.

I don't know what it is. I've said before that if you were to take my body and cut it in half this way, like a log, you can count the rings of fat going back in years to when I was married. And what's really funny is that this is all because of what?

Neglect. Nobody looks at me and goes, you know that Pastor Roseborough, he really just exemplifies planet fitness. No, he doesn't exemplify planet fitness. He exemplifies planet cellulite. And there's a reason for this.

It's called neglect. Because you know what I hate doing? I hate going to the gym. I hate getting on a treadmill. I hate having to burn calories. I hate it. I loathe it. And yet, neglect leads to problems.

And what's really funny, there was a joke running around the internet I think it may have been on TikTok, talking about how it is that men, after they are married, they kind of blow it out a little bit.

And what was really funny, the way the joke goes, it has everything to do with women being territorial. Because you think about it, when you first met your husband, I mean, he had six-pack abs, he had a 28-inch waist, he had huge biceps, and then what happened?

Well, it's real simple. The wife said to herself, you know what, I've got to keep this guy. Now that he's off the market, I don't want him shopping around. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to keep feeding him.

And therefore, I'm going to basically claim, he's my territory. That's a great narrative, but it's not true. At least not in my case. I mean, yeah, my wife, she makes decent meals. She doesn't overfeed me at all.

It's all about neglect. Now, when we hear the third commandment in our catechism, the third commandment is, thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. What does this mean? That we should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching in his word, but gladly hear and learn it.

You see, that third commandment is all about not having neglect for the word. And it's in the word that we hear the wonderful good news of the forgiveness of our sins, won by Christ. But have you noticed that as the temperature has gotten a little cooler, maybe it's just me, maybe it's just me, that one of my favorite times of the year is right now.

Because in the morning, while it's still dark, because we haven't switched over to that time thing again, right? It's still dark outside and in my room, it is like 50 degrees. Too cold to get out, but I'm in a warm little cocoon that I've created, right?

And the thing I don't want to do in the morning is get cold, okay? So I just want to sit there in my warm little spot. And then it's Sunday and you sit there and go, do I really want to go to church, right?

Now, in my case, I don't have a choice. I get paid to go here, so y 'all don't get paid to come here. But you get the idea. We all have these temptations. And before I was a pastor, there was always that temptation.

It's like, oh, couldn't I just sleep in? But see, the thing is that, yeah, that's a breaking of that third commandment. Remember the Sabbath day. We should fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching in His Word, but we gladly hear and learn it.

But we all can point to the fact that we're not always all that keen on hearing God's Word. Sometimes that Bible collects dust. Sometimes, well, church attendance can be a little spotty. But I'm going to point something out here, and that is that when we consider this sin of ours—I'm guilty of it too—we must pay attention to how the Bible addresses it.

If I were to say, you know what? It's just absolutely rotten of you that you do not want to hear God's Word. How dare you? You better get your act together and you better be more intentional about not neglecting God's Word.

What's the problem with this? Well, I've rightly pointed out the problem with the law, and I've made the solution the law. That ain't going to work. So, what we're going to do today, we're going to back up a little bit in the context, and I want to show something to you from the book of Hebrews, because you'll note that our epistle text begins with the word, therefore, which means we're kind of like mid-thought.

And I want you to see what's going on here. The book of Hebrews was written to, well, people who grew up in Judaism at the time of Christ or immediately after. They grew up in Judaism and they had all the smells and bells of the Mosaic Covenant, and now that Christ has come, he's fulfilled the Mosaic Covenant, he's fulfilled the law, he's died, he's risen again, ascended into heaven, and the types and shadows of the Old Testament have given away to the real substance, which is Christ.

And there were people in that first generation coming out of Judaism who legitimately were struggling with the change and thinking, you know, maybe we should go back to Judaism. This Christianity is weird, right?

It's not what we're used to. We didn't grow up with this. And so, the divine author, and we don't know who the author of Hebrews is, the divine author does something very important, and that is, rather than browbeating them for thinking even anything along those lines, instead he does what we are supposed to do.

He preaches the gospel. He does law and gospel beautifully, and the solution is reminding them of the great salvation that they have. Think of it this way. When I was growing up in evangelicalism in the Nazarene Church, there was a notorious group of people, people that you kind of wanted to avoid, and they were called PKs.

You know what a PK is? Preacher's kid. Preacher's kids. They were hellions, man. Nothing godly about them. And it's still a phenomenon to this day, and there's a reason for it. And that is that in much of evangelicalism, what do you hear?

Law, with more law, with a side of law, with law gravy, and more law. You don't ever hear law and gospel, and as a result of it, it's just nuts. And so preacher's kids, they grow up hearing dad from the pulpit or the stage saying, you need to be more intentional about doing the will of the Lord.

And so they'll give you a list every single week on how you can become more holy. But here's the issue. The PKs go home with pastor. And the PKs who go home with pastor, they get to see pastor be grumpy.

They get to see pastor upset because the Vikings lost again. They get to see, which by the way, I don't know why you would get upset about that. That's just like a normal thing, isn't it? They get to see pastor being upset because his coffee's too cold, or he's in a bad mood, or he gets to see mom and dad fight, and then he gets to see mom and grandma fight, and then he gets to see dad get in a fight with the neighbors, and he gets to see dad being short with the kids.

And what happens is that the PK figures it out. Dad preaches the law, but he don't keep it. Christianity's bogus. It's a sane conclusion if you think about it because the law has no power to make you obey it.

So here we've got a presenting issue. Contempt for salvation. Contempt for the gospel. Contempt for the word of God. Do you think me browbeating you is going to make you go, well, alright, okay, I'll pay more attention to it?

No. And even if you said that, give it two days, you're not interested. So what the author of Hebrews does, rather than browbeating them with the law, he placards Christ, and he shows how amazing and wonderful, beautiful, gracious he is.

And it's actually one of the most beautiful sections of all of scripture as it relates to Jesus. So backing up in our context, Hebrews 1 says this. Long ago, and many times, and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.

Oh, he's talking to these Jews. Oh yes, he spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

He is the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the power of his word. And after making purifications for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

Did you catch that? Not only is he telling us how amazing Jesus is, who he really is, God in human flesh, that we have been graced in these last days of God not speaking to us through an intermediary, through a prophet, but speaking to us directly through the Son of God.

And then he can't even get three sentences in without saying, oh, and by the way, he bled and died for you. Right? After making purification for sins, oh man, we all know how sin makes us impure, unholy, mucked up, might as well be rolling around in the mud, right?

But Christ, bleeding and dying for our sins purifies us before God, purifies our hearts, purifies our consciences. Ah. This is a different way of approaching things altogether. After making purifications for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty, having become as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

And this is where it gets really interesting. He's going to remind them who Jesus is. And there were heresies already running around the Christian church basically denying that Jesus is God in human flesh.

I mean, that's too crazy to think about. But what the divine author here does is he compares Jesus to angels. Is Jesus an angel? No. But you'll note that for a while, Christ in the incarnation humbled himself and became lower than the angels.

That's part of the scandal of this thing. So he does some great Christology here. For to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you? Answer, none. Or again, I will be to him a father, he shall be to me a son.

Again, none of the angels God has spoken this way to. And again, he brings the firstborn into the world. And note here, this is a fascinating text. The father bringing forth Christ. He brings him into the world and he says, let all God's angels worship him.

Now, consider completely how weird and out of place this is if Christ isn't God. Because what is the first commandment? You will have no other gods. When tempted in the wilderness by the devil and the devil said, I'm going to give you all of the kingdoms of the earth if you'll just bow down and worship me.

Christ fires back with Deuteronomy. It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. And then you have that awkward moment in the book of Revelation where the Apostle John, who has a Sherpa in heaven who's kind of guiding him and walking him around, showing him different things.

And that Sherpa is an angel. And at one point, the Apostle John gets down on his face to worship the angel and the angel says, you mustn't do that! I'm a servant just like you. And here it says, the father says to all of the angels of heaven, worship Jesus.

If Jesus isn't God, then God's lost his mind. What is the implication? He is exactly that. Of the angels though, he says, he makes his angels winds, his ministers a flame of fire. But of the son, he says, your throne, oh God, is forever and ever.

Wait, what? The father says that Jesus is God? You betcha. Right. Your throne, oh God, is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness. You have hated wickedness.

Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. And you, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands.

They will perish, but you will remain. They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years have no end. And to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?

Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are, and watch the words, to inherit salvation? Are you guys feeling brow beaten right now? Not even close, right? The solution is Christ, and what he's done, and oh man, this author of Hebrews has just poured it out.

Poured it out in such degrees that it's hard to take in, and yet how can your eyes look away from what it is that you're seeing? How can your ears turn away to something else in hearing just how great it is?

And then listen to those words. The angels are sent to serve those who are to inherit salvation. That's you. That's me. This is glorious. It's almost beyond comprehension. And now we get to our epistle text.

Therefore, he said, ah, okay, in light of how amazing Jesus is, how even the angels of God who are in dialogue with the Father, who worship Jesus, they're now ministering spirits to you, you who are inheriting salvation.

Therefore, oh, we must pay closer attention to what we've heard, lest we drift away from it. I always love that line from Hook, Neverland makes you forget. Keep that in mind. The world we live in, we've got the unholy trinity always working against that faith of ours.

The devil, the world, our own sinful flesh. Neverland makes you forget. And that's the point. The divine author here knows this. And so what does he do? He starts preaching Christ again. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and listen to these next words, every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution.

And this is the thing that we all know that we deserve, right? On the day of judgment, if God were to say to all of us, forget it, off to hell with you, right? Just is just, right? That's just. None of us would be able to say, that's not fair.

No, that is fair. That's exactly what we deserve. You see, every transgression and disobedience should receive a just retribution, but there's where the gospel comes in and rescues us yet again. Christ bleeds and dies for every just retribution you have earned because of your sin.

How then shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? The answer is we can't. We won't. There is salvation only in Christ. It was declared at first by the Lord. It was attested to us by those who heard while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will.

Now a little bit of a note here. This is an aside. So you'll put a little asterisk here in your mind. In the charismatic Pentecostal NAR movements, right? Always and again, there's this big emphasis. You need to be performing signs and wonders.

Why? Because it's only by demonstrations of God's power that people are going to believe the gospel, that they're going to believe in Jesus as if somehow the reason why people don't believe in God is because they haven't seen a miracle.

Hogwash. Right? What does Abraham say? They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. Right? No, no, no, no, the rich man says from hell. No, no, no, no. If somebody rises from the dead and Abraham says, listen, they won't even listen if they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, it's not going to matter if somebody rises from the dead.

Right? But you'll note that in the Pentecostal movement, it's always like hokey, stupid, false signs and wonders. Oh, I feel the Lord right now is giving me a download and He's going to give you all an anointing.

Those of you who are suffering from blood ailments right now, the Lord has healed that right now. It's always stuff you can't see, right? Or something silly like they go and they say, oh, well, you've got one leg that's longer than another here.

The Holy Spirit's like pulling that one out. They're just pulling your leg. Okay? Sorry. Pastor joke. Okay. They're just pulling your leg. But you're going to note this. Real signs and wonders occurred in the scriptures and they always confirm the message of the Bible.

The gospel itself was attested to by none other than the greatest sign and wonder of all time. Jesus walked out of the tomb on the third day after He was crucified. Nobody has even come close to replicating anything even approaching that.

And so there are real signs and wonders in the scripture and I would point you to them, notably the resurrection of Christ. And then we also note that God the Holy Spirit in His church has given gifts to various people.

I always like to point out that Dwayne Clevin has the gift of Excel spreadsheets. It's a valid gift from God, maybe from the devil, but mostly from God. Right? Right? So that's the gift of administration.

Pastors have the gift of teaching. People also have hospitality and faith and generosity. These are all gifts given by God for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. He still gives them to this day.

Aside finished. So we continue. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. That's an important note. He's making reference to what's coming. Jesus says, I'm making all things new.

New heavens, new earth coming, new Jerusalem. And you know who's going to be running the place? Not the angels.

Nope.

Christ. And we will reign with Him. That's what the scripture says. We will reign with Him. It was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking. It has been testified somewhere.

What is man that you are mindful of him, or the son of man that you care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. Now we're talking about Christ. But note this important thing. What is man that you are mindful of him?

I mean, when you think about it, we're all just a screwed up, messed up, mortal lot. Our lives are mean. They're short. They're filled with all kinds of suffering. We don't get along well with each other.

If you don't believe me, just look at Twitter or politics. Or come to church sometimes. You get the idea. Why on earth would God pay any attention to us? But that's the thing. God has honored humanity by taking on human flesh.

And it's pointing here to Christ. What is man that you're mindful of him, or the son of man that you even care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You've crowned him with glory and honor, putting everything in subjection under his feet.

Now in putting everything in subjection to him, he left nothing outside of his control. And at present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to him. But we see him, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death.

So that by the grace of God, he might taste death for everyone. These are amazing words. And again, just in the chapter and a half that we've read, how many times has this author pointed us back to the sufferings of Christ?

Now by the way, I know a thing or two about tasting. I like food. You all know what I'm talking about. You ever go to a good restaurant, or maybe you cook something up, it's like your favorite meal, that first bite, you can feel the tension leaving the room.

And the savory goodness is just overwhelming all of your senses. We love a good taste. But there's nothing worse than eating something that's gross. There's a legendary story told in my wife's family, my wife tells the story, about one time that her mother made spinach souffle, and it didn't turn out so hot.

And after one bite, my wife realized she's not going to want to eat this. And so she tried to find a way to surreptitiously make it look like she had eaten it without having eaten it. Her idea was sneak it and give it to the dog.

Right? That's how bad it tasted. But here's the problem. That particular spinach souffle turned out so terribly that when she gave a bite to the dog, the dog gagged. And she was found out. Right? Now I imagine that death tastes far worse than a burnt spinach souffle.

That even the dogs don't like. But you're going to note this. That Christ in his great mercy, he's not only suffered death in your place, he's suffered death so that by the grace of God, you would never ever know what death even tastes like.

You will never even have to take a spoonful of it. That is some good gospel right there. And one that we can all understand, because I don't want to taste death. I don't want to taste it at all. Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life.

Anyone who believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live. And anyone who believes in me, he will never taste death. All because of great, gracious, merciful Jesus, who rather than giving us what we deserve, rather than sitting there and saying, you sit there and you eat up all of that death, you're not getting up from the table until you're done, says, no, I will never let you have that.

I will eat it for you. Beautiful picture. So that it was fitting then, that he for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

And that's exactly right. Christ is made perfect through suffering. And note then, he has also called us to suffer with him. To suffer persecution for his name. To note then, that we too also, God uses our sufferings for the purpose of sanctifying us, bringing us to the end of ourselves, so that we have only to trust in him.

For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he's not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name, my brothers, in the midst of the congregation.

I will sing your praise. Now, a little note here. Great gospel pick that I think is in here. He's not ashamed to call them brothers. Now, in our comedy, in our comedy on Netflix or on television, television shows, always and again there's a theme.

A theme like somebody says, what's wrong with your brother? He's adopted. Okay, that's always how this goes. Oh, well that explains everything. I see why there's the big disconnect. Because he's adopted.

But you're going to note, Jesus doesn't do that at all. Jesus doesn't sit there and go, alright, yeah, you're my brother but you're adopted. Nothing like that at all. Instead, Jesus is not ashamed to call us all brothers and sisters.

Never even mentioning the fact that we were born to a different father, born to the devil. Embracing us as true brothers, as blood brothers. In fact, we are that. You know why? Because of the blood of Christ.

Because of the blood of Christ. So that is why he's not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will sing your praise. And again, I will put my trust in him.

And again, behold, I and all the children that God has given me. So let me ask you, after hearing all of these amazing things about Christ, the magnitude of his grace, all of the things that he's done for us, all of the beautiful pictures of his love, his mercy, his salvation, the fact that he's given us salvation, doesn't give us what we deserve, made sure that we would never have to taste death, that he calls us his brothers, that he is the one who has purified us.

How could we neglect so great a salvation? It doesn't even seem right. So let us repent. Let us repent of neglecting God's word and neglecting the salvation. And receive so freely the forgiveness of even that sin.

And let us bear fruit in keeping with repentance and gladly hear and learn about Jesus. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

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