The Deceitfulness of Riches

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern

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Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg. The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, chapter 10, verses 23 through 31.

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Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

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The disciples were amazed at his words, but Jesus said again, children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.

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It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

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The disciples were even more amazed and said to each other, who then can be saved?

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Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible, but not with God.

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All things are possible with God. Peter said to him, we have left everything to follow you.

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I tell you the truth, Jesus replied, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age, homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields and with them persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

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But many who are first will be last and the last first. In the name of Jesus.

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So our gospel text picks up where the gospel left off last week. Remember the rich young man coming to Jesus and asking, what must

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I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus rattles off the second table of the law and the guy says, oh,

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I've kept all those commandments from my youth. Jesus loves him and says to him, all right, one thing you lacked, go and sell everything you have, give it to the poor and then come follow me.

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Jesus is like, well, his invitation was the same invitation that he gave to the disciples when

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Jesus met Peter and the others, he said, follow me. And they did. This guy had that same invitation.

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But the problem was this. He had a God other than Jesus, and that God is named

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Mammon or money. And so the man leaves despondent and now

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Jesus comments, he says. How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God, and then the text says this, the disciples were amazed at his words.

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Amazed, really, you know why they were amazed? Because there were people preaching in the name of God, some of the same messages that we hear today.

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How do you know that God loves you and is truly blessing you? Well, look at your bank account.

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If the number is small, you are under a curse. If the number is large and has lots of zeros after the initial number, well, then you are truly experiencing the blessing of God.

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You are blessed. And there's pastors and preachers today who are going around the landscape and on the airwaves and on the

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Internet preaching messages to this effect. God wants you, wants you to be rich, and he can't really help you until you start stepping out in audacious faith.

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And all you got to do is look at yourself in the mirror every morning and say words like this.

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I am wealthy. I am prosperous. I am the head and not the tail. I am strong.

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And see, when you start affirming all of these wonderful things that you are, God's hands will be untied and he can start to shower on you blessings from heaven.

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With one little caveat, though, you got to write a large tithe check, make it payable to your local televangelist and send that into him as a seed offering to demonstrate to God that you have enough faith for to believe that God's going to bless you financially.

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And you know what that's called? A lie from the pit of hell, a lie from the pit of hell.

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The gospel is not about making you rich in this life. And if you believe that that is the truth, then your

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God is named money, not Jesus. And that's the problem. And so this is kind of similar to the message that the disciples were hearing, because we learned from the gospel of Luke that the

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Pharisees, who were the chief rabbis running around the landscape at the time, they were lovers of money.

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And so how do you know that God is truly, truly blessed? Somebody just look at the gold in their money bag.

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Look at the clothes that they wear. This is how you can tell somebody is blessed. And we can all kind of relate to this because we're all used to and we're all trained in, well, the pecking order based upon what you have.

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I remember distinctly running into this pecking order when I was a little lad. When I was a lad, the

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Star Wars movies came out. This was a big deal. I remember seeing the original Star Wars movie in the

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Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood. Big deal. Blew my mind. I mean, all

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I wanted was a lightsaber. But then what happened is that all of the toys started coming out.

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There were little Star Wars action figures. And then there were different levels of things that you could purchase.

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You could purchase, well, an X -Wing fighter. Or if you really had money, your parents were really rich.

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You could get the Millennium Falcon. And I remember going over to some of my friends' houses.

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And well, I had a Han Solo and a Chewbacca and a Luke Skywalker. But my friend had the

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Millennium Falcon. It was just not fair. How could he have so much more than I have?

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And I remember going home and saying, Mom, I want the Millennium Falcon. And the response pretty much had something to do with pigs flying or something like that.

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All right. But you know what? I actually felt

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I felt like this kid was better than I was because he had a

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Millennium Falcon and all I had was a couple of action figures. If only I had not opened the packaging and kept those action figures,

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I could sell them on eBay now for a fortune. But that's another story. But we all have stories like this.

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We all look at other people and we say, gosh, look at the clothes they're wearing. Look at the logo on that person's shirt.

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And you begin to feel like somebody's worth is based upon the wealth they wear on their body.

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How big is the diamond in their wedding ring? How big is the gold and the diamonds in their ears or on their neck?

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Right. Is there a Gucci symbol on their purse? Yeah, mine says

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Kmart, but I don't have a purse, I'm just saying, you know, and so and can you afford to shop at Macy's or Nordstrom's or do you have to go to the thrift store?

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All of this is an abomination and it's from the world. Don't think for a second that whether or not

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God is blessing you or cursing you is based upon how much money you have or do not have in your account.

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Jesus is going to blow this all up. So Jesus says how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.

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Think about that, how difficult it is. Why? Because the love of money and the trust in money is idolatry.

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It's a sin against God. In the first table, you will have no other gods before me. So Jesus says, children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.

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It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

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Now, I haven't done much sewing, but I can tell you this. It's difficult to get a little thread into a needle. I can't imagine getting a camel into it.

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In other words, it's impossible. And that's what Jesus is saying. And then the disciples respond.

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They were even more amazed and said to each other, who then can be saved?

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Now, note here in the text, verse 26, the disciples are asking who then can be saved.

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And Jesus looked at them and said, with man, this is impossible. Not the saving of a rich man, but the saving of anybody rich or poor, tall or short, skinny or fat.

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Doesn't matter with man. Salvation is impossible.

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You can't save yourself. Try as you might. You will never be good enough.

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You really think that you're going to save yourself and that your feeble good works are going to somehow stack up to a certain level where God's going to say, well, now you finally have done it.

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You've done the impossible. You've saved yourself. Never going to happen.

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With man, this is impossible, but not with God. All things are possible with God.

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Now I'd like to read to you some other passages of scripture that make it very clear that the love and trust in wealth and riches is idolatry and scripture speaks very sternly against it.

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James chapter five verses one through six read, come now you rich weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you.

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Your riches have rotted. Your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded and their corrosion will be evidence against you and they will eat your flesh like fire.

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You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud are crying out against you and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the

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Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self indulgence.

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You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. Doesn't sound like things are going to go well for those who do that.

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We've all seen those reality TV shows where people are hoarders. It's a weird disorder where people collect and keep every little piece of junk that they could possibly get and they collect it and they stack it all in their houses.

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You can't even walk in their houses like walking through canyons, right? And they never get rid of any of that stuff.

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Well, hoarding doesn't begin with that kind of stuff. It begins with money and these are people who have hoarded, lived in luxury, despised others, have defrauded them.

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And you know why they've defrauded them? Because they never want to part with their God. I know

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I told you I was going to pay you $10 an hour, but you know, I don't really like the job you did here.

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So I'm only going to pay you four bucks an hour. Take it or leave it.

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You've, we've heard of people like this. We may have even experienced people like this and you think, what a jerk.

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Well, the problem there is, is that he see his God is money. He can't part with his

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God. He doesn't want to share his God with anybody. He's living in self -indulgence.

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We read in Ecclesiastes and let me read it again. Ecclesiastes five, whoever loves money never has enough.

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You sit there and you wonder, I mean, we all hear about these exorbitant salaries that these CEOs make or these sports figures.

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And you sit there and go, what is somebody going to do with 110 million bucks? What are they going to do with it?

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I mean, at some point it just becomes absurd, right? You have more than you're ever going to spend in your entire lifetime.

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And you ask somebody who's a CEO, who's got all these stock bonuses, who's making 10, 50, a hundred million, 200 million a year.

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How much is enough? Never is enough, is it? There never is a point where they say it's enough.

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Scripture says this, this is meaningless written by the man who arguably is probably the wealthiest man of the ancient world,

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Solomon. Whoever loves money never has enough. This is meaningless.

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As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner?

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Except for to feast his eyes on them. The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much.

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That's right. The person who works for the rich man, they sleep well at night, but not the rich man. But the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep.

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I think antacids were originally made for the wealthy. Think about it.

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I've seen a grievous evil under the sun, wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner or wealth lost through some misfortune so that when he has a son, there's nothing left for him.

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And then verse 15, naked, a man comes from his mother's womb and as he comes, so he departs.

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He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand. I've never seen a funeral here where there was a

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U -Haul behind the casket. Right. Can't take any of it with you.

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None of it. You think of King Tut. I remember seeing

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King Tut's treasures, you know, when they brought him to Los Angeles back in the 70s, early 80s.

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Remember when that was on tour? And it just struck me that the story behind the treasure, the great treasure was all of that was put into his tomb because that was supposed to go with him to the afterlife.

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Well, somebody forgot to come and pick it up because it stayed here. You can't take any of it with you.

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Proverbs 11, 28 says, whoever trusts in his riches will fall. But the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.

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And see, that's the thing. Money is a tool. Money can be and is often a gift from God.

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We need it. God knows you need it. But to trust in it, to set your heart and your mind on it, to make it an idol.

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That will send you to hell, dangerous stuff. Think of what

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Jesus told this parable in Luke 12, starting at verse 16. Listen to this. Jesus told a parable saying the land of a rich man produced plentifully and he thought to himself, what shall

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I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And so he said, I'm going to do this. I'm going to tear down my barns and build larger ones, big grain silos.

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And there I'll store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years.

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Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, you fool, this night your soul is required of you.

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And the things that you have prepared for yourself, whose will they be? So it is with the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.

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Ambrose of Milan, commenting on this text, once wrote that this poor fool of a rich man was looking for a place to store all of his grain.

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And the place he should have stored it was in the bellies of all the poor and the needy in his community, rich to himself, poor towards God and poor towards God, you're poor towards others and you're stingy.

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So we return to our text. Jesus said regarding salvation with man, this is impossible, but not with God.

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With God, all things are possible. Now, Peter, whose mind is blown by everything that Jesus is saying, kind of trepidatiously puts forward this idea.

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Well, Lord, we've left everything to follow you. But so that you don't think that leaving everything to follow

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Jesus is the thing you have to do to earn salvation. Jesus notes this, he says,

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I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me in the gospel will fail to receive 100 times as much in this present age.

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God does reward us, by the way. Those of us who have faith, the one who has left home or brother or father or mother has done so because of their faith in Christ.

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But Jesus says this in this present age, you're going to receive homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields.

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And here's the caveat. And with them. Persecution, all of God's blessings in this life come with a cross, that's the reality of the situation.

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And I'm glad that they do. Lest we love the gift rather than the giver.

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We love the reward rather than the one who rewarded us. Everything comes with persecution.

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And then in the age to come comes eternal life where the streets are laid with gold.

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Gold goes from something that we hoard to something that we use and treat like asphalt, which

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I think is a wonderful thing to do with gold. Can't stand the stuff anyway. Never have any of it.

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And then Jesus says, many who are first will be last and the last first toppling again the whole world's system and way of looking at wealth, where we sit there and say that person is amazing.

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Look how wealthy and successful they are. You at the bottom, you're scum.

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You've got nothing. Look at your clothes. They're dirty and have holes in them.

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You vagabond, you're worthless. And Jesus says, no, blessed are the poor.

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Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus, who was the one who was blessed?

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Well, according to the world system, it was the guy who was wealthy. But there's Lazarus, that poor man needing medical attention, who's begging for money every day, longing to be fed from the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table.

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When they die, the rich man ends up where? Hell. For eternity.

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And yet the poor, cursed, vagabond Lazarus, he had faith in God, he trusted

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Christ, he was forgiven and he spends eternity in heaven. The last.

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Will be first, the first will be last. So with man, salvation is impossible, but with God, all things are possible.

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Now, if you think about it, there's this wonderful little gizmo. I discovered this a few years ago.

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It's this thing that has like a tiny little paperclip looking thing and you can actually stick it through the eye of a needle, take a piece of thread, put it into the bigger loop, and then you can pull the thread through.

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Right. This is a handy little device and I want you to think of the cross like that.

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With man, it's impossible, it's easier for a rich camel to go through the eye of a needle, big camel, small eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

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And with you, salvation is impossible. But what the cross does is it puts it right through the eye of the needle.

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Jesus grabs you and then he pulls you right through it. That's how salvation is possible.

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Because Jesus bleeds and dies for you, your righteousness will never be good enough.

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You always have fallen short from the moment you were conceived, because as we confess, we were born sinful and unclean.

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Everything that you do, thought, word, deed, the things you do and don't do, all tainted with sin.

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But God is merciful, kind and forgiving, and he has not left the impossible for you to accomplish.

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He has accomplished the impossible for you. And so he is the one who grabs you and pulls you through the eye of the needle into eternal life.

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And all of this he does by grace, as a gift, because of God's mercy.

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What a great Jesus that we have. So that we, he became poor, by the way, left all of the treasures of heaven and was born in a barn for you so that you might be rich, rich in him, rich in God, but never rich to the point where money is your deity.

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If money is your deity, I recommend getting rid of it, all of it, and coming and following Jesus.

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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, Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950, 470th

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Avenue, Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support.

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