Sanctification by Faith That Produces Works Part 1

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Impractical Christianity Part 2

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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.

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John, chapter 6, verses 22 -35. On the next day, the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples but that His disciples had gone away alone.

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Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the

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Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there nor His disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum seeking

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Jesus. When they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, Rabbi, when did

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You come here? Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking

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Me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the

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Son of Man will give to you. For on Him God the Father has set His seal. Then they said to Him, What must we do to be doing the works of God?

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Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom

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He has sent. So they said to Him, Well, what sign do you do that we may see and believe you?

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What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness. As it is written,

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He gave them bread from heaven to eat. And Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you,

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It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

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The bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

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They said to Him, Sir, give us this bread always. And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

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Whoever comes to Me shall never hunger, and whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, O Christ. Now, one of the things we

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Lutherans do and do well is we keep hammering on the fact that Scripture makes it explicitly clear that we do not earn our salvation in whole or in part by our good works.

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That does not mean that we do not do good works or that somehow we turn the gift of the forgiveness of sins into a license to sin.

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That is called licentiousness, and that is explicitly preached against in the epistles. And so as we look today at our epistle text,

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I want to do a little bit of comparative work because Paul talking in chapter 4 of Ephesians begins with these words,

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I therefore a prisoner. And I find it fascinating that you can do a really good search then of what the sins of the flesh look like and the passions of that sinful flesh, unregenerate, stubborn, and hard -hearted against God can do compared to what

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Paul then tells us as Christians we ought to do. But here's the other thing. We can never lose sight of the fact as to why we do good works.

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When I was in a different denomination growing up, I literally believed that I had to save myself in part by my good works.

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To demonstrate that I was taking my Christianity seriously, I would do things like make sure not to go to the wrong movies, make sure not to play cards.

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That's always a big one. It's a big thing. You really show that you're taking Jesus seriously if you don't play cards.

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But then again, I didn't do it publicly. I'd always make sure that we did it surreptitiously. I remember one time I had a friend come to my house.

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He had a little baggie. No, it was not drugs. He had a little baggie. He pulls it out of his backpack and says,

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Look what I got. A pack of cards. Talk about evil.

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But the thing is this, is that when you lose sight that we are saved by grace through faith alone, you lose sight of why we do good works.

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We do not do good works in order to be saved. If that's what you're doing, all of your good works will not save you.

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They cannot. In fact, all of your good works are not good works because good works are for your neighbor, not for yourselves.

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If you are somehow turning your good works into a currency that you now are going to pay to God in order to be saved, you will be damned.

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It's kind of like the movie Titanic. The guy who tries to be able to get on the lifeboat and he's told by the fellow,

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Your money won't save you. Your good works won't save you. So we'll do a little comparative work and then we'll pay close attention to how our epistle text explicitly tells us that we are to believe certain things about who we are in Christ and who we are to each other and that by believing these things that the good works will flow from that.

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So, comparative work. Turn with me to Acts 25 verses 1 through 12.

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Acts 25, 1 through 12. We'll take a look at some of the details as it pertains to Paul becoming an imperial prisoner.

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Paul was arrested when he was in Jerusalem. He was falsely accused of bringing Gentiles into the inner sanctum of the temple in Jerusalem and the

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Jews were basically trying to kill him. Important little note here. The people who are fighting against Paul and the details we will hear about them, they all claim to believe in God.

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They all claim to be Torah observant Jews.

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They make sure that on Saturday that they are doing zero work because they want to obey

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God's commands. But watch what happens because they are not regenerate. As a result of this, and I keep saying this,

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I'll continue to say it. The reason why sinners do what they do is because they're sinners.

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Cows moo because they're cows. Cats meow because they're cats. Christians do good works because they're

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Christians. But we'll see this by way of comparison. Acts 25, 1. Three days after Fessus had arrived in the province, he went to Jerusalem from Caesarea.

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If you want to be specific, the Caesarea referred to here is known as Caesarea Maritima. It's right on the

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Mediterranean Sea. And the chief priests and the principal men of the

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Jews. So notice who's coming. Chief priests, principal men of the Jews. These are religious leaders.

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This isn't your average run -of -the -mill, hard -working, blue -collar

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Jew of the ancient world. These are prestigious, elite religious leaders.

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So the chief priests and the principal men of the Jews laid out their case against Paul. They urged him, asking as a favor against Paul that he summon him to Jerusalem because they were planning an ambush to kill him on the way.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the religious leaders of Judaism in the first century were fully aware that there was a commandment that says thou shalt not murder.

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And yet you're going to note here they are plotting a murderous strategy to get

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Paul killed. How do you do such a thing in the name of God? It's important for us to note this.

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Paul, before he was regenerate, before his sins were washed away in the waters of his baptism, he would do this same stuff, all in the name of God.

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But remember, these people's hearts are darkened. They do not believe in Jesus.

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They have not received the forgiveness of sins, and they think they are saving themselves by their good works. So somehow the ends are going to justify the means here, and that's what people's sinful natures do.

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When you follow the passions of your sinful flesh and what it desires, you will justify the completely unjustifiable.

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You will justify murder and claim that this is a good work when it's not.

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So because they were planning to ambush him to kill him on the way, Festus replied that Paul was being kept at Caesarea, that he himself intended to go there shortly.

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So, said he, let the men of authority come among you, go down with me.

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If there's anything wrong about the man, let them bring charges against him. After he stayed among them not more than eight or ten days,

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Festus went down to Caesarea, and the next day he took his seat on the tribunal and ordered Paul to be brought.

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When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him, and here are the important words that they could not prove.

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So not only had they planned this, by which they were going to try to dislocate him from Caesarea Maritima, and bring him to Jerusalem, they were going to do flat -out false charges, slandering the

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Jews, so they couldn't prove that Paul was neither against the law of the

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Jews nor against the devil nor against Caesar, have I committed any offense. To the

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Jews, he said, Paul, do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me?

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Paul said, I'm standing before Caesar, I don't know where I ought to be tried. To the Jews, you have done nothing wrong, as you yourself know very well.

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If I am wronged or have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I don't seek to escape death.

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But if there is nothing to the charges against me, no one can give me up to them.

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See, Paul knows. He's got a choice here. He's a dead man.

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He knows that. So he says, I appeal to Caesar. Then Festus, when he had conferred with his counsel, answered,

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Caesar, you have appealed? To Caesar you will go. And so thus begins

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Paul's odyssey, if you would, where he spends time in Caesarea Maritima, eventually is put on a boat and travels to Rome, and is shipwrecked, spends time under house arrest with the

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Praetorian Guard. And he was a prisoner. Rightly? No.

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Wrongly? Falsely. Falsely accused. No charges could be brought against him that were true. And people were plotting to take his life.

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All in the name of God. Do you see the problem here? But the problem is this.

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Each and every one of us still has a sinful nature. And this is what our sinful nature desires to do.

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And this is what our sinful nature does. And we try to justify it.

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So let's take a look now at Ephesians. We're going to go through a part of the text. And I want to point out the very thing that Paul is urging us to believe.

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When you believe this, it changes how you treat everybody else.

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So Paul says, I, therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, I urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have, past tense, been called.

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I remember years ago, listening to a fellow who had become somewhat of a liberal in theology.

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He had given up. He had spent his youth and the early part of his adulthood in extremely legalistic evangelicalism.

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And he eventually became kind of a nominal, nonbelieving, skeptical, liberal, somewhat theologian.

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He was haunted by Jesus, but pretty much had made it clear that he'd abandoned Christianity as any kind of belief system that he had, what he was taught.

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When asked about why, he said, well, because when I was that kind of Christian, I, or at least that kind of Christ follower,

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I always hope that someday I would be able to actually become a

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Christian because nothing he ever did seemed to be enough.

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And notice what this word, these words say, you are urged as Christians who are saved by grace and not by works.

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It's not from yourselves to walk, to conduct your life in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have already been called.

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You don't hope to someday become a Christian by your good works. Paul is saying, no, you want to know what sanctification is all about.

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It's about believing what you have been called to and that you have already been called to it.

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He's telling you to behave like a Christian, not so that you can become one, but because you already are one.

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And then he says this. So to walk in a manner worthy of that calling to conduct your life in that way requires you to walk with all humility, with gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.

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I always like to point out that marriage is a challenging institution because you put two sinners in close proximity to each other under the same roof, sharing the same bed.

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What could possibly go wrong with that? It sounds like bliss, right?

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No, this is a formula for difficulty. And indeed it is. But you're going to note here that as we are to bear with each other as husband and wife, we are as Christians because we are saved and called to walk in a particular way that we are to bear with one another in love, eager, not reluctant, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

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And here's the reason why. Listen to these words. There is one body and one spirit.

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We're going to camp on that for this phrase. I remember from here, we're going to camp on this idea here. I don't know what that means, but it sounds interesting.

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We're going to kind of dig into this for a second here. One body, one spirit. This again calls for faith, but let me do a little bit of backstory on it.

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If you would turn with me back to Genesis chapter two, I want to point something out regarding how

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Adam, you know, fell asleep. God put him to sleep and formed Eve. Very important words.

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Genesis 2, 18. Then Yahweh Elohim said, it is not good that the man should be alone.

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I will make for him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.

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And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all the livestock, to the birds of the heavens, to the every beast of the field.

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But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him. So Yahweh Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man.

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And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that Yahweh Elohim had taken from the man, he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

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And then the man said, this at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.

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Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

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Now, we all know that the Old Testament is type and shadow. Marriage is a picture of something even more important.

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Marriage is a picture of Christ's relationship with His bride. We are that bride.

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And listen to the words. A man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife.

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Christ left his father in heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.

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And while he was suffering under Pontius Pilate, he left his mother with his disciple,

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John, so that he can become one flesh with his bride.

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That's us. And we dare not lose sight of this fact. This is why later in Ephesians, Paul writes these words.

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Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave

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Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the

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Word. And here you have this beautiful picture now. Husbands, who are Christians, loving their wives in the same sacrificial, loving, kind, gentle, patient way.

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The same way Christ has done with His bride, who when she came into His presence, was filthy with the muck of sin, and in His great love and compassion,

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He takes water and the Word and cleanses her and makes her holy and clothes her with His own righteousness.

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It's a beautiful picture. So that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot, without wrinkle, or any such thing, so that she might be holy and without blemish.

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So in the same way husbands should love their wives, listen, as their own bodies.

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Well, if they're one flesh, that makes sense. But again, what we heard in Genesis is type and shadow.

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Now consider this then as another data point. 1 Corinthians 12, starting at verse 12, says this,

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Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

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For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. Jews, Greeks, Norwegians, Germans, slaves, free, all were made to drink of the one

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Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If the foot should say, well, because I'm not a hand,

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I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body. That would be a silly foot.

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If the ear should say, because I am not an eye, I don't belong to the body, that would not make it any less a part of the body.

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If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, that would be a weird looking body, where would the sense of smell be?

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But as it is, God has arranged the members of the body, each one of them as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?

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As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand,

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I have no need of you, nor again the head of the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable.

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On those parts of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow greater honor. And our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require.

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But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.

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If one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together.

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And then He says these words, Now you are the body of Christ, and individually you are members of it.

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So, we've seen that because we are to walk out our salvation in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called, we are to not be like the

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Jews who arrested Paul and wanted to murder him. We are to act in humility, gentleness, patience, bearing with one another, eager to maintain the unity of the bond of peace because there is one body.

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So take a look around. You are the body of Christ.

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None of you can exist without the other. At all. And if you're warring with each other, it's like when my dog had surgery.

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Have you noticed that? Dogs are weird. They're strange animals. They eat cat poop, but we won't talk about that.

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Dogs are weird. But you take a dog, and the dog has to have surgery. So you pay the money. The vet does his bit.

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And the dog comes home, and he's got stitches. Left to his own devices, what will the dog do?

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Lick the wound until what? Until it turns into this big, pus -filled, disgusting mess.

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So, in order to keep the dog from using his body to harm his own body, what you do is you put the dog in the cone of shame.

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Right? Yeah. So that's kind of the idea. A body at war with itself hurts itself, and it's ridiculous.

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So the reason why we do good works causes us to have to consider something very important.

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Just like the Church of Corinth, the reason why they were abusing the Lord's Supper, and some people who were rich were getting drunk on the

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Lord's Supper while the poor were being kept from the table, is because they didn't recognize by faith what the

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Lord's Supper was. The very body and blood of Christ, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins.

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In church, if we fail to recognize that we are all together, one with each other, one with Christ, then we're going to behave like the

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Jews did. We're going to let our sinful passions get the best of us, and there's going to be warring and faction.

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No. We are one body. We are all together in Christ. Just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

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One Lord. One faith. One baptism. One God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.

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But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when

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He ascended on high, He led a host of captives, and He gave gifts to men.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. Paul then, in talking about our sanctification, makes it very clear, we do our good works because we believe certain things.

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If you believe that you are one in Christ, and that there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, this will lead to you treating each other differently and excelling in good works and love.

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And then he goes on to give us a picture. This is one of the texts when we confess in the creeds that we believe that Christ ascended into hell, and that He ascended into heaven.

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As confusing as this passage is, this is like the core passage on that. So, it's important that this is part of a doctrine we believe.

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So in saying that He ascended, what does it mean that He also descended into the lower regions of the earth? That He who descended is the one who also ascended far above the heavens so that He might fill all things.

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And He, Christ, gave... Notice the gift. He gave apostles. He gave prophets.

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He gave the evangelists, shepherds. Those are pastors and teachers. For the purpose of equipping the saints for the work of ministry.

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That's right. I'm an equipper. I'm an outfitter. That's what my job is. And note here, there's an error that is running around in the charismatic church today, that somehow

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God has restored apostles on the earth. But you'll note that in our confessions, we say we believe in one holy and Christian and apostolic church.

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The church has always been apostolic. The apostles are still teaching us today. When you're sitting there in your study and you're reading your

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Bible and you've opened up to the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew is sitting right in front of you, instructing you and teaching you and discipling you.

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Same with the prophet Isaiah or Jeremiah or Micah. You may not see their faces, yet they are the very ones who are continuing to instruct you and equip you for works of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until that day when we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the

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Son of God, to mature manhood. Now this is an interesting theme that then comes up in our text.

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One that we must come to grips with. I understand that in many churches, there are people who are chronologically older than others.

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For instance, I have a few years on Brenda. She's just a little bit younger than I am.

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We're almost the same age, right? But the reality of the situation is that your body may be chronologically a particular age, but as a

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Christian, you might still actually be a child. And that is a slap in the face.

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Something we need to come to grips with. It doesn't matter how long you've been a

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Christian, you still might actually be immature. And so we are instructed and admonished then towards maturity.

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You don't like your veggies? You're behaving like a child. You want to play all day and do nothing but watch entertainment?

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You're behaving like a child. Mature people have responsibilities. And they take care of themselves and they eat their veggies.

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Kind of in the same way. So he says, till we attain mature manhood to the measure and the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

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You see, one of the reasons why Christians believe the most ridiculous things coming from the most absurd teachers, like on Trinity Broadcasting Network or God TV or places like that, is because they're immature.

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That's the reason why. They're infants. They're distracted by bright, shiny little doctrines.

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And they're susceptible to human cunning. And so this text is telling, a good work then is lovingly, firmly, strongly helping them to see the truth regarding those false teachers and telling them to grow up.

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Grow up, Mildred. I'm sorry. But, sending a thousand dollars to T .D. Jakes isn't going to make

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God want to bless you with a million dollars. You're being deceived. Grow up. Rather then, we are to speak the truth in love.

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We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body is joined and held together.

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Note again, the unity with Christ. The whole body is joined together by every joint which it is equipped.

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When each part is working properly then, it makes the body grow.

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That's our job. And it's not my job. It's our job.

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We, together, in love, in patience, in eagerness for the unity of the bond of peace, we, together, make the body grow.

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We all need each other so that we build ourselves up in love.

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Consider this. Romans 6 makes it clear that in our baptisms we are united with Christ.

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But next Sunday, we will feast on the body and blood of Christ. Broken, given, shed for the forgiveness of our sins.

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And Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 10, 16 and 17. The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?

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The answer is yes, it is. The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

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Yes, it is. So because there is one bread, we who are many are one body.

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For we all partake of the one bread. And that bread is the bread sent down from heaven.

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The one that Jesus was referring to in our Gospel text. When He said, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not

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Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is

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He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And they said, Sir, give us this bread always.

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And Jesus said, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me shall not hunger. Whoever believes in Me shall never thirst.

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Now it's important for us to note this. As we get close to wrapping up this sermon. And that is that this section of Ephesians is law.

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It is not Gospel. It is telling us what we ought to do. And why we ought to do it.

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It is informed and motivated. And if you would, kind of energized by faith.

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Because it requires us to believe that we are truly one. And that believing that we are truly one in Christ.

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It affects how we treat each other. And how we treat each other then becomes our good works.

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But in reading through this list of law. I must confess.

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There are things to which I must say I have fallen short. And if you are honest with yourself.

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You will recognize that you have fallen short as well. God's law always does that.

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It is always accusing us of those places where we have fallen short. And know this.

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It is the will of God that we treat each other. We who are united together in Christ.

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And are one. That we treat each other with humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another. And are eager to maintain the unity of the

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Spirit and the bond of peace. And when we have not done that. And where we have not done that.

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We must recognize that we have failed. Failed to do what God has so expressly willed for us to do.

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And it's not okay. However.

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It is bled for. It is died for. You see Christ, like I said.

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He left his father and his mother. Laid down his life for all of your sins.

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So that he can be one with you. And one with me. Such is his great love for his bride.

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So we must again, when we examine our lives. And note how far short we have fallen from the glory of God.

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Because the glory of God is the forgiveness of sins. And in falling short of the glory of God.

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That we must again repent. Confess that we have fallen short. Believe the words of the absolution that we are forgiven.

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Believe the words that we hear at this rail. Broken and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Believe the words associated with our baptism.

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That our sins were washed away. And that we were united with Christ. Return back to our baptisms daily.

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And then bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Which requires us to change how we walk.

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How we conduct our lives. Salvation by grace through faith alone.

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Is not so that you can follow after your sinful flesh. And fulfill its desires the way the

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Jews did. Who put Paul in prison. Salvation by grace through faith alone. Frees you to now love each other.

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Because you are one in Christ. Grant us this peace Lord we ask.

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In Jesus name. Amen. 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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