It's Way Worse Than You Could Imagine

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. Luke the 10th chapter.

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Behold a lawyer stood up to put Jesus to the test saying, Teacher what shall

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I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him, What's written in the law? How do you read it?

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He answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

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Jesus said to him, You've answered correctly. Do this and you'll live. But he desiring to justify himself said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor?

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Jesus replied, A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him, and departed leaving him half dead.

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Now by chance a priest was going down that road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side.

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So likewise a Levite when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side. But a Samaritan as he journeyed came to where he was and when he saw him he had compassion.

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And he went to him and bound up his wounds pouring on oil and wine and then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

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And the next day he took out two denarii and gave it to the innkeeper saying, Take care of him and whatever more you spend

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I will repay you when I come back. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

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He said, The one who showed him mercy. And Jesus said to him, You go and do likewise.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus.

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Now a little bit of a note here. When I was a kid I did not like it when my mom gave me chores to do.

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In fact I rather despised it. In fact I was really good at dawdling, procrastinating, and then doing a half -hearted job when it came time to finally getting to work.

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And my mom, she had a pretty long fuse. But when the fuse got down and, well, there was usually an explosion.

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And I hated when there was an explosion. The reason I hated it is because she didn't just punish me in the moment.

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She created punishments that lasted for long periods of time. You know, weeks at a time.

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And often she would go from having a hands -off approach with me to having a quite hands -on approach.

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There's nothing like doing the dishes with your mother looking over your shoulder going, You missed a spot.

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And the whole time that this was happening the only thing I can think of was this.

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Apply myself in the moment. Show her by my good behavior that things are going to be all right.

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And over time the anger will subside and life will go back to normal.

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It's a reasonable thing to think. And usually this is how it worked out. But here's the problem. This is oftentimes how we approach

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God. We think of God kind of like an angry parent. You know, we recognize, Yeah, we've sinned.

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Yeah, we've blown it. But if we just apply ourselves and do some good things intentionally, well then

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God's wrath and his anger will settle down and things will be okay. Hunky -dunky.

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But the problem is that that's just straight -up self -righteousness. That's justification by works.

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And I got to tell you, you need to be aware of the fact that the situation is far more dire, far more precarious and awful than that.

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If you think that you truly have an opportunity to placate the wrath of God by being a good girl, a good boy, a good husband, a good wife, a good child, or whatever, yeah, it's not going to work.

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It's way worse than that. And that's kind of the point of our parable in our gospel text today.

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A very famous text. We're all familiar with it. And it always starts off, you know, with these wonderful words, and behold, a lawyer stood up to put

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Jesus to the test. I mean, it almost sounds like one of those really stupid jokes, right? The one where, you know, there was a cruise ship, it sank, and there were three guys in a lifeboat that can only hold two of them, and one was a priest, the other a rabbi, the other an attorney.

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I mean, this is how, like I said, it's like a setup for a bad joke. And as the joke goes, of course, everybody likes to pick on the attorney.

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And so they're trying to figure out who has to leave the lifeboat, and while they're figuring this out, the whole little dinghy is being surrounded by sharks now, who are getting ready for a meal.

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And wouldn't you know it, it's the the attorney who draws the short straw, and as soon as he gets out of the boat, the weirdest thing happens.

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The sharks part, and he's left alone. And of course, the priest and the rabbi are sitting there dumbfounded, going, what's going on here?

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He looks back and says, don't worry, we call that professional courtesy. So yeah, we like to pick on attorneys.

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So this guy, this expert in the law, he's been to law school apparently, he's gonna now put

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Jesus to the test. And notice this focuses on the law. The thing that's not in his front mirror, in his front screen here, is actually the gospel.

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And so he asked this question, teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

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This seems to be a common question in the Gospels. What shall I do to inherit eternal life?

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Inheritances are gifts that are given by people who die, so this is a weird question.

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Which law school did you go to? DeVry? What's going on here? So Jesus answered him, and Jesus is gonna kind of soft -pedal a little bit, and then crank things up really hard.

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He says, well, alright. He says, what's written in the law? How do you read it? And he said, you shall love the

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Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

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This is, these are the two commandments that Jesus says all the law hangs on. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.

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And he gets the correct answer as far as the law is concerned. And so Jesus says something fascinating.

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He says to him, you've answered correctly. Do this and you'll live.

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Who of us can say, yeah, you know, that whole love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, mind.

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How many of, have you, have any of you done that? Yeah, it's on my to -do list.

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I have yet to figure out how to accomplish this one. And so Jesus saying, do this and you will live, is not exactly comforting.

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But see, that's the point. If you want to be saved by the law, you got to do it. And let's start with that first commandment, shall we?

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Any of us doing it? And immediately you should recognize, yeah, no, I'm having some difficulty here.

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I've never been able to pull that one off. And so the next part of the story then continues.

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Desiring to justify himself, he said to Jesus, who's my neighbor?

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And see, there's the problem right there. Justifying yourself. Good luck on that one, at least justifying yourself before God.

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And so Jesus does the unthinkable. He tells a parable, which is not the unthinkable part. He tells a parable where he does something quite scandalous, and that is, is that he hides himself in this parable and Jesus is the

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Samaritan. There's no way around it and this is just gonna be scandalous when you consider what is going on here.

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Because remember, Jews and Samaritans, they didn't get along. I mean, you think Palestinians and Jews don't get along.

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Samaritans and Jews equally is awful. You know, the racism between the two of them was off the chain even all the way back in Jesus' time.

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And so Jesus taking on the role of the Samaritan, I mean, the implications are just ginormous.

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So Jesus tells the story, I said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He fell among robbers who stripped him, beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead.

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Now let's make this very clear. If you want to find yourself in this parable, that's you.

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That's me. This is our state after the devil and his demons have had their way with us, going all the way back to the

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Garden of Eden. Think of it as a highway robbery. And it's not looking good for us.

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In fact, Paul writes in Ephesians 2 to Christians, And you were dead in trespasses and sins.

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D -E -A -D. Dead. You were born dead on arrival.

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You were born completely incapable of any mobility when it comes to actually doing the things necessary to please

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God. Remember my analogy about my mom? So I would never have been able to placate my mom's wrath if I were unconscious the whole time.

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It's not possible. And that's the thing about dead people, is that they are unconscious. So Paul says,

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You were dead in trespasses and sins. And note then that we as, well, when we were unbelievers, we were the walking dead, which is a weird thing.

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All the zombie movies seem to have some kind of implications regarding our state before becoming Christians.

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So you were dead in trespasses and sins when she once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all, every one of us, once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

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And here's the fun part. We were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

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Well, if everybody is by nature children of wrath and dead in trespasses and sins, then this is an awful situation because dead people are incapable of doing anything to make their situation better.

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That's the point. See, Jesus is doing law and gospel with this fellow. So you and I are the ones who were stripped, beaten, left for dead by the devil and his demons, and now comes the law.

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So by chance, Jesus says, a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

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And all the social justice warriors said, this is not right. This is terrible. There should be good Samaritan laws in place to keep this guy from doing what he did.

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Torah says, the law says, any Levite is forbidden to make himself ceremony unclean by being in the presence of a corpse, unless that corpse is somebody who is a really close relative.

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This priest was following Torah perfectly. In other words, the law of God will not lift a finger to help you when it comes to saving you.

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It can only point out that you are unclean, that you are sinful, that you need to be avoided because you are guilty.

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And so Jesus then drives the point a little bit farther home, says, so likewise a Levite under the same restrictions of the law, when he came to the place and saw him, he passed by on the other side.

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So don't sit there and go, oh, that priest and Levite, they were just terrible. They were just awful. Don't they care about people?

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Well, actually, yeah. They feared Yahweh, and Yahweh forbade them from making themselves unclean with just any old corpse, let alone the corpse of an unknown naked person lying dead on the side of the road.

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Seems cruel, doesn't it? But the law of God will lift no fingers to help you. Not in salvation.

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No way. The law of God will sit there and just say, do this. And you say, but I'm not.

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And the law says, guilty. Why are you gonna help me? No. Do it. But I can't.

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That's not my problem. That's what the law does.

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So have you loved the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? No. The law says you have to get to it, get cracking.

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But I haven't. You're guilty. Oh, and you've got to love your neighbor as yourself. Don't even get me started on that.

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We don't. So you'll note that the priest and Levites, the law is gonna sit there and condemn you, and it isn't gonna help you.

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It's not gonna come to your assistance. It's not gonna give you any aid. It's not gonna give you a leg up. Nothing. So we need somebody who is free.

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Somebody who's free enough to actually do mercy. And that's kind of the point.

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Now here comes Jesus. As a Samaritan, it says, a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.

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How many texts talk about the fact that Christ, when he would see the crowds of the people, he had compassion.

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His splod needs of mine were rinsed. He was gut, he was just gutted and felt compassion for people.

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And this is the state where Christ finds you, and finds me, dead in trespasses and sins, and he has compassion.

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So he went to him, bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.

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Hmm. You see, I think about Christ finding each and every one of us dead in trespasses and sins.

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Some of you baptized here and even in this congregation as infants. Christ found you dead in trespasses and sins, and he took your lifeless spiritual corpse and washed it in the waters of baptism, the cool waters of baptism, and raised you to life, washing away your sins, healing your wounds, and then setting you here in the church.

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This is his inn. And pastors, by the way, get to be the innkeepers. It's kind of a fascinating job.

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So the next day, Jesus took out, and I notice I'm saying him, took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, saying, take care of him, and whatever more you spend,

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I will repay you when I come back. Is there any doubt here we're talking about Jesus?

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Because Jesus is the one who is coming back. Hmm. So Jesus then asked this attorney, which of the three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

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He can't even get the word Samaritan off of his lips. That is just too much for him.

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So he says, the one who showed him mercy. The one who showed him mercy.

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But remember what Paul was writing in Ephesians 2, that we were dead in trespasses and sins. Consider then the mercy of God in this context, because we were the ones who were left for dead by the devil.

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It says this in verse 4 of Ephesians 2, but God being rich in mercy, God is rich in mercy, rich in mercy towards you and towards me, because of the great love with which he loved us.

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Even when we were dead in trespasses and sins, he has made us alive together with Christ.

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Interesting phrase, made us alive together with Christ. Think of it this way, how is it possible that the wrath of God has been placated, that we who have not kept

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God's law perfectly, who utterly deserve to spend an eternity in the lake of fire along with the devil and his demons, how is it possible that the wrath of God has been placated, if we were not able to stand up and do some good things in order to placate that wrath?

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Well, consider it this way. The way our salvation was won was that same highwayman, that same group that assaulted this fellow, left him for dead,

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Jesus let himself be assaulted by them as well. And they beat him.

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Oh, and they beat him good. And they whipped him and flogged him, stripped him of his clothes, nailed him to a cross, suspended him between heaven and earth, and rather than being left for dead, he died.

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You see, that same Jesus, this same Samaritan, he also allowed himself to be roughed up by those hooligans.

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And he did so in order to placate the wrath of God, because he was the sinless, spotless

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Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And he bled and died, was left for dead by those same group of robbers.

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But his death is a vicarious death. His death is a penal substitutionary death.

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His death is a death that atones for sins. And because of that, because he was a sinless, spotless

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Lamb of God, death was not able to hold him. And so he was made alive, brought back from the grave on the third day.

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And now God, in his great mercy and love towards us, who have also been assaulted by the devil and the demons and left for dead, he, through his great mercy, in the waters of baptism, through the preaching of the gospel, he has also made us alive now together with Christ.

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Christians are truly alive in him. See, it is by grace you have been saved.

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And he has raised us up with him, seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ.

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And so you can see these wonderful themes here. The one who showed mercy points us to the one who has been merciful to us by forgiving us of our sins.

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But this question that was originally asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life?

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You'll note that the question doesn't quite get a satisfactory answer, because you and I all know that, well, that attorney hasn't kept these commandments.

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So how is it that he or any of us could live who have not kept these commandments? But here again the words of our epistle text from Colossians chapter 1.

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Paul saying that we are to give thanks to the Father. And here's one of the reasons why we are thankful for the

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Father, because it says this, he has qualified you. He has qualified you in Christ to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

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What must I do to inherit eternal life? Well, there's nothing you're going to be able to do. You're left for dead by the devil.

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But Christ has had mercy on you, and even better yet, through Christ the Father now has qualified you to share in that inheritance.

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It is a gift of God, for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

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It's the gift of God. It's not the result of your work, so that none of us may boast. Hmm. Hmm.

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Mercy, grace, kindness, love, forgiveness. This is all too much.

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Paul goes on to say this, that not only has the Father qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in life, he has delivered us from the dominion of darkness.

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He's transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. You see, when Christ finds us, he doesn't just leave us dead on the road for our corpses to rot and to be eaten by the birds.

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Instead, he picks us up, carries us into his church, and by doing so, he has transferred us from the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of his beloved

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Son, where there is mercy, forgiveness. In fact, he says, in whom then we have redemption and the forgiveness of our sins and our trespasses.

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So Jesus asks the question, who was a neighbor to the one who fell among the robbers?

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Brothers and sisters, Jesus is truly the best neighbor we've ever had, ever could have.

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He's the one. He said, the one who showed him mercy. And so Jesus said to him, you go and you do likewise.

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And note then, what Christ is telling him to do is to show mercy because I've shown mercy to you, to forgive because you are forgiven.

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Go and do likewise. Love because you are loved. It doesn't say that the attorney said anything else after this.

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It seems to have silenced him, which is a miracle in and of itself. The silencing of the attorney.

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What a great miracle, right? But brothers and sisters, this also silences us.

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So put away all of the things that you think that you can placate the wrath of God with, being good for just a certain amount of time until the storm passes over.

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It's all nonsense. You're dead in trespasses and sins, and Christ is the one who has had mercy on you and brought you here today to feed you with his word, to sustain you in the

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Christian faith, to bind up your wounds, to assure you of his forgiveness, and to assure you that you have been qualified by the

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Father to share in the inheritance. There's nothing you can do to earn it. It's given as a gift.

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So receive and believe and go and share with everybody this great love and mercy that has been shown and given to you.

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

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

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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