In My Flesh I Will See God

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church.

Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota.

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

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel According.

To St. Mark, the 16th chapter.

Glory to you, O.

Lord.

When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of James and Salome, bought spices

so that they might go and anoint Jesus.

And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb

and they were saying to one another, Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?

And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back.

It was very large, and entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side,

dressed in a white robe.

And they were alarmed.

And he said to them, Do not be alarmed.

You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.

He is risen.

He is not here.

See the place where they laid Him?

But go, tell His disciples and Peter that He is going before you to Galilee.

There you will see Him just as He told you.

And they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling.

And astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

This is the gospel of the Lord.

Christ is risen.

Hallelujah.

Y 'all remember being young?

Now some of you are young, so I apologize to the young folks here.

This might be a present reality for you at the moment.

But when I was young, when I was a wee little lad, maybe eight years old, Christmas was a

big deal.

You guys remember the movie Christmas Story, how the narrator said that his entire life

kind of revolved around and orbited the Christmas season?

This was true for me when I was a kid.

So in fact, every single year, Thanksgiving night, there was a

Christmas special that aired on Channel 5, KTLA in Los Angeles, right

after Thanksgiving dinner, and it was called Santa and the Three Bears.

And that was the official kickoff of the Christmas season, right?

And the only thing I could think about was Christmas.

Asking my mom, bugging my mom, when are we going to get our Christmas tree?

Then we get our Christmas tree.

And when my parents would go to bed, I would sneak into the living room and sleep on the couch, because I wanted to sleep next to the

Christmas tree.

I loved the lights, the color, everything, and all I could do was think about Christmas.

I would take my toys, play in front of the Christmas tree, because it was all about, ah, Christmas is coming, right?

But then what happened is that I grew old, and I turned ugly.

This is what happens, right?

I got old.

So first I grew up, then I got married, then I had kids, and my kids had that same excitement

and same joy, but of course, I knew it was my job to kind of rig it in their favor.

You get what I'm saying here, right?

But then they grew up, and then we kicked them out of the house.

You've got to kick your kids out when they get to a particular age.

Don't let them stay too long, okay?

It's like milk, it goes bad.

But all of that being said, all of that being said, now when somebody

says, do you realize there's like only a month and a half till Christmas?

It's like telling somebody in August, you know snow's coming in just a couple months.

You just sit there and go, stop, stop, stop.

This is how it goes.

And so that joy, that anticipation I had for Christmas,

you know, it's kind of not there.

But here's the thing I've noticed.

As the beard has gotten grayer, and the body is starting to fall apart, oh praise God that's finally happening, right?

That the thing I'm looking forward to, and I can feel it, it's that same kind of

really excited anticipation.

It's Easter, and the fulfillment of Easter in the resurrection of our bodies.

Because have you guys noticed that this world is a little bit tough to live in?

Have you noticed that we've got full dose good and evil.

The good comes from God, the evil's our fault because of sin, and the two mix together and create this

kind of a mix.

And then there's whole seasons when like the suffering, the pain, the drama, the

well, the sickness and the death, it all seems that time to have a seasons where it gets the upper

hand.

And so we're going to note then, because Christ has risen from the dead, we

have, well, let me mix metaphors here.

We've got a cool Christmas coming.

It's the Christmas when Christ raises us all out of the grave to a new heavens and a new earth.

And this is most certainly true because Christ our Paschal Lamb has been

slain.

This is true.

So death passes over us.

We have the blood of Christ over us.

And Christ has bled and died for our sins, reconciled us to the Father, ransomed us,

raised us from the dead, adopted us in his family.

We are forgiven.

Nothing can change that.

The word of God must be fulfilled.

And so in that regard then, let's consider our Old Testament text first.

I'm going to throw in a bonus text today too.

Did you know there is an assigned psalm for today?

Yeah, there is.

There's an assigned psalm.

And I'm just going to happen to preach a part of it because it's so cool.

But Job, and let me kind of set this up properly.

Job was written probably before Genesis, although it's kind of hard to

figure out how that all works.

Let's just say that if you understand Hebrew and you've ever tried

working through Job and translating it, wow is it hard.

Have you guys ever read Beowulf and the original?

It's that kind of hard.

That's how pristine this Hebrew is.

And so that being the case, we know that this is really, really, really,

really old.

Even older than me.

That being the case, consider then, thousands of years before Jesus walks the earth,

this Old Testament saint has really solid theology.

He understands the gospel.

And how is that possible?

How is it possible that he understands the gospel?

Could it be that God, the Holy Spirit, revealed this to him?

Or that this reflects the faith of the saints of old?

I think it does.

So here's what Job writes.

Oh that my words were written.

Oh that they were inscribed in a book.

Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever.

And I would say, well, mission accomplished here.

Because you'll note that Job's words are written in scripture and God's word will never pass away.

It's written in something better than iron and lead or engraved in the rock.

It is written in the living, active word of God that is theanoustos, in God breathed.

And so now here comes the sentence.

For I know, I know that my Redeemer lives.

He does.

And this is before Christ has been raised from the dead.

It's before Christ was even conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

And yet Job, all those thousands of years before that, he knew that he had a Redeemer and we all

need one.

And that's what we have in Christ.

And he knew that he was alive and that he was living.

And that the last he will stand upon the earth.

Oh an eschatological reality here even.

He's got good understanding of the gospel, good understanding of the eschaton.

And we'll note that maybe, just maybe, we can use this last bit in a proleptic way.

That maybe there was an immediate fulfillment and a far fulfillment.

This is one of the ways prophecies of the Old Testament work.

Think of it this way.

Job looking forward through time, there's two appearances of Christ when he

stands on the earth.

One when he is conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

Born and then suffers under Pontius Pilate.

All the things that Jesus did while he was alive.

And then the far, far one at the end when he stands on the earth.

When he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead.

But we will remember this.

We just observed Good Friday.

Our day of atonement.

And that Christ on Good Friday was not standing upon the earth.

He was suspended between heaven and earth.

He was our sacrifice.

He is the one who reconciles us to God.

He is the one who bears our sins.

Suffers the wrath of God in our place.

And now calls us to repent and believe in what he has done for us.

And you might say, well why should I believe?

Because he's risen from the dead.

His resurrection proves that his sacrifice for our sins was accepted by God the Father.

And that we are saved.

Death has been conquered.

We have nothing to fear regarding death anymore.

This is why then he goes on to say, after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my

flesh I shall see God.

Wow.

He even believes in the resurrection.

And we should too.

Because what he said here is true.

It is right.

Now, I have not privy to the date when Jesus returns.

I have no insights to give you there.

I don't know the day.

I just work in marketing.

God, the Trinity, they're in management.

They've got that all sorted out.

But that being the case, that being the case, when Christ returns we hear

in scripture that he's bringing everybody back who believed in him and they will be raised first.

Because he is the first fruits of the resurrection.

The first fruits of the new creation.

Think of it that way.

And so Job here picks it up properly.

Even though I die and I dissolve and decay and my skin is destroyed, yet in my

flesh I shall see God.

And brothers and sisters, so will you.

The fact that the tomb is empty makes this beyond certain.

This promise is for all who are in Christ whose sins are forgiven.

We will all see God with our own eyes.

It doesn't matter if you die tomorrow, 20 years from now, or some time off in the distant future before the

return of Christ.

You are going to see Christ with your very eyes.

And if you're fortunate enough to survive the greatest part of the tribulation and then

Christ returns, you'll see him with the eyes that you have today.

But my eyes shall see for myself, he says.

My eyes shall behold and not another.

My heart faints within me at the thought of it.

Ah, right there.

My heart faints within me.

That's that Christmas bit.

That part that's gone from me regarding Christmas, but now looking forward to the resurrection.

Yesterday I had the privilege of burying one of the members of Emmanuel Radium.

He died back at the end of January from COVID, and we all know sometimes you have to wait for the ground to

unfreeze in order to bury people nowadays, right?

But that being the case, I was there graveside with him as we put his remains in the earth.

And although it was a sad occasion, it was not an occasion without hope.

And it was very much a privilege to remind them what the scriptures say, that we Christians, because of the

resurrection of Christ, we do not mourn as those who do not have hope.

That would be out of line for us.

For us Christians, we never say goodbye.

It is always see you later.

And I was able to say to Marv before he died that I would see him later.

And now he is worshiping around the throne of Christ with all the departed saints.

And so that being the case then, consider a little bit of the account of our resurrection, and we'll see

the gospel nuggets that are in here.

And I'll say this, always and again when Mark 16 shows up as the text for the resurrection of Christ,

always as a pastor I look at this text and go, what am I supposed to do with it?

It ends off with scared women running away.

But alas, alas, if we work our way through it, we can see a few things that are worth noting.

So it says in our gospel text, when the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene married the mother of James and Salome.

They bought spices so that they might go and anoint him, referring to the body

of Christ.

Now, I find this interesting.

To a person, every one of Jesus' disciples, either men or women, none of them

seem to have had Jesus' words register in their brains and in their hearts

where they understood and believed what he said.

And here's what I mean.

Going to Jerusalem, Christ says, when we get to Jerusalem, I'm going to be betrayed,

I'm going to be arrested, I'm going to be flogged, I'm going to be crucified, I'm going to die, and I'm

going to rise again on the third day.

And the disciples went, what did he just say?

Right?

And even these women, it didn't register with them.

How do we know?

Because they're going to anoint the body of Christ.

They're expecting to see a corpse.

Even Christ's words did not register with them.

So, very early on the first day of the week, which is Sunday, when the sun had risen,

we can do a little double entendre with that.

Indeed, the sun did rise.

They went to the tomb and they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us

from the entrance of the tomb?

Again, they don't even believe what Christ said.

Then, looking up, they saw the stone had been rolled back.

It was very large.

Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe.

And they were alarmed.

Now, this is the normal procedure when you run into an angel, by the way.

I just want to make this clear.

There was a Blackadder joke years ago where the question was asked, and what

exactly should we do if we step on a landmine?

And the answer was, well, the normal procedure is you throw yourself up about 200 feet in the air and then scatter yourself over

a large area.

It's a dark joke.

But here's the thing.

When you run into an angel, the normal procedure is to go, ah!

That's normal procedure.

So when somebody says, yeah, I had an angel appear to me and say this, that, and the other thing, they're lying to you,

right?

They would, well, practically die with that kind of encounter.

So the angel here, he says to them, don't be alarmed.

You see Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified?

He has risen.

He's not here.

See the place where they laid him.

But go tell his disciples and Peter that he's going before you to Galilee.

There you will see him just as he told you.

Ah, even the angel knows the words of Christ.

But I would note something here.

Think back to Maundy Thursday.

Christ is betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

And they go into the Garden of Gethsemane.

And there, when he is arrested, what does Peter do?

He takes out his sword, lops off the ear of the temple servant named Malchus, and Christ says, away with that

sword.

And then he basically says the scriptures must be fulfilled if I wanted to.

All I would have to do is say the word.

And legions of angels would come and fight for me to prevent what was happening here.

And what he's saying is true.

Imagine how difficult this had to be for the angels to watch their

God be crucified and murdered by you and by me.

And yet, here at the resurrection of Christ, this angel doesn't have

any sound of vengeance or of a grudge or of anger or

anything of the sort.

He only has good tidings for Christ's disciples.

And he assures them, you do not need to be alarmed.

You seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified.

He was crucified for you.

And he's risen.

He's not here.

And then see the place where they laid him.

And here's where I'd like to kind of put this in here.

We learn from the other gospel accounts that there were at least two angels

there at the tomb of Christ.

And you'll note that this angel seems to be tidying up now that Christ has risen from the dead.

Whatever his assignment was has come to an end.

He's got to deliver a message and then kind of get on with his day.

But we learn from the fact that there were two angels present at the tomb of Christ.

And it says very specifically in another gospel, one was at the head where his head was, another at the feet.

Think of it this way.

You guys remember the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark?

You guys remember that?

There you have the Ark of the Covenant.

Beautifully recreated for the movies if you would.

But the one thing they got right for sure was the very top part of the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant, that top was called the mercy seat.

That was the place where the blood of the sacrifices, the annual sacrifice, the day of atonement were poured

once a year on the top of that thing.

And what's on top of the mercy seat?

Two angels.

Cherubim.

According to Exodus, God commanded that two angels be put there on the top of the mercy seat,

facing each other with their wings spread out, touching wing to wing.

I think that is an image depicting the work that two angels did after

Christ's tomb was sealed.

There were two angels guarding the body of Christ.

There until he should rise from the dead.

I think that's a beautiful depiction.

I learned it from the church fathers.

Totally stole it from them.

At least you know where I got it from.

It's such a great picture.

I had to share it.

It's so awesome.

So now we've got one of the remaining angels tidying up, folding the linens and things like this, and he

has nothing but good tidings for us because Christ has risen.

So go tell his disciples and Peter, that fellow who denied Christ three times, you tell him that

he's going to Galilee.

You will see him just as he told you.

So they went out.

They fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had seized them and they said nothing to anyone for they were

afraid.

Well that's an unsatisfactory ending right there.

If I were to end the sermon here, I wouldn't think that that was satisfactory.

So let me pull on our assigned psalm for today.

Let me set it up this way.

Do you remember when the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea?

There they are being pursued by the armies of Pharaoh.

They've come up against the Red Sea.

God commands Moses to raise his staff and to part the sea and God parts

it.

And there the children of Israel cross on dry land across the Red Sea and

when the Egyptians follow, God begins to close things up and then the

sea just crashes in and the entire army of Pharaoh perishes in the Red Sea.

In chapter 15 of Exodus, we get that beautiful glorious

worship song talking about how the Lord has mightily defeated the enemies of

Pharaoh and the horse and the rider it says he has cast into the sea.

If you were to think of it this way, in light of Christ's resurrection, Psalm 18 is

like the Christian version of that song.

Let me read a portion of it for you.

Oh give thanks to Yahweh for he is good for his steadfast love

endures forever.

I should put some echo on that.

His steadfast love endures forever, forever, forever, forever.

How long does God's steadfast love last?

Forever.

Because Christ has risen from the dead.

We know this is true.

He has given us eternal life and the steadfast love of our God will see no

end in the days of our life here and in eternity.

Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous.

And let me fill you in on that one.

Remember Christ bore your sins in his body on the cross.

God laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Christ became the sinner so that you can be forgiven.

But scripture also says that we are clothed in the robes of righteousness.

Christ's perfect sinlessness is imputed to us and so glad are the songs of

salvation in the tents of the righteous.

That's you.

The right hand of Yahweh does valiantly.

The right hand of Yahweh exalts.

The right hand of Yahweh does valiantly.

And then listen to these words written by the psalmist hundreds of years before Christ.

I shall not die but I shall live.

And I will recount the deeds of Yahweh.

Are these not the same words that Christ said to the women in John 11?

I am the resurrection and the life.

He who believes in me though he die yet shall he live.

And anyone who believes in me will never die.

It's right here in Psalm 118.

The psalmist says I shall not die.

And this is true for all of us who are in Christ.

Instead I will recount the deeds of Yahweh.

The Lord he has disciplined me severely.

And that's the discipline we receive from a loving father.

But he has not given me over to death.

Open to me now the gates of righteousness so that I might enter through them and give thanks to

Yahweh.

And this then is exactly what each and every one of us have to look forward to.

On that day when the Lord stands on the earth at the end the new Jerusalem will

come down out of heaven and the gates of righteousness will be thrown open for you.

For me.

So open to me the gates of righteousness so that I might enter through them and that I might give thanks to Yahweh.

This is the gate of Yahweh.

The righteous shall enter through it and that is all of you.

I thank you that you have answered me and that you have become my salvation.

The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made.

So let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Today is the first day of the new creation.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of Yahweh.

We bless you from the house of Yahweh.

Yahweh is God.

He has made his light to shine upon us.

So bind the festal sacrifice with cords up to the horns of the altar.

You are my God and I will give you thanks.

You are my God and I will extol you.

O give thanks to the Lord for he is good for his steadfast love endures

forever.

Christ is risen.

Amen.

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