Getting These Texts Right

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.

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John chapter 3 verses 1 to 17. Now, there was a man of the

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Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher.

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Come from God. For no one can do the signs that you do unless God is with him.

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Jesus answered him, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Nicodemus said to him, How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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Jesus answered, Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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That which is born of the flesh is flesh. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do you marvel that I said to you, you must be born again?

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The wind blows where it wishes. You hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. Nicodemus said to him, How can these things be?

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Jesus answered him, Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly,

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I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness of what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

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If I had told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

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No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the

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Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only

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Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his

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Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. In the name of Jesus.

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Brothers and sisters, today's lectionary texts actually contain two texts that are very well twisted in much of preaching that we hear nowadays.

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And I feel it very important today to walk through these texts so that we rightly understand them.

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Let me give you an example. Genesis 12 begins with these wonderful words.

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The Lord said to Abraham, go from your country, your kindred, and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great.

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This is a promise to Abraham, but oftentimes nowadays this text is preached in this way.

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So here we have Abraham receiving his purpose from God. God appears to him and speaks directly to him and reveals to him his destiny.

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And so he must leave where he is and go to the place where God has told him. Therefore you too must pray to God that he appears to you and reveals your purpose to you and your destiny.

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And so the question is, what do you need to leave in order to arrive at your promised land? I wish

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I was making this up. In fact, by the look on your faces, I know some of you have heard this sermon.

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The problem is this is a sermon that's not preached by any one particular person. It's kind of the weirdness that's floating in the water of Christianity today.

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I assure you this text is not about finding your purpose or some steps that you need to take or some place that you need to leave.

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And oftentimes when this text is preached in this way, what you will hear is that the promised land is something like, well, a better marriage.

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The promised land is better behaved kids. And believe me, I would love to have those. Trust me,

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I'm looking for any kind of tips in that category. And they're even adults. But it's not about that.

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And so what ends up happening is the promised land gets allegorized into you achieving some well positive outcome in your life.

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Better marriage, a good job, you know, name it. Well, there is a way in which we do sojourn with Abraham.

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But it's not in that way. And believe me when I tell you the promised land is not a better job or a better marriage or anything of that source or even a better bank account.

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Wouldn't we all love one of those? That's not what this is about. But our gospel text also gets twisted today.

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And let me give you two ways in which it gets twisted and you'll kind of see this. I wish I was making this up and I'm not.

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We all know John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

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I have lost track of how many sermons I have heard over the past few years which teach this text in this way.

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For God so loved the world that he gave. Full stop. Therefore, you must tithe. Therefore, dig into your pocket and write a check.

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Make it payable to Pastor Chris Roseborough, care of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church. Make sure that it's off the gross and not the net because you wouldn't want to be robbing from God now, would you?

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Because here it says that God gave and he gave as an example how you need to give also. This is a twisting of this text which is a full gospel text telling us of God's mercy and grace for us and it's being turned into a tithing text.

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And again, I wish I was making this up. But the reality is that these texts are about Christ, about the promises of God for our salvation and about salvation by grace through faith alone apart from works.

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And I find it fascinating that over and again when I talk about salvation by grace through faith alone apart from works, if I talk about that on social media or something like that, somebody always has to chime in in the comments section and say, yeah, but.

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And the yeah, but usually has to do with something to do with our good works. Well, of course, Christians do good works, but when we talk about the doctrine of justification, we talk about what scripture reveals regarding our salvation being accomplished by God alone, we're not talking about sanctification, we're talking about justification.

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There's plenty of time to discuss our good works, which are a necessary result of our being regenerated and washed and clean and made new in Christ.

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But when we look at texts that have to do with what God has done for us, we don't need any yeah, but.

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You see what I'm saying? Now you'll notice I'm sounding a little stern today, but we're doing some corrective work and I actually don't enjoy having to do this, but I feel it necessary to do this.

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So we'll do a little bit of work in Genesis, we'll go into Romans, and then we'll take a look at our gospel text, see if we can clean up and take a look at the really amazing good news that's in these texts.

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So Genesis 12 one, like I said, begins with these wonderful words, Yahweh said to Abram, go from your country, your kindred, your father's house to the land that I will show you.

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I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

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I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you. I will curse and in you.

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Here's the best part. In you, all of the families of the earth shall be blessed.

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Wow, that's quite the promise. And you'll notice the promise is not made to you that in you, all of the families of the earth will be blessed.

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So the question is, what is God referring to? What is he promising here?

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To whom is he promising and what exactly is meant by the word blessed? I can think of a thousand different ways

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I would love to be blessed. I would love to be blessed with six pack abs. I would love to be blessed with hair that wasn't graying anymore and didn't require me to use some kind of product to make me look younger when

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I'm not. I would love to have a fatter bank account. I would love to have a lot of things.

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As far as blessings go, is that what God is promising here? This kind of blessing? The answer is no, but the answer is also yes.

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And let me explain. If by, well, blessed, I'm looking forward to those things here and now in this creation where everything is still under the curse, the answer is no.

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What am I promised in this lifetime? Hardship, difficulty, suffering, persecution, but there is a new world coming.

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And in that new world, I know for a fact I will have six pack abs and I will live forever.

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There will be no gray hair and I don't have to worry ever again about not having enough money in my bank account to pay for my bills.

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You see what I'm saying? So there is a sense in which we do sojourn and these promises apply to us, but we need to make sure we're very careful not to promise something that God has not promised.

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So the one in whom, well, all of the families of the earth will be blessed points straight to Jesus Christ, the direct descendant of Abraham, the one who was the promised seed that was promised all the way back in the

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Garden of Eden. He is the one and it's through Christ that all of the families of the earth shall be blessed.

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Now Romans chapter four, let's now flip over there and we'll work our way through verses one through 17.

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In Romans chapter four, we see exactly what blessing is being referred to there.

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And here's what it says, Romans four one. What shall we say then was gained by Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh?

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If Abraham was justified by works, justified means to be declared righteous and God's doing the declaring.

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If Abraham was justified by works, well, then he had something to boast about, but not before God.

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For what does the scripture say? And now he quotes Genesis 15, Abraham believed

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God and it was, this is an accounting term, it was counted or credited to him as righteousness.

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That sounds a lot like how Christians are saved, does it not?

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You believe the promises of God for the forgiveness of your sins and God credits that to you as righteousness, period, full stop.

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Hmm. It, this makes it sound like Abraham was a Christian because he was, you see, there wasn't salvation one way in the old

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Testament and then a salvation new way in the new Testament. Everybody from all of human history from Adam until the last person born on the last day, anyone who is saved in that bracketed group is saved the same way, by God's grace, through faith in the promises of God and God credits that faith as righteousness and the righteousness that we're given is none other than the righteousness of Christ himself.

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So Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, so to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due and we all know about that on payday and to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom

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God counts righteous apart from works. And now you're thinking, well, ungodly, maybe that doesn't apply to me.

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I mean, I'm a pretty good person, I pay my taxes, I've never been to prison,

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I gave up stealing long ago, you know, something silly like that. No, Christ only died for the ungodly and that's each and every one of us.

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And you'll notice the good news here. The one who does not work, in other words the person who says there's nothing

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I can do to earn God's salvation, the one who says I can't work and earn this,

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I'll never be able to afford it, the one who does not work but instead just believes, believes what?

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The promise of God for our salvation, okay? He believes in him who justifies the ungodly, that requires you to recognize yourself as being in that group which all of us are, myself included.

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His faith and her faith is counted as righteousness just as David speaks of the blessing of the one to whom

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God counts righteous apart from works. And now we get the details of exactly what kind of blessing was promised to the families of the earth through Abraham.

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Here's what it says, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered.

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Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

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Now, we've heard the saying before, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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And if you think about it, just wander back through the history of your life, whether it's a short history or a long history, and you'll see that your life from beginning until today is marked with all kinds of things that we all know are sins.

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Things that you are ashamed of, things in which you know you should have done better and you didn't, and you know that you deserve

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God's punishment and wrath for not measuring up to what it is that he has so clearly said that you are to do.

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So what are we to do? Well, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven.

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This is the blessing promised to the families of the earth. Blessed are those whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the

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Lord will not count his sin. Wow, that's quite the blessing.

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The sinner who doesn't get what he deserves. And that is only possible because the sinless one,

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Jesus Christ, got exactly what he didn't deserve. That is,

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God laid on him all of our sins, and he suffered, bled, and died so that we can have our lawless deeds forgiven.

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So then Paul then asks, is this blessing then only for the circumcised? Because even in Paul's day, there was a group of people who said, no way.

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It can't possibly be that easy. No way.

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All you got to do is believe and you're saved. Come on. Somebody's got to get some skin in the game.

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Little play on words. And so their solution was circumcision. You see, everybody's got to be circumcised, and unless you're circumcised, you can't be saved, they said.

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And so they added a caveat, an asterisk, okay? So think of it this way. Salvation is by grace through faith alone, asterisk.

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What's the asterisk? And you look at the bottom of the page, and there in four -point Helvetica font, you pull out the microscope, and it says, if you're not circumcised, you're not saved.

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That's salvation by works, not by grace. So I can point to the thing

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I did so that I can be saved. But we do this all the time. It just takes on different forms.

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All right, let me give you an example. Have you ever heard a preacher sit there and say, okay, salvation is by grace through faith.

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It's totally a free gift, but you are the one who needs to make the decision.

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So make sure that you make that decision today, and cry enough tears, and come on down here, and you show

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God how sorry you are. Yeah, we've all heard that sermon, too.

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But that's the same thing as saying, unless you're circumcised, you're not saved. Who's doing the saving?

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Who's doing the regenerating? Where are you born from? We'll talk about that in a second. So is this blessing only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised?

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And Paul yanks the carpet right out from under all of the circumcision guys, and he says this.

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We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. So how then was it counted to him?

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Was it before or after he was circumcised? This is real simple.

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Which chapters come first? Genesis 15, or the ones that follow?

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Paul's just doing a little chronology here. Because it says in Genesis 15, Abraham believed

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God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. So how then was it credited?

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Was it before or after he had been circumcised? And he says this. It was not after. It was before he was circumcised.

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The reason why he received circumcision was the sign as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still circumcised.

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Oh, and you can see the Judaizers, just their eyes turning flame red at this point.

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But what can they say against it? Because Paul is arguing exactly what the scriptures reveal.

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The purpose was to make him the father of all who, what? Believe. Without being circumcised.

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So that righteousness would be counted to them as well, to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith of our father

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Abraham that he had before he was circumcised. For the promise, note the word, promise.

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The promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be the heir of the world. We've talked about that.

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Notice it doesn't say the heir of a small postage stamp piece of property in the Middle East. The heir of the world.

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It did not come through the law. That's right. That's right. Abraham didn't earn it by being a good boy.

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Nope. It came through the righteousness of faith. For if the adherents of the law are to be heirs, faith is null.

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The promise is void. You better get busy. You better get cracking. You got a lot of ground to catch up on if you have any hope of being saved at all.

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But it's not by works. It's not by keeping the law. It's by believing the promise of the forgiveness of sin.

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For the law, it brings wrath. But where there is no law, there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all of his offspring.

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Not only the inheritor of the law, but also the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all.

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As it is written, I have made you the father of many nations, in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

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Wow. Does anyone here doubt that salvation is by grace, through faith, alone, apart from works?

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This text just hammers that point home. Last text, our gospel text.

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I noted at the beginning of our sermon today that this is also a text that is twisted.

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I noted one way in which it is twisted, when a person stops at God so loved the world that he gave and then turns this into a tithing text.

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This has nothing to do with tithing. But there is another common way in which it is twisted. Let me explain.

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When Jesus talks about being born of water in the spirit, what is he referring to?

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The answer is baptism. That's what he's referring to. There's a whole group of people who don't like that, and so they deny that this has anything whatsoever to do with baptism, and so their explanation goes something along the lines of this.

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The water there is referring to amniotic fluid, so you have to be born physically, and then you have to be born of the spirit.

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That's not what Jesus is saying at all. He's referring to baptism.

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In our Sunday school lesson today, I'll show you some of the quotes from the earliest Christians and how they understood this text.

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It's a baptismal text, and it's important. Coming back to John 3, the famous Nicodemus passage, there was a man of the

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Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, notice he's slinking in to have a discussion with Jesus.

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Apparently, it's not safe for him to do this in the open during the day. He says, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

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Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is anothen, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Now, I left the Greek word untranslated on purpose. Anothen has only two possible definitions, only two.

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It either means born again or born from above. Those are the two possible meanings.

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Which one is Jesus talking about? Which one is he referring to? Well, Nicodemus hazards a guess and thinks that Jesus is talking about being born again.

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But that's not what Jesus is up to. So let me read it again. Amen, amen. I say to you, unless one is anothen, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he's old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

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And we all said, ew. That's not what Jesus is referring to. Now is he?

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So Jesus clarifies. Jesus answered, amen, amen.

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I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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Does that sound like born again or does it sound like born from above? Jesus answered, truly

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I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh.

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That which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be anothen.

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The wind blows where it wishes. You hear it sound. You don't know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone born of the spirit. Nicodemus said, you can just see his mind going, how can these things be?

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Jesus answered him, are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Amen, amen. I say to you, we speak of what we know and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony.

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If I told you of earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you of heavenly things?

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No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the son of man must be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

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For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

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For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

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And you'll note then that from the old testament into the new, salvation over and again is a gift given by God.

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And we see that the reason why it is a gift given by God is because God not only gave us salvation, that's talking in the abstract, but he gave us salvation through his only son that he died for our sins, rose again from the grave for our justification.

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And God sent him into the world, not to judge us, but so that we might be saved through him.

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The judgment is still coming, but for all of us who are in Christ, those of us who are born from above, this judgment has already come down from God and the judgment is this, you are righteous by grace, through faith.

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The gavel has fallen and you have been found innocent all because of the great gift and mercy of God.

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And so the idea here is actually quite simple. You see, remember our epistle text said that God calls the things into existence that do not exist.

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And we know from scripture and our sermon last week and our text last week that we were all born dead in trespasses and sins, each and every one of us under the dominion of the devil and powerless to save ourselves and dead people.

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The one thing I've noted about them is they are incapable of raising themselves. Haven't seen that trick done yet.

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Even Houdini hasn't pulled it off and he said he was going to try. Think about that.

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Instead, God calls us out of darkness into light through the preaching of the gospel and in the waters of baptism that we in our waters of baptism have been united with Christ in his death and his resurrection.

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And the spirit has quickened us and made us alive and spoken us into existence and now calls the ungodly righteous because we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

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And all of this is by God's grace, his mercy, because of his great love for you.

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And this is truly good news. This is a better understanding of what these texts say than the way they're being twisted by so many today.

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And the reason why they're being twisted by so many today in all kinds of bizarre ways is because they do not understand the great gift that God has given us.

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They do not cherish this gift and they tacitly by their twisting of God's word deny that we are saved by grace through faith apart from works.

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And as a result of that, when they come across texts like this, they must twist them because they do not believe what it says and they refuse to proclaim it.

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It's a hard thing. But that's the truth. So don't allow yourself to be robbed of the great treasure that is in these texts.

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This is the very word of God given to comfort you and show you his great love and mercy for you.

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And these are promises that you can take to the bank. And these are the very promises that by believing in them, bring you to eternal life and salvation as a gift to not heed these words, to not believe the gospel.

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And here's a weird way of talking about it, to not obey the gospel. By believing it, you would literally jeopardize your soul.

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Because if you don't want to be saved by grace, then you're saying, I want to be saved by works.

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And all I have to say to that is good luck because scripture says by works of the law, no one is declared righteous before God.

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So the person who takes Genesis 12 and turns it into a purpose or destiny passage, or the person who takes

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John 3, 16 and turns it into a tithing passage, or the person who denies that God works and makes us alive and quickens us in the waters of baptism.

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That person is tacitly saying, I don't believe in salvation by grace through faith.

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So you better get busy and make sure you've done your thing so that you can be saved.

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But scripture says, no, we're born from above. We are born of God. Not by the will of man or the will of the flesh, but totally born from God as a gift.

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And God has done this for us, to us, for our salvation. Do you believe?

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Then God counts that belief as righteousness. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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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, 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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