Trinity's Rescue Mission

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. Matthew, the 28th chapter.

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Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw

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Him, they worshipped Him, some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the

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Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

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This is the gospel of the Lord. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You may be seated.

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In the name of Jesus. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

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Amen. Those sound like familiar words to you, right? And you're going to note, that's going to be an important aspect of what we're looking at in our text today.

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As it was in the beginning. We read in our gospel text that all authority in heaven and on earth has now been given to Christ, and Christ has given the command to go and make disciples of all nations.

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Now, a disciple is a learner, and I don't think Jesus is basically saying, go and set up Christian schools.

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That's not the point of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is to go and make disciples, baptizing them, and listen to what it says, in the name, singular, of the

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Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Why make disciples?

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By baptizing. Why make disciples? By teaching everything, all that Christ has commanded them.

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The reason why is because of everything that we just said at the beginning. As it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.

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Amen. The Great Commission, and now the falling of the Holy Spirit upon the church on the day of Pentecost, as we pick up the second half of the preaching of the

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Apostle Peter. It's all about the Trinity's great rescue plan.

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We need rescuing. And if you think it's not as bad as all of that, you don't know what you're talking about.

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Sin is not your friend, my friends. Sin is something that is horrible. It's absolutely destructive.

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It has robbed us of the great, good things that God created in the beginning. I think of the book,

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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Women's Bible Study will know I made reference to this yesterday.

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Why? Because it was sitting on my lips, because in my thoughts I was working out my sermon. But in The Voyage of the

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Dawn Treader, there is a kid whose name is Eustace Scrubb.

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Eustace rhymes with useless. And boy, is this a useless, miserable, awful character.

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If you know the story of the Chronicles of Narnia, you had the four kings and queens of Narnia.

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You had Peter and Edmund, Susan and Lucy. Well, they had to keep coming back to our planet here.

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And on one particular occasion in the story of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, they were visiting a family relative.

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Eustace is more than just a family friend. He's a relation, if you would.

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And what a miserable, entitled, complete know -it -all, arrogant, awful character.

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I wish I could say I've never met anybody like him, but I have. And so C .S.

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Lewis goes way out of his way to make him the most unlikable creature on planet Earth. And as the story goes,

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Lucy and Edmund find themselves coming back to Narnia through magic of a painting of the

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Dawn Treader. And Eustace gets dragged along for the adventure. And boy, does he cry and whine and complain and all this kind of stuff.

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But in one particular thing that happens in the story of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, they find an island, and they're out exploring the island.

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And Eustace is by himself and comes across a dragon's treasure. And, of course, he wouldn't know this because he's never been to Narnia before, and no one has taken the time to explain to him how the ropes work in a magical world.

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Dragons' treasures usually have curses. Not a good thing to steal them. Otherwise, things might happen to you poorly.

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And so he steals a piece of a dragon treasure, puts it on. It's a golden armband. Puts it on his arm.

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And next thing you know, he wakes up, and he is now a dragon. It's kind of funny.

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I'm sitting there going, yeah, about time something awful happened to this kid. He's got his comeuppance. But Louis was at work here doing something important for all of us because everything in the

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Chronicles of Narnia is allegory. It has a spiritual meaning. He's trying to teach us something about our sin and our savior.

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And poor Eustace now begins to look like the miserable wretch that he is. He's a terrible dragon.

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He's not very good at it and laments the fact that he is no longer a human being. But as the story goes, he's eventually redeemed.

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But the cure is not that great of a cure because as the details go,

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Eustace undergoes a baptism of sorts. But the character who plays the role of Christ in the

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Dawn Treader and in the Chronicles of Narnia is the great lion Aslan. And Aslan has to help remove

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Eustace's dragon skin, which required Aslan to take his claws and dig them into the dragon skin and rip them off, rip it off of Eustace.

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Painful, uncomfortable indeed. But is it not the same with us?

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The great rescue mission of the Trinity, God the

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Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, has been in progress for a long time.

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We are only the latest generation to have the gospel reach us, the good news of the forgiveness of sins won by Jesus Christ.

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And Christ commands everybody everywhere. Every time I say it like that, I think of that line from Back to the

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Future. Everybody everywhere is going to say that Clint Eastwood is the biggest yellow belly in the West. But everybody everywhere is to hear the gospel, they are to repent of their sins, and they are to trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.

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And that is salvation having come to us. But salvation from what?

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Look at yourself. Look at the world. Look at the wake of destruction that is following behind you because of your sin.

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And you'll note as you get older, the wake gets longer, and the destruction at times can even become more severe.

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Just look at how you lament, how you do not love God with all of your heart. And look how poorly you treat each other.

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How do I know this? I hang out with you guys. But note this. You'll note that I'm not much better than y 'all.

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In fact, I have to confess my sins with you each and every Sunday. Sin is not our friend.

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Sin is a terrible consequence. And this world is a mess. And it's falling apart. I've noticed that the hurricane season has already begun.

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And all I can say, every time I see one of those things on a satellite view, I sit there and go, well, there's another one of God's little judgments, like a baseball coming in, a high fastball, and who's going to end up having their life upturned and destruction or lose their life as a result of these events.

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And yet they happen year after year after year after year. But it wasn't always this way.

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When we talk about salvation as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever, amen, isn't that the whole point of our opening text?

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It's to tell us, to reveal to us something that we have no memory of.

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A world that is good. A world that is amazing and beautiful, where there is no death or disease, where there are no broken bones, broken relationships, destroyed bodies and sicknesses and things like this.

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A world that God created that was good. But here's the thing. The goodness of the creation that we see as God unpacks, as he over six days creates the world, and yes, by the way, it was six days.

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If you're thinking, well, what about that evolution thing? Mr. Darwin is now a creationist. You just need to know this.

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He has been ever since his death. He knows the truth. And Mr. Darwin's theory is running on hard times with the new sciences related to DNA.

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Keep that in mind. God here reveals to us a reality that we are not aware of, but it's reality nonetheless.

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I recently saw on Twitter, I watched a movie on Twitter this week. Can you believe that? The Matt Walsh movie,

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What is a Woman? They made it available for free on Twitter, and it was a little hard to find.

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Twitter seemed to bury it and sandbag it. But I was able to watch it this week, and one of the things that has struck me in watching this is that sin makes us, dare

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I say it, stupid. Just legitimately stupid.

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Matt Walsh asking person after person, what is a woman? Gender studies professors and people like this being offended by the question, like literally ready to toss their cookies and throw fists for having the question asked them.

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But each of the answers pretty much amounted to this. What is a woman? That's the answer.

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But over and again you heard from the people who were buying into you can be whatever you want to be.

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They talked in this term. We need to recognize that different people have different truths.

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There's your truth, and then there's my truth. And so Matt Walsh would ask a question based upon what?

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Reality. And they would say, well, that's your truth. And you need to be careful because your words are very weaponized there.

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I'm detecting a bad attitude. And so we live in a world where sin causes us to live in complete and utter fantasy that there's this thing called my truth.

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Well, what may be true for you? Well, it's not true for me because my truth tells me that I am, well, skinny.

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That's what my truth tells me. I have six -pack abs, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is intimidated by my manliness when

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I'm in his presence. That's my truth. Yeah! Why aren't you guys buying this?

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But there is a thing called reality. And reality is the truth.

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Christ is the truth. God's Word is truth. The Holy Spirit whom he sends on Pentecost is the spirit of truth.

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So let me tell you again the truth of how we came to be here.

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And it has nothing to do with lightning striking some primordial ooze, creating amoebas that then jumped onto the shore, climbed up a tree, became apes, and then fell out of the tree as human beings.

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Has nothing to do with that. Where we came from is far better than that. And it's important to know if we're talking about salvation, you want a picture of what we are being saved to.

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What's the terminus of all of this? As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

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It says these words in the opening of our Old Testament text. Barashit bara Elohim et ha'shamayim ba 'eth ha 'eretz.

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In the beginning, God, He created the heavens and the earth.

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The earth was without form and void. Darkness was over the face of the tahom. And the ruach Elohim was met a kafetting over the face of the waters.

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And God said, let there be light. And there was light.

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And God saw that the light was good. You're going to hear that word throughout this text.

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Good. The Hebrew word is tov. And God saw that the light was tov.

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If I were to ask you how you're doing today in Hebrew, right? Mashlem chahim, right?

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How are you today? You might respond, tov, I'm good, right? If you're doing really good, you'd say, tov ba 'od.

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And now if you're doing okay, you'd say, besedo. Besedo, it's okay, right? But here, and again, we hear that everything that God created was good.

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Why? Because God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is good.

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Don't let the devil and those who are listening to the lies of Satan fool you. God is not a tyrant.

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He's not a meany, poopy head in the sky who's going to throw lightning bolts at you if you disobey his commands.

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He has given his commands in order to save us because sin is something awful.

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The consequences of it are devastating. It's not good that we are separated from God, separated from each other, and face death as the right consequence of our sin.

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Here it says God created these things, and everything he created was tov. It was good.

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And here then we learn over the course of six solar days. Are they real solar days?

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Yeah. Otherwise, it doesn't make any sense. There was evening and there was morning the first day.

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Jesus affirms this account in the book of Genesis as being God's word and how it went down.

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If you disagree with Jesus regarding this, that's not a good way for a disciple to behave.

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Christ affirms the creation. He affirms Adam and Eve, affirms that we were made in the image of God, male and female.

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He affirms that Abel was killed by Cain, and that the account that we have in the book of Genesis is actual history.

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But sin makes us stupid, and a lot of people who call themselves Christian feel the pressure to bend the knee to the latest mythologies relating to how we came about.

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I think about Andy Stanley. He recently preached on creation. And his explanation as to why

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Genesis 1, 2, and 3 exist is because humanity at the time this was written was too stupid to understand the concept of evolution.

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And so you know how when you talk to your three -year -old and the three -year -old asks you, Mommy, where do babies come from?

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When they're three years old, you might say something like, Well, there's a stork that flies around and drops babies in chimneys, kind of like Santa Claus.

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Please don't do that with your kids, by the way. Please don't do that. But his explanation for why we have

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Genesis 1 here in this creation account is because when this was written, humanity was the equivalent of a three -year -old.

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They weren't ready for the meat of evolution, so they just needed to be reassured that we were created.

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But the mechanism is never described. He doesn't believe the mechanism. But the book of Hebrews is very clear that we were created by the

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Word of God. That was the mechanism by which the universe itself was made.

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And as a result of it, we are unwise and acting as very unfaithful disciples when we sit there and go,

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Well, it didn't really happen this way. Really? Were you there? Because I know a guy who was there.

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His name is Jesus Christ. He is God in human flesh. And he says that this is how it went down.

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And by the way, he rose bodily from the grave three days after he was crucified by Roman soldiers under the orders of Pontius Pilate.

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What are your credentials? Were you there when this happened? Have you risen from the dead?

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If you're going to contradict Jesus, I want you to prove to me that you have the right to do so and that your opinion should carry as much weight as Jesus's.

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And so as soon as you die and rise three days after you've been dead, I'll begin to listen to you regarding where we came from.

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Until then, in the words of Dr. Evil, zip it. That's what you should do.

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We Christians have no right to contradict Christ. But as we read through this account then, it's just such an amazing picture of what

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God has done. Moving on to the third day, it says that God said,

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And God called the dry earth. Here in the Hebrew, it's a wonderful word, eretz.

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We say earth in English. But it makes me wonder, is Hebrew the original language of humanity, right?

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If it is, then the name of our planet isn't earth. The name of our planet is? They bet.

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Hang on, I got it. Fortunately, I have my feathers numbered.

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It's just such an emergency. That'll work.

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So the point that I was making is this, is if Hebrew is the original language of humanity, if that's what

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Adam and Eve spoke, then the name of our planet is eretz. It's an interesting name.

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But you have to roll your R's when you say it. Eretz. You've got to kind of do that thing. We English speakers don't do that very well.

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So he called the dry land eretz. And it was so. The earth eretz brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind.

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God saw that it was tov, good. And then there was evening, and there was morning the third day.

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God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens. You'll note that God created light before he created the sun, the moon, and the stars.

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And the atheists look at this and go, well, see, that's proof that this account is just silly. Really? You really know how things go?

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You'll note that eventually God will create the sun, the moon, and the stars, and the planets, and all these things, and then assign light to them.

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But you see, the fact that God is light, and in him there is no darkness, these are mysteries in the creation that we should take into consideration rather than thinking we know, like Eustace Scrubb, how the world works.

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In reality, we don't. God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.

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Let them be for signs and for seasons, for days and for years. Let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.

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And when God says something's going to happen, guess what? It happens, and it was so. God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night, and he also made the stars.

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God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good tov.

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And there was evening, and there was morning the fourth day. And then God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.

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You know, one of the things I enjoy, you guys remember winter? It was only just a couple weeks ago that we still had snow on the ground.

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But one of the things I really enjoy is now that the snow has melted and the trees have finally put their leaves out and things are blooming and happening, have you noticed when the birds start singing in the morning?

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They don't wait until the sun comes up. About an hour before the sun comes up, it sounds like a tropical rainforest outside in my yard.

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Those things are squawking and chirping and talking and yipping and yapping, and it's just an amazing thing to do.

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Sometimes I'll actually turn the fan off in my window and just sit there in the coolness of the dark still and listen to the sound.

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It's an amazing sound. One of the things I recently read about was how beneficial birds are to plants.

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I had never considered this. I remember my mother -in -law. Before she was my mother -in -law, she was my girlfriend's mother.

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But my mother -in -law, back in the day, she used to play plant music, music to her plants, and swear on a stack of Bibles that it had beneficial impact on her plants by playing music to them.

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And I'm thinking, lady, you're nuts. That's just the goofiest thing that I have ever heard in my life.

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And then this week I read an article. And there are scientific peer -reviewed studies now that have shown the beneficial benefits of plants and music and then goes on to say that the birds initially are the ones who have the greatest benefit on the plants.

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Them singing their morning songs and doing their chirping has a positive impact on your flowers, on your trees, and on your vegetables and things like this.

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And I thought, oh no, I owe my mother -in -law an apology. Decades ago,

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I thought she was a loon. Turns out she knew what she was talking about. And so you'll note that right after God creates vegetation, he creates fishies, and he creates birds.

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And everything is intertwined, and it all works together. And one of the things I love is animals.

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We recently had to put down our dog Luther. Sad to see him go. But that's the thing. I've kind of gotten to the point where I don't know if I ever want another pet because I keep outliving them.

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And it's really sad to be parted from such a faithful companion and a good dog that he was.

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And so to comfort myself, I from time to time like to watch those videos by the Dodo. Have you ever seen those little cat rescue videos and stuff like this?

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I always love it when they find a group of kittens. There was a guy walking down a road in the middle of nowhere, and this tiny little kitten comes out, and there's like no mother cat around, and the kitten's like mewing, save me, save me.

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And so the guy picks it up, and then the next thing you know, six and seven of its little brothers and sisters come running out, and he's got a whole herd of cats following him.

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And I just sit there and go, oh, this is the cutest thing ever. And you want to see what happens to them and stuff like this.

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You see, the animals are a great blessing, and we were originally to be the ones who stewarded them and would have done so exactly the way

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God has done. So when we read about this account, think about all the good that still does exist, but not as it should be as it was in the beginning.

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And you begin to see, again, just how good Tov, God, is.

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God created the sea creatures, every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm according to their kinds, every winged bird according to its kind, and God saw that it was

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Tov. Good. God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, multiply, fill the waters and the seas, let birds multiply on the earth.

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And there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. How many species of animals now are extinct?

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How many animals have we never seen because we've hunted them and killed them into extinction?

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The list keeps growing, by the way. Then God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock, creeping things.

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If you want to know what a creeping thing is, think of beetles and things like this, and ants and bugs and mice and little critters and things that kind of stay close to the ground.

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I believe that spiders probably came into existence after the fall. That only makes sense.

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Because they are nightmarish little creatures. Anyway, and they never survive once I see them in my house, but all of that being said.

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So the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, livestock, creeping things, beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and it was so.

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God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind, and God saw that it was

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Tov. Good. And now in verse 26, the

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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have a discussion among themselves.

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We believe in one God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They speak to each other.

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They love each other. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Son is the only begotten

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Son of the Father. The Father is uncreated and unbegotten. And yet they are all one

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God. And now Father, Son, and Holy Spirit come together and the crowning achievement of humanity, of His creation is humanity.

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Let us make man in our image. Now who is made in the image of God?

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Is it men or women? The answer is both, right? After our likeness, let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth so God created man in His own image.

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In the image of God, He created him male and female. He created them.

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Men and women both are made in the image of God. And you'll note this is a beautiful picture of an idyllic planet.

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Paradise is often how it is described. That's what the original earth was.

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And then note here, God blesses man and wife. He says, God said to them,

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Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

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And God said this, watch this, watch where the food comes from. It's important.

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Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit.

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You shall have them for food. We were vegetarians initially.

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You'll note, what is your refrigerator? I want you to think about it for a second.

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In my refrigerator, we have a freezer portion, we have a cold portion, and my wife goes to the store, and when she goes to L &M

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Meats, the meat ends up in my refrigerator. What is it? It's kind of like a morgue, right?

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Everything that I eat has died, right? It's a little box of horrors if you think about it, but that's not how it was originally intended.

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God originally intended the earth that we would eat fruit and vegetables, living fruit and vegetables and things like this, not the morgue thing that's in my refrigerator, right?

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Think about it, okay? The difference between life and death comes into play.

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But what about the animals? And to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life,

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I have given every green plant for food. Now, here's an important note. I'm pretty sure

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Bible scholars will agree with my interpretation here that God originally intended for kale only to be eaten by animals.

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I just want to make that clear, okay? I'm sure that this is a godly interpretation.

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Just have to insert this, okay? But you're going to note here, the animals, what were they given for food at the creation?

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Plants. Is it any wonder that in the prophet Isaiah, in that beautiful picture at the end of Isaiah of the new earth, you have a lion laying down with a lamb or a wolf laying down with a lamb, and everything, including tigers and bears and lions, they're all eating grass.

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Isn't that exactly how it was in the beginning? Consider the implication. God gave food for every creature, not that they would eat each other.

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Marlon Perkins and his Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom shows, which traumatized me when

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I was a kid, they will never again in the new earth have to see a crocodile eat a caribou.

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It's a terrible thing. If you've never seen it, don't Google it. It's awful to watch. To watch a lion capture a gazelle and watch it die, it's just awful.

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But that's not how it was originally intended to be. Everything ate these plants.

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And so, it says it was so. And then God saw everything that he had made and then listened to the words.

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And behold, it was tov ma 'od, very good.

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But is it very good now? No, it's not. It's just not.

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This is what sin has done to us. But God hasn't rested on his laurels.

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Although he took the day off on the Sabbath, the seventh day, God has not rested.

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He has put himself into the fray. He's done something in order to rescue us from sin, death, and the devil, and the consequences of our rebellion against him.

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Christ says again in our Gospel text, Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

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And so, from the time of Christ's ascension and the falling of the Holy Spirit, the church has been out proclaiming good news.

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Good news that as it was in the beginning, it will be again.

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That what we lost will be restored. All because Christ has bled and died for our sins, suffered in our place, reconciled us to God, and he has promised that when he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, he will create a new heavens and a new earth, not in six days, but in one glorious day.

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And we are all invited. In fact, we're more than invited. Each of you, the reason why you're here today, otherwise

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I don't know why you're here, you believe in Jesus. You trust in him, the one who is good, who is true, who is loving and merciful and kind.

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He knows your sin. You know your sin as well. And yet he is not satisfied to give you the consequences of your sin by sending you to hell.

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Instead, he has forgiven you, washed away your sins in the waters of baptism, given you the

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Holy Spirit to convict you of your sin, and he's given you his word to continue to assure you and give you confidence that in him there is forgiveness and life, and that when he returns in glory, you have nothing to fear from him.

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You have everything instead to look forward to. And the restoration of paradise that we had lost.

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And so we find the Apostle Peter in our epistle text today, our second text, and he's preaching.

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Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works, wonders, and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know.

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This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God.

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Listen to those words. Was it an accident that Jesus was on the cross? That was according to plan.

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I remember a few years ago preaching during Holy Week on a good

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Friday and using an illustration from an 80s television show that I overwatched when

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I was a kid. The A -team, right? Hannibal. He always had this saying. He said, I love it when a plan comes together.

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That there's Christ hanging on the cross for your sins and for mine, and it was all according to plan.

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Peter here on the day of Pentecost affirms this. He was delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God because God is busy working to this day to save you.

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To save me. But then he says these words.

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You crucified and killed Jesus by the hands of lawless men. I always think that was, initially

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I thought that was really unfair of Peter. Come on. It's the day of Pentecost. Christ was crucified 50 days before this.

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How many people there at Pentecost that he's preaching to were in the crowd when

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Jesus was on trial saying crucify him, crucify him? A handful? A dozen?

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Maybe 20? I don't know what the number is, but there was people from all over the

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Mediterranean world and the Roman Empire there on the day of Pentecost and they weren't there when

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Jesus was on trial. How is it that he can say these words?

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You delivered him up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God. It's actually quite simple.

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When Adam and Eve sinned, did you sin? If you say no, you got this wrong.

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You see, Adam and Eve's sin, Adam's sin in particular, is held against you. You're responsible for what he did.

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So am I. His sin is my consequence. We're all suffering for it.

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In the same way then, Christ, when he was put on the cross, all of the people in the crowd who were shouting crucify him, they were our stand -ins.

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Doesn't matter if you were there or not. He said, I was born like 2 ,000 years later. Doesn't matter. If you were there on that Friday in the morning, you would have been screaming at the top of your lungs, crucify

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Christ. You and I are all guilty of the death of Christ because it's our sin, your sin, my sin that put him on the cross.

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That's the point that Peter is making. So we are all guilty of crucifying our

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God, crucifying our Savior, Jesus. But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

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David says concerning him, I saw Yahweh always before me. He's at my right hand so that I may not be shaken.

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Therefore, my heart was glad, my tongue rejoiced, my flesh also will dwell in hope.

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For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your Holy One see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life and you will make me full of gladness in your presence.

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David here is prophesying of Christ and His death. That His body would not see corruption.

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And all of this is because Christ's gladness is our forgiveness.

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Christ's joy is our being reconciled to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit whom we have sinned against.

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And it is His great joy that we are forgiven and pardoned with our own eyes, with our own ears, with our own hands, and tongues, and voices, experience the world as it was always meant to be because of what

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He's done for us. So Peter says, Brothers, I say to you with confidence about the patriarch David.

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He both died and was buried. His tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to Him that He would set one of His descendants on His throne,

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He foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ. That He was not abandoned to Hades nor did His flesh see corruption.

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This Jesus God has raised up and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the

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Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out that you yourselves are seeing and hearing the

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Holy Spirit. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself said, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool.

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So let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain. Let all of you in Kongsvinger, joining us online wherever you are, know for certain that God has made

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Jesus both Lord and Christ, this One whom we have crucified by our sin.

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But know therefore, now when they heard this, all the people were cut to the heart and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles,

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Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent. Be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the

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Holy Spirit. For the promise, the promise of the salvation, the promise of the forgiveness of your sins, the promise of eternal life, the promise of the gift of the

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Holy Spirit, it's for you. It's for your children, all who are far off and everyone whom the

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Lord God calls to Himself. So brothers and sisters, rejoice in this fact today.

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God has called you. God has called you out of darkness into life.

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He has called you out of sin. He's called you out of slavery. He has called you.

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He has forgiven you. He has washed away your sins. He has given you the gift of the Holy Spirit.

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God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is not content in letting you perish eternally.

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He has done everything possible so that you can be forgiven. You are part of the called.

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God the Father has called you. And so, note then, we are saved from this crooked generation and rejoice then in the great gifts that you have received from Christ and take solace and comfort in the fact that our

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God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit has done so much to restore us to what we lost.

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All because of Christ. In the name of Jesus. Amen. And again, that address is

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