The Church Needs to Repent for Not Preaching Repentance

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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Mark, chapter 6, verses 1 -13. Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples.

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When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue. And many who heard him were amazed.

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Where did this man get these things, they asked? What's this wisdom that has been given to him that he even does miracles?

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Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon?

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Aren't his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them,

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Only in his hometown, among his relatives, and in his own house is a prophet without honor. He could not do any miracles there except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them.

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And he was amazed at their lack of faith. Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village, calling the twelve to him.

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He sent them out two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits. These were his instructions.

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Take nothing for the journey except a staff. No bread, no bag, no money in your belts.

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Wear your sandals, but not an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town.

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If any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them.

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They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

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In the name of Jesus. Our text for today is taken from our gospel text.

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And it says this, If any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.

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So they went out and proclaimed that people should, here's the word, repent.

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Yeah, get this. Ancient Christianity, under the tutelage and instruction of Jesus, was a message of repentance.

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We seem to have lost that today. Let me digress for a second. I don't know if you've noticed the news, but things seem to be going haywire here in the

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United States. I'm going to make something very clear. Pagans do what pagans do because pagans are pagans.

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Do you know what I'm saying? Cows moo, dogs woof. Pagans sin. And our country is experiencing a lot of moral upheaval and turmoil.

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And I lay all of the blame, not on the politicians, not on the culture. I lay all of the blame on the church.

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And I'll explain in a minute. We've lost that important word, repent. And it goes way back.

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There's a reason why there are churches today that are blessing same -sex marriages. And I'm more alarmed at that than I am about the society doing it.

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Because, again, pagans do what pagans do. You know what I mean? So let me point this out.

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In our text that I've chosen from our gospel text, it begins with Jesus, though, going to his hometown.

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And, of course, they threw a parade, right? They put out the bunting. Local boy becomes celebrity prophet.

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And everybody welcomed him in the synagogue, and they gave him the keys to the city. That's not how it went, is it?

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No. Jesus in his hometown was rejected. And he could do very few miracles because of their lack of faith.

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They didn't believe. They didn't believe. So if Jesus is rejected by those who know him best, it shouldn't surprise us when we find ourselves in hot water when we're preaching

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Jesus. Because Jesus said, they didn't like me. They're not going to like you either. That's the

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Roseboro paraphrase, and I pray that that translation never comes out. So let's go to this thing again.

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Jesus said, if any place will not receive you, Jesus actually anticipated that they're not going to roll out the red carpet every time you proclaim him and tell people to repent and be forgiven.

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He says, if any place will not receive you, you know what you do? Change the message. Make it a little bit more appealing.

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That's what you do. You go out there, and you find a way to, you know, make it so that you can put on a spectacle.

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Maybe have a circus or a carnival. Maybe have your pastor dress up in a clown suit or come in in an

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Elvis costume. That'll bring in the crowds, right? That's not what

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Jesus said. If any place will not receive you and will not listen to you when you leave, shake off the dust that's on your feet as a testimony against them.

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So they, Jesus' disciples, went and proclaimed, again, listen, that people should, here it is again, repent.

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In other words, you don't get to stay in your sin. God doesn't wink at it. God is not up in heaven as some elderly grandfather who likes to put the butterscotches in his pocket.

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You know what I'm talking about? My grandfather would do this, okay? And it didn't matter how misbehaved his grandchildren were, including me.

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We'd all get a little pat on the head, and he'd give us a butterscotch. And we can be little hooligans. God is not like that.

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And Jesus is not like that. In fact, if you look with me in Luke 24, verses 45 through 47,

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I'd like to point something out. This is Luke's account of the Great Commission. And in Luke's account of the

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Great Commission, Jesus actually gives us the message. In Matthew's account, he tells us what to do, right?

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Matthew says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching all that I have commanded you.

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This is what Jesus says in Matthew. But in Luke's account of the Great Commission, we get the message.

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Here's what it says. Luke 24, 45. He opened their minds to understand the

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Scriptures and said to them, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and here it is, and that repentance and the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem.

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In order to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins, the two go together.

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They're like peanut butter and jelly. In order for repentance and forgiveness of sins to be proclaimed, that requires a preacher, a

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Christian, a pastor, a teacher, to proclaim both God's law and the gospel.

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You don't get to just preach the gospel. Because what happens when you only preach the gospel is that the idea goes that no longer is

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God love, but love becomes God. You see the difference? Love becomes

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God when you only preach the gospel. Oh, you want to get married and you have a partner that's the same sex as you.

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Well, that's okay. Jesus died for everybody so we can bless that marriage. No, we can't.

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Because we have to proclaim repentance and the forgiveness of sins. In order for sins to be forgiven, one has to acknowledge that they need to be forgiven.

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And before that can happen, you must preach God's law. The two go together. If you only preach the law, you create a bunch of legalists running around the landscape thinking that they're holier than thou and that they're earning brownie points with God and they're going to heaven on their own steam.

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That's another error, by the way. You've got to avoid both errors. We're not antinomians and we're not legalists.

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We hold law and gospel in tension, understanding that God has given both and they serve a function. Luther put it this way.

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He said, Always preach in such a way that if the people listening to you do not come to hate their sin, they will instead hate you.

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That's a good quote. Some pretty good advice. Paul, writing to young pastor

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Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, says this, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead.

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Notice it's in light of the fact that Jesus is returning. We sang about it in the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It's kind of weird for me to sing the

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Battle Hymn of the Republic because clearly, at the time that it was written, the Christian faith and patriotism were somewhat intertwined.

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They seem to be quite disconnected today. But Paul says, in light of Christ's imminent return and judgment, and he's going to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing in his kingdom, in light of the fact that what we're dealing with are ultimately the ultimate matters of life and death.

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Believe me when I tell you, it's all about that last day. You remember when you were in high school?

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I went to high school as a freshman, and I don't know about you guys, but I was totally oblivious about how high school worked.

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I had no clue that at the end, that they were going to have a valedictorian and a salutatorian, and that people were going to be honored and stuff like that at some banquet at graduation.

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No clue. And I could care less. But then when it came time, I sat there and go, Dang it, you know,

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I was actually smarter than that kid that got the valedictorian. But it's like,

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I wasn't even cognizant of, there's like a graduation day and there's things that happen, right? Think of, well,

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Christ's judgment is kind of like graduation day, if you would. And on that day, the only thing that matters is what you're going to hear from Christ.

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Either he's going to welcome you into his kingdom, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant, or he's going to say, depart from me,

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I never knew you. That's all that matters on that day. And where you end up after that is either in Christ's eternal new heavens and new earth, or you end up in the lake of fire.

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And believe me, it's uncomfortable there. And that's an understatement. So in light of the fact that Christ is going to return and judge the living and the dead, here's what

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Paul says to Pastor Timothy. Preach the word. This isn't a game.

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Be ready in season and out of season. Oh yeah, that means there's times when preaching the word is not going to be in vogue.

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Reprove, rebuke, and exhort. Two negatives and one positive. So maybe two -thirds of my ministry needs to be negative.

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I'm joking about that. But do so with complete patience and teaching, for a time is coming,

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Paul says, when people will not endure sound doctrine. But having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.

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They will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

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Is that not today? I cannot even begin to tell you.

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I've lost count of the hundreds of pastors I've heard about over the years who have lost their jobs as pastors and have been run out on a rail because they dared to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins and proclaim

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Christ and Him crucified. You know what that does nowadays? It just upsets people. It's divisive.

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It's so negative. It doesn't make me feel good about me. Well, it's not supposed to, is it?

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But see, the thing is, those who turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths are wandering their way right into hell.

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Because remember, it's all in light of Christ's imminent return and judgment that we are to do these things. Repentance is the message that Jesus taught

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His disciples to preach, and they preached it. If Peter were alive today, how popular would he be on Twitter?

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Facebook? Oh, he'd be a raving maniac, wouldn't he? People think he's some kind of Westboro Baptist nut job telling people to repent.

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But here's the important thing about this. Repentance is intimately tied to, if you would, conversion.

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And I want you to think about this. Francis Pieper, who is arguably the premier

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Lutheran dogmatician of the 20th century, in writing about conversion, this is where people go from being pagans to actually being

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Christians, kind of a big deal. He says this, Conversion is affected by the gospel with the aid of the law.

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Listen again. Again, conversion is affected by the gospel with the aid of the law. The inner motions of the heart which go to make up conversion, this is what you experience, are the terrors of conscience which arise from the knowledge of sin engendered by the law and the trust of the heart in the gracious promise of the forgiveness extended to the man in the gospel.

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Have you felt terrors of conscience over your sin? When I've preached over the past year, and I've preached the law, have you felt terrified by it?

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If not, then I need to ramp it up a little bit. I need to take it from maybe beating you with a stick to flamethrower.

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Take it up a notch. Because the reality of this situation is that God's law reveals you don't measure up.

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I don't measure up. You do not love God with your whole heart. How do I know this?

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It's real simple. When you're in trouble and things are going bad in your life, what do you turn to for comfort?

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Do you turn to comfort to God? Or do you disappear into a book, go on a binge on Netflix and watch five seasons of a program?

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Do you crawl into a bottle, pop a pill, go on the Internet and find a way to distract yourself?

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That's your God, by the way. The thing that you turn to in comfort in times of trial and tribulation, that's your

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God. Do you love God with your whole heart? Do you love your neighbor perfectly as yourself?

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And don't think for a second this has only to do with, like, the big sins, you know, murder, adultery, fornical mutilating, whatever that is.

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How about murdering your neighbor's reputation through your gossip? How about coveting your neighbor's stuff?

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How about wanting your neighbor dead because you're so angry at him you just want to knock his head off? All of that damns to hell.

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These are not small matters. They're huge. And if you were to stand before God without being covered in the perfect righteousness of Christ, which is given to you as a gift because Christ bled and died for your sins, you would be damned to hell.

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You are not a good person. I am not a good person. So don't think for a second that this doesn't impact us all.

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So conversion, it's very important that the law do its work and strip you of all notions that you are going to stand before God and God's going to say, you are the best thing next to sliced toast because you're not.

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Christ only died for the ungodly, and that means you and me. Pieper then continues,

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Where these two motions, contrition and faith, which are affected by the Holy Ghost through the law and the gospel, are wanting, no conversion has taken place.

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I want you to think about the implications of what he just said. Without contrition and faith, without the working of law and gospel, the

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Holy Spirit is the one who works that terror of conscience. It's the Holy Spirit who works faith in you to take comfort in the promises of God.

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Where those two things are wanting, no conversion has taken place.

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So imagine yourself, if you would, in a church. There's a pastor. And the pastor's very eloquent.

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He's very funny. He's very entertaining. And the rock and roll laser light smoke is just off the chain.

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But the message you hear is this. You've got some difficulty in your life.

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Yeah, we understand marriage is tough. Children are disobedient. That boss of yours might be a little bit difficult to work for.

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But if you promise God that you're going to apply his principles to make your life better, you can turn things around and experience victory in your life.

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So sign at the dotted line. I would like everybody to bow their heads and raise your hand if you're going to pray this prayer with me.

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Lord, I promise to apply your principles so that I can have better sex, better behaved children, and find my purpose.

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When somebody does that, have they been converted? Have they been brought to penitent faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins?

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No, they haven't. Or how about the churches in town that perform same -sex marriages?

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And let somebody who is in impenitent sin continue to wrongly believe that they have a right standing before God and that God is blessing this union.

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Have they been brought to penitent faith in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins? Have they experienced the terrors of conscience of the law and the comfort of the assurance of the forgiveness of sins in Christ?

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No, they haven't. Are they Christian? I would say no, they're not.

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Christ taught his disciples to preach repentance. Instead, our day is a lot like the day of Jeremiah.

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And if you have your Bible, I'd like you to look with me at Jeremiah 23. By way of historical note,

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Jeremiah was the last prophet that God sent to Israel before he judged them, before he had 90 % of the people of Israel killed systematically by Nebuchadnezzar as a judgment.

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Only 10 % of them remained alive, and they were taken out of the land and brought to Babylon and spent 70 years in Babylon as a consequence and a punishment for their obstinate refusal to bend the knee to God, be forgiven, and abandon their idolatry.

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And I want you to hear the spiritual condition of Jeremiah's day and tell me if this is not today.

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Jeremiah 23, starting at verse 9. Concerning the prophets. Notice it says prophets.

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Prophets are religious guys. Prophets are guys saying, Thus saith the Lord. They're speaking to people and giving them words from God.

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Here's what Jeremiah writes. My heart is broken within me, all my bones shake, and I am like a drunken man, like a man overcome by wine because of the

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Lord and because of His holy words. For the land is full of adulterers, because of the curse the land mourns, and the pastors of the wilderness are dried up.

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Their course is evil, their might is not right. Both prophet and priest are ungodly.

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Religious leaders who are what? Ungodly. Even in my house

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I have found their evil, declares the Lord. Therefore their way shall be to them like slippery paths in the darkness into which they shall be driven in fall.

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For I will bring disaster upon them in the year of their punishment, declares the Lord. In the prophets of Samaria I saw an unsavory thing.

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They prophesied by Baal and led my people Israel astray. But in the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing.

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They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers.

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Look at that. The religious leaders of Israel, immediately before God judged

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Israel, they were strengthening the hands of evildoers, preaching to them,

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Oh, all is fine, everything will be well, God is for you, so who could be against you?

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They strengthen the hands of evildoers so that no one turns from his evil. And that's what repentance is.

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So the religious leaders of Israel were strengthening the hands of evildoers and nobody was repenting. All of them have become like Sodom to me and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.

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Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets, Behold, I will feed them with bitter food and give them poisoned water to drink.

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For from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into all the land.

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Thus says the Lord of hosts, Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes.

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They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the

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Lord, It shall be well with you. And everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say,

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No disaster shall come upon you. What kind of religious leaders are these?

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Strengthening the hands of evildoers? But that's what's happening in the church today, is it not?

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Pastors, congregations. There's 375 ,000 congregations in the

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United States of America. How many of them are strengthening the hands of evildoers and telling,

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No disaster is going to befall you. You go ahead and have marital relations with anybody you feel like.

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It doesn't matter if it's a dude or a girl. Or maybe even three or four of you can get together and you can have one of those poly relationships.

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God's okay with that, because if you feel it in your heart, you've got to be true to who you are.

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Who's to blame for what's happening in society? The churches. Because pagans do what pagans do, because pagans are what pagans are.

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You can't expect unbelievers to bear the fruit of the Spirit. We've been given a message to preach.

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Repentance and the forgiveness of sins. And God is the one who raises people to life through His law and His gospel.

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But we want to be everybody's friends. We want to be liked by everybody. We want finally for the world to say,

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Those Christians are so hip. They're so cool. When were we told to ever believe that that was going to happen?

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So the religious leaders of Jeremiah's day, Oh, they were hip. They were popular. They were cool. Everyone was listening to them, and they were strengthening the hands of evildoers, and now

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God is speaking judgment against them. And he says, Don't listen to the words of the prophets.

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He didn't say don't listen to the words of the king or some raving maniac out there, some pagan idolater.

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These are people who were the religious leaders of Israel. How nonsensical is this?

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And then the Lord says this, For who among them has stood in the counsel of the Lord to see and to hear

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His word? Or who has paid attention to His word and listened? Behold, the storm of the Lord, wrath has gone forth, a whirling tempest.

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It will burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His heart in the latter days.

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You will understand it clearly. I did not send the prophets, yet they ran. I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied.

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But if they had stood in My counsel, they would have proclaimed My words to My people, and they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.

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You want to know how you can tell whether or not a pastor is really sent from God? Does he preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins, or does he coddle and comfort impenitent sinners?

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That's how you know the difference. Because God here says that if they had been sent by Me, they would have turned people from their evil and from the evil of their deeds.

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This is not a game. There are real people who are going to a real hell, and we have the real words of eternal life.

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Does the nation of the United States need to repent? Truly, it does. But before it will know that it needs to do that, the church must repent.

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We must speak the truth, and we must do it in love. And if they will not listen to us, we shake the dust off the feet and move on.

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We don't change the message. We're never going to be the cool trend on Twitter.

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No one's going to be coming and saying, I really am just dying to be in with you and hang with you

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Christian folk. Love what you're doing. That whole celibacy thing before marriage, and that whole thing about being married to one person your whole life of like the opposite sex, just mind -blowing.

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Can't wait to hang with you guys. It's never going to happen.

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So let's stop acting like we can make that happen. We need to repent and understand that we are dealing with the ultimate issues of life and death.

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We've been given a commission to make disciples, and we've been given a message, repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

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And unfortunately, the church, many portions of the church, in the visible church, have abandoned that message, abandoned the authority of God, don't believe in miracles, and believe that basically the message is all about can't we all just get along.

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And that's not our message. Our message is that Christ has bled and died for our sins.

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And your neighbors need to hear this. They need to hear this. They need to hear that they're sinners. They need to understand that they do not have a right standing before God, that they're ungodly, and that Christ has bled and died for them.

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And they need to be called to repent and to be forgiven. The message has never changed, because Jude writes, it's the faith once delivered to the saints.

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Christian theology does not progress, and it doesn't matter that we have smartphones today. The message still doesn't change.

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We have a timeless message to tell people until Christ returns. Let us repent, be forgiven for not being diligent in this message, and bear fruit in keeping with that message, and go and tell the world.

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Because if you're truly a patriot, and you care about this country and where it's going, we've got the only solution.

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Nobody, no politician can turn this thing around. Only God can. And that comes through the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins.

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

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Avenue NW, Oslo, 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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