God Fulfills His Promise to the Nations

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. John, chapter 15, verses 9 -17.

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As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

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If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in His love.

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I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

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My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this than he lay down his life for his friends.

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You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business.

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Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I learned from the Father I have made known to you.

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You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.

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Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command. Love each other.

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In the name of Jesus. Amen. The whole world is broken.

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Something is terribly wrong and we all know it. Chaos stalks our lands and has been doing its wicked work on all the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve for millennia.

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No generation of mankind has been untouched by the chaos. Everyone's story ends the same pathetic way.

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And now, at the opening of the 21st century, armies upon armies of humanity, entire nations in once great and proud empires from the ancient world now moulder in the grave.

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All of us have been made to suffer under a curse. Our bodies fail us. Our relationships are all fouled up, even the best of them.

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And we are a wretched lot, passing our days bickering and biting and devouring each other, toiling by the sweat of our brows to put food on the table.

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And when we've spent all of our energy and our bodies ache and creak under the strain, a new day dawns and we have to rise and toil again.

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But for what? Nothing we accomplish lasts. All that we build eventually falls apart and becomes as derelict as our bodies.

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Marriages fail. Mothers murder their unborn children. Fathers abandon and neglect their children.

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While caring parents, they end up watching their children die of cancer or have to bury them after a fatal bus accident.

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Spouses are taken from us by debilitating diseases and then, finally, by death itself.

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Nations rise, and then fall. Hopes rise, and then they're dashed against the rocks and shatter into useless fragments that are then gathered up in the dustbin and sent off to the dump.

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Fame doesn't last. Riches are fleeting. Fortunes are squandered. And not even science can fix what is broken for even the most skilled doctors ultimately cannot heal themselves.

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And they too die in hospice, just like so many of their patients. And don't even get me started on the politicians.

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They are utterly impotent. They have no ability to fix our world. The best that they can do is somehow try to keep the chaos in check.

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But then again, more and more politicians today seem to be in league with the chaos. And rather than punish evildoers, they instead reward evildoers and then use the authority of their political offices to persecute and oppress the few among us who have any semblance of virtue.

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There is no nation that you can flee to to avoid this curse. The curse is universal.

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And if you're honest with yourself, then you will confess that you are not the solution to this problem. In fact, you, like me, are part of the problem.

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If you were to lock yourself in a cabin on the remotest island in the Pacific, you would end up bringing the chaos with you.

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You are the disease. I'm the disease. And deep down in our hearts, we all know this is true, and we know that there's a

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God, and that we're all going to have to stand before Him. Men and women from every nation will have to give an account of every thought, every word, and every deed.

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We all know this. But we're not only good at deceiving others, we've become masters of deceiving ourselves.

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Despite the fact that we know that we will have to appear before the judgment throne of God, we tell ourselves crazy lies, lies that go like this.

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Oh, I'm a good person, because I'm not as bad as Hitler, Stalin, or Charles Manson. Granted, I'm not as good as Billy Graham or Mother Teresa, but overall,

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I'm a good person. This is nothing but self -deceiving crazy talk.

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Yet the grave, yeah, the grave, the graveyard out there, objectively proves that there isn't a single good person among us.

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Yeah, we're all evil and wicked, for the wages of sin, Scripture says, is death. And none of us has ever avoided payday and receiving the wages of our sin.

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Not one. So if you think about it... I'm painting a bleak picture here.

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If you think about it, it's not so difficult to explain the existence of evil in the world. What is almost impossible to explain is the existence of anything good, the existence of beauty, of virtue, of love.

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Our world seems hell -bent on ridding itself of these and violently snuffing out what little light there is in this world of darkness and evil.

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Even what little that seems virtuous and good within us is so weak and fragile that it never seems to get the upper hand.

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And things that you know that you ought not to do are the very things that you find yourself doing. And the things that you know you should be doing rarely, if ever, are done.

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We are a wretched lot. And every nation, every tribe, every tongue of men deserves a devil's hell.

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And deep down, we all know this to be true. But, and this is a big but, but the prophets long ago foretold that the seed of a woman would crush the head of the one who plunged us all into darkness and into this curse.

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He, the prophesied seed, he was prophesied to be the descendant of Abraham. And Abraham himself was told by God that through this offspring, every nation of the world would be blessed.

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Blessed by God. What an interesting word. Blessed. What a concept.

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Blessed. Every time I hear the word blessed, it's like that scene from the

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Shawshank Redemption where Andy locks himself in the room where the prison's PA system was kept and then he put on an opera music disc.

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You know, from the old record player. He put that and played the opera music over the prison's loudspeaker.

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And there, the scene shows all of these prisoners in their prison uniforms out in the exercise yard and over the

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PA comes this beautiful opera voice. And they all stop and listen and take it in.

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Slack jawed, right? The word blessed is like that.

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It was as if the angels of heaven had visited those prisoners and sang them a song that had once been performed in the throne room of the

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Almighty. But the prison guards were not about to stand by and let this beautiful music be played on their prison speaker system.

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So they quickly broke through the door that Andy had locked and they let Andy feel the wrath of their nightsticks.

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Blessed. Me, blessed. You, blessed.

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What a beautiful word, blessed. My life seems like it's anything but blessed, yet there is the promise from our

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Creator made to Abraham. Every nation, every single one of them, not just a chosen nation, not just a select few, but every nation of men would be blessed through Abraham's seed.

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The prophets further revealed to us that the Creator chose for Himself a nation from among the tribes of mankind through whom this seed would come.

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And now we, in our first reading this morning, have received a report from the men who were also born sons of Abraham, born children of Israel, that the

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Creator has kept His promise to Abraham. The context of our first reading this morning, keep in mind the day of Pentecost has already happened.

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It's the book of Acts. Christianity has started to spread like a wildfire. But up to that point,

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Christianity was a thoroughgoing Jewish religion. The only people who were confessing

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Christ as Savior were Jews. It seems a little odd for us to hear that today because so many

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Jews reject Jesus as the Messiah. But lest we forget, Christianity, God had to intervene literally in order for us

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Gentiles to hear it. So that's the context. And we find out that God had spoken directly to the

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Apostle Peter to go to visit a man by the name of Cornelius who was a

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Roman soldier. And by the way, Roman soldiers and Jews generally didn't get along.

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In fact, that relationship ended poorly. You remember in 70 A .D., the

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Romans had finally had enough of their marriage to the Jews, so to speak.

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And so they scraped the temple off the Temple Mount and destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the

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Jews, threw them out of the Promised Land. That's how things went. So Jews and, well,

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Romans didn't get along. And yet God sent Peter to go and meet with Cornelius.

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And so we pick up the story in Acts 10, verse 28. Peter said to them, you yourselves know how unlawful it is for a

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Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation.

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Yet things were so not good that to just show up at a Gentile's house could get you in a lot of trouble as a

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Jew. And so Peter acknowledges this fact. But God has shown me, he said, that I should not call any person common or unclean.

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And there's a reason for that. It's because God shows no partiality. Christ didn't die for a select few people or for people of only one tribe of humanity.

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Christ bled and died for the sins of the whole world. And so Peter says, God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.

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So when I was sent for, I came without objection. I asked then why you sent for me. So the centurion, that Roman soldier,

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Cornelius said, four days ago, about this hour, I was praying in my house at the ninth hour, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothing and said,

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Cornelius, your prayer has been heard and your alms have been remembered before God. Send therefore to Joppa and ask for Simon, who is called

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Peter. He is lodging in the house of Simon, a tanner by the sea. So I sent for you at once, and you have been kind enough to come.

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Now therefore, we are all here in the presence of God to hear all that you have been commanded by the

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Lord." This is a big deal. A Gentile hearing the

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Gospel. So Peter opened his mouth, and he said, truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, anyone who fears

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God and does what is right is acceptable to Him. Here again, our psalm that we recited.

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Psalm 98, Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things.

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His right hand and His holy arm, they have worked salvation for Him.

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The Lord has made known His salvation. He has revealed His righteousness in the sight of the nations.

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He has remembered His steadfast love and His faithfulness to the house of Israel. And all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our

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God. Peter continues, As for the word that He sent to Israel, preaching good news of peace through Jesus Christ, He is

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Lord of all. You yourself know what happened throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism that John proclaimed how

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God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. And Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

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Jesus did good to all who were oppressed by the devil. Is that not us? Are we not all oppressed by the devil?

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We are. Peter continues, We are witnesses of all that Jesus did, both in the country of the

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Jews and in Jerusalem. They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree.

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But God raised Him on the third day and made Him to appear, not to all the people, but to us who have been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead.

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Remember Jesus' words from our Gospel, Greater love has no one than this, and He laid down His life for His friends.

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Truly they did put Jesus to death, but Jesus laid down His life, and He laid down His life for you.

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Peter then continues, He, Jesus, commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the one appointed by God to be the judge of the living and the dead.

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To Him, to Jesus, all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.

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Every single one of us who believe in Christ receives the forgiveness of sins.

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We all know that we have to stand before God on Judgment Day, but Christ has stood in our place.

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He's stood in the gap. He's taken all of your sins upon Himself so that on that day, when the books are open, you have nothing to fear.

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All of your sin is atoned for. It's all answered for. It's all bled for. It's all died for. Christ was crucified for all of it, for you, and He's done this because He has great love for you, because He's laid down His life for you.

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And so while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the Word. And this is an oddity in Scripture.

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Baptism and the Holy Spirit always go together. And so the Holy Spirit acts all on His own without water to show that He has accepted even the

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Gentiles. So the Spirit fell on all who heard the Word and the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter.

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They were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles for they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling

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God. So Peter realized what's going on and he declared, well, can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people who have received the

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Holy Spirit just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

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Cornelius and his family are the first fruits of God's promise to bless all nations through the seed of Abraham.

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And when we look ahead now to the book of Revelation, the book at the end of the

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Bible, you get a peek, you get a glimpse of what it looks like at the end. Here's what it says in Revelation 7.

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John writes, Standing before the throne and before the

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Lamb and clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands and crying out with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our

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God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. And the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped

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God saying, Amen, blessing, glory, wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might be to our

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God forever and ever. John was seeing you in that throng, his

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Cornelius and his family. In that throng that cannot be counted, you are numbered.

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I am numbered. He was seeing us before the heavenly throne of God in His glory, worshiping, and praising, and declaring that salvation belongs to our

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God because God kept His promise to the nations.

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The Creator. Our Creator. Your Creator. The Great, the

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Almighty Yahweh, the One who was, who is, and who is to come. He has kept His promise.

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Hear this, all you nations and all you who are oppressed by the devil, who dwell in darkness, enslaved in sin, death, and the evil one.

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Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Born again.

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God was in Christ, reconciling the whole world to Himself and not counting your trespasses against you.

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For God the Father has laid on Christ the iniquity of us all. You are not excluded, nor are you outside of the reach of His grace.

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Repent. Repent. So many people think repentance is a one -time thing.

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For Christians, repentance is a daily lifestyle. Repent of your wickedness.

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Confess your sins. Agree with God that you are ungodly. Lay down your weapons. End your rebellion.

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God does not desire to send you to hell, so receive His pardon and His peace, won by Christ through His vicarious death on the cross and His resurrection from the grave.

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No longer do you need to dwell in darkness and bear the fruits of your rebellion against God, which ultimately come to nothing.

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I made a point earlier in the sermon to point out the fact that all of our accomplishments in this world end up amounting to nothing.

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Even look at the great pyramids in Egypt. They're falling apart.

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Nothing that man builds lasts forever. But hear again the words of our gospel. And listen to this.

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Your good works. Your love for your neighbor because Christ has loved you.

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These are not things that abide for a short term and then disappear.

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Jesus says that they will abide, and they will abide forever. You want to do something that matters, something that lasts, something that will not fall apart?

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Then love as you have been loved. All who are born in Christ, born of God, have been raised from the dead and can now bear the fruit of repentance.

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And rather than hating and being hated, we can love as Christ has loved us. And these good works do not wear out.

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They cannot be destroyed by time. They cannot be destroyed by the elements or even gophers and other vermin.

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They don't need fresh paint put on them either. So repent, believe, trust.

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Christ has conquered. He has risen. And he's done this for you. And God has kept his promise to the nation.

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And you who are in Christ are truly blessed. 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, Minnesota, 56744. And again that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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