Blessed Now and Forever

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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Matthew chapter 5 verses 1 through 12 Seeing the crowds Jesus went up on the mountain and when he sat down his disciples came to him

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He opened his mouth and he taught them saying Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

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Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted and blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth

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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy

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Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account

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Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you

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This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus Does anyone battle weary?

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If you noticed just how well for the birds this Christian life can seem and Our text today from the gospel

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Jesus talks about those who are blessed and it doesn't sound like a great list I mean those who are blessed in this lifetime.

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Let me kind of run through this Jesus said blessed are the poor in spirit Well, the reality is is that in this lifetime the people who seem to be blessed at least the ones who are successful Are not poor in spirit.

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They're quite aggressive. They're anything but poor in spirit They seem to have everything or at least claim to have all the spiritual edges on their side

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Blessed are those who mourn, you know more morning isn't a lot of fun. How about blessed are those who party like it's 1999

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Blessed are the meek you've got to be kidding me, right? Not in this lifetime the people who are blessed are those who are aggressive those who are ambitious Those who will step on other people for the purpose of attaining their goals

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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. You're not sure what that means. Let's move along.

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Blessed are the merciful No, come on. Blessed are those who hold a grudge Blessed are those who will refuse to forgive at least that's how it works in this lifetime

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Blessed are the pure in heart. That's another one that I don't even think makes sense in light of the world Blessed are the peacemakers.

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No, come on. Blessed are those who wage war who take territory at least that's how the world operates, right?

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and so you'll note that based upon the world standards the world's way of achieving the world's way of Defining what success and blessedness is that our text today seems to be running in the exact opposite direction and Yet what

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I find fascinating this All Saints Day is the juxtaposition between what

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Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount about those who are blessed and the vision that we have in our first reading from the book of Revelation of the glorious saints who've gone before us and it's weird because When we when we confess our faith together, we have that strange thing that we confess and nobody seems to know what it means

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We can we believe in the communion of the Saints Well by saying that we believe that we are one with them and yet we struggle here we are

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Persecuted here We are well under the boot of the devil tempted by the world crushed

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By the demonic forces and at war even with our own sinful flesh.

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This life is for the birds And it doesn't feel blessed being a Christian.

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Well, it's anything but easy And so let's take a look at these two poles and see if we can make sense of them because they seem to be

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Paradoxical Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says blessed are the poor in spirit. There's is the kingdom of heaven

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What on earth does that mean? Blessed are the poor in spirit. Have any of you had the lamentable experience of playing

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Monopoly against my wife? No The reason

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I bring this up is because Monopoly we all know how the game goes. It's a two -hour long extravaganza you go around and around the board you gather up properties for yourselves and Meek little children turn into cruel misers

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Right, and eventually what happens is is that you begin to lose money?

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You begin to lose property and with each and every go around go

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You're praying that you end up in jail so that you don't have to pay out more money, right? And you can only stay there for three turns

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But as your money supply dwindles, there's this small child going pay me pay me right now my wife had an interesting strategy that she would employ regarding this if one of our children would happen to land on Boardwalk or Park Place and purchase it up She would go into negotiation mode and she would say

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I've got Mediterranean Avenue and one crisp brand -new dollar bill that I'll give you in exchange for that property

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And of course the youngest child will always sit there and go. Hi wonder and the older kids are going.

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No, no, right? Now all of this is to say that we all have the experience of going bankrupt

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Where we see that no matter what our best efforts are Everything seems to be going downhill and at the end of it.

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What do you have? Nothing, everything goes to your debtors and your debtors happen to be your children.

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It's just painful But here's the idea blessed are the poor in spirit

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Those are the spiritually bankrupt The person who recognizes that in and of themselves they have nothing to offer

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God in exchange for their salvation Not only are their pockets out turned but the creditor has come and taken their clothes from them

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They don't even have pockets and then those fig leaves that they were trying to cover themselves up with those have been taken as well

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And given to the creditors and so there they stand before God completely naked With nothing to offer him in exchange for their salvation the poor in spirit are the spiritually bankrupt and Jesus says of those

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Not that they are cursed but that they are blessed and I think that's kind of the point because here's the issue

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Until you have absolutely Nothing to offer God only then are you ready to receive

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Christ and what he has done for you? And the gift of salvation as long as you think that you still need to bargain with Jesus offering him

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Mediterranean and one crisp new dollar bill. You're still not spirit spiritually bankrupt

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Sell it off Even then you cannot pay your debt. So this blessed are the poor in spirit

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Blessed are those who mourn Jesus says they shall be comforted Now a little bit of a note here

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Everybody mourns you live on this planet long enough. You're gonna lose that favorite dog.

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You're gonna lose your grandparents Maybe your mom and dad maybe a spouse or a child. This life is difficult.

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Everybody unbelievers and believers mourn Is that the kind of morning that Jesus is talking about here blessed are those who mourn?

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Well in light of the fact we're talking about those who are spiritually poor or bankrupt I think it's a good idea to recognize that this is the morning that comes

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When you recognize that you have sinned grievously against God and against others

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You think of what David writes in Psalm 51 after the whole Bathsheba affair where he writes in Psalm 51 have mercy on me

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Oh God according to your steadfast love according to your abundant mercy Blot out my transgressions wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin

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Against you and you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight So purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean

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Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow That's the kind of morning that's being discussed here the real stark honest

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Confession and lament that comes from recognizing of just how far short you've come for the glory of God Blessed of the meek they shall inhabit the earth

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I cannot think of a better way of understanding what the blessed meek are then in the contrast given to us in Luke 18

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Regarding the Pharisee and the tax collector the Pharisee at the time of prayer in the afternoon at the temple is

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Thanking God that he's not like other sinners That he's not like them that he's oh, he's so righteous

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He ties all the way down to a 10 % of his herbs in his garden Oh what a good boy he is and so you'll note that he's one who is exalting himself but Jesus commends the tax collector who couldn't even look up to heaven and prayed

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God be merciful to me a sinner and Jesus says of them Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled the one who humbles himself will be exalted

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Humbleness and meekness here go hand in hand. They are practically synonyms. So blessed are the meek

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They are the humble ones who confess that they are sinners in need of a Savior Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied

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Have any of you? Really thought hard about Just how awful it is to continue day after day as a

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Christian to be Regenerate and be a new person in Jesus Christ and still have a sinful nature that is hanging around your neck

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Any of you like done just like done Done with the sin thing and wish you could just be done with it all together

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Any of you look forward to the resurrection saying I cannot wait to be resurrected and to be done with sin never again to transgress any of God's Commandments either from the first or the second table to live on a planet where I'm not screwing everything up over and again,

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I'm reminded that One of the things that people say regarding those who lament all the difficulties in their life and all of the broken

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Relationships that they have somebody says look behind you. That's the wake of destruction You're leaving behind you and we're all doing that So hungering and thirsting for righteousness is what

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Paul talks about in Romans 7 He says I find it to be a law that when I want to do right evil lies close at hand

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You see I delight in the law of God in my inner being but I see in my members another law waging war against the law

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Of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Oh Wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death

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Within the next sentences, but thanks be to God there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus to hunger and thirst for righteousness is to lament the fact that sin still dwells within you

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Blessed of the merciful they shall receive mercy and this is what we pray every time we pray the

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Lord's Prayer Forgive us our debts as we have been forgiven our Debtors as we have forgiven our debtors as we forgive others

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You see the forgiven forgive Otherwise, how do they know how can you know whether or not they're forgiven?

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That's the idea We're all going to be stepping on each other's toes here because every single one of us are sinners that's a given but what isn't a given is whether or not you're going to forgive and Scripture teaches us that the merciful are the ones who are blessed not the ones who hold a grudge and We would be wise to pay attention to what scripture says and what

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Christ teaches us that we are to forgive others because we are forgiven We love because we are loved

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Blessed are the pure in heart. Now. This sounds like something we've got to get busy doing I better quick find some good heart soap some heart, you know cardia soap, you know heart soap something like that, right?

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Well Understand this you can't give yourself a pure heart Anymore than I can get rid of this grave for real.

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It ain't gonna happen So, how do we then acquire a pure heart the

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Prophet Ezekiel helps us out here Ezekiel says in Ezekiel 11 The Lord speaking I will give them one heart and a new spirit.

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I will put within them I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh

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So that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them and they shall be my people and I will be their

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God you see even this pure heart that Jesus talks about here is one that is given as a gift by God Himself Given in the waters of baptism in Colossians 2 we learned that our hearts were circumcised by the very hand of Christ Very hand of Christ and so we can point to a time in a place where we have received from Jesus this heart of flesh

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That wants to obey the statutes of God and then blessed are the peacemakers

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Now, let's talk about peacemakers here. What type of peacemaker are we talking about?

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well you notice that every one of these beatitudes is describing Christians and So a peacemaker then in this context the ones who are blessed are

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Those who go and tell the world that Jesus has bled and died for their sins

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So that they can have peace with God and peace with others This is what Paul writes in 2nd

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Corinthians 5 if anyone is in Christ He is a new creation the oldest past behold the new has come now all of this is from God who through Christ has reconciled us to himself and he has given to us the ministry of Reconciliation that is in Christ.

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God was reconciling the world to himself not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the ministry of Reconciliation You see the ministry of reconciliation is what makes you a peacemaker and you'll note then then that peace

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Begins with peace between somebody and God and then now then from there peace with each other

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And so this is listen to these great words Paul says therefore we all of us

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Christians We are now ambassadors for Christ and God is making his appeal through us

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Now that's right each and every one of you are ambassadors sent by King Jesus himself here to this part of the world to proclaim to everybody that you can find that They can be reconciled to God you see for our sake

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God made Jesus to be sin who knew no sin so that in him We might become the righteousness of God and therefore

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God is appealing to each and every one of us through us To be reconciled to God and then by extension to be reconciled to each other

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And of course, we all know that preaching the gospel is gonna get you in a wee bit of trouble

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It always seems to happen, doesn't it? And so Jesus says blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

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Yeah, say a word about Jesus say a word about him being the only way of salvation talk about him bleeding and dying for sins and sinners and call people to repent and to be forgiven and Somebody's gonna want to take your head off it always seems to work that way and So Jesus reminds us that when that happens to us that we are blessed and of course he continues blessed are those

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Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account

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Rejoice and be glad your reward is great in heaven for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you and So you'll note then that the beatitudes sound a lot like Recognizing your blessed state as you carry your cross to your death and follow

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Jesus That's the idea. And so what looks like to the world as one who is cursed

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Jesus lets you in on the secret. No, no, no, no, no. No, you are not cursed. I know this is tough

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I know that you're down under and you're pushed and oppressed and persecuted

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Don't worry about it believe what Jesus said you're not cursed You are blessed and if you need a little bit of a glimpse of what's coming well the scriptures have revealed that to us so that we can hang on to this glorious hope and see the reality of what truly is

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Because what good is it to know that you are blessed if you have no concept of what that blessing looks like and here's what?

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It looks like Revelation 7 After this John writes behold, I saw a great multitude that no one could number now

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That's an important little detail Because haven't you noticed that the Christian Church?

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Seems to be tossed and buffeted and always to be small and weak and really not all that strong and glorious And so you're sitting there going how many

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Christians are there in the world? Yeah, don't worry about that Let you in on a little secret

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Revelation says when it's all said and done the multitude is so great that Nobody can number this multitude of those who have believed in Christ the blessed ones and they're from every nation all

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Tribes and peoples and languages. That's right. They they come from Norway. They come from Germany They come from South Africa from Kenya from all parts of the world

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Australia and other places and they even speak Norwegian and they speak

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North Dakotan or Minnesotan they all are from everywhere and there they are standing before the throne and the lamb clothed in white robes

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We'll hear a little bit more about these white robes in a second Which is so important and then with palm branches in their hands

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They cry out with a loud voice and watch how this works. This is amazing So here you got this glorious picture of worship taking place before the throne of Christ in heaven

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The multitude is so vast so great Nobody can count it and watch the human beings are the ones who get to start this little

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Worship set if you would and they call out salvation belongs to our

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God who sits on the throne and to the lamb and then watch who responds and Then all the angels we're standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures and the

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Angels fell on their faces before the throne and they worship God saying

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Amen Now note this We humans call out the truth about God and the angels fall on their faces and say amen to the truth that we proclaim about Christ This sounds like blessing beyond blessing

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Amen and now listen to the words of the angels blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might

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Be to our God forever and ever Amen, you'll note in the

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Beatitudes. It doesn't sound like we're all that glorious then there's a reason for that because we're not

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We're weak We are needy We have nothing and Christ has everything and the angels led on that all

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Blessing glory wisdom Thanksgiving honor and power belongs to Jesus not to us.

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That's why we never had it in the first place So then one of the elders addressed John saying Well, who are these clothed in white robes and from where have they come and here comes another one of these like cop -out answers

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There's a similar answer like to this one that we're gonna see in the book of Ezekiel the valley of the dry bones where God asks

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Ezekiel Ezekiel can these dry bones live and Ezekiel goes Well Lord You know

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If they can right and so John does something similar. So who are these clothed in white robes and John says sir

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You know In other words saying he doesn't and so the angel then says this

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These are the ones coming out of the great Tribulation great tribulation and is that not what the

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Christian life is trouble toil tribulation suffering bearing our crosses following Jesus and Listen to them.

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They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb None of these showed up with white robes that were already white

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They were all soiled with sin and each and every one of them have been given these white robes who have been dipped in the

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Blood of the Lamb and that blood has made them white the righteousness that is given by grace through faith

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Therefore they because they have been forgiven are before the throne of God They serve him day and night in his temple and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence

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Let me take this a little closer to home this is where Agnes is right now, this is where Jerry is right now

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This is where those people who are your relatives in that graveyard are right now this is what they're doing right now and You are one with them in Christ Right now

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They in glory You still finishing their course? you still walking out your

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Salvation bearing your cross as you head to your death and they in heaven shining in Christ's glory clothed in the righteousness given by faith

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And we are one with them and here's the good news. They currently do not hunger

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They neither thirst The Sun does not strike them nor any scorching heat and now or will any of that touch you when you join them in?

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Glory for the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water

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And God himself will wipe away every tear from their eyes this is what it looks like to be blessed of God and This blessing is yours now and Then Your blessing in Christ.

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Oh you who have been forgiven you who are spiritually bankrupt you who are mourning your sin you who are

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Humbled and confess your need for Christ you who hunger and thirst for the righteousness to be revealed in that day

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You who are merciful because you have been forgiven you who have been given a new heart in Christ You who are now peacemakers telling

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Christ people about what Jesus has done for them and you who are persecuted and suffer for the name of Jesus you are blessed now and forever in the

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Blessed One Jesus Christ who has shed his blood So that your robes will be made white in the name of Jesus Amen If you would like to support the teaching ministry of kungsvinger lutheran church

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You can do so by sending a tax -free donation to kungsvinger lutheran church 159 50 470th

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Avenue Northwest Oslo, Minnesota 567 4 4 and again that address is kungsvinger lutheran church 159 5 0 470th