Confronting the Idolatry of Reason

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, the 8th chapter.

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The Jews answered Jesus, Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and you have a demon? Jesus answered,

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I do not have a demon, but I honor my father and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory, there is one who seeks it and he is the judge.

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Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death. The Jews said to him,

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Well now, we know you have a demon. Abraham died, as did the prophets. Yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death.

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Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?

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Jesus answered, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our

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God. But you have not known him, I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you.

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But I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

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He sought and was glad. So the Jews said to him, You're not yet fifty years old. And you've seen

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Abraham? Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.

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So they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. This is the gospel of the

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Lord. Praise to you, O Christ. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. In one of the older translations of the Athanasian Creed, we hear these words.

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See if you remember this, some of you old school folks. The Father, incomprehensible.

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The Son, incomprehensible. The Holy Ghost, incomprehensible. And yet there are not three incomprehensibles but one incomprehensible.

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I remember years ago, one person kind of taking a snipe at this said, I think the whole thing is incomprehensible.

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This whole idea of the doctrine of the Trinity. And this is where we must understand where the limits of our human reason are and we must not engage in idolatry, especially idolatry of the mind.

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Keep in mind, idolatry is when you create a God for yourself. And usually it goes something like this.

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You can always tell when somebody has done this because they say, Well, the God I believe in would never dot, dot, dot.

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That's kind of the opening phrase. And usually whatever the dot, dot, dot is, that's something that is totally contradictory to what the

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Scripture says about God. So the God I believe in would never condemn somebody for loving somebody of the same sex.

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Well, the God you believe in is not the real God who exists.

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That's a God of your own reasoning. And so you'll note then that in the fall, the devil had

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Adam and Eve kind of rather than look to the outward revelation of God and what he said, which stands outside of us and speaks to us, he had them look inward.

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Eve became an enthusiast. She looked for God inside. And when she looked for God there, she came up with the exact wrong conclusion and she decided to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and hence the misery we find ourselves in today.

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But many people do this. And so enthusiasm takes on two forms. Two forms. You sit there and you go, well,

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I feel that God is this way. And then the other form is, well,

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I think that it's reasonable to assume that God is this way. And your thinking and your feelings are both wrong.

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Put them away. Put that gun down. You're going to hurt somebody with it. Right? That's the idea.

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So put your reason aside. How is it that God is one

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God and three persons? I count Father, Son, Holy Spirit. I absolutely passed first grade math.

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One plus one plus one does not equal one. Something's off here.

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Put your reason aside. We are called to confess and to believe what

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God has revealed about himself, even if our mind can't wrap itself around it. And confess, the

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Greek word for that is hama lageo. Hama. Same. Lageo. To speak.

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Hama lageo is to speak and to say the same thing that God has revealed about himself.

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Now, you'll know over the years, people have attempted to take a crack at the doctrine of the

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Trinity. Most notably, St. Patrick. By the way, St. Patrick is the fellow who wrote this hymn that we sung right before the sermon today.

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I bind unto myself today. It's called St. Patrick's Breastplate. It's a fascinating and amazing hymn.

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And so St. Patrick took a crack at it and said, well, the Trinity is like a clover. You know, you got three leaves and it's one clover.

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But the problem is that that analogy breaks down. It breaks down badly. And over and again,

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I keep hearing Hans Feeney's voice from the Lutheran Satire YouTube channel. That's modalism,

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Patrick. You know, it's like, oh, yeah. And so other people have actually taken a crack at the doctrine of the

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Trinity and said, well, the doctrine of the Trinity, it's like, well, God likes to wear different hats. So one day he puts on his father hat, and everyone knows what that hat looks like.

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You have to wear flannel with it. It's kind of interesting. And then you tell really bad dad jokes when you're wearing that hat.

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But then he also likes to put on his son hat. And then he likes to put on his Holy Spirit hat.

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And that's the problem here. Now you've got one being and one person who likes to engage in cosplay or something like that.

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I don't know how to explain this. This is a little bit weird. But again, that's an idol.

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That is the heresy known as modalism. So what do we do?

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How do we approach this? Well, here again, the words of the creed we just confessed.

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Whoever desires to be saved. Now, a little bit of a note. I'm assuming that everybody here desires that.

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And this is good news because God himself desires your salvation as well.

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This is why he sent his son, so that you and I can be saved. So if you desire to be saved, you must, above all, hold to the

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Catholic faith. And we hear that word and we go, Catholic. It's a word that evokes a response because immediately the

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Pope, weird, strong, high miters and weird things start coming into your mind.

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Put that all away. Catholic, notice it's small, see, means universal.

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In other words, this is the faith once delivered to the saints. The faith that Christians have confessed in the first century, in the second century, all the way up to the 21st century, all across the world.

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This is the same confession. This is universal. That's the idea. Now, it says, whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will, without doubt, perish eternally.

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You sit there and go, well, that's a strong statement. Why would it say that? Why? Because if you believe in a false god and you're worshiping an idol, your god doesn't exist and your god cannot save you.

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This is revealing to you who God is, the one who truly exists, the one who really desires your salvation.

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There is no other deity. So looking to the deity of your own heart or the deity you've created by your own reasoning, that god can't save you because it doesn't exist.

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So pay attention. God has revealed himself, who he is in his scripture, and although we don't understand it, we're not required to understand it.

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We are to believe it, to confess it.

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So the Catholic faith is this. We worship one God in Trinity, Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.

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So here's how this works. Put all of your diagrams aside. Every one of them, at one point or another, fails to capture the concept of the

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Trinity, and I'm at this point in my life convinced there is no analogy, there is no diagram that you can point to that doesn't have a flaw because God is like nothing, nothing on this planet.

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So here's what scripture says, and so we are going to confess and we will say the same thing as what scripture says.

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Isaiah 43, verses 10 through 11 says this, the Lord, Yahweh speaking, he says to Israel, you are my witnesses, declares

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Yahweh. You are my servant, whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe and understand that I am.

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Before me no God was formed, nor shall there be any after me.

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I am Yahweh, besides me there is no Savior. Hmm.

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Well, if there was no God's form before the one true God and there's no God's going to be formed after him, well, that kind of rules out

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Mormonism, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. It does. But you can say then, well, there is only one

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God. This is what scripture says. Cross references help. Isaiah 45, 20 through 22 says this, assemble yourselves.

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Come, draw near together, you survivors of the nations. They have no knowledge who carry about their wooden idols, and they keep on praying to a

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God that cannot save. Again, hear those words, idols created by human beings.

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Whether they are abstract idols of the mind or the heart or idols carved in wood or stone, you can pray to it all you want, it can't save you.

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So declare and present your case. Let them take their counsel together. Who told this long ago?

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Who declared it of old? Was it not I, Yahweh? And there is no other

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God besides me. A righteous God and a Savior, there is none besides me.

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Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth. For I am God, there is no other.

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One God. So if we say we believe that there is one

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God, we are saying the same thing as Scripture. Hmm.

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Now, next piece of this then, putting this all together, kind of old school style.

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The Holy Spirit is called God. Did you know that the Holy Spirit is called God? Quite explicitly called

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God by none other than Peter himself. In Acts chapter 5, we have this awkward account of Ananias and Sapphira who, well, because everybody in the

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Christian church at the time that was wealthy seemed to be thinking that it was just a great idea to sell everything they had and then take the proceeds, all of it, and donate it to the church.

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That's an interesting thing. And so there was quite a few people. And when they did so, they would take the proceeds, lay them at the feet of the apostles.

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But Ananias and Sapphira, they wanted the credit for giving everything to the church while holding back some of it for themselves.

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Where they could have easily went and sold the property that this is talking about here, laid it at the feet of the apostles and said, we decided that we're going to give 80 % or 50 % or 40 % to the

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Lord and to the church. They would have been just fine. But they wanted everyone to think they were like all the others, that we're giving everything back to the church.

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So it says, A man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira, they sold a piece of property with his wife's knowledge.

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He kept back for himself some of the proceeds, brought only a part of it, and laid it at the apostles' feet.

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Oh, look how holy and generous I am. Look, I'm giving everything, just like those other guys gave everything.

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But Peter said to Ananias, why has Satan so filled your heart to lie to the

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Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? Uh -oh.

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Why are you lying to whom? The Holy Spirit. Now, the Jehovah's Witnesses say that the

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Holy Spirit is not a person. The Holy Spirit is like electricity. It's like the force. It's like magnetism or something like that.

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Can you lie to electricity? I've never lied to electricity. I may have cursed electricity, especially like those late

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January days when, like, there's no moisture in your house, right, and you're happening to be in your socks scuffing up the carpet, and then you touch that piece of metal and zap!

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You know, ah! Curse you, electricity! Right? But electricity cannot hear you.

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Electricity is not a person. But you'll note here that Ananias lied to the Holy Spirit, and lying is something you only do to a person.

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So Peter goes on. He says, While it remained unsold, did your property not remain your own?

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And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart?

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You have not lied to man, but you have lied to God. So you'll note, using synonyms here, the

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Holy Spirit and God are the same. All right, so kind of work out the math. There is one

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God. I'm saying the same thing as Scripture. The Holy Spirit is God. I'm saying the same thing as Scripture.

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Now, a little bit of a note. Jesus himself in our Gospel text will make it clear that the Father is

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God. And I have yet to find anybody who denies that the Father is God. That weird heresy does not exist.

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But there's so many clear passages that say the Father is God. Suffice it to say, for the moment, that when we say the

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Father is God, we are saying the same thing as Scripture. And now we've got a conundrum because now we've got one

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God. The Holy Spirit is God. The Father is God. I count two, not one.

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I understand. It's not yours to understand. It's yours to confess. But then we come to Jesus himself.

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And this one gets a little bit hard for people. Because Jesus is a unique fellow in that he has a divine nature and he has a human nature.

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We hear again the words of the creed that we just confessed. It is the right faith that we believe and confess that our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is at the same time both

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God and man. How is that possible?

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I have no idea. It's true, though, Scripture says this quite explicitly. So he is

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God, begotten of the substance of the Father before all ages. Yes, Scripture says that. And he is man, born from the substance of his mother in this age.

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Perfect God, perfect man, composed of, and listen to the components of a human being, a rational soul and human flesh.

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Now consider this for a second. Each and every one of us, as human beings, we have a body and we have a soul.

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Now, John, I'm going to pick on you because you're a visitor and I can do that. Okay, but now

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I'm looking at you. I only see one of you. Now, I'd have to drink a lot to see two of you, but that would not be a good thing as a pastor.

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But I only see one of you. But you have a body and you have a soul, yet there's only one of you.

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In the same way, then, Jesus Christ, he has a divine nature and a human nature, and his human nature is comprised of a body and soul.

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And our creed says there are not two Christs, but one.

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The same thing occurs here. And by the way, I would challenge any of you. Like, let's see here.

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Who's looking fit? Mikey, you're looking fit. You've been going to the gym. I challenge you right now to do 10 jumping jacks using only your body and not your soul.

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But in order for you to do that, if your soul leaves your body, then we push you out there. Note the point here.

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You can't do anything, whether it's jumping jacks, eating breakfast, blowing your nose, taking a shower, combing your hair, brushing your teeth, or any of the things that you do in a day, that you can't do anything with only your flesh and not your soul involved.

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Period. It's not possible. Same thing regarding Christ. Everything he does, he does as the

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God -man. So listen to this. He's perfect God, perfect man, composed of a rational soul, human flesh.

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He's equal to the Father with respect to his divinity, less than the Father with respect to his humanity.

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You think of Christ during his state of humiliation in the Incarnation, while he's here to serve and to bleed and to die for us, and he says of the

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Father, the Father is greater than I. Well, this is absolutely true in regards to the fact that he possesses a human nature.

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And it says this, although he is God and man, he's not two. There's not two Jesuses, there's only one. But he is one

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Christ. One, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of humanity into God.

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And so you get the idea here. Now, Scripture, does it say that Jesus is

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God? Yes, it does. Let me give you just a few texts. For instance, John 1 .1,

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beautiful text. In the beginning was the Word, or the Logos, and the Word was with God, and the

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Word was God. How do you be with a

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God and then be God at the same time? Notice this just screams Trinity here. There's only one

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God, and yet Jesus is the Word, and he was with God, and he was God. And how we know that the

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Word is referring to Jesus? Because it says the Word became flesh. All right? Consider our text from just a few weeks ago, the second

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Sunday of Easter. That text from the Gospel of John where Thomas missed the first Sunday where Jesus appeared in the upper room, and they said, we saw

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Jesus. And what did he say? I'm not going to believe unless I touch his nail -scarred hands and put my finger into his side.

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I'm not going to believe. So the following Sunday, his disciples were inside again.

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Thomas was with them, and although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

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And so Jesus said to Thomas, put your fingers here. See my hands. Put your hand and place it in my side.

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Do not be disbelieving, but believing. Thomas then says, the

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Greek is a little better here. You are my

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Lord and my God. Now does

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Jesus say, whoa, slow down there, partner. No one promoted me to God. No, here's what

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Jesus says. You believe because you've seen me, and blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

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So note that Thomas doesn't get a rebuke for saying Jesus is God or his God. Instead, he gets an attaboy from Jesus and says that everybody who believes that Jesus is his

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Lord and God, even though they haven't seen him like Thomas has, is blessed. That means that blessing is to you.

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None of us have seen Christ. Then you think about what Paul writes in Acts 20. Actually, this was an address that was given by the

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Apostle Paul to the pastors of the churches of Ephesus as he's getting ready to head towards Jerusalem.

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Paul gives these words, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

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God is spirit. When does God bleed? Answer, Christ bled.

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We are saved by the blood of Christ. And here it says this is the blood of God. And then

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Romans 9, wonderful text, starting at verse 1, Paul lamenting the fact that so many people who are his genetic relatives as Jews do not believe in Jesus.

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And he says, I'm speaking the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit. I have great sorrow, unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh.

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They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises.

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To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, listen to these words, according to the flesh is the

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Christ, who is God over all.

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Christ is God over all. Paul in Titus 2 says,

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The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. And it's training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self -controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope.

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And what is our blessed hope? Listen to what he says. The appearing of the glory of our great

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God and Savior Jesus Christ. Our great

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God and Savior Jesus Christ. Now, if I were to say that Jesus is

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God, would I be saying the same thing in Scripture? Yeah. One God, Jesus is

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God, Holy Spirit is God, the Father is God. Now, a little bit of a note here.

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You're always going to have some yahoo who says something like this, well, Pastor Roseborough, I see what you did there.

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I see what you did there. Yeah, you went to Peter, and you went to Paul, and, you know, of course, those guys said that Jesus was their great

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God and Savior, but Jesus never said that he was God. And so,

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I'm a red -letter Christian. And so, because Jesus never said he was

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God, I really think that he probably wasn't, that people promoted him after his death and resurrection and exalted him to God, but he's not really, because Jesus never said that he was.

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Hmm. How's it go? Challenge accepted. Right?

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Now. Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim. Okay.

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Sorry, inside joke there. My apologies. Now, a little bit of a note here. In order to take on this challenge, we've got to do a little backup work in the

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Old Testament. Remember when Moses, he was on the run, you know, he was on Egypt's most wanted, he'd murdered some fellow, disappeared off into Midian, got married, and was tending his father -in -law

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Jethro's sheep, 40 years after the crime, by the way. I wonder what the Egyptian statute of limitations was for murder.

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But he was off in Midian, right around Mount Sinai, and wouldn't you know it, while he was doing his shepherding thing,

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God appears in a bush. It's burning, it's not consumed, and Moses is scratching his head going, how is it that that bush isn't concerned?

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So he goes over to take a look at things, and God himself speaks from the bush, tells him to take off his sandals, the ground he's standing on is holy, and then

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God tells him that he's chosen him to go and to free his people from slavery.

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And Moses is not really keen on this assignment. He is not embracing his purpose -driven life properly, but he asks some legitimate questions along the way.

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It says, Moses said to God, so if I come to the people of Israel and I say to them, the

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God of your fathers has sent me to you saying, sent me to you and they asked me, well what is his name?

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Who shall I say, what shall I say to them? So God said to Moses, first bit out of his mouth, it's kind of a verb, okay, so God's name begins in verbal form, verb itself, and he says hayah, hayah.

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Now hayah is not a karate term here, it's actually a Hebrew word for to be, okay, and actually in this particular instance, the way it's parsed out, he would have said ayah, but anyway, for the point of this discussion, he gives a verb as his name, hayah,

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I am, right? And so then he goes on and he says, he said to them, say this to the people of Israel, hayah,

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I am, has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, Yahweh, which is kind of the noun version of hayah, so you know we get a verb and a noun, the self -existing one,

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Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has sent me to you, this is my name forever, thus

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I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Now, pop quiz in the middle of the sermon, just make sure you guys are not sleeping, the name of God is what again?

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I am, very good, you guys pass, you can all have brownies after church, okay.

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Now we come to our gospel text, we'll pay attention then how human reason is in play with the unbelieving

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Jews who are in a verbal battle with Jesus, one of my favorite texts. And by the way, you can always tell when somebody's losing the argument because they always resort to this fascinating thing and that is they go all ad hominem on somebody, okay.

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I can't defeat your logic, I can't defeat your facts, I can't defeat your reason and what you're saying, so I'm gonna accuse you of being a

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Nazi, I'm gonna accuse you of being a gunky head or something like that, so they attack the person and this is where we are in our text.

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So the Jews answered Jesus, are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and you have a demon?

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That's an ad hominem attack. And note here how piously they do this, okay, because they ask it in the form of a question because if Jesus was, what are you saying?

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They would have said, we're not saying anything. We're just asking a question. We heard that you're a

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Samaritan and that you have a demon. We're not saying anything. We didn't make an assertion, we just asked a question,

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Jesus. You're losing it there, buddy, right? So are we not right in saying that you are a

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Samaritan and you have a demon? So Jesus answered, I do not have a demon.

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I honor my father and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory.

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There is one who seeks it and he is the judge. Truly, truly, and these are wonderful words.

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Actually, in the Greek, it's amen, amen. Amen, amen. I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.

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Let that one sink in for a second. I wish at this moment the Jews would just be quiet because it's like, whoa, slow down there,

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Jesus. You're saying if anyone keeps your word, he will never see death. I'm interested.

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I'm dying. I'm 51 years old. Somewhere over the past decade or so, maybe,

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I crossed over the halfway point of my life because there's no way I'm making it to 102. Okay, it's just not happening, right?

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So I'm like, I'm more than halfway done. You know, I'm kind of looking down the pipeline, sitting there going,

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I'm glad I'm still breathing today. Right? And the longer I keep breathing, the more happy I'm gonna be that I'm still breathing.

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But the problem is there's a day coming when I won't be. And Jesus is saying anyone who keeps his word will never see death.

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But I know that Scripture says the wages of sin is death. And I've sinned. And Jesus here is promising life to anyone who keeps and guards his words.

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And the words of Christ are be forgiven. The words of Christ are he has bled and died for you and for me so that we can be reconciled to the

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Father. He's even died for all of our idolatries, all of the ways in which we've denied or tried to circumvent the doctrine of the

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Trinity, or even worse, created false gods for ourselves. And anyone who keeps his word, he says, will never see death.

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Rather than rejoice at this, now the Jews, their reason kicks in.

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And note that everything they're saying sounds utterly reasonable and rational from a human reason point of view.

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And here's how their argument works. So the Jews said to him, now we know you have a demon.

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And you can almost hear the sass that they deliver this. And they say, Abraham died.

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Now, why is that important? Well, because if you remember, the word of the Lord came to Abraham. Abraham left a really good neighborhood in Ur of the

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Chaldeans and headed off and lived as a sojourner in the Canaanite territory, right? All because he heard

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God's word. And so he heard the word of the Lord, the real God, and he died. And then, as did the prophets.

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I mean, did not the word of the Lord come to Jeremiah? Did not the word of the Lord come to Isaiah? All the prophets died too.

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And yet you say, if anyone keeps my word, he'll never taste death. Are you greater than our father,

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Abraham, who died Jesus? Notice, human reason seems to be winning the day.

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You know, they think that they've got Jesus in check. To make the matters worse, they even pound on this.

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They say, oh, and the prophets, they died too. So who do you make yourself out to be,

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Jesus? Who do you make yourself out to be? So Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

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It's my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God. And by saying this,

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Jesus is making it very clear, you claim that you worship the God who is my father, but you don't know him at all.

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Your idolaters, your reason, your feelings have gotten in the way.

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You've created an idol for yourself, because if you truly worshiped my father, the one who you claim he is our

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God, you would believe in me, he's saying. But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him,

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I'd be a liar like you. But I do know him, and I keep his word.

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And then it gets really interesting. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.

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He saw it and was glad. Where's that in Genesis?

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Answer? It's not there. It's not there at all. So kind of think of it this way.

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Jesus is talking about Abraham like he knows him personally. Like if Don and I were having coffee, and we decided that we would be talking about Arlen, right?

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And then maybe somebody joined us who doesn't even know who Arlen is. We say, yeah, we gotta tell you about Arlen, man.

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I mean, have you seen his John Deere tractors? They're huge, man. I mean, this guy is like the robot, the

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Megatron robot of all things farming. We'd be talking about him, and people would be thinking, yeah, you guys know

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Arlen pretty good, don't ya? Right? Yeah? Nobody would assume we'd never met the fellow if we're talking like that.

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That's the way Jesus is talking about Abraham. All right? He says of Abraham, Abraham rejoiced to see my day.

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He saw it and was glad. And here's where human reason again comes into play, and it looks like human reason is gonna win the day.

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So the Jews said to him, Jesus, come on. You're not yet 50 years old, and you've seen

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Abraham. I mean, let's get real, Jesus. You're in your early 30s. There's no way as an early 30 -year -old something that you've seen

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Abraham. I mean, at that point, it should be mic drop, game set match to the unbelieving

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Jews, right? Because a 30 -year -old man hasn't lived long enough to have seen

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Abraham with his own eyes, yet will talk about him like he knows him personally. And then

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Jesus does something amazing. So Jesus said to them, amen, amen.

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I say to you, before Abraham was, a go a me.

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I am. What's God's name again? I am.

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Oh, I think Jesus just claimed to be God here. Whoops. Right?

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And yes, he did. And how do we know that that's what happened? Well, consider it this way. When you studied the

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Mosaic Covenant, and we've been doing that in our Sunday school classes as we've been working our way through Leviticus, there are a few crimes in ancient

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Israel that deserve the death penalty. And by the way, they didn't have electric chairs or lethal injections or things like that.

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The death penalty came by rocking somebody's world, literally with rocks, until they stopped breathing.

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It was quite a painful death. And it was reserved for the sexually immoral, for false prophets and blasphemers, and just a few others.

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Just a few others. And so you'll note then, upon Jesus saying, before Abraham was,

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I am, first move. Grab a rock. He's just blasphemed.

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He's made himself to be God. And so they picked up stones to throw at Jesus. Not tomatoes.

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Stones. And Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. So you can see then how human reason looked like it knew what was going on when it came to Jesus.

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He wasn't even 30 years old, and yet he'd seen Abraham. So don't let your reason dictate who

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God is. What His essence is. How is it possible that there's only one

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God in three persons? I have no idea. I have no clue how it works.

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I couldn't explain it to you if I tried, and I'm not about to, because when I try to explain it to you, I'm going to end up making an idol myself.

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Instead, I will point you to what the Word of God says, and what God has revealed about Himself. That there is only one

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God, there is no other. Before Him, no gods were made, nor will there be any after Him. And that the

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Holy Spirit is called God, and the Father, Christ, calls Him God. And Jesus Himself is called

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God and claimed to be God. So whoever desires to be saved must, above all, hold to the

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Catholic faith. Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will, without doubt, perish eternally.

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And so the Catholic faith is this. We worship one God in Trinity, in Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.

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So again, consider this interesting fact because of what Christ has done for us on the cross.

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This same God desires your salvation, so much so that God Himself became a man born of the

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Virgin Mary, and God Himself had a mommy. God Himself nursed at the breast of Mary.

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God Himself had to learn His ABCs, in His cases,

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Alephs, His Baiths, His Gimels, His Daleths. God Himself went through puberty and His voice changed.

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He went from singing soprano to having a nice baritone voice. God Himself walked on this earth.

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He had favorite foods like you and I. He worked in His father's carpenter shop. God Himself bled and died so that you can be saved.

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God Himself in the darkness on that Friday afternoon suffered with nails in His hands, and yes,

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God has hands, and nails in His feet, and God has feet, with a crown of thorns pressed into His head and His back opened up by the lash of the

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Romans. He struggled to breathe and took every breath hard with pain and agony as He bled for your sins and mine.

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The Son of God in the darkness cried out, My God, My God, why have

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You forsaken Me? And He was forsaken so that you would never have to be.

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He died so that you would never taste death, and He desires for you to be saved.

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How is this possible? I do not know, but God Himself cried out,

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In the darkness it is finished, and He breathed His last, and God died.

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It is a great mystery. I don't know how it works, but whoever does not keep this faith, undefiled, will without doubt perish eternally.

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So repent of your idolatry and your sin and be forgiven because your great

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God and Savior has bled and died for you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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