God Hasn't Promised Candy

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 fourth chapter.

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Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where He had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill.

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When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to Him and asked Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.

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So Jesus said to him, Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. The official said to him,

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Sir, come down before my child dies. Jesus said to him, Go, your son will live.

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The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. And as he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering.

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So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.

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And the father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, Your son will live. And he himself believed, and all of his household.

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This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee. This is the gospel of the

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Lord, in the name of Jesus. Now it's no secret I'm a nerd, you all know that.

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But I have to confess, it's worse than you've ever imagined. Not as you see in nerddom, there's a spectrum.

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There's nerds and then there's nerds. Okay, let me explain. When Barb and I were in high school, we were drama nerds.

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There will be grief counselors available after the service for those of you shaken by this news. All of that being said, we took several years of drama together.

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We had a wonderful drama teacher. And I must sadly say that when it comes to the student performances that I've watched, and you'll note that high school performances when it comes to drama, even in drama class, are generally not that memorable.

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There's really only one particular performance I remember from class even to this day.

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And the reason why I remember it is how angry it made me feel. The girl that performed this particular dramatic reading did a really good job.

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But the content of the story was really good. I don't know if you've heard of the short story written by James Clavell called

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The Children's Story. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's worth a Google. Let me kind of put it this way.

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This is a story that plays well during the Cold War. And if you ever hated communism after reading this short story, you'll hate it even more.

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It'll bring your hatred to a full -on boil. But all that being said, the setting for the story is that the

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United States had lost a war to the Soviet Union. And so the

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Soviet Union had sent in their people to then take over the infrastructure of the

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United States. This would include sending in 19 -year -old girls freshly trained in communist camps on how to indoctrinate and brainwash children to knock this idea that God exists out of their minds.

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And the story is well told is the best way I can put it.

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But let me read to you a portion of it, because this is going to kind of play into our theme for our gospel text today.

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What had happened is that here you have a classroom full of elementary school children.

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Their 19 -year -old communist teacher is now indoctrinating them and has promised them that the state would like to have them spend the night.

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We're going to spend the night together. We're going to have some fun together as a group. And the children all promised that they would be good.

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They were very happy. And then Jenny, one of the students, speaks out and says, but first we have to say our prayers before we go to sleep.

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So the new teacher smiled at her. Of course, perhaps we should say a prayer now.

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In some schools, that's a custom too. She thought a moment and the faces watched her.

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And then she said, let's pray. But let's pray for something very good. What should we pray for, children?

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Bless mommy and daddy, Danny said immediately. Well, that's a good idea, Danny. I have one.

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Let's pray for candy, the communist teacher says. That's a good idea, isn't it?

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And they all nodded happily. So following their new teacher, they all closed their eyes and steepled their hands together and they prayed with her for candy.

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The new teacher opened her eyes and looked around disappointedly. But where's our candy?

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God is all seeing and everywhere. If we pray, he answers our prayers. Isn't that true?

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Danny chimes in, I prayed for a puppy of my own lots of times, but I never got one. Maybe we didn't pray hard enough.

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Perhaps we should kneel down like it's done in church. So the new teacher knelt and all the children knelt and they prayed very, very hard.

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But still, there was no candy because the new teacher was disappointed.

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The children were very disappointed. And then she said, perhaps we're using the wrong name. She thought a moment and then said, instead of saying

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God, let's say our leader. Let's pray to our leader for candy.

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Let's pray very hard and don't open your eyes until I say. So the children shut their eyes tightly, prayed very hard.

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And as they prayed, the new teacher took out some candy from her pocket and quietly put a piece on each child's desk.

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She did not notice Johnny alone of all the children watching her through his half -closed eyes. She went softly back to her desk and the prayer ended and the children opened their eyes and they stared at the candy and they were overjoyed.

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I'm going to pray to our leader every time, Mary said excitedly. Me too, Hilda said.

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Could we eat our leader's candy now, teacher? Oh, let's please, please, please. So our leader answered your prayers, didn't he?

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I think you get the point. And I remember as a high schooler hearing this read in a dramatic reading and drama class and I was furious.

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It's one of the reasons why this is the only thing I remember from drama class when I was in high school. It really angered me.

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But the thing that angered me the most is that I had this profound sense that these kids were sitting ducks.

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And at the time I was a Nazarene and I didn't really have good theology even at all to speak of.

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And that being the case, I couldn't exactly explain why God wouldn't have answered their prayer for candy.

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And here's the reason why. Because God keeps his promises and he hasn't promised us candy.

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And that's an important thing in our gospel text today. An important thing.

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Because there are a lot of people trusting God for a lot of things. And some of the things they are trusting him for are just crazy.

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I think about the word of faith movement. I think of TBN preachers like Jim and Tammy Faye Baker.

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That takes you back some of you, right? You remember Tammy Faye Baker came down with cancer, right?

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Breast cancer. Metastasized and went stage four. And she legitimately was eaten alive by cancer.

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And just a few days before she perished, she was interviewed by Larry King. He's thus perished too as well.

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But Larry King interviewed her and I was aghast at what I saw on the television.

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Tammy Faye Baker looked worse than a survivor of Auschwitz. She was a skeleton.

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And just days before she was going to die, she was still decreeing and declaring her healing.

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And could not confess that she had cancer. Because she was trusting

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God for perfect health. Isn't that the theological equivalent of candy?

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It is. So as we work our way through our gospel text, we're going to be asking the question, what are you trusting

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God for? What are you trusting him for? Because if you're not trusting him for what he's promised, then your faith is malformed and you are a sitting duck for the devil and his temptations and all of the things that he's going to do to really mess you up.

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So here's our text. Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee where he had made the water into wine.

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That was his first sign that he did. Now, if you remember in the Gospel of John, at the very end of the

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Gospel of John, John muses about the life and ministry and teaching of Christ.

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He says if everything that Jesus had done had been written in books, he surmises that the entire world couldn't contain everything that he had done.

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That's how much he had done. So what did John do? He hand -selected seven signs and he punctuates his gospel with this phrase.

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These things, these signs are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

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It's a pretty good promise, right? Believing you might have life in his name. So this is going to be the second of Jesus' signs, and we know the reason why it's recorded, so let's take a look at the details.

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So at Capernaum, there was an official, and my Greek students will know that I lamented how anemic the

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ESV translation is here, okay? The Greek word is basalikas, and it means royal official, royal official.

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So if you've ever heard the term basaleia, that means kingdom. Basalikas is somebody who is an official within the basaleia, the kingdom.

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So this is a royal official. This guy has status. This guy has power.

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He has a position of authority. He's a royal official. That's what the text says.

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So let me ask you a question. Does being rich or being royalty protect you from all of the suffering and pain and difficulty that this world has to offer?

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Nope. Have you noticed that the rich and famous die at the same rate as everybody else, and maybe a little bit quicker too, because in their boredom, they all decide to use drugs, and that really messes up your body, right?

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So you'll note that the suffering of this life comes to everybody. It is not a respecter of person.

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So here we've got a royal official whose son is ill, and we know from the bottom of the story, as he's traveling home, he lives at least, and maybe a little bit more, than a day away.

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This is the days before subways, and pickup trucks, and vehicles, and things like this. So traveling at least takes him a day, and maybe a little bit longer to get home.

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So he's not even in his own zip code. He's come to seek Jesus out. So when the man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him, and he asked

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Jesus to come down and to heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Seems pretty reasonable.

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And you'll note, John has already made it clear, he's omitted a bunch of Jesus' miracles. So clearly, this guy has heard about Jesus' miracles, and the things that he has done, and he is confident, and has faith that Jesus can heal his son, even though he's at the point of death.

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But then Jesus fires off a shot, and it leaves us wondering as to what's going on.

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Jesus said to him, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

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Okay, what's going on here? Does this guy seem like some crazed

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Pentecostal who's in need of signs and wonders? I know it says it's directed at him.

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That's what the text says, but one has to wonder, was Jesus also wanting the crowd to pay attention to what he was saying here?

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Or was this also written for our benefit? Maybe it's a little bit of everything there, right?

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Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. Now here's where we have to take this into consideration.

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In our day and age, there has been a growing and alarming trend within the Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, which have a profound influence on every single denomination on the planet, including

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Lutherans. And there is this continual focus and the belief that they, we as Christians, need to perform signs and wonders in order to validate the gospel message so that people will be convinced to trust in God.

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But here's the thing. If I were to say to you, hey listen, I would like for you to come up for me right now and I would like for you to perform for me the black belt kata for American Taekwondo, anyone able to do that right now?

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It's necessary that you do it. Get up here and do it. I could scream and yell at you all I want, but none of you are going to be able to pull it off, right?

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And there's a reason, because none of you have that ability. And if God hasn't given you an ability to perform signs and wonders, then screaming and yelling at you and hooping and hollering and guilting you and telling you you need to perform signs and wonders, how effective is that going to be at producing signs and wonders?

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It's not. It's going to create the environment in which people then go into the world of make -believe.

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Right? And so you have men like Todd White running around the landscape performing the miracle of lengthening legs, and the charismatics defend it as if it's a true miracle.

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Oh, this is a real thing of God. No, it's not. He just shifted the legs to the right and left and made it appear.

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This is a parlor trick. I mean, here, you want to see a miracle? Watch. Woohoo. Wow. I'm a miracle worker.

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Right? I think the big miracle today is that anybody believes the miracle claims within the charismatic movement.

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That's the big miracle. It's the strong delusion sent by God, but you'll note that all of us have read our

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Bibles and go, wouldn't it be cool if these things were happening in our day?

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And Jesus is very clear about something, and that is that signs and wonders are not what creates faith.

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He even says to the Jews, even if somebody would rise from the dead, you're still not going to believe,

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Jesus says. So that being the case, where does faith come from? Does faith come from miracles?

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From you seeing a sign or a wonder? No. The Apostle Paul makes it clear in Romans chapter 10, faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of Christ.

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Paul also says earlier in chapter one, the gospel, the good news that Christ has bled and died for our sins.

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That is the power of God into salvation for all who believe. We don't need signs and wonders.

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We need the preached gospel. We need the word of God, and if God decides to perform a miraculous sign or wonder along the way, all the better, but it's not necessary, right?

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So you'll note that Jesus' quip here kind of hits us all in the face because who of us can say that we haven't thought, wouldn't it be really cool if we could like, you know, pray for people that are dead and they were raised to life and stuff like this?

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And I would know that would be interesting for sure. But you'll note that at Bethel Church in Redding, California, I am not making this up.

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They have a group of people called the Dead Raising Team. They've even created a documentary about the

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Dead Raising Team at Bethel called the Dead Raisers. How many corpses have they brought back to life?

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Zero. I would call that false advertising. They are the non -dead raisers.

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They are the corpse coolers. They are not anything else other than that.

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Okay? So here Jesus is saying, unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe.

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And the guy hasn't quite registered what Jesus said. So the royal official says to Jesus, sir, come down before my child dies.

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And Jesus is legitimately at this point not ready or willing to pack an overnight bag for a day -long journey to this fellow's house.

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He doesn't want to get a fresh toothbrush. Maybe he's just unpacked from a trip himself, or maybe he's doing laundry while he's there in Capernaum.

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It doesn't say. But then Jesus says to the fellow, go, your son lives, the text says.

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Go, your son lives. And here's the important point. The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and he went on his way.

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So now he goes from needing to see a sign to just believing the word.

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And something amazing happens here. And I mean legitimately amazing. And that is that the way this miracle works out is that this fellow doesn't get to see the sign.

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That reminds me of that stupid song from Asa Bass. I get stuck in my song every now and then. I saw the sign.

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Oh, no, I can't even do that. Anyway. So he didn't even get to see the sign. He didn't even get to see it.

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But you know who got to see it? His slaves. The text,

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I know the ESV says servants. The Greek says douloi, his slaves.

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He is a namikos, he's a royal official. He has slaves, right? He doesn't even get to see the sign.

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His slaves get to see the sign. But here's the thing. His slaves didn't get to hear the word.

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So they saw the sign, but they didn't get to hear the word. He got to hear the word, but he didn't get to see the sign.

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And as a result of all of that, the way it then plays out is everybody ends up believing, which is the whole point, right?

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So he went on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his son was recovering.

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So clearly, some of them said, we got to get to this guy as quick as possible. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better.

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And they said to him, yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him. The father knew that was the hour when

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Jesus had said to him, your son lives. And so he himself believed. So now he believes in Jesus.

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And that goes on to say, and all of his household, which means he then gave the word that Jesus gave, so that now they, the ones who saw the sign, are now all believing in Jesus.

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Now, here's the question I have for you. Where are all these folks today? They're dead.

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Their corpses are still moldering in an unknown grave somewhere in Israel today.

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They've been dead for 2 ,000 years. A lot of good that miracle did, or did it?

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And now I come back to the point. What are you believing God for? If you're believing

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God for status, if you're believing God for a million followers on YouTube or Instagram, so that you can be an influencer, you're trusting

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God to give you that great promotion at work. You're trusting him for a loaded bank account.

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You're trusting him for perfect health and perfect wealth, and for you to be the apple of everybody's eye.

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You're trusting in God for candy. In fact, your faith can't save you.

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And I would note, people who are trusting in God for these things are not standing on any promises.

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They're standing on twisted texts, twisted by false teachers who have made merchandise of them for money.

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So what are we trusting Christ for? Answer, eternal life, the forgiveness of all of our sins.

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We trust him for daily bread. It doesn't go much beyond that. We trust him for strength to help us through times of difficulty.

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To put it another way, is that when people who are trusting in God for candy run up against the inevitable, they lose all faith altogether.

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And they go into eternity not trusting in God for the real promises that he's promised, but trusting in something else.

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And so my question is this, are the promises that you're trusting in good enough to get you through when the inevitable happens and your body fails?

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And boy, I have learned rather recently how quickly that can happen. Okay, two weeks ago,

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I was fine on a Friday night. I woke up on a Saturday morning in agony, and it took a couple weeks to recover.

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I was shocked at how quickly the turn occurred. The reality is this, is that each and every one of us is just a day away from a chronic illness.

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Each and every one of us could be potentially just days away from our own demise and our own death.

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And it may even be painful and difficult to go through. Are the things you're trusting

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God for able to keep you focused on them even when your whole body is falling apart or even better, the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket?

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Do you guys remember the year 2019? What a blissful year that was, right?

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It was a wonderful year. Everything was normal, right? Everything was normal.

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Nothing crazy was going on. The life was pretty good. And then 2020 hit, and then they locked us all down.

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And have you noticed that things have not returned to normal? Not only have they not returned to normal, the exponential rise in wickedness is insane, and there's no end in sight.

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I can't sing along with the Beatles anymore. Things are only getting better.

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They're getting better all the time, right? No, they're not. They seem to be getting worse and worse and worse.

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Is your faith able to sustain you even if the person you're going to vote for in a couple weeks doesn't win?

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Is your faith able to sustain you if the republic itself fails and is taken over by a communist regime?

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Is your faith able to sustain you if we are attacked by a foreign entity and we lose and we are subjugated to tyranny?

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Is your faith able to survive that? What are you trusting God for?

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You see, these things were written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you might have life in his name.

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If I can borrow from next Sunday's psalm, I'm not preaching on it, so I thought I'd pull it forward.

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Listen to what Psalm 46 says. God is our refuge. He is our strength, and he is a very present help in trouble.

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Therefore, we will not fear, though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling, though the hurricanes go to category six and the earthquakes to nine.

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Though cities fall. If Godzilla should attack Los Angeles and San Francisco, right, right, and we're powerless to stop the destruction, will you still keep trusting

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God? Because I can assure you that when the world goes to that kind of hell in a handbasket, people will be asking this question, where is your

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God now? My answer, he said this would all happen.

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Everything's going exactly like he said it would go. Why would you think he's not there with us?

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He said he's with us even to the end of the age. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the most high.

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God is in the midst of her. She shall not be moved. God will help her, but listen to the clause.

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God will help her when the morning dawns. Have you ever been in agony in the night, waiting for the daytime, knowing that at eight o 'clock in the morning, the pharmacy opens and there will be relief?

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Or you can get to the doctor because his office hours are at that time, but it's three in the morning and you've got five hours left to go and it is dark, it is cold, and you are in pain.

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That's a metaphor for us here in this life. We are still waiting for the dawning of the new day, the day when

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Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead. The night is far spent for sure, but still it is night.

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And there's suffering yet to be experienced. And God promises us help when the morning dawns.

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The nations rage, the kingdoms totter. God utters his voice and the earth melts.

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The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress. So even though the earth melts and everybody's plans for a normal year come to a cataclysmic end and we recognize there will be no more years left because the earth is destroyed, is your faith able to sustain you through that?

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Come behold the works of Yahweh, how he's brought desolations on the earth. He makes the wars to cease to the end of the earth.

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He breaks the bow, shatters the spear. He burns the chariots with fire. So be still and know that I am

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God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts, he is with us.

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The God of Jacob is our fortress. God is not a

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God of prosperity in this life. He is not like the fertility deities of the ancient world.

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He hasn't promised you a rose garden. He hasn't promised you abundance and wealth. He hasn't even promised you a full quiver full of children.

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He's promised you the forgiveness of your sins. He has bled and died in the darkness on the cross.

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He knows exactly what it means to languish and suffer in the dark because he did so for your sins and mine.

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He promises us suffering in difficulty in this life. And he promises to sustain us with daily bread and he doesn't offer us a crumb further than that.

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If we get it, it's all blessing. But he's only obligated to give us daily bread.

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So you'll note then, brothers and sisters, these things are written so that we may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God. And in this second sign of Christ, Jesus chastises those who only believe because they see signs and wonders.

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Brothers and sisters, we believe because we've heard the good news and God the Holy Spirit has raised us from the dead and we are trusting in the true promises of God.

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So don't be distracted by promises of candy.

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That's the work of evil like the Pied Piper and those who promise to take you to Pleasure Island.

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All they're going to do is turn you into donkeys and drive you off into the salt mines of hell. The true promises of God are humble.

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They are despised by many and they don't seem practical, but believe me when I tell you, when Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead and we are raised to new life and we are experiencing the joys of the earth that God has promised us when he remakes the earth, it'll all seem very practical then and all the alluring candy promises of the false teachers will be seen for what they are, doctrines of demons.

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

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Avenue Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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

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