God Feeds Israel In the Wilderness

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 14 verses 13 through 21. Now when Jesus heard this he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.

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But when the crowds heard it they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them and he healed their sick.

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Now when it was evening the disciples came to him and said this is a desolate place and the day is now over.

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Send the crowds away to go into the villages to buy food for themselves. But Jesus said they need not go away you give them something to eat.

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They said to him we have only five loaves here and two fish and he said bring them here to me.

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Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass and taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven and said a blessing.

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Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they ate and they all ate and they were satisfied and they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.

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And those who ate were about five thousand men besides women and children. This is the gospel of the

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Lord. In the name of Jesus. Food. Love that topic.

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In case you can't tell I may be suffering from the sin of gluttony from time to time. However, food is an important theological topic in Scripture and our gospel text today contains an important food miracle.

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But before we get to the food miracle in our gospel text I think it would be wise for us to do a little bit of preliminary work to see if we can understand what the scriptures kind of teach in regard to food.

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There is a theology if you would and we read in Genesis chapter 2 verses 16 and 17 that the

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Lord God commanded the man Adam. This is before Eve had been taken from his rib. You may surely eat of every tree of the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.

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For in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

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Now a little bit of a note here. Think of the Garden of Eden. God has created Adam. Eve is soon to be on the scene.

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Where did they shop for groceries? Their local fruit tree.

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Yeah, if you're hungry grab a banana. If you're hungry grab an apple. Everything was provided by God as gift.

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It was free. And so we see that there was one tree that they were not supposed to be touching and that's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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They weren't to eat of that and the first sin that occurred was well to not listen to the voice of God.

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To listen to another and then eat of the tree that we were not supposed to eat of.

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So what we find ourselves in now in part is a curse and the part of the curse that we all kind of deal with on a day -to -day basis is this.

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Genesis 3 reads God talking to Adam and giving him his punishment for his participation in this sin.

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Because you have listened to the voice of your wife which was the first issue and you have eaten of the tree of which

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I commanded you you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain shall you eat of it all the days of your life.

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Thorns and thistles it shall bring for you and you shall eat the plants of the field.

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By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken.

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For dust you are and to dust you shall return. So every day when we wake up and go about our business put in a hard day's work in order to pay the bills and put food on the table to afford the food that the farmers are literally growing for us in mass and the farmers will tell you it takes a lot of time and effort to fight the weeds and the bugs and the blight and all that type of stuff and food as a result of this is a very

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Important and yet very expensive commodity as my mom would like to point out money doesn't grow on trees and It takes money to pay for food.

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And if you look at our world today, you know, some people have a lot of food

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Other people have little or no food food is an important thing. And so under the curse

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Food is no longer provided as gift by God Food is something that we have to earn

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No more God's grace Keep that in mind now Second data point here in order to properly understand what's going on in our gospel text

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I'd like to review a few portions of Exodus chapter 16 in Exodus chapter 16 the children of Israel have already been set free from slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt and They are now they've crossed the

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Red Sea and well they ran out of food a Lot a lot of people with nothing to eat in a wilderness place is not a scenario for well happiness if you would

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I? Mean have you ever been on one of those day hikes you thought you know, maybe when you were younger Yeah I'm gonna go up in the woods and go on a day hike and you packed yourself a knapsack you get about five or six miles into the hike and you stop and you open up your canteen and and you reach into your knapsack or your

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Backpack to grab some trail mix and you realize oh, no. I forgot the food.

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That's happened to me here You've got a bazillion people out in the wilderness and there's no supply trains running back and forth from Egypt for obvious reasons

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So they're out of food. And here's what it says. They set out from Aleem. These are the springs of Aleem in Saudi Arabia in the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of sin

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Which is between Aleem and Sinai and on the 15th day of the second month They even remember the day this happened.

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They knew down to the day 15th day of the second month They had departed from the land of Egypt the whole

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Congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness and the people of Israel said of them

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Oh would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by meat pots

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And ate bread to the full for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger

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Meat pots sounds kind of like a relaxing way of just enjoying some steak. Yeah, I like a little meat. Thank you

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You know, this does not quite sound right at least they're retelling of their slavery narrative seems a little sketchy if you know what

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I mean, but when you're hungry and Everyone's cranky you need food.

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So the Lord said to Moses behold I'm about to rain bread from heaven for you and The people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day

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That I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not skipping to verse 9

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Says this Moses said to Aaron say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel come near before the

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Lord For he has heard your grumbling and as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel they looked toward the wilderness and behold the glory of the

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Lord appeared in the cloud and The Lord said to Moses. I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel say to them at twilight

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You shall eat meat and in the morning you shall be filled with bread Then you shall know that I am

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Yahweh your God and in the evening Quail came up and covered the camp and in the morning dew lay on the camp around the camp and when the dew had gone

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There was on the face of the wilderness a fine flake like thing Fine as frost on the ground and when the people of Israel saw it they said to one another manna

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What is it? but they did not know what it was and Moses said to them it is the bread that the

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Lord has given you to eat verse 35 The people of Israel ate the manna for 40 years till they came to a habitable land

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They ate the manna till they came to the border of the land of Canaan so This kind of is the big setup pay attention to this this miracle that we read in our gospel

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Text if you would is part of the big reveal as to who Jesus is

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And so Jesus is going to be Recreating if you would one of the miracles from the book of Exodus this exact miracle where God in his grace and his mercy provides

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Food for his children free of cost There is no cost to this kind of harkens back a little bit to the

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Garden of Eden But it's important that you pay attention to the details here now a little bit of a note when we look at Matthew 14 this miracle the feeding of the 5 ,000 this miracle and Jesus is bodily resurrection from the dead.

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These are the only Two miracles that appear in all four

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Gospels That's how important this miracle is you think what's the big deal people had lunch?

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Well, it's a lot bigger than people having lunch It's a lot bigger than that And so we read now in our gospel text keep keep this

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Exodus piece in your mind here When Jesus heard this he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself

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But when the crowds heard it they followed him on foot from the towns and when he went ashore

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He saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them and he healed their sick a little bit of a note

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Just a reminder of what we've been working through this summer in the gospel of Matthew Jesus had begun his ministry was preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins had called his disciples he was literally cleansing lepers raising people from the dead giving sight to the blind and Preaching the good news of the gospel of the kingdom and he was met with stiff resistance by the

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Pharisees and this stiff resistance Resulted in them literally accusing

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Jesus of doing the miracles that he was doing by the hand of the devil himself

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And so Jesus switched it up a little bit and rather than preaching plainly

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He began preaching in parables not to help them understand what he was saying But to ensure that they would never understand what he was saying kind of an important thing

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But since we're kind of the 13th disciple as we work our way through the gospel of Matthew It's important for us to know that we along with the disciples in this point in the narrative are coming to grips with who?

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Jesus is and you're gonna know you're not gonna find real passages bold statements by Jesus in front of large crowds in Israel where he says

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I Am the Son of God I am God in human flesh come down to save you he doesn't speak this way in part because had he done that they would have accused him of blasphemy and Jesus's earthly ministry would have been cut a wee bit short

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The crucifixion would have been moved up a little bit on the calendar. So Jesus instead has chosen to Demonstrate who he is by what he's doing

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Who he is by what he's doing. We'll see it this week and we're gonna see it in spades next week and so here we've got this great crowd huge crowd and as we read at the back end of our gospel text there are 5 ,000 men

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Present now everybody knows that the Bible hates women. So that's why they don't count men.

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I'm Joking, that's just totally wrong when you think of it this way 5 ,000 men that roughly translates into about 5 ,000 what families?

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5 ,000 families now, this is the day before birth control and this is the day before television

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So if you have 5 ,000 men you have 5 ,000 wives. How many children do you think are running around?

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No, it's not 2 .5 and there are no white picket fences at this point So the chances are pretty good that with each of these different families

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You have anywhere from 5 to 10 children running around as well Some on the hip some toddling some walking around some nearing adult age you get the idea

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So how large is this crowd if you kind of start doing the math you're getting upwards now of 20 25 30 ,000 this is the stadium crowd.

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It's huge and you're gonna note that the text makes it very clear where they are they are in a desolate place a large crowd of Israelites in a wilderness place

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Hmm. I wonder what's going on here. Hmm. Let's keep reading So you got the idea now when it was evening the disciples came to Jesus and said this is a desolate place

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That's kind of the point. The day is now over send the crowds away to go to the villages and buy food

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What for themselves? That's the way of things under the curse. Is it not? You're gonna have to God's not providing your food for you and not in that sense.

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You're gonna have to work for it It's not gift. It's earned so they may go buy food for themselves

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Then Jesus says this draw jaw -dropping statement Well, they need not go away you give them something to eat and you can just never had those moments where somebody tells you something and you can literally feel the

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Blood drained from you and everything runs ice -cold in your veins. You ever have that happen. I can I can just see

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Peter going Whoa, what? Okay. He's in panic mode at this point.

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And so it says We only have five loaves here and two fish

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So so he said bring them here to me. He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass

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Wow, he makes me to lie down in green pastures. This sounds like the Good Shepherd, doesn't it? May them sit down on the grass and taking the five loaves and the two fish

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He looked up to heaven and said a blessing Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples and the disciples gave them to the crowds

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Notice Jesus broke them and gave the disciples gave this is all gift

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Gift food think of it that way and then they broke them gave them and they all ate and were

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Satisfied so think of it this way after the men had had their fill of bread and fish

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They had to loosen up their belts a little bit and go. Oh, yeah. I thought that's really good See Jesus didn't just give them a little bit a little box lunch, you know, maybe a you know

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A dry dried out chick -fil -a thing, you know a little bit of coleslaw on the side.

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No They ate to the full and there were leftovers and they took up the 12 baskets full of broken pieces

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That were left over and those who ate were about 5 ,000 men Besides the women and children and we learned from the gospel of John's account of this exact same miracle.

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What? happens next John chapter 6 verses 13 through 15 says so they gathered them up filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten and When the people saw the sign that he had done

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The light goes on they said this is indeed the prophet who has come

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Into the world the one that Moses told us about that. We had to listen to that. This is Jesus They fight they put it all together because they're sitting there going man

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We got this great crowd of Jews in a desolate place and God has supplied us with food miraculously.

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Oh We know who you are So perceiving then that they were about to come and take

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Jesus by force and make him King Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself

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They figured out who Jesus was they correctly identified him. They knew that Jesus truly was

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Well the promised Messiah the king of Israel, but they did not properly understand what his mission was

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They did not understand that Jesus did not come at this point

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To lead them as an army in order to take back the city of David and reestablish the

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Davidic Kingdom on earth Instead Jesus here in his incarnation and his humbleness has come a little bit more like Moses to lead his people out of slavery

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Into the real promised land. That's what he was up to. So this great important miracle pinnacle miracle helps us identify who

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Jesus is but we must remember this and That is that well

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Although Jesus is King He's also suffering servant That's what he's come for a little bit of the words from our

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Old Testament text from Isaiah 55 We'll kind of help frame then and put the finishing touches on this idea

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Here's it says come everyone who thirsts come to the waters and he who has no money

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Come by and eat come by wine and milk without money and without price

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Hmm you'll notice Isaiah here is prophesying and telling us to do what seems to be impossible to purchase food to purchase wine

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To purchase things that would satisfy our tummy our hunger and our thirst and to buy them without money

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Why doesn't it just say God's Basically setting up a welfare system.

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Just come and get it says come and buy Does it not I? Want you to think of it this way.

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We've all heard the phrase. There's no such thing as a free lunch now granted There may have been times when we ourselves have been given a free lunch

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But that doesn't mean the lunch was free It cost somebody else so somebody buys you lunch for you.

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It's free for them It costs same idea here is that Jesus has not come to Conquer and set himself up as a bread

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King and set up, you know kind of a global Socialist theocracy that's not always come to do

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Jesus has come to purchase for us People for himself

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People who are forgiven and think of it this way to basically pay the tab for all the food in the new earth

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And he's gonna do so with his own blood. And so in the new in the new earth

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We come and we buy without money Because Jesus has picked up the tab

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Does that make sense? So for us it's an eternity of a free lunch But for Jesus it cost him everything it cost is his entire life in Eden the food was free and was gift in the new earth

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It'll be free and a gift but it'll be a free a gift purchased

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Already paid for by the fact that Jesus came and he paid your penalty for your sin

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Including the sin of Adam and Eve that were imputed to all of us So that in the new earth we can once again not have to toil and survive by the sweat of our brows

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But receive for eternity the gift of God's Grace and is caring for us in body and soul

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Meeting our needs so that there'll be world without end and it's important to note this that what's coming

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The finest foods the greatest wines The greatest cheeses the greatest food you've ever tasted in your entire life in a world without end bought purchased in advance by the extravagant love and grace of Christ For sinners such as me and sinners such as you

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It's a beautiful picture. And so this miracle reveals who

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Jesus is But it also reveals what he is doing and what he has done food theology and scripture

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It's about law and gospel But the gospel has the last say because what

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Christ has done think of it this way. We are all invited to the great wedding feast of the

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Lamb we collectively are the bride of Christ and it's going to be one big blowout party and Christ has made it so that it has an open bar to the praise of his glorious grace 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 159 5 0 470th

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Avenue Northwest Oslo, Minnesota 5 6 7 4 4 and again that address is kungsvinger lutheran church 159 5 0 470th

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Avenue Northwest Oslo, Minnesota 5 6 7 4 4 We thank you for your support

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