The Agony of Apostasy

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 Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Luke 12 49 -53 I came to cast fire on the earth, and I would that it were already kindled. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished.

Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on, in one's house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.

In the name of Jesus. Beloved, I wish I could bring to you better texts than these. Everything seems so dark with these texts. What's this about Jesus bringing fire and division? I mean, didn't the angels sing on Jesus' birth?

You know, peace to you, right? Peace. What is this fire, sword, conflict, division talk? Well, this has to do with the division that's caused by the separation of light from darkness. Let's return again to our Old Testament text.

Jeremiah Against False Prophets and Vain Hopes

You'll note that although the words of the prophet Jeremiah were written more than 2 ,500 years ago, they could have been written, well, today, this morning. The state of the visible church today is abysmal.

False teachers, false prophets abound, and there's no way to check them. They fill the hearts and the minds of people with absolute nonsense. They do it on Christian TV, Christian radio, Christian churches.

It's like watching the world become darker and darker as the light of the church, well, the light of one church after another is extinguished and snuffed out. That's our context. Jeremiah writes, Thus says Yahweh.

He is truly speaking the word of the Lord. Jeremiah, unlike the people he is now writing about, is not a false prophet. He is a true prophet. And here's what the Lord says. Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes.

They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, it shall be well with you. You will have your best life now. No, I put that in the text.

But it fits, doesn't it? Everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say no disaster will come upon you.

Love wins, right?

Luther on Jeremiah, Hardening, and the Coming Judgment

Luther, in his introduction, the prophet Jeremiah says this. Few comments are needed for an understanding of the prophet Jeremiah. If one will only pay attention to the events that took place under the kings in whose time he preached.

For his preaching had reference to the condition of the land at the time. In the first place, the land was full of vices and idolatry. The people slew the prophets and would have their own vices and their own idolatries go unrebuked.

This is in the land where they claimed that Yahweh was their God and King. Luther continues, we learn from Jeremiah, among others, that as usual, the nearer the punishment, the worse people become. And that the more one preaches to them, the more they despise his preaching.

Thus we understand that when it is God's will to inflict punishment, he makes the people to become hardened so that they may be destroyed without any mercy and not appease God's wrath with any repentance.

Those are some sharp words. And it should cause us to take pause and check. Luther continues,. So the men of Sodom long ago had to not only despise righteous Lot, but even afflict him because he taught them.

Even their own affliction was at the door. Likewise, Pharaoh, when about to be drowned in the Red Sea, had to oppress the children of Israel twice as much as before. And Jerusalem had to crucify God's Son when its own final destruction was on the way.

So it goes everywhere, even now. Now that the end of the world is approaching, the people rage and rave most horribly against God. They blaspheme and damn God's Word, though they well know that it is God's Word and they know it is the truth.

Besides, so many fearful signs and wonders are appearing both in the heavens and among all creatures which threaten them terribly. It is indeed a wicked and miserable time, even worse than that of Jeremiah.

And note, Luther penned these words 500 years ago. How much worse has it gotten? But so it will be, and it must be. The people begin to feel secure and they sing, Peace all is well, love wins. They simply persecute everything that accords with the will of God.

And they disregard all the threatening signs until destruction suddenly surprises them and destroys them before they know it. But Christ will be able to sustain His own, for whose sake He causes His Word to shine forth in this shameful time of ours, just as at Babylon He sustained Daniel and those like him, for whose sake Jeremiah's prophecy had to shine forth.

To the same dear Lord be praise and thanks, the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God over all to eternity.

Amen.

The Gospel as Repentance, Forgiveness, and the Exposure of Sin

Sobering words, are they not? You think preaching the Gospel is about making people feel happy? Boosting their self-esteem? The Gospel is the good news of Christ's death for sinners. That's you.

That's me.

Each and every one of us deserves the wrath of God because of our sinful rebellion against God. And when the Word of the Lord comes to us,.

What do we do?

We fall asleep.

We ignore it.

Oh, things will be fine. I mean, things have been getting better and better all along. I mean, look it, we now have iPhones and iPads, and we can talk to each other.

Over the Internet.

The world is getting better. Haven't you seen the Olympics? Look how happy everybody is in the whole wide world. We're all heading towards utopia. The Kingdom of God is just on the cusp. And yet, look at society.

How many untold millions of unborn infants have we slaughtered? Clinically. As a nation, we are so guilty it's not even funny. And you wonder, why has God's judgment tarried? But has it? Has God's judgment tarried?

Look long and hard. How difficult is it to hear the Gospel being preached today? How hard is it to find a church where a pastor preaches the Word of God? How easy is it to find a church where God's Word is treated like a balloon animal, twisted and bent into every kind of shape that pleases and entertains people?

Anything different in our society than it was in the time of Jeremiah? The parallels are stark. They're sobering. It makes one wonder that the judgment of God is not just around the corner. Jeremiah continues,.

For who among them has stood in the counsel of the Lord these false prophets? To see and hear His Word, or who has paid attention to His Word and listened? The obvious answer is none. Behold, the storm of the Lord.

Wrath has gone forth. This is dark stuff. A whirling tempest, a tornado, has burst upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has executed and accomplished the intents of His heart.

In the latter days, you will understand it clearly. And these false teachers and false prophets assure us,.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

God really isn't this way. There is no wrath in God. God is love. There is no wrath. This was a misunderstanding on the part of that cranky guy named Jeremiah. He clearly had gastrointestinal problems and was probably not potty trained correctly.

Just ignore those words. No, no, God is love. You will be prosperous. God wants to make you a millionaire. Didn't you know that? He has the secret dream destiny that He wants to give you.

Come to church.

Apply these principles. Your life will get better.

And better and better.

And then you have that nagging part of you saying, What if He isn't crazy? What if He actually is saying the truth? Jeremiah says that God says, I didn't send those teachers. I didn't send those prophets.

Yet they ran.

I didn't speak to them. Yet they prophesied. If they had stood in My counsel, God says, then they would have proclaimed My words to My people. They would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their deeds.

No, no, no, no.

You're fine. It's okay.

It's okay.

You go ahead.

And do whatever you want.

Surf into websites and look at porn. No problem. Sleep with your girlfriend.

No big deal.

Cheat your boss. Steal stuff from his till.

Go ahead.

Do whatever you like. You deserve it. Something's off here. These teachers are telling us everything is fine with God and we can just stay the way that we are. And yet Jeremiah says that if they had My words, God's words, they would have been turned from their evil.

Who talks about that anymore? Evil? Sin? You've got to be kidding me, right? They're oopsies.

They're slipsies.

They're mistakes. I'm broken. It was an accident. Sin? Evil?

Nah.

And yet the Lord, speaking to the prophet Jeremiah,.

Says,.

Am I a god at hand, declares the Lord, and not a god far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him, declares the Lord? Do I not fill heaven and earth, declares the Lord? I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in My name.

Lies?

It's a lie?

Yeah.

A lie.

They say, I have dreamed a dream. I have dreamed. How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? You mean, God doesn't have a dream destiny thingy for me?

You mean, God doesn't intend for me to go out and be the most amazing person ever? The one who's going to change the world? The one who everybody says at his death,.

Wow!

That one was amazing! You mean, Jesus isn't telling us to dream bigger? To be imaginative? To go and conquer the world with our great dreams and visions for making the world a better place? Jeremiah says, all of those people who speak this way, they're speaking deceit.

These words do not come from the mind of God. These words come from the deceit of their own blackened, sins infested,.

Pus ridden hearts.

They think that they can make my people forget my name by their dreams. They tell one another, even as their fathers forgot my name for Baal. But let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream. But let him who has my word speak my word faithfully.

Brothers and sisters, we have God's word. You will not find it here. You will find it in your Bible. That's where God's word is. And God's word, his written word, all of it,.

Theanoustos,.

God breathe. None of it says, oh, don't worry about your evil. Just go about doing what you like. Instead, Jesus who is the word of God incarnate, his voice is added to the voice of the prophets of the Old Testament.

And what does his voice say?

Repent. Repent.

You are not good. You are wicked. You are evil. You have sinned gravely against heaven and earth. You stand guilty before God. You are not good. You are the opposite of that. You and I both have all deserved the wrath of God.

Christ's word comes to us and says,.

Repent.

Change your mind. Say, God, you're right.

I'm wrong.

And then hear these words. Christ has bled and died for your rebellion, for your wickedness, for your evil. Now be forgiven.

Live.

The Golden Calf and Worshiping God on Our Own Terms

Now, keep this in mind, that the idolatry that is today, all of these words, these prophecies, these dreams, these visions, these teachings that have their origin in the hearts of these people and then have, well, God's name slapped on it,.

If you would.

Right?

This is a common thing, and it goes way back, by the way. Way, way back. Remember the incident of the golden calf? Let me remind you from the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 32. When the people saw that Moses was delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and they said to him, Up, make us gods who shall go before us.

As for this Moses fella, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him. So Aaron said to them, Take off the rings of gold that are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me.

So all the people took off the rings of gold that were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. And he received the gold from their hand and fashioned it with a graving tool and made a golden calf. And they said, These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

Now watch these pious words from Aaron. And when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it. And Aaron made a proclamation and said, Tomorrow shall be a feast to Yahweh. That's what the text says. Golden calf, idol.

We're going to worship the way we want to worship. We're going to believe what we want to believe. And then we're going to slap God's holy name onto it. A golden calf named Yahweh.

Really? That's cute.

But it's deceitfully sinful. Many people lost their lives for this sin. And all of this comes from their own heart. None of it comes from God. Now a little bit of a turn here. I want you to think of this.

You who know the truth, you who are baptized into Christ, forgiven, who trust Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, who daily walk in the waters of your baptism, penitent, forgiven, that when you speak the truth of God's word, do you not know that you get yourself in trouble?

You do.

I've talked with many of you. And you say things like, Yeah, but if I say that to this person, they're going to get upset.

Right?

We all know this. We all know that if we say these words, this message, this word of God to people, that you're evil, repent, be forgiven, Christ has bled and died for that, that's going to send some people over the edge.

The word nowadays is triggered.

Right?

I'm triggered. I'm triggered.

Right?

Consider the words of our psalm today. Listen to what it says. My soul longs for your salvation. I hope in your word. My eyes long for your promise. I ask, when will you comfort me? For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke, yet I have not forgotten your statutes.

How long must your servant endure? When will you judge those who persecute me? The insolent have dug pitfalls for me. They do not live according to your law, your Torah. All of your commandments are sure.

They persecute me with falsehood. Help me. You see, here's the issue. Every single one of us is born dead in trespasses and sins. As long as you remain in that state, you are hostile to God. You hate His word.

You do not want to hear anything about turning from your sin and being forgiven. That whole crucified and risen Jesus is very impractical and quite offensive. And so when somebody comes to you speaking those words, what do you do to that person?

You treat them the way the Pharisees treated Christ, right? And since, well, murdering somebody physically could land you in prison for a very long time, and in Texas might result in you being killed, we come up with ways of murdering people without actually leaving a mark.

And how do we do that? We murder their names, their reputations. When they show up, we turn our backs on them. We make sure to be on the phone and gossiping about them, right? And do you know what I'm talking about?

We unfriend them on Facebook. We let everybody know that person's drunk the Kool-Aid. They're religious now. We don't invite them to our parties, and we make sure that they know that they're not invited.

And all of this is because you would dare.

To speak the truth to them.

Christ’s Baptism, Division, and the Light of the World

They despise God's Word. And this is why Jesus in our text says today, I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled. Right now, it's quite out of control. But Jesus gave us these words, I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished.

These are good words for us, because Jesus truly was baptized. Baptized into death. Baptized in the fires of the wrath of God. Baptized so that we might live. And so we now in our baptisms, Esther, you today, join to Christ in the waters of baptism.

We now do not get what we deserve. We get the forgiveness of our sins. Rather than face the fires of hell for our crimes and rebellion against God, we hear from Christ our Judge that you are forgiven.

All because He has gone to His baptism. But in the meantime, for those of us who have the audacity to believe and proclaim the words of God and do it faithfully, Jesus says from now on, one house, it will be people who are divided.

Five against three, two against four. Do the math, it just is awful. Some of you even in this congregation have suffered that kind of division. Division in your own family. Division with your own friends.

But again, Christ has been baptized with the baptism of God's wrath. He has bled and died for all of your iniquities. And all of us who have come to the waters of baptism, have been baptized into Jesus.

And we are all now in Him. Jesus was the prophet prophesied by Moses. He is our prophet, our priest, and our king. And He does not fill our heart with vain words.

No.

Vain words keep us in slavery.

No.

Jesus, who is the truth. You see, it's not true about Jesus.

Jesus is the truth.

He who is the truth and who cannot and will not ever lie to you or to me, has spoken the truth about us. And He has correctly spoken to us His law that we are by nature sinful. We have rebelled against God, our merciful and kind Creator, and His word and His commands.

And rather than live in freedom as children of the light, we've become slaves to the dominion of darkness with the devil himself as our tyrannical dictator. But rather than throw the whole lot of us into the fires of hell as we rightly deserve, Scripture says that God sent forth His Son born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem, to purchase those who are under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are all now sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts so that we cry out, Abba, Father. You are no longer slaves. You are sons and heirs through God. Now that we've been set free, those who are blinded by the devil and his ways mistakenly think that we've joined with evil.

And because of this, they persecute us and they hate us. And the reason for this is that they hate the light. John 1 says this, all things were made through Jesus. Without Him was not anything that was made that was made.

In Him was life and the light was the light of the world. And the light shines in the darkness. The darkness has not overcome it. There was a man who was sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light so that all might believe through Him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through Him, and yet the world did not know Him.

He came to His own and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor even of the decision of a man, but born of God.

John 3 says, No one has ever ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, who is the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have as a gift eternal life.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him would never perish, but have eternal life. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.

And there's where the folly is. Those who hate and despise God's Word do not understand that Christ has not come to condemn them, but to save them. And the good news is this, that whoever believes in Him is not condemned.

Whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment. Light has come into the world, and people love the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his works should be exposed. Christ Jesus was baptized into our sin and death to accomplish our salvation by His cross and resurrection, so would all whom He has sealed by the Holy Spirit with the sign of His sacrifice, so that we would no longer live according to the lying, enslaving words of the dominion of darkness.

And our own sinful hearts, instead, that we would live in true freedom in the light of His Word. And that's the dividing line. The dividing line is light and darkness. You hate His Word, despise it, you are in the dark.

If you truly believe and trust in Christ, the light of the world, then you will never be in darkness and you have been set free from the dominion of darkness. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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