Applying The Key

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. Matthew, the fifth chapter.

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Jesus said, You have heard that it was said of old, You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.

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But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council.

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Whoever says, You fool, will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go.

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First be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison.

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Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. You have heard that it was said,

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You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

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If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out, throw it away, for it's better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

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And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away, it's better that you lose one of your members than your whole body go into hell.

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It was also said, Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery.

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And whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again, you have heard that it was said to those of old,

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You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn. But I say to you, do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king.

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And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say simply be yes or no.

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Anything more than this comes from evil. This is the gospel of the Lord. In the name of Jesus.

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Amen. All right, we're going to see if we were all paying attention last week. Remember, last week in the sermon, we pointed out what the

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Apostle Paul said, that he chose to know nothing except for Christ and him crucified for our sins.

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And we noted that what that really is pointing to is that every single doctrine must be hooked into the gospel itself, otherwise you're going to misread the scriptures.

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And so, think of it today. Did you notice any gospel in our readings today? Even a hint of gospel, just a little bit, there was no gospel in it.

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In fact, all of our readings today were law, and really, really heavy law, especially when it comes to our gospel text.

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Very heavy law. What are we to make of that? Well, let me give you an analogy to kind of start with. We have to go back, and we have to interpret it through the fact that there is nothing except for Christ and him crucified for our sins.

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We will try to accomplish that before we're done today. But I want to point out something about men. Have you noticed how stubborn they are when it comes to getting directions?

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Okay. Now, back in the days before there were things called GPSs, and your iPhone would give you instructions.

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Back in those days, we used these very, very special, magical things. They were made on paper.

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They were called maps. And I remember having to use maps and actually have to put on a notepad.

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I got to go to this freeway and get on this one going south, and then I need to head west, and I need to get off at this exit and go three miles, and then

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I need to turn left. It was an ordeal, right? But here's the thing. Back in those days, you were prone to getting lost, and it was always super embarrassing if you got lost with your wife in the car, okay?

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Because your wife would detect very early on. You don't know where you're going, do you? No, I know where I'm going.

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I'm just following the instructions that I wrote down from the map, right? You're lost, aren't you?

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No, I'm not. I'm not lost. Okay, 30 minutes later. Okay, I think I might need some help.

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And here's the thing. Actually stopping the vehicle, getting out, and maybe going to a gas station or something, because everybody knows, gas station attendants know where everything is, right?

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You go inside of the gas station, and you do the... I hate to say this, but I need a little help.

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I'm trying to get to such and such a place. Can you give me directions? And usually the guys say, oh yeah, he does this kind of thing.

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He says, go there, do this, do that, and you try to put it into your head and not get it all scrambled up, right? And so we loathe having to do that.

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But here's the thing. I want you to use that same analogy, that here we have the law, and we intuitively think that the law is like a gas station attendant who knows where everything on the planet is, and knows how to get there.

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But here's what the law does when you ask it for directions. So when you stop and you realize, you know, getting to heaven and getting to the eternal kingdom of Christ is a little more tricky than I thought.

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I better get some directions. So you get out of your vehicle and you go and you ask the law,

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Mr. Law, I mean, you seem like a trustworthy fellow, seem to be quite righteous and stuff like this.

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He says, I'm trying to get to the heavenly kingdom. And all the law will say is, well, it's that way.

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Ah, thanks. That's all I need. I just, that's all I need to know. It's that way. I can do that, right? So you get in your vehicle, which is your religious faith, and you start heading that way.

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And you travel that way for a long, long period of time. And you don't feel like you're any closer to finding the heavenly kingdom than when you first began.

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And so you begin to wonder if things are going wrong. And your wife is saying, you're going the wrong way.

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But he said it was that way. So what do you do? You turn around and you go back.

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And you say to the, you say to Mr. Law, Mr. Law, I was looking for the heavenly kingdom. You said it was that way.

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I headed in that direction. And well, I couldn't find it. And he said,

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I told you it was in that direction. I didn't tell you you could drive there, right?

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And see, that's the point. When you look at the law, it'll point you in the right direction of heaven.

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But it will not give you any ability to get there. It knows how to get there.

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It's that way. But don't think for a second that you can actually get there on your own. Because remember, we chose to know nothing among you except for Christ and him crucified for our sins.

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So what's the purpose of the law? It does point the way to eternal life, but here's the caveat.

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If you want to go that direction that the law is telling you, you're going to need to make sure that you haven't sinned even once.

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If you've sinned even once, you cannot possibly arrive at the heavenly kingdom on your own steam.

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There's no vehicle. There's no car. There's no religion. There's no prayers. There's no amount of good works, giving alms to the poor, anything that's going to make it possible for you to get there.

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You have to be taken there, which means you have to passively receive the gift of salvation.

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And so you sit there and go, well, if I only have to passively receive the gift of salvation, what's the point of the law at all, right?

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Because you'll know, have you ever noticed that when you're reading the law, it really kind of makes you feel terrible about yourself?

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Yeah? Yeah, I've noticed that too. And that's the point. It's kind of like the worst

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CT scan guy, you know, you ever go in and have like a CT scan done of your body? They put you in that thing and that thing whirls around and don't have any metal around you because the magnet, you know, fly off under the magnets, they won't be able to peel it off.

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Right? But there you are. And so the CT scan guy is looking at you and he goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

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Oh, you're screwed. It's a mess. What do you mean? Well, I don't think I should tell you, but you know, you're not going to make it.

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You're not supposed to tell me that. The doctor's supposed to tell me that. Well, yeah, I know, but I can see the diagnosis. It's terminal.

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You're not going to live. Thanks. Right? That's the job of the law.

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It's to give you a diagnosis and you'll note that it doesn't do so politely. That's its function, is to legitimately make you think about what you have done to transgress

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God's law. It makes you aware of your sin. And even worse, it makes you aware of the consequences of it, which you'll note has a tendency to create all kinds of anxiety.

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And that anxiety is not a bad anxiety because there's only one thing that can quell that. Think of it this way.

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Go to our gospel text today and I want you to consider the words of our Lord. He says, you have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not murder.

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And we all sit there and go, whew, haven't done that, uh -uh, no, no, no, mm -mm.

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Whoever murders will be liable to judgment. But I say to you, and Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, everyone who's angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

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Let those words sink in. Everyone who's angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.

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Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says you fool will be liable to hell of fire.

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Wait, what? How is that just? All right? I remember it was a couple of decades ago.

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Some kid in Singapore, an American citizen was traveling to Singapore and he did, he committed some kind of a misdemeanor.

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And you know what Singapore did to that guy? They caned him. They caned him.

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And we were all shouting here in the United States, that's barbaric. He only did this.

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It's a misdemeanor. And you caned him? Now I want you to think about this.

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God is saying if you insult your brother and call him a fool, you're liable to go to hell.

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Forget the caning. I'll take the caning at this point. Cane me please. Hell no. But that's the thing.

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He's saying if you do these things, you're going to go to hell. Well, what is this law then doing?

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It is making us all guilty. It is making us all sinners.

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It is making us all realize that we face judgment as individuals and the judgment that we face, the consequences of our sin on the books is that even a minor infraction, something we consider to be no big deal,

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God says that is going to send you to hell. Seriously.

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So what does Christ say to do? Well, let's see if this helps. If you're offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift therefore before the altar and go.

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First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift.

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Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court, lest you accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, and then you be put in prison.

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Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. And then you sit there and go, what if I try that?

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You know, all right, so I've sinned against somebody, so I go to them and try to be reconciled. And what if it turns out the person isn't interested in being reconciled to me?

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What if that person's kind of a lousy person and as a result of it there's no way to be reconciled?

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Then what? You'll note that Jesus doesn't say, well then you're off the hook. He doesn't say that at all.

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You'll note here that Jesus isn't in this portion of his sermon giving us loopholes to help our consciences feel like, well,

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I've done all that I needed to do, that's all I need to do, I'm off the hook, I'm no longer guilty. No, not at all.

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Oh, it gets worse. So you've heard that it was said you should not commit adultery. And I'll sit there and go, well,

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I haven't done that. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

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Can I be blunt? Let's just put this out on the table. This now makes every red -blooded male over the age of 12 guilty of adultery, right?

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Every single one of them. Me included. Y 'all included.

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And this is, well, that just basically was a nuke that leveled each and every one of us.

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And he says, if your right eye causes you to sin too late, tear it out, throw it away. A lot of good that's going to do because the damage has already been done, the sin has already been committed.

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Have you noticed that in our day and age there seems to be an epidemic, not of COVID, but of pornography, right?

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Yeah, so let's just make this clear that Christ here has just made every man a sinner.

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And oddly enough, this also then would apply to women. Just flip the script, it still applies.

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If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out, throw it away. It's better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

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I should have done that when I was born, it would have helped, right? Too late now.

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If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off, throw it away. It's better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

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So what are we supposed to do with this? It doesn't make us feel good. In fact, you'll note that humanity has this very interesting proclivity, and that is that our hearts are constantly breaking the first commandment, you will have no other gods.

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And when the one true God who speaks to us from his word rightly condemns us, and we feel the anxiety of the pending doom that we face, and the judgment that we have earned because of our sins, even the smallest ones have earned us hell, we try to find ways to silence the law.

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Some people stick their head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend like the law isn't there and just go along their merry way.

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Well, I'll have to deal with that when the time comes. Other people silence the law by creating their own laws.

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When I was a Nazarene, it was do not dance, drink, smoke, or chew, right? I'm going to tell you this, that is a super simple law.

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It's really easy to keep, but it has absolutely nothing to do with holiness, nothing to do with it at all.

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In fact, when you consider what it is that God's law is telling us that we ought to be doing, it has nothing to do really per se with not dancing, drinking, smoking, or chewing.

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It has everything to do with loving God and loving our neighbor, and that being expressed in our thoughts, our words, and our deeds to our neighbor.

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This is the reason why Jesus says that when you insult your brother and call him a fool, you've already committed murder in your heart, and the murder happened long before the words you fool ever left your lips.

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That's the reality of the situation. The law's job is to condemn us.

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It says, yeah, salvation's that way, but you can't get there. You are absolutely, utterly incapable of it.

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And so what do we do with this then? How are we to work this out?

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Well, we're going to note that Scripture doesn't leave us without clues as to what to do here.

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So we ought not then to besmirch God's law, to attack it, to somehow think he's the bully.

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The law is being a bully here. It's roughing me up and saying unkind things to me, and I don't like the way it's talking to me.

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We should never do that. Paul in Romans 7 says this, what shall we say, that the law is sin? You know, he's asking that question because there are legitimately people who somehow, as Christians, sit there and go, well, the law has really nothing to talk to us about, and they drive the law down.

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He says, by no means, if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin, and boy, we need to know it.

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For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, you shall not covet.

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But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

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The problem is inside of me. The problem is inside of you. The law has given a proper diagnosis.

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For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and then

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I died. So the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me, not because of it, but because of sin within me.

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For sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, then deceived me, and through it killed me.

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So the law is holy, the commandment is holy, it is righteous, and it is good.

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So we must not take God's law and somehow, well, accuse it of doing evil, because it's not the one that kills us, it's sin that kills us.

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But the commandment is the thing that brings to light what God's holiness requires of us, and points out the fact that we do not live up to it.

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Thankfully, the resolve of that portion of scripture ends with these words, but there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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Again, Paul chose to know nothing except for Christ's name crucified for our sins. And so here, this careful study of God's law, even just the little bits that Jesus gave in the

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Sermon on the Mount, we can see how it then condemns us all. But the thing is, is that the law doesn't get the final say.

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You are in Christ. You have been baptized into his death and into his resurrection.

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In the waters of your baptism, Christ has washed away all the filth and iniquity of your sin.

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He has clothed you in the splendid righteousness of his righteousness. He has loved you, bled and died for you, taken away your sin and guilt and shame, taken it upon himself.

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And so we no longer have to be condemned because Christ was condemned for you and for me.

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This is the reason why there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

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So here on the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, when we are dealt out three texts that all are heavy in law, note that this is a good time for us to begin to think on that law, to not cast it aside, to begin to get ready for the penitential season of Lent.

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This is a good pre -Lent service for us, if you would. This is a time for us to get used to looking back in that law and seeing the reflection that comes back.

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And you'll note the reflection that the law gives you back is not a good one. It shows a dead, rotting corpse, because that's who we are.

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But you have been baptized and made alive. This is the reason why in our Old Testament text,

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God says, choose between life and death. It is not a matter of mere obedience that is the distinction between life and death.

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If that were the case, then Christ died for nothing. The distinction then between life and death is whether or not you truly have faith that you are forgiven in Christ.

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And by that fact, that you have been united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, and you have been indwelt by God the

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Holy Spirit, you have, you now have faith and you are capable of loving

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God and loving neighbor. But you're going to note, right now, because you still have your sinful flesh, there's nothing easy about doing it.

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Because although you have the desire, because you've been united with Christ, to do good and to do right, you still have a sinful flesh that desires to do wrong and seeks after its own selfish desires.

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The two are at war with themselves. That being the case, we are admonished in Scripture.

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We are admonished in Scripture that by the power of the Holy Spirit to mortify our sinful passions, and it is a good thing that the law identifies what those passions are.

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Without the law, we would practically be blind to our own deceitful desires that burble up from our own sinful nature.

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But through the law of God, we can see the sin for what it is, and even more important, we can see the consequences that we've earned as a result of those sins.

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And the ones that we consider to be the, well, the least dangerous, you'll note that even those, well,

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Christ points out, by them we have earned hell. So brothers, we are not debtors to our flesh to live according to the flesh.

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Instead, by the power of the Holy Spirit, then we put to death the deeds of the body, and by doing so,

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God will make us live. So let us embrace the law. Let us embrace it and see it for the holy thing that it is.

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And although it accuses us and makes us uncomfortable and judges us, and rightly so, there is no condemnation for any of us because Christ was condemned so that we would not be condemned.

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So let us then look to the law and see its powerful work and the role that it plays. In fact, in our hymn, the opening hymn today, very important words, and I want you to consider them as we finish up today.

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I think this hymn does a really great job of explaining the function of the law in our lives as Christians.

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It says the law of God is good and it's wise. Let those words sink in because it's true.

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And the law is the one that sets God's will before our eyes. It shows us the way of righteousness and it rightly dooms to death when we transgress.

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The law, its light of holiness, imparts the knowledge of our sinful hearts so that we may see our lost estate and turn from sin before it's too late.

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You see, the law is screaming at us, turn around, turn around, you're going the wrong way, you're heading to hell, turn around.

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And so it actually plays a very vital role, we dare not besmirch it.

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To those whose help in Christ have found and would in works of love abound, God's law shows us what deeds are his delight and should be done as good and right.

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You see, the law also helps us so that we don't have to invent good works. I want you to think about this, at the time of Martin Luther, people had these really crazy ideas as to what a good work was.

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What's a good work? Well, you head to such and such a castle in Bavaria and then you go to such and such a chapel next to the castle in Bavaria and what you do is you walk in and you see there the relics, the knuckle bone of Saint Teresa is there.

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And if you say a certain prayer and you put enough money into the coffer, then you will receive a special blessing, right?

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And people thought that this is how they do their good works. How do you do a good work? You put a nickel in the coffer and then you light a candle in the church, that's a good work, right?

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And you'll note here that people come up with all these crazy ideas as to what a good work is. Evangelicals today, so many of the people that we serve online, they come to us and they have no clue what a good work is because when they were attending these churches, they were told, well, they've got to find their purpose.

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They've got to learn how to hear God's voice, discover their purpose, and then set about doing it. And it's like that character from Rudolph the

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Red -Nosed Reindeer, Hermie, who doesn't want to make toys. He wants to be a dentist. And so you've got to go and find out what it is that God wants you to do and then you've got to get busy doing that and you're praying,

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God, please don't send me to Africa, right? Weird things like this. And what is staring them in the face is

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God's law, which makes it clear what a good work is.

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Love God, love your neighbor, care for your wife, care for your spouse, love and care for your children, do a good job at work.

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And people sit there and go, well, it can't be that, that's too simple. But that's what the law says, right?

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It shows you what good works are so that you don't have to invent them. But here's the warning in our hymn, to those who scornfully disdain

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God's law, so then in sin remain. It's terror in their ear resounds and keeps their wickedness in bounds.

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So don't disdain God's law because by doing so you stay in the bonds of iniquity.

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And then note here, verse 5, the law of God is good, but since the fall its holiness condemns us all.

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It dooms us for our sin to die and it has no power to justify, none.

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Stop looking to your good works as if somehow they are going to earn you salvation.

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You will never earn salvation that way. Yes, God's law is good, but you are not capable of keeping it perfectly.

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So then what's the resolve? To Jesus we flee, who from the curse he is the one who has set us free, and we humbly worship at his throne, knowing that we are saved by grace and through faith alone, right?

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So you'll note, as Christians, we dare not fear God's law, nor do we attack it, nor do we dilute it, nor do we somehow water it down.

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No, what we do instead is we joyfully hear its condemning voice and thank

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God because that's the voice of God speaking to us, showing us our sin and the magnitude of it and the dire consequences of it, but we know that in Christ we have no condemnation because he has bled and died so that we can live.

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So as we get ready to go into Lent next week, it's just a week and a half away, right?

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This is a good time to again pull that law out, dust it off, examine your life in light of the

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Ten Commandments, and when it condemns you, this is the place where you need to ask

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God, the Holy Spirit, to give you the strength to once again be about the task of mortifying our sinful flesh so that the

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Holy Spirit can produce in us the fruit of repentance, the fruit of the

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Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self -control because that is who our

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Savior is and that is exactly what he is like. In the name of Jesus, Amen. And again, that address is

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Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th

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Avenue NW, Oslo, MN 56744. We thank you for your support.

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