It Will Cost You Your Self Righteousness

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 in salvation by grace through faith alone.

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And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Rosebrook. The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 13th chapter.

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Jesus said, The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up.

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Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.

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Again the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered the fish of every kind.

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And when it was full men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into containers but threw away the bad.

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So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace.

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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood all these things?

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They said to him, Yes. And he said to them, Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a master of a house who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.

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This is the gospel of the Lord in the name of Jesus. So Jesus caps off this chapter in Matthew, Matthew 13 with three quick short parables and at the end of the parables he asks his disciples,

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Do you understand all these things? And so you'll note Jesus in chapter 13 is giving us a master class on how to understand his parables.

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It's necessary because Christ hasn't withdrawn his word, he's just made his word to be impossible to understand unless you apply yourself to it, unless you have faith.

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And so he who has ears to hear, let him hear but do not be stubborn and stiff necked and do not despise

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God's word. But I would note here, I'm still a recovering

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Nazarene and a recovering Californian. I think that's also a thing also.

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But all of that being said, I think I still have some PTSD from receiving all kinds of law, law, law, law, law, law, law preaching and not hearing the gospel for me as a

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Christian. That being the case, I can distinctly remember horrifying, terrifying sermons on these particular parables, especially the first two and being told things like, well, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field.

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So have you sold out for Jesus a hundred percent? Are you on fire for the Lord? And of course, are you willing to lay down your life for Christ?

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And we're not talking about just persecution, we're talking about laying down your life every single, if you are not willing to do that, then you're not even worthy of the kingdom of heaven.

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Why should you even call yourself a Christian? And you preach like that and eventually somebody's going to sit there and go, you know, that's a good point.

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That's a good question. Why should I call myself a Christian? Asta, I'm out of here. On to the next thing.

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You know, all law preaching doesn't bring us peace with Christ, it brings us terrors. And somebody can only sit under that kind of terror for so long.

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But here's where we're going to apply some very important rules.

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Number one rule, context, context, context. But there's another rule when it comes to sound exegesis, and that is you let

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Scripture interpret Scripture. I assure you that there is a cost to being a disciple of Jesus Christ.

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And as we sang in the opening hymn, Jesus is indeed our priceless treasure.

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But I think you would be surprised to find out how the Scriptures interpret that cost when it comes to what we need to get rid of and consider to be worthless so that we might gain

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Jesus, our priceless treasure. So we'll do a little bit of work on that. Second parable, I'll kind of set it up this way.

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You're in there, but not where you would expect. Let's just kind of put it that way.

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And then the third parable, super easy to kind of understand. The parables regarding the judgment day always seem to be pretty straightforward.

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So with that, we'll do a little bit of work here. First parable, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up.

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There's lots of stories of hidden treasure, right? Isn't that what being a pirate's all about? It's all about hiding treasure.

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But I would note something here. In the days before banking, we can put our money safely in the bank.

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At least we think it's safe, right? FDIC insured up to a particular amount of money that I never seem to get any closer to.

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But all that being said, the bank seems to be a safe place to do it. But before there were banks, what would you do with your money?

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So I did a little research this week. Yeah, what did people do with their money back in the day? Turns out that in Jesus's day, it was common practice for people to divvy up their money and put it into three places in order to protect it.

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Place number one, legitimately putting it in a chest and burying it somewhere, maybe in a garden or somewhere out in a field.

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That was a common practice. This was to avoid becoming bankrupt. Third way in which people...

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Second... I jumped over the second. Second way in which people kind of hid their money is they would invest it in jewels and wear it as jewelry.

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And here was the thinking. If you lived back in the day, Roman soldiers would come through or Greek soldiers would come through, the

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Syrian army would come through. And there was a good chance back in the day that you would find yourself at least one or two times in your life being a war refugee and having to be on the run and go somewhere else in order to survive a conflict and then come back when things have settled down.

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And the whole point of converting part of your assets into jewels was you can wear it on your way out and then when you arrive where you're going, you can trade, you can sell those jewels and then have the money that you need to live on.

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That's a pretty smart way of thinking. And then the third is you hide it in the proverbial mattress. Parts of it go into the proverbial mattress.

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This is your day -to -day operating expenses. So it wouldn't be uncommon if somebody hid a treasure in a field, which is not an uncommon place to put it, that that person might die and nobody knows where it is.

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Where's cousin Vito's treasure? We have no idea. He dug it up somewhere and hid it while he was drunk and he can't even remember where it was.

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So this is kind of the thing. So Jesus legitimately is referring to something that people would understand long before the days before there were pirates of the

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Caribbean. So here's the fellow. He finds this treasure and what does he do?

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He covers it up and then in his joy, he goes and sells all that he has to buy that field.

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Now, if this were me, the sinner that I am, I'm not interested in buying a field.

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I just want the treasure, right? So I would take one of my flashlights or go into stealth mode, maybe get myself some kind of a device where I can see in the dark, and then

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I would go and dig that treasure up while nobody was looking, so there were no witnesses, and I would just slink away with it into the dark of the night and enjoy the joys of the treasure.

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But that's not the parable that Jesus told, which then begs the question, why does he need to sell all that he has in order to buy it?

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And here's where we need to note something here. This is talking about the kingdom of heaven. This is talking about Christianity.

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This is talking about eternal life. This is talking about Jesus Christ, our priceless treasure.

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And you'll note, good luck stealing him and good luck stealing the kingdom. That ain't gonna work.

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There is always a cost for being a Christian.

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You cannot possess the treasures of heaven and something else, and let me explain what that something else is, and here's where we'll do a little cross -reference work.

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Think along with me. If you wanna flip over to Philippians chapter three, if you have a Bible open, you are welcome to do that.

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I'm gonna start at verse two, a passage that I come to with some frequency in my sermons, and let's look at this text in light of this idea of those things that are worthless and those things that have such value that you'd be willing to forsake them for that, all right?

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And here's what Paul says, Philippians three, two. Look out for the dogs.

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Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. He's writing this against the self -righteous, and you'll note that each and every one of us still has an old sinful

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Adam, and let me tell you, that guy is as self -righteous as they come, right? Your old sinful

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Adam is every bit as much as the Pharisees, a dog and a mutilator of the flesh, seeking to bargain with God.

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Well, God, I should be given blessings from you because I did these things, right?

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I'm a good person. I did some good things. Therefore, I should receive blessings from God, right?

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Why is it that I'm not getting what I deserve, God? And what do we do? We're exchanging our good works, thinking that they have some kind of a cash value, right, in order to receive blessings or maybe even salvation from God.

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Paul says this, we, Christians, we are the circumcision, who worship by the

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Spirit of God and we glory in Christ Jesus and we put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself

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I have reason for confidence in the flesh also. So he's now going to list out his pedigree, it's a good pedigree if you were to think of like the

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Torah and God's law. If anyone else thinks he has reasons for confidence in the flesh, listen, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

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Hebrew of the Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

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And what are the lists that people used when I was growing up? Well, I never went to any

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R -rated movies, only went to movies rated G and PG, didn't drink a drop of alcohol, never smoked, never chewed or dated any girls who did, all that kind of stuff.

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And so you think, ah, I'm really, really, really holy. But here's, note the words, whatever gain

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I had, I counted as a loss for the sake of Christ.

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Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

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Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and I count them as rubbish in order that I might gain

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Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that is from God and that depends on faith.

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Huh. Same theme, right? And that's really the point. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field.

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You see, that is exactly what Jesus is. He's treasure hidden in a field.

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I would note he was hidden inside of a tomb, right? And does the world consider

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Jesus to be a treasure? No. In fact, it's fascinating that God takes the treasure of the eternal life offered in Jesus Christ and he hides it.

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He hides it in bread and wine and in the waters of baptism. He hides it in Jesus's death for you and I on the cross and him being put into a rich man's tomb.

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He hides it in the scriptures, the Bible of all things. And boy, is that book being despised more and more today and of all places, places that call themselves

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Christian churches. And so, you know, ordinary place, a field, that's where God places this great treasure.

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And I would note that this fellow who found this treasure, was he looking for it?

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No. That's kind of the thing. We've all heard stories of some fellow who, some farmer who decided that he was going to dig up part of his plot of land because he was going to do something different.

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And next thing you know, his backhoe gets into the dirt and he digs up like the keys to Atlantis or something like this.

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You know, some buried treasure from ancient times. What do we say about that fellow? That guy's the luckiest guy on planet earth.

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It was just dumb luck, right? But the reality is this, is that that treasure found that guy.

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Just like eternal life and the treasure of Jesus Christ, he has found you. And although you were not looking for it, you have found it in him.

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And as a result of it, we recognize that there is a cost that must be paid in order for us to possess this treasure.

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We cannot steal it. And it requires us to sell all of our works of self -righteousness.

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All of those deeds that we thought that we had done in order to earn salvation, just put them all away and instead buy the field.

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And if you don't have any money, good news, the whole thing's free anyway. That's the point because you cannot even afford this field.

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And then he possesses it. You possess it. So you'll know the kingdom of heaven is indeed like a hidden treasure and it's going to cost you every single one of your deeds of self -righteousness.

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They will get you nowhere. Instead, trust in Christ and receive this treasure that you so clumsily just stumbled upon as the gift that it is.

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Parable number two. I said, it's really not about you and it isn't, and a good way to think of it is this.

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People hear it this way. The kingdom of heaven is like a pearl of great price. Wrong.

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That is a wrong way of reading this. The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls.

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That's the point of the text, right? And so we must note something here in scripture.

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Scripture in Romans chapter three says of all of us, none is righteous.

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No not one. No one seeks for God. Now pop quiz, reading comprehension time here.

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How many people seek for God according to Romans three? None. Huh. All right.

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But I know a guy who seeks. I know a guy, right? Didn't Jesus say that he came to what?

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Seek and save the lost. So Jesus is this merchant.

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The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant, it's like Jesus, in search of fine pearls and who on finding one pearl of great value went and sold all that he had and bought it.

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Let me kind of give you a common way of putting it. This merchant went and bought the farm so that he can purchase this pearl.

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And what is the pearl? It's the church. It's you. It's me. And he bought it with his own precious blood.

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That's the point of this text. Let me give you some cross references so that you don't think I'm totally out of whack here.

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At least just partially out of whack would be okay. But here's what it says in Ephesians chapter five.

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We'll use this as kind of an anchor text. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing so that she might be holy and without blemish.

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Now the scripture is clear. This passage goes on to say that therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.

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He's quoting from Genesis. And then he says this, this mystery is profound. And I'm saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

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What refers to Christ in the church? Genesis chapter two, a man will leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two will become one flesh.

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That text is pointing us to Jesus. In other words, every single marriage, every wedding is a type and shadow of Jesus's relationship with you, his bride.

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Now think back to this. We've all been to a wedding or two, right? Has anyone not been to a wedding? All right. The pinnacle moment of every wedding is not when the pastor says to the groom, you may now kiss the bride.

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That is not the pinnacle moment. The pinnacle moment in every single wedding is when the music changes and we know that the bride is about to make her entrance, right?

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I always get teared up every single time I see it. Everybody stands up.

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Everybody turns around and ah, there she is and she's wearing her wedding dress and she's beautiful.

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Your breath is taken away and she starts coming in, right?

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That's the pinnacle moment, but that is, you'll note that here it legitimately says that Christ has taken his bride, you and I, as sinful as we are.

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Scripture says together we have all become worthless because of sin, but Christ in his great love for his bride sanctifies her, cleanses her by the washing of water with the word.

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He then presents her to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing so that she might be holy and without blemish.

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So every time you go to a wedding and you see the bride coming in in her dress, that is a picture of y 'all, of me and you as the bride of Christ.

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But that's our foundation text. Here's the next one. In Revelation chapter 21, listen carefully to the revelation of the new

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Jerusalem. John is still getting his cook's tour of the heavenly kingdom and seeing visions of heaven that are just too marvelous for us to ponder completely.

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He says, Then I saw a new heaven, I saw a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, the sea was no more.

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And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

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New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. Here comes the bride. Right? You have to think of it that way.

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Prepared as a bride. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

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He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their

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God. Well, isn't that how it works, right? Couples are not supposed to cohabitate before they get married, right?

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Does Jesus cohabitate with his people before he gets married to them? No! Okay, we do not have

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Jesus here face to face. But there is a day coming when God's dwelling place will be with us after the wedding, right?

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So Jesus doesn't fornal caboodle -ate. He's properly engaging in the right behaviors regarding his bride.

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So behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their

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God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more. Huzzah! Neither shall there be mourning, huzzah, or crying, or pain anymore.

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Amen and amen. The former things have passed away. Then he who was seated on the throne said,

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Behold, I am making all things new. It's a great picture, right?

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Great text. Much comfort here. So he also said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy, and they are true.

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He said to me, It is finished. It is done. It is done. I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

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To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

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By the way, when somebody gives you a free meal, is it a free meal?

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Doesn't it cost somebody something? Whenever somebody takes me out to dinner or takes me out to lunch and says,

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I'll pick that up for you, right? For me, it's free. They still have to pay the tab.

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And you'll note that's the same with eternal life. Salvation is free to us, but it's not free to Christ.

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He is the one who picked up the tab. And so you'll note that all of these things are given to all of us for free, without cost to us, but at great cost to him.

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He laid down his very life, bled and died so that you and I can live. He is the one who experienced thirst on the cross, right?

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Didn't Jesus say, I thirst? Extreme suffering and pain as he bled and died for your sins and mine.

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And he is the one who thirsted on the cross so that he can give us of the springs of the water of life without payment, so that we would never thirst.

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The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. As for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for the murderers, the sexually immoral, the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

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But then that vision continues. Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues.

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And he spoke to me saying, come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb.

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Now my immediate question in hearing a statement like this is how do you plan on doing that? Okay, because the church is the bride of Christ.

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Are we going to see a montage of all of the faces of all of those who were saved? I think that would be a little tedious, don't you?

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Instead, think of it this way. When you travel to the East Coast, maybe you land in Newark, right?

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Right across from Newark Airport, what do you see? The Manhattan skyline. You see

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New York. And you can say, I've seen New York. Have you?

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Yes, you have seen it. Now in all of its microcosm detail, no.

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But that's kind of the picture here. You want to see what the bride of Christ looks like? Well, we can't show you all the faces, so let's show you where she lives, right?

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So here's what happens next. So he carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain, and he showed me the holy city,

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Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. Remember, this is the bride of Christ, having the glory of God.

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She's decked out. It's radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal.

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It had a great high wall, 12 gates, and at the gates, 12 angels.

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And on the gates, the names of the 12 tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed. On the east, three gates.

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On the north, three gates. On the south, three gates. On the west, three gates. And the wall of the city had 12 foundations, and on them were the 12 names of the 12 apostles of the

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Lamb. And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and its walls.

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Man, all I've got is a tape measure made of aluminum, right? You know, I like the sound that it makes, though, when you bring it in from after it's like out 11 feet, you know, never mind, that's a whole other story.

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So the city lies four square. Its length the same as its width, and he measured the city with his rod, 12 ,000 stadia.

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Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its walls, 144 cubits, by human measurement, which also is an angel's measurement.

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The wall was built of jasper, while the city was of pure gold, like clear glass.

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Remember, he's describing the bride of Christ. This is where she lives.

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This is the glory that she is decked out with, because he has given this to her.

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The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, then agate and emerald and onyx and carnelian crystallite and beryl and topaz and chrysophras, and then jacanth and amethyst.

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The 12 gates, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls.

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Each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the city, the street of the city was pure gold like transparent glass.

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Pearls show up again. Is it any wonder that in our Old Testament text that it was assigned for today, the people who put this lectionary together made sure to use

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Deuteronomy 7. Listen again to the words of Deuteronomy 7. You are a people holy to Yahweh your

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God. Yahweh your God, he has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

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You sit there and go, I'm not Jewish. You've been grafted into Israel.

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Of course this is talking about you. How could it not? The bride of Christ is truly

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God's treasured possession. It was not because you were more in number than any of the people that the

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Lord set his love on you, and I would note that Kongsvinger is far from a megachurch, right?

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Did God choose y 'all because this was such a big megachurch? No, not at all.

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It was not because you were more in number than any other people that Yahweh has set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because Yahweh, he loves you, and he is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that Yahweh has brought you out with a mighty hand.

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He has redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of the king of Egypt, Pharaoh.

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So know therefore that Yahweh your God, he is God. He is the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations.

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You'll note that God has done this all because of his faithfulness, his kindness, his love, his keeping of his promises, and he's assuring you that he is saving you purely by his love, mercy, and grace.

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All is a gift. That second parable now resonates pretty, pretty well.

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The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls who on finding one pearl of great value, his treasured possession, his bride, he went and sold all that he had, bled and died for her, purchased and won her by his own blood.

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Now all of this then leads somewhere, third parable, a little straightforward. The kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind.

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When it was full, men drew it ashore, sat down and sorted the good into containers and threw away the bad.

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You can think of this as either the gospel or maybe even better like the day of judgment. On the day of judgment will

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God selectively pick some people to be raised from the dead while others stay dead? When Jesus returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, he's going to raise everybody up and the angels are going to do some sorting work.

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And of course we hear this kind of parable and anxiety rises up within our hearts, rightfully so too because we all know that we heard what the angels said and that what

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Christ said that the cowards and the adulterers and the idolaters and the liars and the just the list goes on, right?

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They will never inherit the kingdom of heaven. But such were some of you,

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Christ has washed that all away. He has forgiven you, he has clothed you in his own righteousness.

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Is that not what Paul said? Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but the righteousness that is by faith.

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We have all been bedecked in Christ's righteousness. So on that day when the angels come and Christ returns and all of humanity is sorted out, one group over in that bucket, another group over there, right?

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Sorted out into two different groups. So it'll be at the end of the age. The angels will come and separate the evil from the righteous, but you are clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

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You are his treasured possession. He has bled and died for you and washed away all of your sins and clothed you in the splendor of his glory and righteousness.

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So you can figure out which bucket you're going into, but the rest, they will be thrown into the fiery furnace.

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And yes, Christ talks about a fiery furnace, invokes Daniel chapter three, but there is a fiery furnace that Christ has saved us all from, and that's the fires of hell by clothing us in his righteousness.

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In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. So have you understood all of these things?

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Christ asked that of his disciples back in the day, and he asked this of all of us now.

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Do we understand these things? Do we get these parables now? Do we understand what he meant by them and what they mean and how they comfort us?

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Indeed, we do. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. In the name of Jesus, amen.

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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, NW, Oslo, MN 56744. 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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