Series B – Second Sunday of Easter – Sunday, April 12, 2015 | Pr. Chris Rosebrough
| Welcome to the Teaching Ministry of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church. Kongsvinger 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 Rosebrough: |
| Time Stamp | Transcript |
| 0:29 | the holy Gospel According to Saint John chapter 20 verses 19 through 31. |
| 0:36 | on the evening of that first day of the week when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the |
| 0:42 | Jews Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you and after he said this he showed them |
| 0:48 | his hands inside the disciples were Overjoyed when they saw the Lord again |
| 0:54 | Jesus said peace be with you as the father has sent me I am sending you and |
| 1:00 | with that he breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit if you forgive anyone his sins they are forgiven if you |
| 1:06 | do not forgive them they are not forgiven now Thomas called didymus one of the twelve was not with the disciples |
| 1:13 | when Jesus came so the other disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said to them unless |
| 1:20 | I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into a side I will not |
| 1:26 | believe it a week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them |
| 1:31 | though the doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you then he said to Thomas put your |
| 1:38 | finger here see my hands reach out your hand and put it into my side stop |
| 1:44 | doubting and believe said to him my Lord and my God then |
| 1:52 | Jesus told him because you have seen me you have believed blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed |
| 1:58 | Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples which are |
| 2:03 | not recorded in this book but these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the son |
| 2:10 | of God and that by believing you might have life in his name |
| 2:17 | in the name of Jesus backstories now when I was a kid |
| 2:24 | Star Wars movies came out now I totally nerded out on them Star Wars was the |
| 2:30 | thing okay in fact I had one of the very first flashlights designed to look like |
| 2:35 | a lightsaber it was terrible yeah I remember having epic lightsaber |
| 2:42 | battles with my friends now one of the interesting things about that movie um I I actually had the the Supreme Joy |
| 2:51 | of actually seeing it at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood when the movie came out and man when that movie |
| 2:58 | came out oh yeah yeah I mean it was so loud so epic I’ve never seen anything like it before and what’s weird is it |
| 3:05 | starts off you know how those it you know starts off right right and then it says Star Wars |
| 3:11 | and then comes those scrolling words right and the first Star Wars movie said episode four A New Hope |
| 3:19 | and of course after watching the movie there’s a lot of Buzz episode four what four four why is it four right and so as |
| 3:29 | I grew up you know when episode five came out and then episode six I mean the big buzz was well what’s the back story |
| 3:35 | because there’s these epic characters in there most notably Darth Vader if order you knew the top power of the dark side |
| 3:42 | right and so you wanted to know the back story about this Darth Vader character well when my son was about my age the |
| 3:49 | next series of Star Wars movies came out and they gave us the back story so |
| 3:55 | backstories are very important and I’m going to actually blend if you would our |
| 4:01 | epistle text and Our Gospel text together because there’s a lot of backstory going on and I’m going to fill |
| 4:08 | you in on a little bit of the details now to help you out I’d like to open up your Bibles to First John chapter 2 |
| 4:15 | verses 18 through 26. I’ll give you a second to get there but because when you |
| 4:21 | read the commentaries on the Epistle of First John it’s absolutely hilarious all |
| 4:27 | of the scholars kind of weep and grind their teeth together and and complain |
| 4:33 | bitterly because this letter that John wrote apparently has like no discernible |
| 4:39 | outline to it and so what’s really funny is is that nobody can quite figure out what John is doing so it’s the weirdest |
| 4:46 | thing John explains the reason why he wrote this letter like in the dead |
| 4:51 | center of it which doesn’t make any sense because every good you know professor and teacher knows that you |
| 4:57 | write your thesis at the beginning and then you have your supporting paragraphs and the conclusion John apparently did |
| 5:04 | not go to American schools so you got to remember he’s a product of the first century okay let me read to you his |
| 5:10 | thesis statement regarding this epistle so we can get you some of the backstory and then when you see the backstory all |
| 5:15 | of a sudden this thing’s going to come to life right so here’s what you write children it is the last hour and as you’ve heard that Antichrist is |
| 5:22 | coming and oh yes he is so now many antichrists small plural they have come |
| 5:29 | therefore we know that this is the last hour they went out from us but they were not of us for if they had been of us |
| 5:35 | they would have continued with us but they went out that it might become plain that they are not all of us but if you |
| 5:42 | have been anointed by the Holy One and you have all and you all have knowledge I write to you not because you do not |
| 5:47 | know the truth but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus |
| 5:56 | is the Christ now remember those words who is the liar okay it’s actually |
| 6:02 | referring to a very specific person and the false teaching but we’ll get there so he’s calling him a liar and he’s |
| 6:08 | calling him an antichrist so this is the Antichrist who denies the father and the son no one who denies the son has the |
| 6:16 | father whoever confesses the son has the father also so let which you heard from the beginning abide in you if if what |
| 6:23 | you heard from the beginning abides in you then you will then you too will abide in the son and in the father and |
| 6:29 | this is the promise that he made to us eternal life so I write these things to you about those who are trying to |
| 6:37 | deceive you ah so there’s our thesis statement right in the middle of his epistle why did |
| 6:43 | John write this Epistle of First John so that those who are trying to deceive you |
| 6:49 | would not and he calls them liars and Antichrist now let me tell you the back story there |
| 6:55 | was in Ephesus a man by the name of sirenthus |
| 7:00 | very evil dude in fact if we were telling our story he would be the bad |
| 7:05 | guy now before I tell you more about his story let me tell you about how John came to be in Ephesus you’re thinking |
| 7:12 | John’s a good Jewish boy when we see him in the book of Acts he’s in Jerusalem how does it that he ends up in the city |
| 7:19 | of Ephesus which is in Asia Minor well it’s real simple remember the the |
| 7:25 | emperor Titus well actually he was an emperor while he was doing this but he was a commander of the armies of Rome |
| 7:31 | they came to Israel and they had had it with these zealots who kept killing |
| 7:39 | Roman soldiers and their duplicitous ways and the fact that they would not |
| 7:45 | submit to Roman rule and authority and were always trying to subvert it they said enough is enough and they sent the |
| 7:52 | armies of Rome to Jerusalem and they slaughtered the Jews in total |
| 8:00 | they eventually surrounded Jerusalem pummeled that wall to the ground |
| 8:05 | breached the Wall came in and got on the Temple Mount and they burned the temple |
| 8:12 | to the ground in fact it was so epic of a scene that the gold inside the temple |
| 8:17 | is described as flowing like a river out of the out of the temple itself well |
| 8:23 | good Roman soldiers being good Roman soldiers you don’t want to let a river of gold go to waste and so they made |
| 8:28 | sure to get every last bit of gold out from the cracks of the cement and out of |
| 8:34 | the temple and in the process they just so happen to raise the temple and just throw it off the Temple Mount and there |
| 8:40 | it sits to this day in a heap off of one side of the Temple mount well along with this you know the Roman |
| 8:47 | government decided that it would be a good idea to kick the Jews out of |
| 8:52 | Jerusalem and they did that would include John because at this time they viewed Christianity as kind of |
| 8:59 | a sect within Judaism the Romans didn’t quite know what to make of Christianity and so John finds himself out of Judea |
| 9:07 | and he then traveled with Jesus’s mother Mary to Ephesus and remember that it was |
| 9:15 | the Apostle Paul who planted the churches in Ephesus he was the missionary to the Gentiles and he |
| 9:21 | proclaimed the gospel for years in Ephesus in the Hall of tyrannus he had like a standing gig where he would out |
| 9:27 | he’d go and tell everybody about the about Jesus and thriving congregations |
| 9:33 | sprouted up and grew and then after Paul by this time Paul is dead John comes in |
| 9:41 | and he’s now the bishop kind of the the guy in charge of overseeing all of the different congregations of Christians |
| 9:47 | within Ephesus well now we come back to our bad guy our bad guy’s name is |
| 9:53 | cyrinthus cerenthus was a former Jew he lived and grew up in Egypt and he lived |
| 10:00 | in Ephesus at the time that the Apostle John lived and served there now cyranthis was an interesting guy he |
| 10:06 | combined Jewish ideas with what may be called kind of the beginnings of a |
| 10:12 | heresy known as gnosticism now if you’ve never heard of gnosticism I’ll give you just kind of a very rough cut idea of |
| 10:18 | what this is all about it’s based upon the philosophy of Plato and it basically says matter things you can touch |
| 10:26 | bad spirit good that’s really simplistic but that’s kind |
| 10:31 | of the idea and so because they believe that matter is evil the idea of God |
| 10:38 | becoming flesh yeah that’s like runs completely |
| 10:44 | contrary to the way of thinking and then this idea that we’re going to all be raised again bodily and live forever in |
| 10:51 | matter you know resurrected bodies that’s like Unthinkable so this is kind |
| 10:58 | of that’s kind of the idea of gnosticism so serenthus taught get this he taught that |
| 11:04 | Jesus was the physical son of Joseph he denied the Virgin birth |
| 11:10 | and cyranthus taught that Jesus was the Aeon of Christ or whether or that the |
| 11:16 | Aeon of Christ was United with Jesus at his baptism you’re thinking what on Earth is that kind of reads like a |
| 11:22 | Sci-Fi novel well think of it this way if you’re familiar with the New Age movement they talk about this thing |
| 11:27 | called the Christ Consciousness right so the Christ Consciousness is this kind of |
| 11:32 | Eternal spiritual concept idea that may or may not be personal and so the |
| 11:38 | gnostics kind of thought the same way so Jesus was the physical offspring of |
| 11:43 | Joseph cyrinthus said and when he was baptized that’s when the Christ United |
| 11:49 | with him and then the Christ left Jesus just |
| 11:55 | before his sufferings and death where is this guy getting any of this |
| 12:00 | nonsense right and uh to kind of boot cyranthus rejected |
| 12:05 | all of the gospels all of Paul’s letters and he accepted only certain parts of |
| 12:11 | the Gospel of Matthew in the gospel of Mark now keep this in mind okay cyrenthus is |
| 12:17 | teaching this at the exact same time that the Apostle John is in Ephesus they’re in the same town |
| 12:25 | cyrenthus never met Jesus strenthus could not tell us what Jesus looked like he had never even heard |
| 12:32 | Jesus’s voice had never heard Jesus teach a single Parable had never |
| 12:37 | witnessed a single miracle that Jesus accomplished but serenthus believed that |
| 12:43 | he knew who Jesus was and what Jesus’s message was better than the Apostle John |
| 12:50 | and he opposed the apostolic teaching through the Apostle John and gathered a |
| 12:56 | following of his own there in Ephesus it’s absurd if you think about it now |
| 13:03 | one of the church fathers whose name is irenaeus let me tell you a little bit about this guy he wrote a very long book |
| 13:08 | against heresies and in there he tells us a little bit about cyranthis and |
| 13:14 | you’re wondering well where did this guy get this information from well let me give you arenais’s pedigree if you would |
| 13:19 | so while John is in Ephesus he’s discipling people and one of his |
| 13:26 | disciples is a gentleman by the name of polycarp you may have heard of him he actually was martyred for his faith in |
| 13:32 | Christ in his 80s and polycarp he discipled irenaeus |
| 13:39 | so arenais is one of these guys he’s got a great pedigree he was taught The Faith from polycarp polycarp was taught The |
| 13:46 | Faith from the Apostle John we know this with certainty so now arenais is the one |
| 13:51 | who tells us about cyrenthus and here’s what he writes he says there are also those who heard from polycarp that John |
| 13:58 | the disciple of the Lord going to bathe at Ephesus and perceiving that cyranthus |
| 14:04 | was within the building rushed out of the bath house without bathing exclaiming let us fly lest the bath |
| 14:12 | house fall down upon us because cyrenthus the enemy of the truth is within |
| 14:19 | laughs yeah well these are the days before they had cold and hot water running inside of |
| 14:26 | your home and so if you wanted to bathe which was you know I think at least you had to do once a year |
| 14:31 | um you’d go to a place you know that was headed public baths and cyrinthus was in there and John was so incense he |
| 14:38 | couldn’t even stand to be in the same you know under the same roof as this guy now polycarp himself actually had a |
| 14:46 | face-to-face meeting with another heretic by the name of marcion Marcin was one of these guys who kind of |
| 14:53 | basically believed what he wanted to believe in the apostolic teaching and um Marcy and upon meeting polycarp asked |
| 15:01 | him do you know who I am and polycarp says oh I know who you are |
| 15:07 | you’re the firstborn of Satan |
| 15:12 | these are great stories anyway so this is all backstory okay so you got that okay |
| 15:19 | so Mark well friends this is always the way that Heretics think and operate they |
| 15:26 | think they know better than the apostles these men and women they are enemies of |
| 15:32 | the truth they are corrupters of the truth they’re children of that liar the devil now that’s the back story you got |
| 15:40 | it so John when he’s writing this letter that now is in our Bible he’s writing it |
| 15:45 | to the churches so that they would not be deceived and the one he’s writing against is serenthus |
| 15:52 | so now go back to First John chapter 1 verse 1 from our epistle reading and |
| 15:58 | what does Paul say not Paul John I’ve done that it’s John here’s what he |
| 16:04 | says that which was from the beginning sentence number one |
| 16:12 | is literally like John it’s like the Bell has rung ding ding ding ding ding |
| 16:17 | and John is coming out of his Corner going just knocking him down because this |
| 16:24 | first sentence that which was from the beginning Jesus is the Eternal Son of God which is |
| 16:31 | completely contrary to what serenthus teaches he’s not mixing words he’s not |
| 16:37 | going to play nice with Sirens he’s coming out swinging and Swinging hard so |
| 16:42 | he’s basically saying I’m speaking of Jesus who did not have his beginning |
| 16:48 | from Mary but was from the beginning that’s a good way to put this and then John continues that which we have heard |
| 16:55 | which we have seen with our eyes which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of |
| 17:01 | life who is this nonsensical dude serenthus |
| 17:06 | who thinks he knows better about Jesus than we do I touched him is what John is saying |
| 17:13 | right and now you think back to our gospel text Our Gospel text says this |
| 17:19 | on the evening of that day the first day of the week the door is being locked where the disciples were for fear of the |
| 17:25 | Jews Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you |
| 17:30 | little note isn’t that great these are the disciples notice it says |
| 17:36 | they’re cowering in fear in an upper room because the fear of the Jews when Jesus is arrested his closest guys the |
| 17:43 | guys who he spent all of this time investing in them and they knew exactly |
| 17:49 | who he was and they confessed him as Lord and God as soon as trouble shows up these guys |
| 17:56 | Scamper away into the darkness like cockroaches and Jesus’s words are not you lousy bunch of you know how what are |
| 18:05 | you thinking you know you left me high and dry right he’s not thinking that way at all and Jesus isn’t coming for |
| 18:11 | Retribution he’s already bled and died for all of their sins and so his first words to them are |
| 18:17 | peace be with you peace that tells you about Jesus right but |
| 18:24 | back to our story so when Jesus had said this he showed them his hands and his side what did John say in his epistle |
| 18:31 | that which we have seen which we have touched right so then the disciples were glad when |
| 18:37 | they saw the Lord Jesus and and said to them again and he said to them peace be with you as the father has sent me even |
| 18:46 | so I am sending you now pay attention to this |
| 18:53 | father sends the son the son says even as I have been sent by the father now I |
| 18:58 | am sending you that fancy word that we use all the time apostle |
| 19:04 | it’s from a Greek word apostolas it means one who is sent |
| 19:09 | the apostles are sent there are no apostles today okay now remember in the Great |
| 19:16 | Commission it’s kind of a little off note to the side here Great Commission Jesus says all authority in Heaven and |
| 19:22 | Earth has been given to me go therefore and Make Disciples of all Nations baptizing them in the name of the father |
| 19:28 | Son and the Holy Spirit teaching them all that I have commanded you right do the disciples accomplish that task of |
| 19:36 | discipling all Nations did they make it to Australia New |
| 19:42 | Zealand no they did not did they did the hubuku tribe somewhere in Brazil no not at all |
| 19:52 | but see the thing is is that when Jesus commands them to disciple All Nations the disciples are still discipling all |
| 19:59 | nations they are doing so through their writings because Jesus said to the disciples if |
| 20:06 | anyone who listens to you listens to me the one who hears you hears me where can |
| 20:12 | you go today to find out about what the historical Jesus said and taught and did |
| 20:19 | there’s no other place that you can go except for the apostolic writings that’s the only place you can go |
| 20:26 | so they are still discipling to this day so that commission that their the |
| 20:31 | disciple All Nations indeed on the last day men from every tribe of every human |
| 20:36 | you know Clan will be there be represented on that last day in the |
| 20:42 | great cloud of witnesses those who’ve been brought out of the Great Tribulation brought to penance and faith and they were all discipled you and I |
| 20:48 | were discipled by Peter by John by Paul by James we’re all being discipled even |
| 20:55 | right now because John Is discipling Us so think about that |
| 21:00 | he’s the one who sent is sent by Christ yeah I don’t seem to remember him being |
| 21:07 | sent do you no so he says to them I am sending you and when he said this he |
| 21:13 | said and breathed on them receive the Holy Spirit if you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven if you withhold |
| 21:19 | forgiveness from any it is withheld now Thomas one of the twelve called the twin was not with them when Jesus came so the |
| 21:25 | other disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said unless I see his hands and marks of the nails and place |
| 21:31 | my finger into the mark of the nails and placed my hand in the side I will never be leave |
| 21:38 | silly Thomas silly Jesus sent them to tell him that he was |
| 21:45 | raised from the grave his response should have been amen hallelujah |
| 21:50 | instead he says no I’m not going to believe so eight days later that would be on |
| 21:57 | Sunday again Jesus is raised on Sunday eight days later it’s a Sunday so Sunday |
| 22:03 | night Jesus appears and it says this to Thomas although the doors were locked Jesus |
| 22:08 | came and stood among them and noticed what he says peace be with you and then he says to Thomas put your finger here |
| 22:13 | and see my hands put out your hand and place it in my side do not be disbelieving but be believing is a good |
| 22:20 | way to translate the Greek there Thomas answered to him |
| 22:29 | my Lord and my God and that is exactly |
| 22:35 | who Jesus is he is God |
| 22:40 | now does Jesus rebuke Thomas |
| 22:45 | for claiming that he’s God no here’s what he said Jesus said to him have you believed because you’ve seen me |
| 22:53 | blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed and see that’s the |
| 23:00 | thing I and you we all have something in common with cyranthis if Jesus were to |
| 23:05 | be walking down the streets of Grand Forks maybe shopping at Walmart looking down the spaghetti aisle or something |
| 23:10 | right we wouldn’t recognize him as Jesus we’d have no clue that was him |
| 23:17 | I’ve never seen him have you no I’ve never seen him I have no idea what |
| 23:23 | he looks like I have a suspicion that a lot of the church art out there is a little bit dodgy I’m just saying okay I |
| 23:31 | don’t think he looks exactly like that that’s Norwegian Jesus and I Think Jesus was a Jew okay |
| 23:41 | right okay sorry I just had |
| 23:47 | so we don’t exactly know what he looks like but here’s the thing |
| 23:53 | because of the testimony of John of Matthew of Mark of Paul we all believe |
| 24:01 | that Jesus is Lord and God and here Jesus is saying to us who have never |
| 24:06 | seen him who’ve never put our fingers into his nail scarred hands or into his |
| 24:11 | side you are blessed and Jesus’s words of peace to the disciples also come to you |
| 24:17 | peace be with you you believe you trust and so |
| 24:23 | that’s the idea now let me weave in a little bit from our epistle attacks I’m kind of switching channels here let me |
| 24:29 | read again that which we’ve seen that was which we’ve touched the life was manifest and we have seen it and we |
| 24:35 | testify to it and Proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the father and was manifest to us that which we |
| 24:43 | have seen and heard we Proclaim to you |
| 24:49 | so that you may have fellowship with us John writes that’s right |
| 24:54 | John’s writing to you it may not be cyranthus who is harassing |
| 25:00 | you in teaching contrary to the apostles now the name always changes but the the |
| 25:05 | motive is always the same I don’t believe that the apostles had it right |
| 25:11 | I’ve got a better word than John I’ve got a far more accurate word than |
| 25:16 | Matthew my insights and speculations are far closer to the truth than what we |
| 25:22 | would get from Luke in the book of Acts or that ornery guy Paul and so come let |
| 25:28 | me tell you my great ideas about Jesus they’re so much better than the apostles |
| 25:34 | and people who think and act like this run run |
| 25:40 | but believing the disciples and their testimony the ones who were sent |
| 25:46 | we have fellowship with them we truly do and we have fellowship with the father |
| 25:52 | and we have fellowship with Jesus Christ his son so John says we are writing these things |
| 25:59 | so that our joy may be complete so this is the message that we’ve heard from him and we’ve Proclaim to you that God is |
| 26:04 | light in him there’s no Darkness at all if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and we |
| 26:11 | do not practice the truth but if we walk in the light as he is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the |
| 26:17 | blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin |
| 26:23 | all of it Jesus bled and died for all of your sin and then we have these words that are |
| 26:29 | very familiar to us if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us why does John write these |
| 26:36 | words well we learn from irenaeus that cyrenthus and his Gnostic buddies they |
| 26:41 | basically believed that that in something called this spiritual sense |
| 26:47 | and they believed that they were being saved by their Superior spiritual knowledge it’s called gnosis right and |
| 26:55 | so they claimed that they can do as they pleased and they can do so without being |
| 27:02 | contaminated by sin in fact some of corinthus’s buddies went so far as to |
| 27:08 | basically praise men like Cain like Korah and praise Judas and to regard |
| 27:16 | them as being gifted with Superior freedom of thought and intrepidy Intrepid and trepidity of action that’s |
| 27:24 | a direct quote they also claim that since the soul attains Perfection only by knowledge or gnosis that it was |
| 27:30 | actually required for people to do all kinds of evil so that they can attain perfection |
| 27:38 | no joke the gnostics actually taught that if you really want to be saved you |
| 27:44 | have to engage in all kinds of debauchery sins of the flesh so that you can have |
| 27:50 | true knowledge of all things because you’re saved by your knowledge they taught |
| 27:56 | so this is the back story what does John say if we say we have no sin we deceive |
| 28:02 | ourselves and the truth is not in US written exactly against what cerenthus |
| 28:10 | and his buddies were saying and think about this when somebody tells a lie when somebody deceives |
| 28:17 | they usually do so to gain an advantage over another person or to keep themselves out of hot water |
| 28:26 | you know I remember one of my first memories as a child |
| 28:31 | is that I used to sneak into the kitchen take a kitchen chair |
| 28:38 | scooch it over to the counter climb up onto the chair and then I would reach into the cookie |
| 28:45 | jar and so one of my earliest memories is of me surreptitiously in the dark going |
| 28:52 | through this procedure and while my hand is getting ready to go into the cookie jar |
| 28:58 | on goes the light switch and lights go on in the kitchen and my mother then used my middle name |
| 29:07 | it’s always a bad thing when my mom uses my middle name and it went something like this Christopher Michael what are |
| 29:14 | you doing to which I said I’m getting you a cookie |
| 29:24 | it was a great lie it was designed to deceive and make me look like I had |
| 29:29 | nothing but love for my mother but it was a lie |
| 29:35 | well the idea behind deception is that is it’s designed to kind of help the |
| 29:41 | person telling the lie but John here says if we say we have no sin we deceive |
| 29:47 | ourselves self-deception is the worst kind of |
| 29:54 | deception what gain is there in self-deception there’s none none |
| 29:59 | whatsoever there’s no advantage to it at all it is a miserable state |
| 30:05 | if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us but if we confess our sins God he is |
| 30:12 | faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness if we say we have not |
| 30:18 | sinned we have we make him God a liar and his word is not in us so every point along |
| 30:26 | the way is designed as an arrow against the heresies the false Doctrine the |
| 30:33 | false teaching of cyrenthus and his gang who stupidly |
| 30:40 | have exalted themselves above the Apostle John and think that |
| 30:46 | they have a better word to give the world so John writes my little children I’m |
| 30:51 | writing these things so that you may not sin but if anyone does sin we have an advocate with the father Jesus the |
| 30:58 | righteous one he is the propitiation the atoning sacrifice for our sins and not |
| 31:03 | only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world who has a better message |
| 31:08 | to offer the world cyranthus who says oh you can engage in all kinds of sinful |
| 31:14 | behavior and this is by the way in which you’re saved because you’re saved by |
| 31:19 | knowledge and your knowledge isn’t complete until you’ve committed adultery until you’ve been so drunk that you your |
| 31:26 | lungs are being puked out of your mouth right or the one who says |
| 31:33 | no you are a sinner and this is sin this is what it means to |
| 31:38 | fall short of the glory of God that Christ bled and died for these sins repent and and be forgiven the one who |
| 31:46 | appeared to us said peace be with you because he had died for all of our sins |
| 31:52 | who is it that’s bringing us a better message or John who was sent by Jesus serenthus |
| 32:02 | or John yeah and John writes in his gospel now Jesus |
| 32:09 | did many other signs and he saw them all in the presence of the disciples which are not written in this book but why did |
| 32:16 | John write his his gospel here’s what he says these things are written so that |
| 32:22 | you may believe that Jesus is the Christ the son of God and by believing you |
| 32:28 | might have life in his name that is real good news |
| 32:36 | but see the way of Heretics they always think they know better and today’s Heretics John calls them Antichrist |
| 32:43 | today’s Heretics they say things like come on we live in the 21st century we all have smartphones now |
| 32:50 | and you expect me to believe that Jesus was really born of the Virgin Mary really |
| 32:57 | or that Jesus really Rose bodily from the grave nobody comes out of the grave |
| 33:02 | it’s just got to be mythology and this idea of Jesus suffering for our sins how |
| 33:09 | barbaric is that this is how they talk you really oh that |
| 33:16 | makes God into a moral monster what kind of God would do that |
| 33:22 | this is how they talk but you know what they have in common |
| 33:27 | with cyrenthus they think they know better than the Apostle John |
| 33:32 | and the eyewitnesses they think they have a better gospel to give to us and it’s no gospel at all |
| 33:38 | and like cyrinthus they’ve never met Jesus but John has so who are you going to believe the one whom Jesus sent who |
| 33:44 | says that you are forgiven repent believe be forgiven and live Jesus was |
| 33:50 | dead and now he’s alive he did speak peace to us we touched him we handled |
| 33:55 | him we put our fingers in his wounds in his |
| 34:00 | hands and in his side we ate meals with him we saw these signs these things are written so that you |
| 34:07 | might believe that he is the Christ and by believing have life in his name or the one who says bah humbug we know |
| 34:15 | better than those silly disciples and those apostles come and follow us we’ll tell you what |
| 34:20 | Christianity is really all about who are you going to believe because the same choice that the |
| 34:28 | Ephesians had the same choice we have today as for me |
| 34:34 | I’m going to go with John just seems to make sense |
| 34:40 | in the name of Jesus amen [Music] |
| If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kongsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax-free donation to: Kongsvinger Lutheran Church 15950 470th Ave NW, Oslo, MN 56744 We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message, and, again, thank you for listening. |
LutheranLectionary.org 