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Grace mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord

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Jesus Christ.

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For the last few Friday's we've been walking through the Ten

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Commandments and I'd like to kind of take a step back and and ponder a

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question that I take to be fundamental to the whole enterprise here.

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And that is what's wrong with sin,

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really.

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Now, on one level, it's very easy to answer that question.

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God threatens to punish sin and you don't want to be on the receiving

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end of that, but that answer is kind of similar to the classic

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parental because I said so.

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And it may not always be the most compelling way to present the

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material.

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When I was in third grade, our school had a rule that you can't walk

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on the grass and if a teacher saw you walking on the grass, she would

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yell.

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Don't walk on the grass.

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And when you can't got to be in the fifth grade, you could become a

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safety patrol, which meant that you get to wear an orange belt and a

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sash, and you get to tell the other students not to walk on the grass.

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I never understood why.

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I mean, you could walk on the grass at recess.

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Why can't you walk on the grass when you're walking home?

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But, you know, your third grader, adults have all kind of weird ideas

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that don't make any sense

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and so these things are just too marvelous for me to comprehend.

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Now do we imagine that that's how God's law is that he just picked

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some arbitrary rules and he kind of throws him out us as a test to see

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if we're going to obey him or not.

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And that there's really no rhyme or reason to the rules themselves

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it's just this kind of arbitrary thing.

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Well.

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I mean, if God wants to do that, he can do that

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we don't really have a standing, any standing to object.

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And he does seem to have done that to Abraham

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for example, when he told him to sacrifice Isaac.

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But Paul gives us a little bit more information about God's law in the

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reading for today.

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He gives us a little bit of a deeper understanding of it when he

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portrays the Christian life as a battle between the flesh and the

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spirit.

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He puts it this way.

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The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption,

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but the one who sews to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal

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life.

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Now in this passage Paul is picking up a theme that was introduced

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first in Genesis 6.

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Where God saw that the sons of God had married the daughters of men,

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and he was upset by this and he said, my spirit will not abide in man

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forever, for he is flesh, his days shall be a hundred and twenty

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years.

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Now, this is the first time in the Bible where flesh and spirit are

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put in opposition to one another.

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It wasn't that way in the beginning.

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God created Adam from the dust of the ground and he breathed into

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Adam, the breath of life and Adam became a living being.

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It is God's breath or God's spirit that made Adams flesh live.

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The flesh and the spirit are supposed to go together.

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So what happens when God takes the spirit away in Genesis 6.

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Well, the human lifespan is decimated.

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It goes from nearly a thousand years all the way down to 120.

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And it hasn't really gotten much better since then.

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And death itself, even comes to be described as God taking his Spirit

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away.

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Ecclesiastes says that the dust returns to the Earth as it was

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and the spirit returns to God, who gave it. Or when Jesus dies, John

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tells us that he gave up his Spirit.

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When the spirit is taken from the flesh

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it means death for the flesh.

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Now, when Paul picks this up, he uses flesh to refer to what we call

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our sinful nature.

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And I think a point of clarification is in order here. That you should

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not think of flesh

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as only our physical bodies.

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Paul is not saying that our bodies are in rebellion to God, but our

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souls are fine.

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I mean, it's not something like that.

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Think of the Commandments

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for example. There are some Commandments that you could plausibly

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frame as a dealing with sins that arise from our body.

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So, for example, adultery you might frame as coming from our bodies

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in the sense that it's driven by biological impulses. But there are

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other sins like coveting

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for example, that it's not at all easy to see how you could describe

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it that way.

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Or the sin of pride

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let's say,

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So it's not just our bodies, but it's our bodies and souls and our whole

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persons that are oriented against God, and in rebellion against him,

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and that's what Paul means by flesh.

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Yet, having said that Paul does choose the word flesh.

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I mean if you wanted to say body and soul, he certainly knows the

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Greek word for soul

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he could have said that he doesn't.

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So there is something

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I think paradigmatic about the weakness of the body that Paul wants to

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communicate here.

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And that is this.

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The body, not only dies without the spirit, it rots and it decays.

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This is what Paul is actually referring to

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when he says, the one who sows to his own flesh, will from the flesh

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reap corruption. Corruption is a nice polite, word in English

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but what it refers to here is the rot and decay of the dead body.

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Because that is what is at stake in the question of sin.

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It isn't just don't walk on the grass.

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It's don't tear yourself apart.

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Don't rebel against the very source of your own life.

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Because if you do then what you're choosing is not just you want to be

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the boss.

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What you're choosing is rot and decay.

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Now, if I can, you know, back up from this, or away from this just a

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little bit and maybe use an image

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that's slightly less graphic than the one saying Paul uses.

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It's sort of like having a sweater, and if you start pulling on the

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threat of the sweater, it's going to come unraveled.

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Maybe, maybe not all at once

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but if you keep going, you're going to disintegrate the thing.

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And that's what happens to you if you gratify the desires of the

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flesh.

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Now if you're wondering what those desires are, Paul gives us a nice

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list of them in Galatians, 5, sexual immorality,

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impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits

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of anger, rivalries, dissension, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies and

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things like that.

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So if you do these things or have them in your heart, you're pulling

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at the thread.

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You're damaging yourself

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in other words, you're making it easier for your fleshly desires to

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gain the upper hand over you in the future.

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So, what's to be done about this?

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Well, the answer is not to try to weave together the sweater

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once again, the answer is to get a new sweater every day.

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And I think this is what Luther is urging in the small catechism when

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he advocates the practice of daily contrition and repentance.

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He says that the old Adam in us should by daily contrition and

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repentance, be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires and

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that a new man should daily come forth and arise.

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This practice of daily contrition and repentance is then instantiated

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in Luther's morning and evening prayers among other places, where we

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pray in the morning that God would deliver us from every evil.

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And we pray in the evening that he would forgive us

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all our sins were, we have done wrong.

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We pray against sin and we pray for the forgiveness of sin.

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This is daily contrition and repentance.

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And when we pray this, we can have absolute confidence that God grants

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our prayer.

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Because he told us to pray for this.

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This is in the Lord's Prayer to forgive us, our trespasses, and

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deliver us from evil.

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He said to pray that

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so we know he's going to give it to us. And what's more

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he's actually already given to it to us in our baptism. Because that is

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where we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death

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in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead that we too

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might rise to walk in newness of life.

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So what about the pulling on the thread business?

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How are you going to stop doing that?

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Well, at this point, I would like to refer to Cyril of Alexandria.

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Okay,

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now you didn't laugh when I quoted Luther.

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I mean, so it seems to me that you have a kind of narrow understanding

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of what it means to be in the Christian church.

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So when you're doing your daily contrition and repentance, this is

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something you can repent of.

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Anyway, the reason I want to talk about Cyril is he has a really

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challenging understanding of what it means to be crucified with

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Christ.

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And it's one

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I bet you haven't heard before. Cyril thinks that to be crucified with

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Christ means.

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The Christ has taken your sinful desires and he has

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 lulled them to sleep.

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So that they don't bother you anymore.

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That is being crucified with Christ.

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Now, Cyril's not claiming that you, you can achieve sinless perfection

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in this life.

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He's very clear about that.

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And so, I think the way to think of this is It's not that this is a

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target.

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It's a goal that we're shooting for as Christians.

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It's not something that happens all at once, but it's something that

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happens gradually over time day by day by day.

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And this is why a daily spiritual practice like Luther is advocating

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in the Small

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Catechism is really helpful.

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Now, granted, you may be a little disappointed in the particular

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practice

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I'm recommending this morning, you know, so the preacher is going to

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help me with my sanctification and all he's got for me is a couple of

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rote prayers.

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Okay, it's not I grant you

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it's not that fantastic looking. But if you are willing to accept that,

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God could actually work through such things as a manifestation of

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contrition and repentance every day.

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Then what you may find, is that

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as you get your new sweater every day.

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That what Cyril describes may actually start to happen for you.

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That is to say that your sinful desires, may gradually start to quiet

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down a little bit.

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And so I want to close by praying for exactly that.

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And I was going to use Luther's morning prayer, but I see that we're

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going to pray that later in the service.

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So I'm going to use Luther's evening prayer to pray for this even

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though it's so this is a proleptic evening prayer I suppose. But let's

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pray

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that God would quiet down our sinful

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desires.

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I thank you

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my heavenly Father through Jesus Christ

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your dear Son that you have.

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Well, let me just clarify, I'll pray and you can pray along silently

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since I didn't ask you to look at it, but. I thank you

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my heavenly Father through Jesus Christ

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your dear Son that you have graciously, kept me this day and I pray

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that you would forgive me.

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All my sins were I have done wrong

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and graciously, keep me this night. For into your hands

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I commend my 

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self.

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My body and soul and all things.

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Let your Holy Angel

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be with me that the evil foe may have no power over me.

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Amen.