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May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be

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acceptable in your sight.

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Oh Lord our Rock and Our Redeemer.

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Amen.

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

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and Savior Jesus Christ.

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How do you define irony?

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The beginning of this year has already not been without its tragedies.

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We still look forward to it and being one that was without them.

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And yet here we are still struggling.

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Still worrying with the fallout from a pandemic. Still worrying

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about how the future semester is going to look how we're going to

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reach our people with the Word of God. How we're going to continue to

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eat survive and live many are losing their jobs many are suffering

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from all that is going around.

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And it is ironic

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that everything that we've worked for for decades even centuries.

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Has brought us to this.

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There's tragedy all around us.

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All our wealth

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and our country is still unhappy.

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We've been working so hard and yet we struggle we're deprived.

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We're angry.

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And we look around at a more godless culture day after day.

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Our pericope for today our passage is not without a sense of irony.

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First John quotes, Isaiah the prophet.

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We hear this in Mark.

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This is what happened before our text today.

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He's referring to John the one who's going to be preparing the way of

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the Lord. Now John we hear he has plenty of fame and he's baptizing for

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the repentance.

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His manners also seem strange camels hair,

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locusts and wild honey.

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What is this man

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who's been charged with doing such great things?

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And above all this.

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Rather than taking the glory and receiving his fame.

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He points to someone else.

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But the glory he redirects elsewhere.

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In our passage for today to us John should be the focal point.

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But instead

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he counts himself as not worthy to stoop down and untie sandals.

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He points rather to one who is greater.

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To one who is coming.

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The fame that he could take the glory that he could receive he

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could make much of himself, but instead he points to someone else.

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The strap of whose sandals I am unworthy to untie.

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And even though John highlights Jesus Act of baptizing.

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That he will be baptizing in the Holy Spirit and Fire.

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John baptizes him

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truly irony.

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But then the heavens are opening the spirit to send and a voice calls him

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saying you are my son.

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I am well pleased.

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And finally another irony in our passage.

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Is that looking ahead we don't have a record of Jesus baptizing the

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way John did at all.

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The whole of scripture and the whole of this history that comes up and

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leads up to this point is full of irony in itself.

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We've been hearing within the past week's passages from Isaiah.

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Particularly, Isaiah 9 where we are told that this light will shine.

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Shine Your Light. And through all that Isaiah says in between chapter 9

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up until what we heard last week in chapter 60 when he talks about the

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coming servant the one who will give himself who will be scorned and

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rejected. Again in chapter 60.

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We now have a new understanding of what it means when he says that his

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light will shine. Shine your light be says.

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He's foretelling of this Messiah to come and this is what we preach

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today. And even as we look back on the irony of years that have gone

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past we can look at how Luther revealed what was hidden and disclosed

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by the church at that time.

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There was so much oppression by the church, and we understand that the

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Gospel in its true

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grace was preached.

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Going back even before that the destruction of the second temple in 70

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AD was not something that should have happened when God said that this

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Temple would remain forever.

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This makes no sense.

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Before that even Christ who was expected to come as a king.

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He was going to be the one to rule the Nations to save them from their

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sins instead

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he comes as a lowly, babe.

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Made lower than the lowest and crucified on a cross.

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Of course leading up to that as we're going backwards in time.

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We have an exile to Babylon and the destruction of a temple again,

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which was never to be destroyed but was destroyed.

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David was to build that Temple

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but God built it through Solomon his son.

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We could look at all the ironies of Moses and the fact that he wasn't

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able to speak and if he was the one who through his speaking.

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Not being able to speak well brings his people out of Egypt.

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God used him to bring his people out of Egypt.

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We would have expected to see Esau receive

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the blessing from Isaac would rather Jacob was the one to receive it.

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Caine the evil one kills Abel who is the faithful one.

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Adam and Eve are living in perfection and yet still they feel

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incomplete without this fruit.

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And so they give up perfection for fruit.

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And here today as we look and see the world as it sits everything

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would tell us that it took longer than 6 days to create it.

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When in reality

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we have a God who made the world in 6 natural days.

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It defies all sense.

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Well,

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if there were no ironies

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we wouldn't need to have anything written down would we?

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This text also, ironically, doesn't say anything about me making much of

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me being glorified or significant, but would it do you any good to see

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me glorified were made much of.

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And to those of you who will stand In a Pulpit and preaching to your

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congregation someday or those of you deaconesses who will be speaking

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and helping your congregation through their needs.

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Would it do good for them to see you glorified?

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But rather we have Jesus who says

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follow me.

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John did not make much of himself.

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He made less of himself and made much of Christ.

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We are called to do the same.

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It's truly if there's anything that we would seek in the glory of

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ourselves.

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It does not last very long.

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Whether we would seek

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my glory, money, credibility, prestige, safety, happiness, skills, food,

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possessions, knowledge, a legacy. We can look out and see how we've been

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pursuing airplanes and skyscrapers,

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great wisdom,

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even our piety,

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even love.

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Maybe we strive to create the perfect Church on Earth which in itself

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is ironic because there's only one who can perfect our church.

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Many things in this world say to us and call to us saying do as I say

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and I will make you great.

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But this is that old familiar voice.

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A voice that we recognize

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It is the voice 

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of death.

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And at the end of all other things that would call us to run after

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them.

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The end is always the same.

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Give back everything

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I have given you it says.

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And now lay down

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and die.

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In that moment

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everything that we would have saw for ourselves in this life is

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emptied of its meaning because it does not last.

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Who will save us from all this?

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There he is depicted.

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God's beloved Son.

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There he is depicted.

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The one in whom the Father is well pleased.

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Look on him and believe.

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Look on him and be pardoned.

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For the ironies are not over yet.

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We are baptized as Christ commanded.

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We in our worthlessness

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receive being lifted up by a God who gave up all things for us.

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And it is not the righteous one who is saved but the righteous one who

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is saving.

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That the infinite can be encapsulated into the words of the finite.

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That the Incarnation of an infinite

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God can be enfleshed in the form of a man.

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That a holy God would Institute his holy word about his holy plan to

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come out of these unclean lips.

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But at the end of all that at the end of this life, as we mentioned, we

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are left with nothing but a grave

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but he was left with even less.

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He was left with an empty grave.

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And in the emptiness of this grave

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he is made much of. He is glorified.

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He has been raised to glory and seated at the right hand of the Father

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and we here in this place stand assured today of this final great

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irony.

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That he who is worthy in the end

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actually does make much of us.

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Who are unworthy.

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For God the just

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is satisfied to look on him and to pardon me.

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He looks on the one who is worthy and pardons the one who is unworthy.

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And because of this we are joined together with him in baptism and all

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that is his as Luther says becomes ours because he gave himself for

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us.

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All praise and honor and glory and power and might be to our God who

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reigns forever and ever.

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Amen.

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And the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts

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and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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We continue with our hymn. Please rise.