Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa California ✝ sdg ✝

The strong man first crept through the lush terrain of paradise as he sought out his innocent prey in a “search and destroy” mission. He saw the man and the woman standing there in the garden. He knew he’d have to fight them with great tact and subtlety, for a full frontal assault would probably fail to entice them over to his side. So the strong man turned his attention first to the woman as he approached her in a serpentine sort of way. He spoke to her lovingly and reassuringly—using the words of his greatest Enemy, the Stronger Man—twisting those words until they sounded enticing and attractive. Then he outright contradicted them.

In this battle, the woman fell first, while the man followed closely behind her, all because of the strong man’s persuasive forked-tongue. He spoke to them lie after lie, and passed each one off as a Word better than God’s Word. Suddenly, right there in the garden, this strong man found God, His greatest Enemy, standing face to face with him—looking no less powerful or glorious than He had ever looked—and that in spite of the rebellion in progress. Because the strong man’s Nemesis was hardly weak of Himself, on that day His countenance and words told the story of both wrath and mercy, sin and grace, Law and Gospel.

There in the Garden of Eden, on the same day as the strong man’s victory over the highest of all creatures, his enemy the Stronger Man began to outline His battle plan. God didn’t bother to conceal His strategy, nor did the devil accidentally overhear it. Rather He boldly and openly declared this plan directly to the Serpent, to the strong man himself. He said to him, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed. He shall crush your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” This was not some sort of hopeful wish or blustery trash-talking. Rather, God spoke a promise. In fact, He spoke The Promise. He spoke it directly to the devil, and He told him exactly how one day he would be utterly defeated.

Of course, that strong man would have you think otherwise. He’d like you to believe that it’s he who has the power—not just over you but over all things—that it’s he who tempts you away from the Lord God and His good and gracious will. When you’re sick or in despair, it’s that satanic strong man who whispers in your ear to try to convince you God has no real love for you. He tries to convince you that you no longer have any need for God when life is good, and that he’s the one who’s given you everything you have. He makes sin and temptation so enticing, then goads you to leave the Word behind and decide for yourself what’s good and right for you. This has been his effective strategy from the beginning, and you were bound to his power.

For although he knows he’ll never win the war, the strong man’s desire is to lure and keep from Christ as many of us as he can—as he goes down in defeat. The strong man’s greatest pleasure, then, is when he’s able to entice one of God’s own to leave the kingdom and be lost with him forever. On the surface it almost sounds ludicrous that anyone would follow this strong man. But just consider our world around us. See how many have already forsaken the one true God in favor of the devil. Just think how many might be lost in the future to his damning lie. Then, finally, take a look at yourself and heed God’s warning: You’re no match for the strong man. That’s why you have to keep your eyes focused on the promise God made to us all in the Garden of Eden that day: that the Seed of the woman would one day come to do battle with the strong man—that the strong man would bruise His heel like a cowardly serpent hiding in the weeds waiting for his prey—but more importantly, that the Seed of the woman would crush the strong man’s head in fulfillment of the promise. In other words, that the Seed of the woman would be the Stronger Man.

You no longer have to look forward in time to the fulfillment of that promise made in Genesis 3:15. No, we rejoice that this Stronger Man has already come. The promised Seed of the woman was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary. He’s Jesus, and He’s clearly the Stronger Man that He was talking about. He healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath. By mighty words and deeds He’s proven Himself to be that promised Savior, the Son of God, and the Stronger Man. That’s why the Scribes and Pharisees—those unwilling to repent and place their trust in Him—instead conspired together in hopes of destroying Him. He was “too good to be true.” Or more like, for those Pharisees, He was too good to be tolerated!

And so the strong man, the devil, went about his guerilla warfare of attacking the Stronger Man. He incited Jesus’ own people to doubt Him, and thus they came to take Him away, believing Him to be out of His mind. “He has Beelzebub,” they said, and “By the power of demons He casts out demons.” That was the exact opposite of the truth. He was no slave of the ancient serpent. He hadn’t come to bring people to hell for Satan, but to defeat that strong man once and for all. He asked: “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand… No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods,” Jesus reminded them, “unless he first binds the strong man. Then he can plunder his house.”

The Stronger Man, you see, is no slave of the devil, but He came instead to bind him, tie him up, and rob him of his power over you. In fulfillment of His Word He came to tie up the satanic strong man and plunder his house and goods. How did He tie up the strong man—and how does He plunder his house? And here’s the genius of this amazing victory.

It’s not what we would have expected, because His power is made perfect in weakness, the Stronger Man fulfilled the ancient promise and defeated the devil by submitting to death on the cross. He suffered for the sins of the world. He bore upon Himself the wrath of God for the iniquity of us all. He trusted that even though on the cross the Father would forsake Him and judge Him for our sin, He would also raise Him to ultimate victory. We must continually point out to one another, and also to the world, that the strength and power of Christ the Stronger Man is His death. That’s how He ties up the strong man. He suffers for the sin of the whole world and dies, but death cannot hold Him in the grave. By His resurrection He shows that it’s the strong man who’s really been bound, and that Satan is the one who finally has no power at all!

Death, then, is how the Stronger Man accomplished his victory, and He plunders the house through the forgiveness of sins. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Stronger Man, has stolen you away from Satan by taking your sin away. He died for it on the cross, and now He freely offers forgiveness to you through the Word you hear today. In the Divine Service week after week, He continues to plunder the strong man’s home with glorious shouts of victory. Whenever you hear Christ’s words saying, “I Baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Those few words—together with a splash of water—sweep away the devil and his hold on you. With words of forgiveness announced through His called pastors, He regularly proclaims to you how you’re forgiven of all of your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Your sins are loosed from you like broken shackles, and the strong man is bound. And, of course, the Stronger Man has yet one more battle cry: “Take and eat, this is My Body…take and drink, this is My Blood…given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins.” Where Christ is, you see, the devil must flee, for a divided house cannot stand.

This rescue is yours to believe and trust in, but Christ the Stronger Man doesn’t force His forgiveness on anyone. He simply offers it as a free gift and as a statement of His love. Yet the devil twists even this. He still convinces people that, while the Lord offers grace, they ought to refuse His gifts and go their own way, believe what they want to believe, do what they want to do. “This,” the devil whispers, “this is true freedom!”—when really it’s slavery of the worst kind.

Those who forsake God’s Word, you see, give up on forgiveness itself. The person who says he has no need of worship, the Word, or Communion is actually saying that he has no need for the work of The Holy Spirit! This, as Jesus says, blasphemes the Holy Spirit, and a rejecter of God will not be forgiven, and not because God isn’t merciful or He’s mad at them, but it’s because the unrepentant sinner is saying “No!” to the very mercy God offers.

Though the devil has already lost the war, he still longs for you to return to his house, and with him suffer his defeat and condemnation forever. He whispers in your ear that you’re no match for him, because, after all, he’s the strong man. And he’s right! You are no match for him! Compared to you, he’s still much too strong for you to defeat. But the fact is, while the devil may be the strong man, our Lord Jesus Christ is the Stronger Man. By Christ’s death, Satan’s been bound and rendered powerless. Today in the forgiveness of sins, Christ has once again plundered the devil’s house. He triumphantly says: “You are no longer dead in sin. I died for you. I’ve forgiven you. My kingdom is yours, and you are Mine.”

In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Readings:
Gen. 3:8–15 And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking
Ps. 130 My soul waits for the Lord
2 Cor. 4:13—5:1 we have a building from God, a house not made with hands
Mark 3:20–35 if a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. … whoever does the will of God is My brother…sister…mother