Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent: March 20, 2022 jj
Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝
As we were preparing for this season of Lent, you may recall that I enjoined you to rest your whole faith and confidence in the power of God’s Word. Three Sundays into the season of Lent, and we have seen very clearly why this must be for us. It’s because we are in a spiritual battle. Satan waged war against Jesus in the wilderness after His forty days of fasting. An evil spirit tormented the daughter of the Canaanite woman that we read about last week. Today, the Gospel begins with Jesus casting out a demon that had made a man mute, then it leads to a skirmish of words with His enemies who claimed Jesus was using demonic power to deceive the masses, and it ends with a correction for those who wish to praise the Virgin Mother Mary at the expense of trusting in God’s Word alone. This is a constant battle, and you have no choice but to be involved in it. Unlike the distance of space and situation that we have between us and the ravages of war going on right now in the Ukraine, this spiritual war hits us much more deeply than our news headlines and gas prices. All along the way, our only weapons, whether they be offense or defense, are found in the Word of God.
As he did earlier in Genesis, when the devil convinced Adam and Eve that they could be like God just by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, he’s constantly using the tactic against you too, feeding you the delusion that you can get along much better without God calling all the shots. Satan tricked Pharaoh through his court magicians that these divine plagues were just tricks that anyone with magical skills or contacts with evil spirits could perform. Turn your staff into a serpent? We can do that! Turn the Nile River into blood—that’s an old one. Thanks to the devil’s work, our human race has turned into a house divided, for it was he who convinced human beings that they should attempt to declare their independence from God. And when sinful human creatures declare their independence from God, they quickly turn on each other as well, as we’ve seen all too clearly these days.
Do you think you’re safe from this evil scheme? Does your baptism somehow protect you from the assaults of the devil? If you think so, you should guess again. Satan works the hardest against those who are not his. He can divide those in a Christian house against each other just as easily as he could anyone else. But he doesn’t stop with messing up your relationship to God and with other people. The devil also attacks your very self and actually creates a civil war within you.
The Apostle Paul describes this inner conflict in his letter to the Romans: “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I desire not to do, that’s what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I desire not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.”
What’s true for Paul is also true for you. As a Christian, you want to do what pleases God and helps other people, yet you actually do the very opposite. That’s the war between good and evil also going on within your flesh—a war instigated by the devil himself. And what’s more, he has an ally in your own sinful human nature, a traitor that would make even Benedict Arnold blush. It’s the sin that dwells in you, it’s in your very nature, causing you to divide yourself against God and feed your own lusts and desires. It’s that part of you that says you’d get along much better without God calling all the shots. Your heart is a house divided, and if the devil and your sinful self had their way, you would not stand.
It can start out very innocently, as we read today in Ephesians, the ways of the evil world have always tried to creep in to the family of the Church. Even foolish talk and crude joking can be pathways leading to the total denial of the faith, if they are not checked with the law of God and repentance. The covetous man can hide his idolatry from everyone else, but the Lord has still removed His inheritance from those who love the things of this world more than Him. We must not be deceived. We were once darkness, on the wrong side of this spiritual battle, but now we are light in the Lord, and our Savior Jesus fights for us.
To highlight this battle and what it means for our Christian walk through life, in today’s parable, our Lord likened the devil to a strong man in order to point this out: Jesus is the stronger man, the one who actually has bound Satan and plundered him for all he’s worth. Though we have given in to temptations and disregarded God’s will in favor of the darkness of the slave-holding Egypt that we have left, Jesus stood up to the crafts and assaults of the devil. He prevailed without falling into sin—for our sakes. God has always had the upper hand in these battles with the Evil One. Remember that Pharaoh was convinced that his magicians could match the plagues that Moses dished out? Then when the gnats and the flies started attacking in unprecedented swarms, those magicians could only admit the truth: This is the finger of God. Their snake-staffs were swallowed by the serpents made from Moses and Aaron’s staffs. Even they could see that every time God faced off with the devil, that God would always win. Though we, following our deceived sinful nature, would rather side with the devil and only think for ourselves, Jesus took it upon Himself to rescue us from the slavery that placed us in the house of Satan.
Our rescue was certainly a show of divine power, because Jesus destroyed the power of the devil once and for all. Yet at the same time, it looked the opposite—like the devil was the one who would emerge victorious. With Jesus and what He’s going through as we read in the Gospels, we don’t see cataclysmic plagues unleashed against the bad guys and our Savior’s boot pressing down on the devil’s neck. In fact, the ultimate death blow in this war that had begun at the dawn of time was when Jesus humbled Himself to the point of death, even death on a cross!
He chose to bind your sins to Himself and forced God the Father to be divided against His own Son—after all, who was it that said, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” The rejection and scorn, suffering and dying of His crucifixion, these were in fact the very cords that bound up Satan and rendered him powerless and divided. Now with the strong man tied up, Jesus the Stronger Man robbed his house, taking back you and me, the poor souls who were once lost in our sins and slavery. Once we were rightfully accused of sin and rebellion, of doubt and hypocrisy. Now we are in Christ, the risen and victorious Savior. You are free!
Now that you are released from the devil’s kingdom and made a part of the Kingdom of God, you are no longer a house divided from Him. Instead, Jesus took great pains to unite you as one with Him and with your fellow believers. He does some binding on you, too, a different kind of binding. Christ binds you close to Himself in faith that is His gift to you, and He binds you to your neighbor in love, so that you may fulfill each other’s needs. With His Holy Spirit in you and guiding you, now you walk as children of light and you have the ability that you never had before to pursue all that is good, true and right according to the Ten Commandments. Jesus calls you His brother, sister and mother, because you believe in Him, you trust in the power of His Word, and by His grace you perform His will, not as a requirement but as a naturally-occurring response. Blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.
Renounce the devil, and all his works and all his ways. Resist his evil schemes and deceptions. Instead, turn in faith to your Savior Jesus, who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light. Continue to rely on the power of God’s Word that always will fight for you in this war that you are in. Do not remain a “house divided” within your soul. Drown that rebel sinful nature in the waters of your baptism into Christ, a baptism that still lives on to make you grow in your Christian life. Remember your baptism by reminding yourself, “Jesus claimed me as His own and no one can take that inheritance away from me.” You are not a possession of Beelzebul. He has no power over you. Instead, you belong to Jesus and your sinful division is mended because of His word of forgiveness.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” It is true for us in our spiritual battle as Christians, now that we are free from the bondage of sin, death and the devil. Because of Christ, Satan’s kingdom has been divided and his eternal judgment has come, but we on the other hand stand united in our Lord and share in the everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness that God has in store for us. Thanks be to stronger man Jesus, for He bound strong man Satan, and released us from his prison. Now, with God’s Word in your Lenten arsenal, you are in God’s house unto eternity.
In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Readings:
Ex. 8:16–24 the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.”
Eph. 5:1–9 be imitators of God as dear children
Luke 11:14–28 blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!