Sermon for Oculi – Lent 3

Ephesians 5:1-9  +  Luke 11:14-28

There were at least three beliefs about Jesus floating around Israel as He carried out His earthly ministry. He’s either out of His mind, or He’s working with the demons, or He’s the very Son of God. Believe it or not, it was His own earthly family who thought, for a time, that He was out of His mind. St. Mark tells us that in His Gospel just before he records the same events you heard in today’s Gospel from St. Luke. The scribes and Pharisees thought He was in league with the demons, as you heard in today’s Gospel. And, as St. Matthew records this same event, there were still others who believed that Jesus was the promised Christ, the Son of David, the very Son of God. But what those people thought about Jesus isn’t nearly as important today as what you think about Jesus, what you believe about Jesus, because the only way you escape the devil’s control and the devil’s kingdom is by believing in Jesus as the Son of God, as the only One who is stronger than the devil.

Jesus was casting out demons again as our Gospel begins. This one was both blind and mute, holding the poor possessed man in a terrible state of isolation. Jesus used no incantations, no sacred objects, no magic spells. He didn’t even command the demon to depart “in the name of God.” He did it in His own almighty name, and the demon had to obey. That display of divine power caused some in the crowd to conclude, “Could this be the Son of David?”

But the scribes and Pharisees were quick to dissuade those people from believing in Jesus. He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons. Why did they think that? Well, they saw supernatural power at work, and there are only two sources of supernatural power: God (who also empowers His holy angels), or the devil and his demons, who still retain some of the power God gave them in the beginning, before they turned against Him. The unbelieving Jews just couldn’t accept that Jesus was the very Son of God, just as they couldn’t accept His word which declared that all men, including them, were in need of a Savior from sin, because no one is good enough to earn his own salvation. Since they rejected Jesus’ word, they saw Him as a false prophet, in league with the devil, while they viewed themselves as being on God’s side.

But Jesus showed them how absurd their accusation was. (Worse than absurd, actually, because by claiming that Jesus’ power was from the devil, they were actually committing blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, because it was the Holy Spirit of God who was the One who was truly at work in Jesus’ miracles, and they were branding Him “Beelzebub.”)

His first argument was this: Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to ruin, and a house divided against a house falls. If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? For you say that I cast out demons by Beelzebub. It was foolish to claim that Satan was helping Jesus to drive out Satan. That would show division among Satan’s ranks, weakness, and it would mean that his kingdom would soon self-destruct, just like any kingdom or house divided against itself eventually does (which makes one wonder how much longer our own divided country can possibly survive!). But Satan’s kingdom isn’t divided. He and all his demons are united in their love for wickedness and in their war against God and against the people of God. Satan’s kingdom is strong. He’s strong. And his kingdom will not self-destruct. The only way for men to be rescued from Satan’s powerful kingdom is if someone comes in from the outside, someone stronger than Satan, someone who actually has our best interests at heart. That’s Jesus.

He continues His argument: And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? So they will be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, well-armed, guards his palace, his possessions are secure. But when a man who is stronger than he comes against him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted and divides the spoils. To me, it seems clear that what Jesus means is that, although some of the Jews were going around attempting to cast out demons, they weren’t very successful. But Jesus was, every single time! That proved that He was using not the power of the devil but the “Finger of God” to cast out demons, which Matthew’s Gospel identifies as the Holy Spirit. His power over the demons was not proof that He was working under the devil. It was proof that He was stronger than the devil. Only Jesus was able to rescue people out of the devil’s kingdom.

And the same is true today. Whether the devil holds people under his direct control or whether he simply counts them among his children who are trapped inside his kingdom and, therefore, outside the kingdom of God, he and his demons are just as powerful today as they ever were. His grip on mankind remains firm, and his lies are potent. Look at how he deceives the nations! Look at the rising violence and addiction in the world, the widespread acceptance of wickedness and the widespread rejection of truth. Look at how the witness of the genuine Christian Church has been all but silenced. All this is Satan’s doing, aided by his demons and helped along by his allies among men. How can the Church prevail in the midst of all this? How can anyone still escape from the devil’s grasp? Only if there’s Someone stronger than the devil at work, Someone who actually has our best interests at heart. That’s Jesus.

And there’s no in between when it comes to Him. As He says in the Gospel, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. You’re either with Him by believing that He is the very Son of God and by keeping His Word, or you’re against Him, in league with the devil. You’re either gathering with Him, confessing Him before men as the very Son of God so that they come into His kingdom, or you’re scattering people, pushing them away from Him by promoting Him as anything less than the very Son of God.

Here I’d like to share with you a wise observation from C.S. Lewis, because, apart from the three reactions to Jesus that we mentioned above, which Lewis also mentions here as real possibilities, there is a fourth, absolutely ridiculous attitude toward Jesus that is very common today, just as it was common in 1952, when Lewis wrote these words. It’s the perception of Jesus as a great moral teacher who is not the Son of God. As Lewis writes, “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity). You’re not rescued from the devil’s kingdom or protected from the demons by having nice thoughts about Jesus, by thinking highly of His moral teachings, or by picking and choosing which doctrines of Scripture you’ll believe or discard. Only faith in Christ Jesus as true God and true Man, who bore our sins, suffered and died for them, and rose again from the dead, only faith in His promise to deliver us from the devil’s kingdom will actually result in a person being rescued.

But even after being rescued, there is still a risk of being recaptured! Whenever an unclean spirit goes out of a man, it goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, it says, ‘I will return to my house out of which I came.’ And when it arrives, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first.” What does it mean that a demon goes back and finds its house “swept and put in order”? It means that the person who was at first rescued from the devil allows a vacancy to remain in his heart. Maybe he’s straightened up his life. Maybe he’s not indulging in open wickedness anymore. But unless the Word of Christ dwells in a person richly, unless the Spirit of Christ dwells in a person’s heart by faith, he remains vulnerable to the devil’s attacks.

So what to do? Jesus tells us in the final words of today’s Gospel. And it happened that, as he spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” There it is. That’s the recipe, that’s the answer. That’s how to fill your heart so that the devil has no room to get in. Hear the word of God and keep it. It’s a simple thing, really, but it’s also a lifelong thing, to keep hearing God’s Word, and not just the verses you happen to like, but the whole thing, the whole of Scripture, and the preaching of it which God’s ministers provide, if they are faithful. And not only to hear it, but to ponder it, think about it, and then “keep” it. Treasure it. Hold it close. Do what it says. Or, as St. Paul put it in today’s Epistle, Be imitators of God. Walk in love. Walk as children of light. Then you will be blessed, happy, fortunate, enviable, because where the Word of God is heard and kept, there is the Spirit of God, and the Father, and the Son, making their home with the one who believes. And where God is—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—there the devil has no power. May the word of Christ dwell in you richly, that you may know Jesus rightly, follow Him steadfastly, and be preserved from every evil. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Sermon for Oculi – Lent 3

Ephesians 5:1-9  +  Luke 11:14-28

Demons are real. The devil is real—a real spirit-creature, powerful, cunning, ferocious, and relentless. The Bible associates demons with false doctrine, with idol-worship, and with shadowy influence over world governments. You and I may not have obvious encounters with them, or maybe we do and just don’t understand what it is that we’re facing. There was a girl in the city of Philippi who was possessed by a demon at the time of the apostle Paul. It was called a “spirit of divination,” allowing the girl to tell people their fortunes with a supernatural degree of accuracy. It’s not impossible that there are demons involved still today in some cases of fortune-telling, or perhaps in certain conditions that are otherwise diagnosed as illnesses. I have known both Christians and non-Christians who were convinced that they were being troubled, even terrorized, by demons. And I can’t rule out that possibility.

At the same time, I’m skeptical of many modern claims of demon possession as well as modern claims of exorcism. There is no evidence in Holy Scripture that the miraculous gift of being able to cast out demons would continue after the days of the apostles, and most of the claims of modern exorcisms are directly tied to teachers of false doctrine anyway, so even if the possessions are real, the exorcism accounts may not be, or, in a truly diabolical scenario, the demons could be playing along with the false teachers, willingly leaving their host in order to lend support to the false teachings of the false teachers.

Whatever doubts we may have about what’s going on today, there can be no doubt about what was going on at the time of Jesus. Holy Scripture is a dependable witness to such things. Demons were, at that time, most definitely taking control of people’s bodies in various ways, or, as in the case of the fortune-teller, communicating directly with certain individuals, giving them knowledge of things they couldn’t otherwise know. They seem to have swarmed the world at the time of Christ, since we hardly hear anything about them tormenting people prior to that time. And no one was able to help.

Until Jesus came along. Jesus drove out demons easily, with a word, just as He did in today’s Gospel, where a demon was keeping a man from being able to speak. And He didn’t have to do it “in the name of” someone else, nor did He need to ask His Father for permission or power to do it. The Father had given Him the Spirit without measure. As He says after His resurrection, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”

The people of Israel were rightfully amazed at Jesus’ power, which was unlike anything they had ever seen. But the devil’s children were there, too—not spirit-children or hybrid humans, but human unbelievers whose spiritual attitude was according to the devil’s image instead of God’s. He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons!, they accused.

Jesus responds to that accusation with a series of answers. First, he shows how silly it is to claim that He is driving out demons by the power of “Beelzebub.” That’s a Hebrew name that means “Lord of the Flies.” In the Old Testament, it was the name given to the god of Ekron, one of the Philistine cities, and eventually became associated with Satan himself. To say that Satan was helping Jesus to drive out a demon, against the demon’s will, implied that the devil had somehow turned against his own angels, in which case, his kingdom was doomed from within, destined to self-destruct, and would soon cease to be a threat to God’s people. If the devil had turned against his own demons, then they had nothing to fear from the devil any longer.

But that wasn’t the case at all. The devil remains a fearsome enemy of all mankind, and of God’s people, in particular. So, no, the devil was not the source of Jesus’ power.

What about the sons of the unbelieving Jews? By whose power were they casting out demons? And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out? So they will be your judges. I take this to mean that no one else was able to drive out demons, even if they tried. By whom do your sons cast the demons out? By no one! No man could do what Jesus was doing.

So, if Jesus was actually successful at driving out demons (which everyone there admitted), and if it wasn’t by the devil’s power, then there was only one conclusion that they could reach. This was the mighty Seed of the woman whose coming was foretold since the Garden of Eden. Jesus was the One who was to come and crush the ancient serpent’s head.

That’s exactly what Jesus Himself concludes here: But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. The kingdom of God is a reference to the reign of the Christ: His invisible reign here on earth, which will be followed by His visible reign after Judgment Day. He then follows up that statement with the example of the strong man, and the stronger man.

This is one of the two major teachings in these verses. The devil, with all his demons, is like a strong man who guards his possessions within his house. People are those possessions, whether or not those people are possessed by a demon. The apostle Paul writes this to the Colossians in chapter 1: God has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. That means that, before we were brought to faith and baptized into Christ, we were under the power of darkness, outside of Christ’s kingdom, dead in our trespasses and sins, like the rest of unbelieving mankind. All who are outside of Christ belong to the devil, whether their bodies are possessed or not. And if they are possessed, then the devil holds onto them even more strongly.

That’s why it took a stronger Man, Jesus, to come in and conquer the devil and take away his armor in which he trusted. That’s the picture Jesus give us of Himself. Of course He’s stronger than the devil, because the devil is a creation of God, while Jesus is true God and the devil’s Creator. Not that He created him as the evil one, but the angel who became the devil is, by his very nature, inferior to Christ, his Creator. But even as true Man, Christ is stronger than the devil, because He is a sinless Man who fights against the devil with His Father’s full approval. He is the mighty Champion who went to the cross in order to remove from the devil his right to accuse or hold onto anyone who is on Jesus’ side, by faith.

You see how important it is to be on Jesus’ side in this epic spiritual battle? Because there are only two sides. As Jesus says, Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Who are the Christian’s allies? We may have political allies or community allies who aren’t believers in Christ Jesus. There is a place for that in this world, and Christians and non-Christians can work together and support one another in those earthly endeavors. But in spiritual matters, there can be no such allegiances. As Paul writes to the Corinthians, What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial (or “Beelzebub”)? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? No, if a person is not on Jesus’ side, by faith in Him and by obedience to His Word, that person is not the ally of Christians and shouldn’t be seen that way. That person remains on the devil’s side.

Jesus then gives us a glimpse into the spiritual realm—something only He can do!—so that we can understand what’s at stake here, how important it is to be squarely on Jesus’ side. He describes what happens when a demon leaves a person. It wanders around for a while, and then it goes back to look at the state of the person whom it left. And if it finds that person’s heart swept and put in order, or “empty,” as it says in Matthew’s account, then it goes back in, and it invites its demonic friends to join it and make that person’s life far worse than it had been before.

This is another key teaching in these verses. The believer in Christ Jesus has the Holy Spirit dwelling in his heart, so that the devil can’t get it. He may be able to get away with terrorizing a person from the outside, for a while, and he can surely tempt a believer, as he was even able to tempt the Lord Jesus. But the one who is clinging to Christ in faith cannot be possessed or controlled by any demon. I can’t think of a stronger warning or encouragement to make sure that, each day, you’re living in repentance and faith, and that you never toy with the things of the devil—idolatry, pornography, sexual immorality, witchcraft, sorcery, fortune-telling, Ouija boards, and all such things. Instead, as Paul said to the Ephesians in today’s Epistle, Be imitators of God, therefore, as his beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and sacrifice to God, to be a sweet-smelling aroma. But sexual immorality and all uncleanness or greed, let it not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting for saints, nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse joking, which are not proper for you, but rather thanksgiving.

After hearing all this from Jesus, a woman in the crowd that day stood up and tried to praise Jesus for His words. But her praise was mis-focused, if you will. Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts at which you nursed! But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” Mary, Jesus’ mother, was certainly blessed. But she can’t help anyone against the demons. She can’t help anyone with anything. But Jesus can! And His word can! Hear Him, God the Father said to Peter, James, and John on the Mt. of Transfiguration. So don’t let your faith (or your praise) become mis-focused. Hear Jesus. Trust in Jesus. And do what He says. Put His word into practice. And you will be blessed, which includes being kept safe from the devil and all his evil angels and all their wicked schemes. If you’re with Jesus, you’re with the Stronger Man, and He will be your ever-present Protector against the evil spirits. As St. Paul writes, If God is for us, who can be against us? Neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons…will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

Source: Sermons