Lent 1

Luke 10:17-20 - Invocavit Sunday - March 9, 2014
Rejoice in This!

This morning we give special attention also to these words from the 10^th chapter of St. Luke’s Gospel, after Jesus had sent out seventy men to the places where he himself was about to go.  We read in Jesus’ name:

Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”  And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” 

These are your words holy Father; sanctify us by the truth; your word is truth.  Amen. 

The reason we are sinners is because the devil is a liar, and because our first parents believed his lie.  Now, we could curse them and complain about the misfortune they have caused us.  But before we do, we need to understand the proper definition of original sin.  We call it original sin not simply because it was the first sin committed by man.  We call it original sin because it is the origin of all the other sins we commit.  Original sin is the sin that all sinners of all time are equally guilty of.  We inherit sin not as a genetic defect that is not our fault.  No, we inherit sin as rebels who conspired with our first parents against God and his word.  Spiritually speaking, we were there with Adam consenting to what the devil was saying, and rejecting what God had spoken.  In other words, if it had been any one of us in the Garden with the devil, the story would be the same. 

Just because we can’t help it doesn’t mean that it’s not our fault.  “I was born this way!” is not an excuse.  It’s an admission of guilt.  It’s a reason to repent of who we are, to acknowledge our complete helplessness before God, and to beg him for mercy.  But that’s not what man does, does he?  And that’s not what our own natural urges are, are they?  Instead, man either blames God for making him the way he is, just like Adam blamed God for giving him his wife who gave him the fruit, or else man runs from God in terror, the way Adam did when he heard God’s voice in the cool of the day.  And all the while, man covers up his glaring guilt with his own fancy works, just as Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves when they became ashamed.  Original sin is nothing more than unbelief.  As our Lutheran Confessions put it, it is to be without the fear of God, without trust in God, and to have the evil inclination to do what God forbids. 

God punishes sin.  He curses.  He had just blessed Adam and Eve and told them to be fruitful and multiply.  But now, because of their sin, childbearing would be painful, childrearing would be stressful, and submitting to one’s husband would no longer come natural.  God had blessed them and given them all creation to tend to and enjoy.  But now man would labor by the sweat of his brow – and not just literally.  Intellectual pursuits would become difficult when once they were pure pleasure; the elements of nature would be hazardous, when once they served man as ministers of God; the desire to rest would from now on come long before the work is done.  God had blessed them.  But they – we – rejected God’s word.  So God cursed them.  And so we suffer under the same curse until we return to the dust from which we were taken. 

But before God cursed man and woman, he cursed the devil, casting him from heaven down to earth.  Before he cursed the ground, he cursed the serpent who would spend his days slithering upon it, eating the very dust to which his victims would return.  There’s comfort in this – this victory over Satan.  God did not curse us for our disobedience without first making a way to deliver us and free us from our sin.  Before condemning man to suffer and die, he promised to send the Seed of the woman who would suffer and die in our place.  This Seed, being the very Son of God, would suffer and die an innocent man.  He would be obedient to God’s word, and indeed would fulfill it.  And so by his death he would destroy the power of death and crush the devil’s head.  

God cursed creation in the hope of redeeming it.  That’s what St. Paul writes in Romans 8.  So also God cursed man, and continues to speak his damning law of judgment against our sin, in the hope of delivering us into the glorious freedom of the children of God.  Again, that’s what St. Paul writes in Romans 8.  The curse is for the sake of the promise.  And so by holding onto the promise, we see the curse broken before the eyes of faith. 

This is what the seventy disciples saw with their eyes of flesh when they went out preaching the coming of Christ.  “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”   How exciting.  And they would see more than that, as Jesus told them, “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”  They would see and experience in their own bodies the curse lifted.  They would see creation itself refuse to harm them just as it had been in Eden.  They would see hell and all it’s hordes cower before their proclamation.  That was the power of the gospel of Christ!  Jesus promised the same thing to the twelve Apostles in Mark 16:

 “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Creation was cursed because of our sin.  Creation is blessed because of our salvation.  These wonderful events proved it.  As Paul writes in Romans 8: “The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God” (8:19).  In the gospel we see the curse lifted, because we see the law that condemned us fulfilled by Christ.  But the sons of God are not yet revealed to creation.  The miraculous events during Jesus’ lifetime and during the age of the Apostles were only a foretaste.  It didn’t last, as we well know.   It was only intended by our Lord as a temporary display of the gospel’s power.  Just as speaking in tongues ceased, although for a while the curse of Babel was lifted, so also snakes and spiders can again kill, and do.  The curse is still very much real.  Our sick and our dying are better treated by doctors and medicine than by faith-healers. 

But this does not mean that the power of the gospel is temporary.  It is not.  It is eternal.  The sons of God might not be revealed to creation as they once were for a brief time 2000 years ago.  But the sons of God are revealed by faith.  That is to say, we know who we are as Christians, as children of our Father in heaven through the promise that we have in our Baptism.  As Paul again writes in Romans 8: “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16).  This is the Spirit whom we received when we were born again through water and the word.  At Jesus’ Baptism, the heavens opened and the Father spoke while the Spirit descended on Jesus as a dove, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”  Likewise in our Baptism, we have certainty of God’s love and approval.  Through this biblical promise, God opens heaven and speaks to us.  And so that we might be certain, we are given the same Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts to trust God’s holy word.  And then what?  Well, armed with such confidence, the Spirit leads us where the Spirit led Christ: into the world of sin, where the devil’s wiles hold sway. 

Everything in creation passes away – grass and flowers fade, thorns and thistles make our labor difficult, sin and stupidity in others make them hard to work with so that we think we are justified in hating them, disease robs us of our daily comfort while death claims our loved ones; fires burn, floods destroy, and even our beloved pets die to add salt to our wounds – and all this serves to remind us that we still have much to contend against in this world of sin, not least of all our own sin.  The world and all that fills it remains cursed.  But we are not cursed.  None of these things — although they are the result of the sin that we have been born in and that we daily commit — none of these things can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

The devil begs to differ.  He is up for the challenge.  He is the prince of this world and has been ever since he fell like lightning from heaven.  He is roaming around like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  And he will use everything in creation to tear us away from God just as he used a snake and beautiful fruit to tempt our first parents in Eden.  He will appear as an angel of light.  He will carry the world along with him, and tempt us with the allure of their popular opinions and false doctrines.  He will use our hunger for daily bread to distract us and disarm us of God’s word.  He will entice our fleshly lusts and urges to take what God has not granted.  He will use our religious experiences and our moral victories to persuade us that we have reached the height of spiritual strength, so that we imagine we no longer need to hear God’s word or learn it.  In this way he urges us to test God.  He will show us the glory of the world.   “Look how much she has accomplished.  This can be yours as well.  There is so much that can make you happy.”  But the devil is a liar.  He has been a murderer from the beginning.  We need to arm ourselves with the truth. 

Jesus overcame all of these temptations in order to restore us to life.  He was armed with the word of God.  And just as he saw Satan fall like lightning from God’s glorious presence in heaven, so also by employing the Bible against him, he saw him flee like lightning from his humbled presence on earth.  “You will be like God,” the devil lied.  And so our race fell from our original innocence.  But here, in the person of Jesus Christ, the devil encountered God himself, clothed in the very flesh that Satan had once deceived.  And Jesus overcame all of his temptations as our Substitute in order to give us his innocence.

God put enmity between the Seed of the woman and the seed of the devil.  This was a promise to us whose flesh is not at enmity with the devil.  It was a promise to us whose flesh is friendly to the lie we were born believing.  But Christ could not be won over.  His love for his Father and for us was too strong.  By resisting the devil in the desert, Jesus proved to be his enemy.  And by consenting in loving obedience to his Father on the cross, Jesus proved to be his conqueror.  “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”  He bore our sin.  He redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, in order that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Galatians 3:13). 

And it is through the Spirit who speaks to us in the word that we are able to resist the devil as well.  Through the power of Christ crucified we are able to live Christian lives that please God.  As we sing:

Or should Satan press me hard,
Let me then be on my guard,
Saying, “Christ for me was wounded,”
That the Tempter flee confounded.

Like the disciples in Jesus’ day, we see a foretaste of the curse being lifted.  And we rejoice at seeing the devil trampled beneath our feet.  It is wonderful to see the power of God’s word in action!  But we do not trust in what we see.  We don’t trust in our own resistance.  May we not be distracted by the devil’s last ditch effort to deceive us.  We trust in what we hear.  We trust in what the second Adam has accomplished.  That is why he says: “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”   This is to say that we should rejoice in our Baptism, where our Old Adam who ignores God’s word is daily drowned, and we rise as new men who believe God’s word.  Rejoice in this!  It is where we were joined to Christ’s death and resurrection.  It is where the name of Jesus was joined to our own.  Rejoice in this!  This is how we know that our victory has already been won.  The devil lies defeated underneath our feet as surely as Jesus has been raised from the dead.  And our names stand written in heaven as surely as Jesus sits at the Father’s right hand.  Rejoice in this!  With this confidence, we employ God’s word against every temptation of body and soul until we are delivered forever at the glorious revealing of all God’s children. 

Let us pray:

O Jesus, who my debt didst pay
And for my sin wast smitten,
Within the Book of Life, oh, may
My name be also written!
I will not doubt; I trust in Thee,
From Satan Thou hast made me free
And from all condemnation.  Amen.