Being and remaining on the right side

Sermon for Oculi

Ephesians 5:1-9  +  Luke 11:14-28

When Beelzebub first tempted Adam and Eve to sin, these were some of the first words the Lord spoke to him: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. Enmity. Hostility. Division. That’s what the Lord Himself promised to put into the world. But in this case, it’s a good thing, to place a division between the seed or the children of Beelzebub and the Seed of the woman, that is, the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who are children of God by faith in the Seed of the woman. If the Lord hadn’t put this division into the world, we would all be on the devil’s side, raging against God. As it is, there is a little congregation of believers throughout the world who have been separated out from the devil’s family, whom God has brought over to His side, who have been delivered from the power of darkness and conveyed into the kingdom of His beloved Son. There are only two sides in this cosmic battle.

Whose side are you on? That’s the question the Lord would have each of us consider in today’s Gospel, and not just for the sake of considering it, but so that we may cling tightly to Jesus and so be safe from the demons. In this battle, nothing is more important that being and remaining on the right side.

Jesus’ power over demons is once again made vividly clear in the Gospel. He was casting out a demon, and it was mute. And it happened that, after the demon had gone out, the man who had been mute spoke, and the people were amazed. As we saw last week, the demons have been given some authority since the fall to harass mankind and even to bodily torment some people. Here the torment was in the form of keeping the poor man from speaking. But Jesus cast the demon out with a word, and we see how amazed some of the people were by His authority and power. In a way, Jesus’ power over the demons was even more impressive than His power over nature and disease, because the demons actually have a will to disobey God, and yet they were forced against their will to do Jesus’ bidding.

Not all were amazed. Some concluded that Jesus was working together with the devil, with Beelzebub, as if He were the devil’s friend, on the devil’s side: He casts out demons through Beelzebub, the ruler of demons. What a wild accusation, to claim that Jesus was on the devil’s side! And why? Why would they think that? It’s because they had twisted the Old Testament to form a new religion, a religion in which you get into God’s grace by doing things, by outwardly keeping the Law and by being a member of the right race. In this new religion that the Jews has invented for themselves, there was no room for grace or forgiveness, no room for a Savior from sin.

Jesus, on the other hand, was upholding the Old Testament, the old religion taught by God, a religion in which all mankind stood guilty before God, a religion that branded all men as sinners and called all men to repentance, but a religion that also offered God’s grace toward sinners, and the forgiveness of sins through faith in the Savior, Jesus, whose very name means “Savior.” He told them the Word of God and the truth about the Word of God. But these people had turned evil into good and good into evil, God into the devil and the devil into God, so they saw everything the opposite of the way it really was.

Similar accusations are still directed against God’s precious people. The closer we get to the end, the more truth-telling Christians will be labeled as lying servants of Satan. Already we’re branded as racists, colonizers, guilty of “Christian privilege,” stupid, uneducated, and foolish. Those are lies, of course, and it isn’t pleasant to be lied about, but it sure puts you in good company, right there with Jesus, who was called the devil’s coworker and ally.

Others who saw Jesus cast out this demon asked for a sign from heaven that Jesus was truly sent from God. As if casting out demons wasn’t a sign! But, in fact, Jesus did give them yet another sign. But He, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “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 through Beelzebub.” You see, they weren’t bold enough to accuse Him of working with Beelzebub loudly enough for Him to hear it. But He showed by His response that He didn’t need to hear their secret remarks; He knew the innermost thoughts of their hearts.

His answer reveals the folly of their accusation. First, He tells them, your accusation is foolish, because Satan is not divided against himself. A house divided against itself falls. Like the United States, I suppose, which can’t possibly stand much longer, as divided as it is. Sometimes it takes a century or two for divided kingdoms to topple. But they must topple. They must fall. Even if “falling” doesn’t mean the country ceases to exist. Sometimes, it just means it’s left as a weak, chaotic, empty shell of what it was. The devil’s kingdom is not like that, though. His kingdom stands and will stand, growing stronger and stronger, until Christ Himself comes to defeat him, and to defeat him, not with a great battle, but with the glory of His coming, with a word, just as He made quick work of the demons even in His state of humiliation.

But the devil has suffered a real defeat already, by “the finger of God.” Jesus was successfully driving out demons. How could he do that? As He says in the Gospel, 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 with 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. I take Jesus’ words to mean that no one else was able to cast out demons except for Him. And He was able to do it, to enter the house of the strong man, that is, the devil’s kingdom, and remove his armor and divide the spoils, because He is the Stronger Man. Even before His death on the cross, He had begun His assault on the devil’s kingdom, rescuing people from bodily possession. But by His innocent death and His powerful resurrection from the dead, Jesus, the Stronger Man, would redeem the souls of mankind and win the right to lead sinners out of the devil’s kingdom in never-before-seen numbers, so that His holy Christian Church would extend throughout the whole world.

Returning to the Gospel, Jesus then presents His hearers with a dire warning: Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Be careful, you who don’t want to be on Jesus’ side, you who pretend Jesus and His Christians are on the devil’s side. If you’re not with Jesus, the Son of God, then you’re against Jesus, against God, and that will not end well for you. You see, there are many sides in the world. But in this ultimate battle, it isn’t Democrat vs. Republican, or patriot vs. traitor, or white vs. black, or good person vs. bad person. It’s Christ and His Christians on the one side, and the unbelieving world on the other.

Jesus then describes the very real danger of not being on the side of the Son of God. He describes what happens when a demon is cast out of a person, when a person is once freed by the Son of God. The demon leaves for a while and wanders around, but then he checks back on the house that he left. And if he finds it “swept clean and put in order,” that is, if he finds a vacancy in that person’s heart, without the Holy Spirit dwelling there, then he comes right back and brings some of his infernal friends with him, and together they make it even worse for the person.

Either you’re on the side of Jesus, or you’re on the devil’s side and vulnerable to the demons. Only the Son of God and His Holy Spirit can keep the devil out, can keep him from accusing you, or controlling you and influencing you from within. Becoming a Christian, through Baptism and genuine faith, puts you on the Lord’s side, in His kingdom, in His holy Church. These words of Jesus are a warning to stay close to Him, to not let yourself be emptied of the Holy Spirit by willful sin, by impenitence, or by neglecting the Holy Spirit’s tools for strengthening and preserving faith.

That’s the last part 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.”

How do you get on the side and remain on the side of the Son of God? Not by being His mother. (What good would that do any of us?) No, you stay on His side against the demons by hearing His word. Not only by reading it at home, but also by hearing it preached, receiving the ministry of Word and Sacrament by the ministers whom Christ has sent, from the time you’re baptized until the end of your earthly life. And you also have to keep the word that you’ve heard. Keep it by treasuring it and holding it close. Keep it by believing it and by doing what it says.

That’s where today’s Epistle comes in. What does it look like to keep the word of God? It means to be imitators of God, as dear children, and to walk in love, in all the ways that God’s word describes, including avoiding every form of fornication and all uncleanness and greed. Let it not even be mentioned among you, as is fitting for saints, nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse joking, but rather thanksgiving.

Hearing and keeping the word of God. It’s the very thing the demons want to keep you from doing, because they know the power of God’s word. They ridicule it. They deny it. They twist it. They undermine it at every turn, because it’s true, and they hate the truth, and they know that they have no power over the one who hears and keeps the word of God.

But that’s part of the enmity, the hostility, the division that God has put between the seed of the serpent and the Seed of the woman, between the devil and the world on the one side and Him and His believers on the other. The world loves its own. But you, Christians, are no longer its own. You belong to the One who loved you and gave Himself for you, and soon you’ll be safe forever from all the assaults of the devil. For now, while we still live in this world of demons, remember that your safety comes from Christ alone, and through His Church, through the ministry of Word and Sacrament, He will continue to give you the protection and the strength to be and to remain on the right side, on His side. Amen.