Bible Text: Luke 11:14-28 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Lent 2020 | The baptisms of the ancient Church usually included the exorcism of the devil. Before baptizing the pastor would say, “Begone evil spirit and make way for the Holy Spirit.” That’s actually how my daughter Martha was baptized, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing to bring it back into our churches. It’s how the Lutheran Church did it in Reformation times too. Now as we just heard with little Augustyn’s baptism, we’ve kept the questions, “Do you renounce the devil? Do you renounce all his works and all his ways?” which is a sort of exorcism. But no matter what we add to the words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” a Baptism is a Baptism and therefore a true exorcism. It takes a child of the devil and makes him into a child of God.
Now it’s not a physical, a bodily exorcism that we’re talking about here. The devil’s not omnipresent, he can’t be in more than one place at one time, and so he can’t be bodily possessing millions of people at the same time. And it’s a useless endeavor to speculate on how many demons there are, how many thousands or millions of angels fell with Satan in the beginning and were cast from the presence of God, as if every person when he’s born has a devil locally present inside of him. No. When we say that everyone born into this world is under the power of the devil, we can’t picture the Hollywood caricature of a girl twisting her head around and chanting creepy Latin phrases with pea soup bursting from her mouth, and we aren’t saying that Satan or a devil possesses everyone’s body or locally fills some place in the soul. We’re saying that Satan has the power to accuse everyone born into this world of sin because by nature we know nothing of the true God, we don’t love Him or fear Him or trust in Him, but instead readily believe lies about ourselves and about God, happily embrace our sin and join the devil in being separated from God. That’s how we’re born. That’s how little Augustyn was born. And that’s the sinful flesh that still clings to us.
And it’s this relationship that God reverses in Baptism. This is the exorcism we just witnessed. God laid claim on Augustyn in his Baptism. He ended the devil’s right to accuse him of sin, because He gave him the sinlessness of his Lord Jesus, he robed him in it, so that this child is spotless before God, innocent, possessing the righteousness of Christ Himself. And at the same time, our Father gave him His Spirit, so that he can know who his God is, love Him, trust in Him, fear Him. Christ, who crushed the devil’s head, destroyed His power, by bearing our sins and suffering their punishment on His cross, unites Himself to us in our Baptism. This is what it means that the devil’s power is ended, that he is exorcised, that he has no claim on you.
There’s no neutrality here. This is why Jesus responds as He does to those who accuse him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul, of the devil. That’s impossible. The devil can’t cast out the devil. Now I suppose the devil could order one of his demons to leave a person who’s been physically possessed, but the devil can’t change the spiritual state of that man. There is no neutral state between God and the devil. You can’t say, I don’t want anything to do with the devil, I want nothing to do with evil, but I also don’t need Jesus. That’s just not how it works. He who is not with Me is against Me, Jesus says. This is the basic dichotomy, the essential either/or of human existence, either you are with Jesus or you are under the power of the devil. There’s nothing in between. Because to be in the power of the devil is exactly this – not to know and love Jesus, not to hear his Word and keep it. Jesus calls the devil a liar and a murderer. And the devil’s lie is precisely that you don’t need Jesus to take away your sins and teach you who your God is and what it means to lead a good life as God’s creation on this earth. The point of Jesus’ casting out the demon from this mute and deaf man is not simply that the demon physically left him, I suppose the devil could accomplish that, but that this man now knows Jesus, loves him, and trusts in Him, has ears to hear Him and a voice to confess Him. And this, obviously, only God can accomplish.
Now it’s very fitting that this man, who’s just been saved from the devil and knows God and loves Him, it’s very fitting that he doesn’t get to enjoy it for a moment without controversy. Immediately, the devil attacks. Immediately, he has to face doubt, as the people around him question Jesus and demand that He prove with a sign from heaven that He really is God.
Because this is the life of the Christian. This is your life. Jesus explains how it goes, first by telling how He makes people Christians in the first place. “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are secure. 22 But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils.” That’s your Baptism. The stronger Man is Jesus who casts the strong man, the devil, out, along with all his accusations against you and his lies about who you are and who God is.
But then Jesus gives a warning, and again, it’s a warning directed to us Christians who have been transferred from the devil’s kingdom to God’s. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ 25 And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. 26 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”
That poor man just got the devil cast out of him, and here Jesus tells him this. Everything’s swept and put in order, you belong to Me, you trust in Me, Jesus says, but know this, there’s seven other devils going after you now, and if you fall to them, you’ll be worse off than you were before I cast the devil from you in the first place.
Jesus didn’t just say this to that man, he said it to us. This is exactly where we are. Our Baptism is a call for the devil to fight against us more strongly than he did before. He was the strong man and you were his palace, and your Lord Jesus took you from him and made you His palace. The devil wants us back.
There is a goal in the mind of the devil to take us away from the God who bought us with His blood and made us His children. This is why St. Paul warns us Christians so emphatically in our Epistle lesson to act like Christians, to remember who we are as children of our God, washed of our sins, and not to embrace them, not to participate in sexual sins, in fornication, in nasty talk and jokes, in coveting and wanting more and more stuff, not even to talk about what used to be done in secret and now is open for all to see on our TVs and laptops and phones.
Jesus doesn’t step lightly here, neither does His apostle, and so his pastors have no right to either. Your Lord destroys the silly idea, so popular in American Christianity today, that once you’re saved you’re always saved. No, once you’re baptized and saved, you have seven devils attacking you. You know this. You know the sins that tempt you. You know the laziness or the lust or the vengeful urge to gossip or to speak that cutting word that nurses your pride and hurts your neighbor, you know the discontent with what God has given you. You can’t take the devil lightly. He is the strong man. And you cannot separate the devil from temptation to sin. To take your sin lightly is to take your salvation lightly. For Christ’s sake, who loves you and wants you with Him forever free from all evil and pain, never imagine that you can indulge in what you know your God says is wrong, don’t be like Pharaoh and hear the word of God and harden your heart against it. We cannot lay claim on the Kingdom given us in our Baptism if we insist on embracing the works and kingdom of the devil.
And this means that God has laid a great and beautiful responsibility on you today, Andrew and Alina, and has reminded all of us parents with young children what our duty is. Look at the world we live in. This week has especially shown the selfishness of the human soul. People hoarding food and toilet paper for themselves so their neighbor doesn’t get any. People worrying themselves sick about a virus that can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Don’t get me wrong, I would do anything to protect my children from disease, to keep them safe. I would happily die for their bodily well-being, I’d happily run a thousand miles to get the vaccine that would save their life, and every parent worth the name would say the same thing. And in time of plague, which is what we’re in, no matter how serious it ends up being, we should do all we can to care for one another’s bodies, keep our children safe, keep our elderly safe especially. But the attacks of the devil against our souls and the souls of our baptized children are far more serious, and yet you don’t see people flooding to the stores and buying out bibles, or knocking on the door of churches begging to be taught or begging to be forgiven or to be baptized. And there’s irony here. Because we have an antidote to death, to sin, to the devil. We have it. And we don’t do a thing to earn it. Jesus gives it freely. What we parents, who have brought our children to be baptized, need to know is that Jesus means what he says, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” They are blessed forever. They are protected from all evil. So teach your children God’s Word. Teach them their Savior. Teach them the Bible stories. Teach the ten commandments, the apostle’s creed, the Lord’s prayer. Teach them by your own life not to be lustful or greedy or mean or gossiping or to talk nasty. Teach them instead to love God’s Word and fight daily against sin, to learn to hate it and to love the God who rescued us from it. This is what we need. This is what our children need. And the devil is powerless, absolutely powerless, against it. Because this is how the stronger man conquers and always will.
A woman calls Mary blessed. Mary is blessed. She gave birth to the eternal God in human flesh. And it is this God made flesh who took all the accusations of the devil against us sinners on Himself and overcame the devil’s every temptation in our place, it is this Jesus who is the subject and center of God’s Word. And so Jesus responds with the beautiful declaration, “More than this, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it.”
The word for ‘keep’ here in the Greek fits with the picture of a palace and the war that is being fought between God and the devil for this palace – which is you, and that should tell you more than a little about what God thinks of you, that He calls you His palace. The word is phulassw, it means guard, protect. It’s a war term, what soldiers do. We live in the church militant, where Christians are called to fight. There will come a time when we rest completely in heaven, where no devil has access, where no temptation will taint our desires, where our love will be perfect, and faith will be replaced with sight as we look on the Son of God in His glory, where there is no battle. But now we fight. We fight against our sin and we fight to remain Christians till we die. And that means having our Lord Jesus fight for us, hearing the Word of God and guarding it as the priceless treasure it is.
Resisting temptation and the wisdom of this world with the truth that God’s law is beautiful, that it tells you exactly what is right and good, that you were baptized to obey it with happy hearts, and with the truth that God has visited you in your weakness, that He saw your failures, how you so easily succumb to sin, and He has not only shed His blood and taken the punishment against your sin on Himself, He has given you His Spirit, by whom you cry out Abba Father, to the God who has made your enemy His enemy, has conquered him, and will keep you in His Kingdom through His Son’s blood shed for you and given into your mouth for the forgiveness of your every sin.
With this Word, there is nothing to fear. No evil of body or soul, no plague, no disease, no sin, no death. The God who conquered them all stands with us and for us, to forgive us, strengthen us, and lead us to everlasting life.
Let us pray:
My walk is heavenward all the way. Await my soul the morrow, when thou shalt find release for aye, from all life’s sin and sorrow. All worldly pomp be gone. To heaven I now press on. For all the world I would not stay. My walk is heavenward all the way.