Sermon delivered Sunday, September 12, 2010 at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church. If you would like to hear the audio version of this sermon, usually somewhat different from the text below, click here.
Lectionary texts: Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What is the Human Condition?
Good morning, St. Andrew’s! In today’s Epistle lesson, Paul summarizes the heart of the Gospel for us. He tells us that, “The saying is sure and worthy of our full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” of which Paul considered himself to be the foremost, which only served to increase his amazement and thankfulness over the great gift of grace he had received. This is a natural reaction for anyone who really understands the human condition and accepts the Good News of Jesus Christ. But there is someone who wants to rob us of the Gospel and leave us in despair. This morning I want to talk to you about being on your guard so that Satan does not rob you of the Good News that is yours. Before I begin, however, I don’t want us to get hung up on anthropomorphic issues that tend to get in the way when we talk about Satan. I don’t care what he looks like. I don’t know if he has a body or horns or a tail or if he carries a pitchfork. I just know he exists and he is sheer evil, and if we tend to dismiss him or his existence, we do so at our own peril because that is what he hopes we will do.
It is easy for us to allow Satan to rob us of the Good News for many reasons. We tend to underestimate Satan’s power to pervert and destroy, and we overestimate our ability to handle him. We get distracted in our daily lives, which makes us even more vulnerable to his attacks than we might normally be. Some of us don’t know our Bibles as well as we might, which makes it easier for Satan to attack us. Others of us prefer to remain isolated from the broader Christian community of faith, which leaves us without help when Satan whispers in our ear. Most of us tend to let down our guard when we are in familiar places or among those we love and trust. We forget that Satan can and will attack us anywhere and can use anyone to destroy our faith and along with it, our very selves. The list is endless but you get the point. Satan is a powerful adversary who is hellbent to destroy our faith and us. He will use our own fears and weaknesses along with the events of our lives, both good and bad, to turn us away from the Gospel and we dare not let him do that.
For example, how many of you, when hearing about God’s judgment and wrath in today’s OT lesson and psalm, tended to apply that to yourself, especially if you are struggling with other issues right now? I mean, after all, most of us know our sins and our transgressions are ever before us, at least in our more honest moments, and when we hear verses of Scripture like the ones from Jeremiah today, we can worry about or even become afraid over our eternal destiny. Or we might be tempted to wonder how in the world the God who speaks in Jeremiah’s lesson can possibly be the same God we read about in today’s Gospel lesson, a God who actively searches for sinners to save them from their sin and alienation from him.
It is precisely at these moments that we make ourselves increasingly vulnerable to hearing Satan’s whispers in our ear. If we normally struggle to accept the wondrous grace and love offered to us in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Satan will be only too happy to whisper to us that our fears are justified, that God really is speaking to us in the prophetic passages that deal with the Day of the Lord and of God’s wrath and judgment.
If our knowledge of Scripture isn’t as solid as it might be, Satan will use our ignorance to blind us to the context of passages like Jeremiah’s lesson for today. He does not want us to hear in God’s warning to his people the anguished cry of a parent pleading with his wayward children and warning them of the dire consequences their foolish decisions to remain stubborn and sinfully rebellious are about to bring upon them. He does not want us to see that underlying God’s warning of impending judgment is a great love for his people to repent and return to him, to choose life rather than alienation and death. He doesn’t want us to remember that God created us to have a relationship with him, not to destroy us. No, Satan wants us to only hear words of condemnation aimed at us. He wants us to believe we really are as bad as we think, and consequently beyond hope. He wants us to be convinced that God could not possibly love us, but only wants to condemn us.
I tell you this, in part, because I have just recently dealt with a similar attack. Most of you know that Dondra and I lost our five month old kitten last month to heart failure. It was sudden and unexpected, and it was traumatic. What you don’t know is that the week before this all happened I had made a terribly inappropriate comment. It was inadvertent and just came out of my mouth. I don’t know where it came from and I was immediately sorry and ashamed that I had said it, and I asked for forgiveness. Then five days later, Woody got sick. As I was driving to the vet hospital, all of a sudden the story of David and Nathan popped into my mind. “You are the man,” I heard a silent voice say. “You are forgiven but this is happening to your kitten because of your language. You are a Christian minister. God expects better of you than this and you must bear the consequences of your wicked behavior. You are forgiven but Woody is going to die because of your language.” Note carefully that I did not hear the silent voice quoting other passages from Scripture like today’s Epistle lesson or Paul’s wonderful crescendo in Romans 8:1, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” No, I only heard Scripture that condemned.
I don’t think I have to tell you how awful this burden was. I was mortified as I drove to the hospital. To think that I was directly or indirectly responsible for this kitten’s death was just about too much for me to bear. It was credible to me because like many of you, I know my transgressions only too well and my sin is ever before me. Satan exploited that vulnerability in me and tried to destroy me. Fortunately I persevered in prayer and Bible study, and I have a wife and a Christian friend whom God used to remind me that this wasn’t God who was talking to me, but Satan using a traumatic event in my life to exploit my already vulnerable emotional state.
Where is God’s Grace?
My story reminds us that Satan is a liar. Condemnation and hopelessness are not attributes of the Good News of Jesus Christ, thanks be to God. No, the Good News of Jesus Christ is summarized in today’s Epistle lesson and in the comfortable words we hear every week after the Absolution. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. As Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel lesson, we have a God who actively searches us out to invite us back into a saving relationship with him. It does not matter who we are or what we have done as Paul reminds us poignantly when he applies the Gospel to his own life. If we repent and put our whole hope and trust in Christ, we have God’s eternal promise to redeem and restore us. For you see, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).
In the life and death of Jesus, we see God actively searching out sinners to end our alienation from him, an alienation that must lead to death because there is no life outside of God. In his earthly ministry, Jesus ate and drank with sinners, not to tell them it was OK to remain in their sins but to call them to repentance and to let them know they have a God who created them for relationship, not destruction. In Christ’s death, we see God actively pursuing us in a most profound way because by allowing himself to be nailed to the cross, Jesus bore the just punishment for our sins so that God’s holy justice might be satisfied without destroying us. It is a gift that boggles the mind and we have to constantly remind ourselves of its truth, otherwise we open ourselves up to the whispers of Satan that there really is no Good News. But that is a lie. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, especially us. Nothing except our refusal to accept the free gift of God’s amazing love and grace to us in Christ can ever separate us from him. Do you believe that? If you really do, then not even Satan or the gates of hell will ever be able to prevail against you because you have the very Power and Presence of the Risen Lord to help you fend off Satan’s attack’s.
And once you really believe the Good News of Jesus Christ, it will help you make sense of the warnings about God’s wrath and judgment. You will be able to read them with the understanding that you are seeing love in action. You will be able to hear the anguished cries of a Father who loves his creatures dearly and wants them to have life, not death. This is not unlike a parent who gets angry with his own children because they have a drug or alcohol addiction. The parent knows that the life of an addict is hell and often destroys people and their lives. No loving parent wants that for his or her child and God does not want his human creatures to choose death.
You will also read passages like the ones from Jeremiah in light of the cross and will be enabled to see the hope of redemption and grace that always accompany warnings of judgment and wrath. Unlike Satan, who never offers hope or grace because he hates us, God always offers his people the hope of redemption and life because he loves us, a promise made manifest to us most powerfully in the cross. You will then see that the God of the OT is no different from the God of the NT in that regard. Instead, God has entered our history to act decisively on our behalf. For you see, God is a God who seeks us and wants us to have life. That is why Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, especially us.
Where is the Application?
So what should we take from all of this? It is really quite simple. First, we must take Satan seriously. Consequently, we must be diligent and faithful in the pursuit of our spiritual means of grace so that we align ourselves with the One who can protect and defend us against Satan’s attacks. We must be humble enough to admit that we are vulnerable to Satan’s attacks and ask the Lord to help protect us. We must learn the story of God’s salvation thoroughly so that when Satan quotes Scripture to us, we are able to see where he perverts or distorts it, just like he did to Jesus in the wilderness during our Lord’s temptation. We must be diligent in our prayer life and worship God regularly, giving thanks to him that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and remembering all that God has done and is doing for us as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And we must be diligent in not allowing ourselves to be isolated from the Christian community so that we become even more vulnerable to Satan’s evil plans for us. We must remember that where two or three are gathered together in Jesus’ name, there he will be among us (Matthew 18:20). None of this will stop Satan from attacking us but we will have Jesus’ power to ward off Satan’s attacks.
Summary
Satan is real and he hates us. He wants to destroy us, not just in this life but forever. He wants nothing more than to destroy our faith, to convince us we are people without hope. But we know better. We remember that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, especially us, and like Paul we marvel at God’s wondrous love and grace for us. We remember there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We have the very Presence of the Holy Spirit living in us and testifying to the truth of the God’s great love for us in Jesus Christ. We are blessed with God’s word contained in Scripture and enjoy the grace of Christian fellowship. We use all these weapons to help us say to Satan, “Get behind me!” when he attacks us and we trust in the Power and Presence of our Lord to make Satan obey. Let us always remember that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, especially in our weaker moments, so that we can appropriate the Good News in any and every situation, now and for all eternity.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.