"To Him be glory forever": Satan

Thursday, February 9, 2017

Me? My Feet?

I want to begin at one of my frequent stepping off places, something I read in the Bible that seemed to jump off the page at me. I was reading the closing of Paul's letter to the Romans, where he writes this in verses 19-20:

" For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you."

In these final words of warning and encouragement Paul includes the somewhat startling fact that the Roman believers themselves will defeat Satan, using an image drawn from hand-to-hand combat, crushing him with their very feet.

Satan, the great and powerful enemy of God. That he will one day go down to defeat, and not just a temporary setback but an ending that will have no end, should not be a surprise to Christians. The Bible frequently gives witness to this fact, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. But Christians clearly understand that this final defeat of God's enemy will come at the hand of God Himself.

But still…Paul's words…they seem to be spoken in a very clear way. Perhaps they are meant like this:

I open my Bible and read. I read God's good news on every page.

I fold my hands and pray. I lift up praise. I confess sin. I give thanks. I seek help.

All of these things, as acts of faith, are direct attacks on the enemies of God, chief of whom we often call Satan. He is powerless in the presence of faith in God. It is as if he was on the ground and my acts of faith are my feet, choking off his breath.

Me? My feet? Apparently so.

And by faith in Jesus, yours too.

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Not Such A Strong Man After All

This morning I preached from Mark 3:20-30. Jesus has been healing people, including healing them of evil spirits, and the powers that be have accused him of using the power of Satan to do this work. This is a ludicrous charge and Jesus paints several verbal pictures that point this out. In verse 29 he gives the last of the pictures, saying,

"But no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house."

What Jesus is saying here is that Satan is a strong man, and that no one can take things from a strong man without first tying him up, or putting a limit onto his ability to use his power. Satan's own power cannot be used against him, meaning that in order for Jesus to drive evil spirits out of people he must both have the ability to overpower Satan, and he must use that ability. Which is precisely what Jesus has done.

But as I thought a bit more about this verse this afternoon I realized it shows us a bit more than the point Jesus was making to the Jewish religious authorities. The image of verse 29 is an image we can also see at work today.

In the death and resurrection of Jesus, Satan has been bound. The power that he has as a "strong man" is clearly shown to be weaker than the power of Jesus. He still fights against God, as he always has, but he knows the ending just as clearly as anyone who reads the Bible with faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord does.

Luther said it well in the third verse of his great hymn:

"And tho' this world with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,

We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph thro' us.

The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him,

His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure:

One little word shall fell him."

In Christ, Satan has been bound. His house is being plundered. All to the glory of God.