“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled
was convincing the world he did not exist.”
At least that is what one movie character says. And certainly, that is one of his
tricks. A 2009 poll of those identifying
themselves as Christians found that almost 60% think that the devil is no
living creature, just a personification of evil.
Whatever works is what the Devil
will do. If he figures that his best bet
to separate you from God is
to terrorize you with his diabolical tricks, then
he will do that. But if you believing
his lie that he poses no threat to you – if that will get you away from Christ,
then absolutely that is the way he will lead you straight down the broad path
that leads to destruction.
 |
| In The Screwtape Letters, a supervising demon advises an underling to keep his human victim in the dark. "The fact that 'devils' are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you. |
In an article[1]
about the spiritual beliefs of the ¼ of Americans who report no religious
affiliation, there was this quote from a young person helping to provide clean
water in Africa: “I don’t need ‘magic trick Jesus.’
I’m not interested in that, and I’m not interested in ‘saving my soul.’ I’m not
about saving myself. I want to save the
world.” You do not think you need Jesus
to be God if you do not think the Devil is any sort of problem. A human Jesus who inspires to be good to
others – that is all they are interested in.
Is Satan’s
greatest trick convincing people he does not exist? Perhaps.
Or maybe it is convincing people that God is a devil. That happens in the OT text where the Devil
had persuaded Adam and Eve that God was being rude to them by forbidding them
the fruit of knowing good and evil. And
it happens in the Gospel text today when the enemy scribes from Jerusalem
accuse Jesus of having an unclean spirit, saying, “He is possessed by
Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out demons” (Mark
3:20-35). Meanwhile Christ’s flesh and
blood family figure something evil is going on in His brain, giving Jesus
delusions of grandeur.
In our own day, God
still gets accused of being a devil. A
Christian woman who had suffered domestic violence told her story on the radio
last week. She said as she struggled in
the months after she left her abusive husband, she could not believe in God –
because it was easier to believe there was no God than to believe that God
would allow her husband to abuse her.
She now is glad that God did not abandon her, but had loved her in
Christ through and past it all.
Also this last
week was the sad story about Bruce Jenner. Now if I were to go get plastic surgery so I
could look like an alien, people would recognize I was not right in the head –
and at best they would hope I would get mental help. At worst they would mock me. It would be wrong for people to go along with
my lies and say that in fact I was an alien.
Likewise with Mr. Jenner, who needs our prayers, not mockery nor
approval. The surgery does not change
the fact that he still has the male chromosomes God gave him through his
dad. Which brings up the worst part
about this mess – whether people realize it or not, Jenner’s actions are an
accusation that God got it wrong giving Jenner a man’s body.
You and I accuse
God of getting it wrong with us too.
Just consider how each time we break God’s
Why God made
Satan and his demons in the first place is a mystery we will not know the
answer to in this life, though we do know that God created them to be holy
angels. However, the demons turned away
from goodness. Satan became envious that
God made humanity to be the crown of creation.
Judging God to have gotten it all wrong, the Devil declared war on God
to take over the Universe – and quickly recruited Adam and Eve to his side,
seeking to turn man away from God. His
weapons are deception and murder – which is why our Savior Jesus calls the Devil
the father of lies and a murderer from the beginning.
When Jesus tells
the parable of the strong man in today’s Gospel (Mark 3:20-35), He describes
the world as the Devil’s home territory, a world in bondage to that evil and
powerful warlord who does not want you to praise the Lord’s holy name, nor let
God the Father’s kingdom come. The
prince of demons hoards his plunder in the courtyard, protected by the walls of
his fortress, like some legendary dragon asleep on his piles of golden
treasure.
In this case the
treasure is not silver or gold or precious gemstones. The plunder is you. And me.
The story Jesus tells is no “once upon an imaginary time” fairy tale,
but a real life once upon a historical time.
Jesus tells the one true story that makes sense of this messed up world
as His Word cuts through Satan’s lies.
Our Lord and Savior tells us that we are right to cry out when the world
goes wrong, because it was never meant to be this way. Tragedies should not have happened. God, after all, had created humanity in His
image for good. He put us in this world
for far more than the meaninglessness of modern life. However, humanity has lost its way, falling
into sinful pride or self-hatred; lusts and cravings that only hurt us in the
end. The human race fell under the spell
of the lie of the warlord and we are enslaved – stripped of the true freedom
and life God gave to us.
But for us fights
the Valiant One, whom God Himself elected.
And so Jesus says, “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.” Jesus Himself is this Stronger
One who has come behind enemy lines like soldiers
Jesus does all
that for you – for you are His treasure.
You are worth everything to Him, in spite of your sinful rebellions. You are worth dying for, worth redeeming,
worth forgiving. Brother
Jesus has taken care of your evil. “Truly,
I say to you, all sins [and blasphemies] will be forgiven the children of man,”
is His promise to you!
But what about
that unforgiveable sin? That is enough
to keep a person up at night, worried they are guilty of doing something that
could lock them out of Heaven. However,
the very fact that a person gets worried about sinning against the Holy Spirit
is evidence that the Holy Spirit is working on that person and has not
abandoned them. The sin against the Holy
Spirit is to be completely unconcerned about being opposed to Jesus,
consciously unrepentant, stubbornly unbelieving – as the Pharisees were that
day. After all, as we heard on
Pentecost, the job of the Holy Spirit is to grant us faith in Jesus – and if we
reject that work of the Holy Spirit, it will not go well for us.
No matter how
many other people think Satan is imaginary, you are in good company to believe
the demons are real. Jesus treats them
as real too. And more importantly, even
while the Devil rages and the world continues to live all sorts of lies, you
know that Jesus is the Truth, and He is the Stronger One who has already
conquered and chained up the Devil. You
belong to Jesus. You are free from
Satan’s chains. Yes, you and I have
ignored God’s goodness, and misjudged His actions to be evil. However, you have also confessed yourself to
be a sinner before God. You do not claim
your sins are good. You call them evil
and pray that God the Father will deliver you from them. And you also confess the goodness of Jesus
and His Cross, and His power over death and the Devil. You expect and receive forgiveness from
Him. And so even as He is arisen after
death, so you shall live forever. A life
that is not meaningless, but eternally meaningful – for you live in Jesus the
Stronger One, and in Him you shall die, and you shall be His forever. Amen.
[1] Elizabeth
Drescher, “The Gospel According to the ‘Nones’” http://americamagazine.org/issue/gospel-according-nones
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