3rd Sunday in Lent (Oculi) – March 23rd, 2025
Trinity Ev. Lutheran Church, Block, Kansas
Rev. Joshua Woelmer
Text: Luke 11:14–28
“God’s Power over Evil”
Theme: Jesus has overthrown the kingdom and power of Satan—we ought to be warry but not scared.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Lent lasts for forty days. Many people focus on what we can do for Lent, giving things up and so forth. And that’s not bad. Fasting, almsgiving, and prayer are all a part of Lent. But in our readings on Sundays, a lot of the readings focus on Jesus battling the demonic. Two weeks ago we heard about Jesus’ temptation by the devil. Last week we heard about a Canaanite woman with a demon-possessed daughter who came to Jesus for help. Today we have Jesus casting out a demon that caused a man to be mute.
Even though looking at this kingdom of darkness is frightening, it is important to look at it today. Firstly, we need to know something about Satan and his kingdom, because it is real and because it is dangerous. Not looking at it at all would be ignoring our enemies. It’s like in the movie Lion King, where the young Simba asks his dad about the dark area in the horizon. His dad responds shortly, “That’s beyond our borders. You must never go there Simba.” Now, of course he’s trying to protect his son by not feeding his imagination about elephant graveyards, and we must be careful not to feed the imagination about Satan and the fallen angels. However, we should know something about our enemy instead of just saying, “Don’t go there.”
Secondly, we must talk about the kingdom of darkness because doing so reveals the greater power that Christ has, and the kingdom that he is leading us all to. So today we will look at two things: the nature of the devil’s kingdom and how a person is delivered from it.
The simple fact of the matter is that we live in a binary world. If we pray in the Lord’s Prayer that God’s Kingdom would come, it implies that there is another, and indeed there is. Satan is often called the prince of this world. He was an angel of God before he and many other angels became enemies of God and fell into darkness.
And yet, we have to ask one important question: what is his purpose? Is it to cause mayhem and destruction, like so many movies picture? Yes, of course. Satan hates order. He hates God’s order. He wants to tear down the orders of life, family, marriage, and society. He is a murderer. But his primary purpose is to lie—to twist God’s Word. If Satan can steal the truth of God’s Word from someone’s heart by putting lies there instead, he has achieved a small victory.
We must remember that Jesus accuses the Pharisees of following this father of lies, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
We certainly know that this first happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. Here he deceived man, and all mankind fell under his power. All men by nature are born into Satan’s kingdom. And yet, at the very moment of enslavement, God steps in and promises a Redeemer who will crush the head of the serpent and who will be a stronger man to defeat the devil. Yet even while many are converted from darkness into light by baptism and the Word, there are still millions of souls that are in Satan’s kingdom.
We have a picture in our Gospel text of some of those who are or were part of Satan’s kingdom. First, there are those whom demons have possessed or oppressed. These Jesus came to set free from their bondage. He came to save the lost—those whom the world has written off.
Second, there are the Pharisees, those false prophets within the earthly church who lie about God’s Word and actively oppose it. They opposed Jesus from the beginning, and there are still false prophets today who lead Christians to unbelief by teaching heresy.
Finally, there are outright atheists and mockers of the faith who demanded a sign from Jesus, “while others, to test him, kept seeking from him a sign from heaven” (16). These would not be convinced even if there were a sign from heaven, even if darkness covered the whole land for three hours on a good Friday afternoon.
The devil rules this world and his followers by using his weapons—above all else is our sinful flesh, which also desires that which is evil and selfish. Second, as I have mentioned before, the devil uses lies to say that evil is good and good is evil. As Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness!”
Satan uses these two tools to attack you. He uses your sinful flesh to tell you that if something feels good it must be good, no matter what God’s Word says about the matter. And then, when your conscience is oppressed and knows that you have sinned, Satan is at your doorstep accusing you of your sin and driving you to utter despair. You cannot fight the devil by yourself. You cannot forgive your own sins or try to forget them. You have no strength in yourself to overcome the devil.
You need a warrior; you need someone who is stronger. The devil trusts in his lies—that is his armor. But Jesus is the stronger man who has overcome Satan. He did this first by coming into the world doing miracles like the casting out of demons. Although he was accused of casting out demons by Beelzebul, he rightly points out that Satan would not cast out his own demons. Only the finger of God can cast out demons.
Jesus certainly did this on earth, but he did even more by his death—he conquered Satan once and for all on the cross. Right there on Golgotha, when it looked to the whole world like the Son of God was defeated, he was accomplishing his ultimate victory. Even though Satan struck at his heel, Jesus crushed Satan’s power.
He has stripped Satan of his armor, because Jesus’s words are truth. Truth dispels the devil’s power. First, the truth about who we are—sinners by nature. But also the truth about who Jesus is—the Son of God who has died for you and me. Satan now is powerless when confronted with Jesus’ Name and with God’s Word. We do not need to fear him, because we have Christ in our ears and on our hearts.
This is why we come to church, and why we desperately need to hear God’s Word on a regular basis. The devil is always attacking. We need to hear of Christ and what he did for us; we need to remember our baptism daily, where we are placed into God’s Kingdom. We need the Lord’s Supper—the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. These two things strip Satan of his weapons. Hearing the truth of God’s Word dispels lies, and receiving forgiveness removes sin from our conscience.
Jesus says, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (23). We are with Jesus here by being in his Word. Jesus gathers us to himself and to other believers, that we may not be scattered by the lies of the devil. Christ here reminds us that we cannot be rogue Christians—you cannot say, “I believe in Jesus, but I don’t need to go to church.” No—God gathers and feeds his flock here by giving you salvation. Being alone opens you up to the attacks of the devil.
So if Satan rules his kingdom by lies, Christ rules his church by his Word. This is why Jesus talks about the unclean spirit leaving a person and deciding to return there, bringing even more demons. Someone may have a demon exorcised and cast out in Jesus’ Name, but if their heart is not filled by the Holy Spirit and God’s Word, they are left open for another attack.
Finally, Jesus responds to a woman who praised his mother by saying, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Mary was blessed more because of Jesus’ Words than by bearing him and nursing him. We too are blessed eternally by receiving the powerful Word of God for our salvation. Here you have heard God’s Word and what Christ has done for you on the cross. Here God fills you with his Holy Spirit, so that you may go out into the world with joy and freedom.
Christ says to “keep” his Word. This isn’t a law word, as if following the law were on you now. No; it has the connotation of protecting and cherishing. We are all called to cherish God’s Word, take it to heart, and to live by it. Renounce the world and its sinful ways; stick to Christ. Rejoice, you whom God has already delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of His dear Son. He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. You have a good and strong Lord who will continue the good work that He has begun in you until that day. Remain with him! Someday Satan and his whole kingdom with all his subjects will be hurled into the fiery pit, but you will shine as the sun in your Father’s kingdom forever and ever.
Now may the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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