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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Normally, people do not want other people to suffer, and people’s trying to prevent other people’s suffering might be a good thing, normally. However, the situation with Peter and Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading in some ways is anything but normal. As we heard in last Sunday’s immediately-preceding Gospel Reading (Matthew 16:13-20), Peter had confessed Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Jesus had promised both to build His Church on the Office making that confession and to give Peter that Office of the Keys in order to retain and forgive sins. In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus began to show His disciples that, as the Christ, He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And, Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him, essentially, as is clear in the original Greek text (NASB, AAT, NEB), asking God to prevent that from happening, but Jesus turned and essentially rebuked Peter (confer Mark 8:33), arguably telling him to go away (for example, NEB), addressing him as “Satan”, and calling him a “hindrance” (or a “stumbling block” [ASV, NIV, NASB, NEB]), for Peter was setting his mind not on the things of God but on the things of men. Considering primarily the Gospel Reading, this morning we direct our thoughts to the theme, “Rebuking Satan”.
Certainly, we can relate to Peter’s love for his Lord and so also to Peter’s concern for His Lord’s safety and welfare. Yet, Peter’s “sentimental intervention” lined-up precisely with the devil’s intention to keep the Christ from the cross (Marquart, CLD IX:63-64). When the devil himself earlier came to Jesus in the wilderness and tempted Jesus three times, Jesus similarly said, “Be gone, Satan!” (Matthew 4:1-11). But, those Satanic temptations may have been more obvious! Our being for others a cause of their sinning or of their falling from faith may be less obvious. We may not rebuke Satan when He tempts us through other people or through ourselves. We may, in wrong ways, try to prevent other people’s suffering, or our own suffering, that God otherwise would use for their or our good, such as by wrongly ending other people’s or our own lives. We may not deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Jesus as we should. We sin in these and countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. On account of our sinful nature and our actual sin, we deserve to lose our life now in this world and to be tormented eternally in the next world, as it were, in the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41), unless we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, as God calls and enables us to do.
Already some fourteen years ago, a majority even of Christians in America said, contrary to Holy Scripture, that Satan was not a living being (Barna). Do we think and act as if Satan is real? As Lutherans, we believe, teach, and confess that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature do not want us to hallow God’s Name or let His Kingdom come (Small Catechism III:11), and that they try to deceive or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice (Small Catechism III:18). Too often, they succeed! Even though in Christ we ultimately are victorious over the power of the devil (confer Small Catechism II:4), we do not rebuke Satan as we should. We can hardly blame our failure to rebuke Satan on our not having Divine omniscience to know when, where, and through whom Satan is working, for God’s Word makes clear the deep divide between the things of God and the things of men influenced by the devil.
The reason the Son of God appeared, the Divinely-inspired St. John says, was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). On the cross, the Seed of the Woman, Jesus, bruised the head of the serpent, though the serpent bruised Jesus’s heel (Genesis 3:15). Jesus is the Son of the living God, and, as the Christ, His going to Jerusalem, and His suffering many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and His being killed, and His on the third day being raised all were Divinely necessary for us and for our salvation. On the cross, Jesus died for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins. Jesus gave His life in return for our souls. Jesus died in our place, the death that we deserved, and then He rose from the dead, as, if necessary, we also will rise from the dead someday, too, unless the Lord comes in glory before our deaths. When we are sorry for our sin and trust God to forgive our sin, then God does forgive our sin. God forgives our sin of being for others a cause of their sinning or of their falling from faith; God forgives our sin of not rebuking Satan when he tempts us; God forgives our sin of trying to prevent suffering in wrong ways; and God forgives our sin of not denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus as we should. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
God forgives our sins through His Word in all of His Word’s forms, especially His Word’s sacramental forms. As Jesus in His death and resurrection was victorious over the devil, so we are victorious over the devil as we are united to His death and resurrection in our baptisms (Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 2:12), which baptisms at least begin to rescue us from the devil (Small Catechism IV:6). As baptized children of God, we can rebuke Satan whenever, wherever, and through whomever he tempts us, pointing to our baptisms as the sure sign that we are rescued from the devil’s power. When we nevertheless succumb to temptation and the devil keeps reminding us of our sin, we can privately confess to our pastors the sins that particularly trouble us for the sake of individual absolution, and then we can point to that absolution as the sure sign that we are forgiven of those sins. Baptized and absolved, we are admitted to this Altar and its Rail, where we receive bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, which also give us forgiveness of sins, and so also life and salvation. The Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ strengthen and preserve us in body and soul also to go through our own suffering on our way to life everlasting.
Our Lord’s sufferings for us are certainly unique (confer Michaelis, TDNT 5:913-916), but our sufferings on account of Him and His Gospel (confer Mark 8:35, 38) are at least similar by analogy. As He calls us to do, we deny ourselves, take up our cross—the afflictions that we experience because we are Christians (Pieper, III:69)—and we follow Him. Even though we do these things imperfectly, we do not use that imperfection as an excuse for not trying to do them, for not trying to do them is being perilously close to losing our salvation (Pieper, III:33). Like Jeremiah in today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 15:15-21), we bear reproach for the Lord’s sake, and, as called to do in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 12:9-21), we do not curse but bless those who persecute us. In our afflictions, as in all things, God’s grace is sufficient for us, for His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). God is present in and through what we experience, and God works all things together for the good of conforming us to the image of His Son (Romans 8:28-29; confer Beckwith, CLD II:60-61).
We can but may not always prevent suffering. We can but may not always rebuke Satan, either. But, with daily sorrow and trust, we live in God’s forgiveness of our sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And so, we look forward to the Son of Man’s coming with His angels in the glory of His Father and His freeing us completely from both suffering and the temptation of the devil, as we are with our God for eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +