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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.)
We see Satanic influence all around us in the world, in other people and even in us ourselves. Other people and we ourselves fail to honor parents and other authorities; even other authorities fail to honor other authorities. Other people and we ourselves fail to help and support our neighbors in every physical need; even a Church body that complained about the “Big Beautiful Bill’s harming our neighbors itself fails to condemn abortion, which kills our neighbors among those least able to defend themselves. Other people and we ourselves fail to live sexually pure and decent lives; many may not even try to live sexually pure and decent lives or care that they do not even try. Then there is stealing, false testimony, and coveting, and that is not even to mention regard for God’s Word, for God’s Name, and for God Himself. Truly, the devil, the world, and our sinful nature try and succeed in deceiving us and misleading us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice, although in Christ we overcome them and win the victory.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the Lord Jesus appointed and sent seventy-two laborers into His harvest to speak and enact the peace and warning of the Kingdom of God, and the Lord Jesus Himself spoke woes of warning upon the cities where He had done mighty works and the people had failed to repent, ultimately rejecting not those sent by Jesus or even Jesus Himself but God the Father, Who sent Jesus. Then, as we heard, when the seventy-two returned with joy that the demons were subject to them, the Lord Jesus spoke about His seeing Satan fall like lightning from heaven, but He told the seventy-two not to rejoice that the spirits were subject to them but that their names were written in heaven. This morning we consider “Satan’s falling and God’s writing”.
In the beginning, when God saw everything that He had made, behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31). The man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed, Genesis tells us (Genesis 2:25). But, in the very next verse, the serpent asked the woman about God’s commandment regarding eating of the trees in the garden (Genesis 3:1). Presumably, some time after the declaration of all creation as “very good” and before the fall of humankind into sin, the devil and his evil angels themselves fell away from God and into sin (for example, Pieper, I:505). Then, the devil, the serpent, successfully tempted the woman and man to sin, and they took with them all of their descendants, including each one of us, so that by nature we all deserve punishment now and forever. Then, the man and the woman knew that they were naked, and they were afraid, and rightly so, at least until God promised them a Savior Who would crush the serpent’s head with His foot. (Genesis 3:1‑24.) Apparently, throughout the Old Testament era, the devil, Satan, had access to God in heaven, as it were, in order to accuse humankind of sin before God, as he did, for example, with Job (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7).
But, with the birth, life, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of that Savior, Jesus Christ, Satan seems to have lost his access to God in heaven, as it were, and can no longer accuse humankind of sin before God (confer John 12:31; Revelation 12:10). So, in today’s Gospel Reading, as the seventy-two preached and enacted the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, Satan was falling like lightning from heaven, Jesus said, perhaps drawing on a passage that God spoke through Isaiah about a king of Babylon’s falling from the sky like a star (Isaiah 14:12-15), which passage apparently prompted Jewish tradition to depict fallen angels as falling stars, something our Midweek Bible Study has discussed as we have come across similar passages in the book of Revelation (for example, Revelation 9:1; 12:1-12). In Revelation we also hear about, and so we have discussed in our Midweek Bible Study, as recently as this past Wednesday, the Book of Life, which also goes back to the Old Testament (for example, Exodus 32:32), including a passage from Isaiah (Isaiah 4:3; confer Psalm 69:28). In the Book of Life, God Himself wrote the names of all who belong to Him, so the Book of Life is, as it were, proof of our heavenly citizenship.
God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, St. Paul writes to the Ephesians and to us, continuing that in love God both predestined us for adoption to Himself as children through His Son Jesus Christ and ultimately seals us with the promised Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:3-5, 13). In Jesus Christ, the Kingdom of God has drawn near to us. Because of Jesus’s death on the cross for the sins of the world, including your sins and my sins, we have peace with God. As the resurrected Jesus on Easter evening greeted His disciples with peace (John 20:19, 21; confer John 20:26), and as Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading sent the seventy‑two out with a message of peace, so God to all extends the gift of peace like a river, as we heard in today’s Old Testament Reading (Isaiah 66:10-14). Those who receive that peace in faith already now can rejoice, while those who reject God’s peace in unbelief for eternity will suffer, Jesus essentially says, greater degrees of torment in hell than the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (for example, Pieper II:547).
Those who receive God’s peace in faith receive God’s forgiveness through His Word and Sacraments. In today’s Gospel Reading, God’s working through the seventy-two’s preaching and enacting the Gospel seems to contribute both to Satan’s falling and, we might say, to bringing about the fulfillment of God’s writing our names in the Book of Life. As the seventy-two reported that the demons were subject to them in Jesus’s Name, so through the water and Word of Holy Baptism, the touch and Word of Holy Absolution, and the bread and wine that by Christ’s Word are His Body and Blood in the Holy Supper, in Jesus’s Name God continues to work today, forgiving sins and so granting eternal life and salvation. The seventy-two had table fellowship with those who received God’s peace, but they did not have table fellowship with those who rejected God’s peace. That God Himself works through those whom He sends is a comfort to you, for you do not have to worry, for example, about my personal character or beliefs but trust God’s Word spoken through me (for example, Apology of the Augsburg Confession XXVIII:18).
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few, so we should pray earnestly to the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into His harvest, as Jesus then did with the seventy-two. Not everyone is so sent! There is an obvious distinction between the workers and everyone else. Still, all may consider being set apart to serve as such workers. Those who are so-called as workers ideally are trained in residential seminary programs, and those that are not so-called ideally support the called workers who serve them. As we heard Jesus say in today’s Gospel Reading, the laborer deserves his wages, and, as we heard St. Paul write in today’s Epistle Reading (Galatians 6:1-10, 14-18), let the one who is taught the Word share all good things with the one who teaches (confer 1 Timothy 5:18 and 1 Corinthians 9:4‑14). Yet, the workers’ joy is not their remuneration or even that they have authority to tread on serpents and over the power of the enemy (confer Psalm 91:13; Mark 16:18), but the workers’ joy is that God has written also their names in heaven.
As St. John saw in Revelation, the ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan was in some sense bound for most of the time between Christ’s ascension and His return in glory but would be released for a little while (Revelation 20:1-3). We do not know for sure whether that “little while” is still in the future or if we are in it already now. Regardless, the Satanic influence will end! Satan ultimately will be thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur (Revelation 20:7-10; confer Romans 16:20). With Satan’s final and full fall comes also the final and full fulfillment of God’s writing us in the Book of Life, as, if necessary, we will be resurrected, and, certainly, we will be glorified in the full sight of His glory, and so we will be purged completely of our sinfulness and confirmed in goodness for all eternity.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Amen.)
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +