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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading, but, of course, the theme for the day is St. Michael and All Angels.
We know that sometime during those first six 24-hour days in which our Lord created everything that we can imagine or have seen with our eyes, He also created angels, and sometime from the seventh day of His rest, in order to establish for us time in itself, from that point forward until we read in the third chapter of Genesis of Adam and Eve being tempted by Satan, some point in time in there did Satan turn to his pride and was kicked out of Heaven.
The picture that John writes about in the Revelation, the epistle reading that was read or the second reading, are we seeing the scene of Christ’s victory over death and Satan shown to be eternal in God’s great eviction of Satan from Heaven by the archangel Michael. But the very end of that text, “woe” is the word used by the writer. “Woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath because he knows that his time is short.”
It’s interesting in your and my life….it takes a great amount of humbling for us to realize the demons that are always around us. It takes a great deal of adversity to occur within our lives that God allows to occur in order for us to have our eyes opened to the great reality of how frail we are and how real demonic foes do exist and continue to hassle us until we are called home. I was very shocked to hear about a young lady who had been worshiping with us here at St. Paul as a student at UT tragically killed by a car coming out of a parking garage as she was exercising.
We know not when that day will come, do we? For her, it occurred at a very young chronological age. For one whom we have just celebrated his homecoming into Heaven, Pastor Elwanger, it lasted a little bit longer. More time given for many other things to be accomplished or endured, depending upon your and my life and what God allows. Woe to you, oh, earth and sea, for he whose time is short has come down to you. Holding a little baby, a life in itself, it is hard for us to imagine that such an infant could be such an archenemy to the one who prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone like him to devour, but it’s very true, isn’t it?
In Pastor’s Bible study about the Screwtape Letters written by C.S. Lewis, I hope you’re hearing a theme. Satan does things. Most of the time it’s in a complete opposite of what you and I expect. We expect to be confronted with evil and forget that the evil of which we expect to be confronted beats within our own heart. We expect to see something grandiosely horrid and be able to point our finger and say, “There is the evil of which God describes,” rather than having heard words come from our lips that pierce the hearts of those around us with such hurtful and despicable things, forgetting that they flow from within us and our own sinful flesh. It is pride that Satan loves to stir up, for as we sang in that hymn, it is his own pride that moved him to be evicted from Heaven, to place himself and his thoughts and his conception of life and all that God had created to be supernally more important than how God has described him and how God has dictated to His creation what it is and who is the Creator.
I confess to you a great sin of pride in my own life. It occurs in us preachers and pastors. It also occurs in anybody in this place. We think we’re destined for great things because of a self-inflation, and we think it to be below us to be pushed into a direction that is beneath what we perceive to be our talents and abilities and do not mark faithfulness as a great act of faith, but rather great things as a great act of faith. Which is greater as a great act of faith? To serve God’s people that there are only thirty that gather on a Sunday morning, one at best each year for confirmation, or to be in a place that there are one thousand members gathered, confirmation classes of thirty to forty. Which one? Indeed, which one? Are they not both the same?
When Jesus, in the Gospel reading, sent out seventy-two men to preach and proclaim God’s good news of eternal life and blessed them with the ability to exorcise and drive out demons, that’s like seeing pews filled at your preaching. That’s like seeing God reveal Himself in grand and beautiful things, and Satan uses that great gift that God alone gives and can take away to stir up that pride within our bosom, and having stirred it up, he then attacks the very pride he stirred up and says to you, “And you think this is all because of you,” crushing that very thing and turning us back inward again, for Satan drives us here and not to Christ. In driving us here, whether we are accomplishing much from our perspective or accomplishing little from our perspective, Satan drives us back here where he knows we will only find more doubt, more despair, more inconsistencies, more failures, more fears, but not more faith. It is God’s Holy Spirit that drives us here that brings faith, engenders faith, creates and sustains faith. It’s here that Satan doesn’t want you to be driven, so as he is called in Hebrew “Satan,” which means “the accuser,” well, he accuses us.
Think about all your discussions with those whom you love dearly in your lives. You and I in our discussions with those people whom we love dearly in our lives have been found to be more often than not clinging too tenaciously to our pride rather than being humble with that loved one, because, by golly, we want to be right and not wrong. And by being right, we can notch that in our wallet or in our holster and say, “Look at what we have been made known to be right.” We don’t get done at the end of a day and ruminate about how we’ve been too humble, and if we do, well, we’re taking pride in our humility, aren’t we?
When someone accuses us and impugns our integrity, we’re very hurt, pricked. But what is hurt and pricked? Our pride. Check with Breckenridge. Check with Seton and St. David. They have never ever had to call a Code Blue on someone who choked and died because they swallowed their pride. It doesn’t happen. And yet, you would think….you would think it would be, because we cling so strongly to it and aren’t willing to let go of it, and it is what stands in the way of our relationships with one another; doesn’t it? It is what stands in the way of our relationships with all people. It is what stands in our relationship with our God and how badly we need Him and how Satan continues to glaze our eyes over to the critical need for His great mercy.
Judgment Day for you and me, we know not when that day will come. We know and believe and confess He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. For Brianna, her judgment day occurred out on a run. For Pastor Elwanger, it occurred at another point in time, at a hospital in Cedar Park, and for you and me, we know not when that Judgment Day will come for us. But we do know because of the text and God’s promises and our own experiences, Satan will not stop accusing you, deceiving you and me, until we die.
So what is our hope then? Left to ourselves, we will fall each and every time just as our forefather, Adam, and Eve did, just as the parents who bore us and sired us did. And on our deathbed, we shall not look back at our life and say, “I should have been more proud,” but rather, “I should have been more humble, for it is my pride that has pricked the people I love the most, and it is pride that has kept me further away from my God than He desires.” By the blood of the lamb did John write.
When those seventy-two returned full of pride, could not help but have pride. Oh, yes, the text does not say that. I would not disagree with that, but you and I know what it’s like to see God’s grandiose power at work. Whenever things seem to go so right in our lives, we are not left humbled by such a thing. We’re left proud by such a thing. Let us not forget for who we are….sinful, damnable creatures who deserve such punishment that was meted out to Christ on the cross. And God, through Christ Jesus, said, “Do not marvel at such grand things that you have witnessed with your eyes that I have done through you, but rather marvel that I would allow your name to be written in the book of life. Marvel that I would claim you as my child, for your parents are sinful just as you are. Marvel that I am your God and hath called your name at that baptism, writing your name in that book of life, redeeming you by that blood of My Son.” How humbling to have returned in such fine fashion to be met by their Lord and, rather than a rally cry and a whoop of great delight, are they reminded of humility and grace.
By the word of their testimony, this is what you and I have to give for we have tasted and we have seen that the Lord is good, good to me, as we all say to ourselves, “He has been good to me. He has brought me thus far. He has kept me in his hand. He has not let go of me.” That’s the word of testimony that we have to give, about which Daniel spoke leading many to righteousness. That is why God continues to use you and your life and even….even your death regardless of how it comes. As a believer, it is used by God, for it is a reminder that that which we cannot see and yet we confess that God has created everything visible and invisible is deathly real and is very visible, for in bread and wine with body and blood does He redeem us and does He feed us and does He sustain us. Rejoice. Your names are written in the book of life. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
