Peace Lutheran Church
Posts Tagged "Satan"
Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 09, 2024
Text: Genesis 3:8-15
Theme: God, it’s all your fault!
Outline:
1. God it’s all your Fault! (You gave me this woman, you created this serpent, all your fault) Pass the blame
2. God, you alone save us! God passes our blame onto Christ, seed of the woman, crushes head of the serpent
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the Old Testament Lesson from Genesis chapter three verses eight through fifteen.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well. What happens if I go like this? Poke. Pretty soon we would start a poke war right? We would keep poking each other constantly. Eventually we would get bored. We would get annoyed with each other. Then the complaining begins. Stop it! She started it! No I did not! It is her fault! For as much fun as we had at the beginning, eventually we try to place someone else as the one who has all of the blame. We see something similar in our text for today. Who does Adam blame? Who does Eve blame? What does God do for them after they broke His one command? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. God it’s all your Fault!
You had one job. One solitary, easy job. It is so simple. Yet that one job was not done. You were not able to do even one simple thing. You failure. Have you felt like that? I am sure you have. Adam and Eve had one simple command to keep, do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Sounds easy right? You can eat from every other tree, but not this specific one. Alas, as we know, Eve was tempted by Satan. She ate the fruit and gave some to Adam who was with her. He ate and all of the wonderous grace of Eden is undone.
This is where our text for today picks up. Adam and Eve have made clothing for themselves from fig leaves. They are afraid of every single rustle of a leave in the heat of the day, thinking that it could be the Lord coming to punish them for the transgression they have just done. For humankind the fall is not enough; its flight cannot be fast enough. This flight, Adam’s hiding away from God, we call conscience. Adam cannot hide from God. The Lord God does come. The Hebrew word is YHWH, the personal name of God. God comes as a personal Creator to His creation to walk and talk with them as He has done before. He knows where Adam is, and yet He asks where he is. “Here is a call of anxious love. The Savior-God was moving to restore his fallen children to himself. But these words are also a call of stern justice. The Creator was demanding an answer from his rebellious creatures. “What have you done that you should be hiding?” He calls Adam and Eve to repentance. He calls where are you? To give them an opportunity to turn back to Him in love and forgiveness.
What is Adam’s response? It is not, “I am sorry God, please forgive me and restore me back to the way things were a few moments ago.” Rather it is one of blame. The woman whom you gave to be with me. He says God it is all your fault. If you had not made Eve, none of this would have happened. He does not even admit that he sinned when he should have told Eve not to have anything to do with that snake. He places the blame solely upon God. When Eve is asks, she says it is the snake’s fault. “The serpent deceived me, and I ate It is not my fault. It is his. It is her fault. It is your fault God.
Has much changed? When convicted of our own sins, we follow the same pattern as old Mom Eve and Dad Adam. We pass the blame onto others just like they did. It’s not actually my fault. It is the devil’s fault. He tempted me. He made me do it. It is the world’s fault. If the world was not so beautiful then I would not have given in. We hear it often when it comes to the actions of others as well. If she was not so attractive, nothing would have happened to her. She must have been asking for it. If he was not so rich, maybe he would have been fine. We love to blame anything or anyone, anything to take the blame away from ourselves and admit how sinful we really are. We do not want to admit that we too have fallen. We too have broken the Law of God, more than one simple rule! We have sinned in thought, word, and deed, and who do we have to blame? No one but ourselves.
2. God, you alone save us!
God’s justice demands His action. He must do something. So, what does God do? He could just destroy everything, start over again. Yet instead He hands down curses for the snake, Eve, and Adam.
“Adam’s and Eve’s pitiful attempts to excuse themselves didn’t deserve an answer from God and didn’t get one. Instead, God turned to the serpent and announced a curse. The serpent’s method of movement was henceforth to be changed; from now on he would crawl on his belly.
If this seems unfair, remember that God was doing this to teach the two people who were still blushing from the first sin. The snake’s unusual method of moving along the ground was to serve as a constant reminder to them and to us that this is the animal Satan used to drag down the crown of creation to his level. Crawling in the dust would also symbolize Satan’s defeat and humiliation. Adam and Eve heard the words God spoke to Satan; they were to know that although Satan had won his little victory here, he would not triumph permanently.”
Within God’s condemning speech to Satan there is a promise given to Adam and Eve: 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” There is salvation given and it is all God’s action. It’s all His fault, His doing. “These words are spoken for the sake of Adam and Eve that they may hear this judgment and be comforted by the realization that God is the enemy of the being that inflicted so severe a wound on man. Here grace and mercy begin to shine forth in the midst of wrath which sin and disobedience aroused. Here in the midst of most serious threats the Father reveals His heart…Who points to deliverance, indeed who promises victory against the enemy that deceived and conquered human nature.”[4]
Adam and Eve were given to trust the promised Gospel of Genesis 3:15. As Luther says, “Their consolation against sin and despair was their hope for this crushing, which was to be brought about in the future through Christ…[Adam and Eve] are full of sin and death. And yet, because they hear the promise concerning the Seed who will crush the serpent’s head, they have the same hope we have, namely, that death will be taken away, that sin will be abolished, and that righteousness, life, peace, etc. will be restored. In this hope our first parents live and die, and because of this hope they are truly holy and righteous.”[5] Adam and Eve are saved from death and hell by faith in the promise of God.
They put their trust and faith into the same One that we do. One from the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent. One who will undo everything that Adam and Eve have done. One who will restore Eden again forever. Who is that One? The Only-begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He took on our flesh. He became one of us. He was tempted in every way, just as we were. His heel is bruised upon the cross where He suffers, bleeds, and dies for us. By His death, Jesus takes Adam’s sin, your sins, my sins, upon Himself. He suffers the full weight of our punishment, of our guilt and blame. He pays the price for them by the shedding of His holy and precious blood. Satan thinks he has won. Nothing could be further from the truth. Victorious, Jesus rises from the dead on the third day. The head of the serpent is crushed beneath Jesus’ nail scarred feet forever. As we will sing, “He can harm us none. He’s judged, the deed is done. One little word can fell him.” Ascending to the right hand of the Father, Jesus has given to you Eden restored. Everything that Satan has done, Jesus has undone and made everything new again.
Con: God it is all your fault! In a way it is. It is not His fault that you give into your own sinful flesh, the sinful world, and the temptations of Satan. That’s fully your fault, but thanks be that He is rich in grace and mercy. He alone has given us the forgiveness of our sins, the salvation of our souls, and life with Him forever purely by His love and almighty power, promised all the way back in the Garden that you may have Eden restored once again.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
First Sunday in Lent Midweek
February 22, 2024
When Satan tempts us, Lord provide
Your sword and shield to help survive
That with your Word we can defend
Ourselves through life until the even.
O Lord may the Words of my Mouth, and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord our Rock, and our Redeemer.
In the movie 300, a spartan warrior by the name of Dienekes is informed that the Persians are so numerous that when they discharged their arrows they obscured the light of the sun by the multitude of the arrows. Dienekes was not dismayed by this, but making small account of the number of the Medes, he said that their guest brought them very good news, for if the Medes obscured the light of the sun, the battle against them would be in the shade and not in the sun.
At times, that is what the arrows hurled at us by Satan feel like. He attacks us relentlessly, in a wide variety of ways. He never relents. For some he uses guile, making it seem as though it is not really a large deal. ‘One little bit will not hurt.’ For some he uses persistence, attacking the same place again and again until it weakens. ‘Go ahead, what is the worst that can happen? You are a failure. You failed to live up to the Law or do this or that.’ For some, he attacks with deception, as with Adam and Eve, ‘Did God really say that? Surely, He did not mean it.’ The attacks are so many in number. Satan has numerous tools at his disposal, how can we ever hope to fend off even one of them? Indeed, Luther writes, “If you even knew one of the arrows that Satan flings at you, you would run to the Sacrament for refuge.” We do not know all the plots that Satan has arrayed against us. We do not know when and where he will attack. Thanks be to God, as if we did know, we might fall into abject despair and hopelessness! All we know is Satan’s end goal, to cause us to lose our faith and be condemned with him in Hell forever.
If it was not enough to have such a seemingly powerful enemy against us, we know well our own weakness of our sinful flesh. It is not on the side of God, but on the side of our deadly foe every single time. On our own we will fail again and again. We have no hope of victory under our own power.
Thanks be to God that He does not leave us to fight such a foe under our own power. Rather, He sends Jesus to fight on our behalf. Jesus is tempted just as we are, yet uses the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God to fight Satan off. Jesus bears all of your sins. Upon the cross He suffers, bleeds, and dies for you. By His death, He destroys the power of death. By bearing the punishment of your sins, Jesus destroys all the assaults of Satan. Of what can he accuse you that Jesus has not already borne the punishment for? Nothing.
Our heavenly Father gives us a constant shield against the attacks of Satan, found in Jesus Christ, and what He has done for us,. When Satan attacks us, we run to the Father’s mercy and grace, shown to us in Jesus, for help and support. We comfort ourselves with His holy Word that every single one of our sins has been covered by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
The same as our Lord used His own holy Word to defeat the temptations of Satan, so too do we. We defend ourselves, steadfast in the faith He has given to us through His Holy Spirit, until that day when He calls us out of this vale of tears to His nearer presence to await the resurrection of the dead and life everlasting with Him.
Until that day, stand steadfast dear flock, Fight in the shade against all the temptations of Satan, knowing that Jesus has fully defeated all of your foes, Satan included, and He holds the field victorious forever on your behalf. Satan can do no harm to you, one little word can fell him.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.