Howard C. Wilkinson - "On Casting out Satan" (January 28, 1962)
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| - | The sermon today is on casting out Satan. | 0:23 |
| The text is Mark 3:23. | 0:27 | |
| It is a question from Jesus Christ. | 0:32 | |
| How can Satan cast out Satan? | 0:36 | |
| One of the favorite preaching techniques of our Lord | 0:42 | |
| is the asking of a question | 0:46 | |
| which compels his hearers | 0:49 | |
| to fix their attention upon the impossibility | 0:52 | |
| of something which they are doing, | 0:55 | |
| or upon the error of their ways. | 0:58 | |
| Jesus had the ability to ask a question in such fashion | 1:02 | |
| that the hearer would be almost compelled | 1:07 | |
| to give himself the correct answer, | 1:10 | |
| without the answer being given verbally by Jesus Christ. | 1:13 | |
| For example, his question, "What shall it profit a man | 1:19 | |
| if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul?" | 1:23 | |
| fairly demands the answer, "It shall profit him nothing." | 1:29 | |
| His question, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord, | 1:36 | |
| and do not the things which I say?" | 1:41 | |
| has a built-in, obvious answer. | 1:45 | |
| It shall profit him nothing under these circumstances. | 1:50 | |
| Nothing is gained by it. | 1:55 | |
| And so Jesus turned to his critics | 1:59 | |
| on the occasion out of which our text comes this morning. | 2:04 | |
| These critics were seeking to discredit him | 2:09 | |
| for curing an insane man. | 2:13 | |
| They were saying that he cast out the insanity or the devils | 2:16 | |
| within this unfortunate man | 2:23 | |
| by using the power of Beelzebub, | 2:26 | |
| the alleged prince of devils, | 2:28 | |
| and it was at this point that Jesus taxed their minds | 2:31 | |
| with this question. | 2:34 | |
| How can Satan cast out Satan? | 2:37 | |
| It will be profitable for you and me | 2:46 | |
| to face this question ourselves this morning. | 2:48 | |
| Now, of course, this is not the time to labor | 2:53 | |
| the question of whether Satan | 2:56 | |
| is some kind of personal potentate | 2:59 | |
| which is the source of unlimited evil, | 3:02 | |
| who dwells in the cosmic basement | 3:05 | |
| and thinks up all kinds of damnation | 3:08 | |
| for as many people as he possibly can contrive it for. | 3:10 | |
| Some Christians have believed one thing about this, | 3:15 | |
| and other Christians have believed something else about it. | 3:17 | |
| It is worth noting in passing, however, | 3:21 | |
| that many, many Christians | 3:23 | |
| have derived their conception of Satan | 3:26 | |
| more from Dante and Milton | 3:29 | |
| than they have from the holy scriptures. | 3:31 | |
| In his "Paradise Lost," Milton pictures Satan | 3:34 | |
| as a crafty, hardheaded, devilish kind of potentate, | 3:38 | |
| who is so proud that he would rather rule in hell | 3:44 | |
| than to serve in heaven. | 3:47 | |
| But whatever your conception | 3:52 | |
| of the personalistic Satan may be, | 3:54 | |
| people who have the personalistic view of Satan | 4:00 | |
| agree with other Christians | 4:02 | |
| that the only form in which we mortal humans | 4:04 | |
| actually meet Satan | 4:08 | |
| is in certain qualities of character | 4:09 | |
| in individual human beings whom we know and meet, | 4:12 | |
| or in certain unfortunate practices in society | 4:15 | |
| which have a depressing effect upon mankind. | 4:19 | |
| That much seems to be quite clear. | 4:23 | |
| This is the only form in which we meet Satan. | 4:26 | |
| Even Martin Luther, who traditionally on one occasion | 4:31 | |
| threw a bottle of ink at Satan, | 4:35 | |
| failed to leave us any description | 4:38 | |
| of the physiology of Satan | 4:40 | |
| at whom he supposedly threw the bottle of ink. | 4:42 | |
| I presume that about the only individual | 4:46 | |
| who claims to be Satan | 4:51 | |
| that anybody in the Durham area has actually encountered | 4:53 | |
| has been that person that we see when we move | 4:57 | |
| into Duke Stadium down at the other end of the campus, | 5:00 | |
| for the purpose of watching an athletic contest. | 5:03 | |
| There we see the antics of a university student | 5:07 | |
| who is dressed in blue, | 5:11 | |
| who has an elongated appendage | 5:13 | |
| affixed to the backside of his lap, | 5:15 | |
| and who is sometimes cast out | 5:18 | |
| by the cheerleaders of the opposing team, | 5:21 | |
| and sometimes is cast out by the Dean's office. | 5:24 | |
| That is about the only person we actually encounter | 5:29 | |
| in the flesh or in the spirit, either, | 5:33 | |
| who calls himself personally by the name of Satan. | 5:35 | |
| Now, although in a given day's journey, | 5:40 | |
| we do not normally expect to encounter an individual | 5:43 | |
| who will call himself Satan, | 5:46 | |
| we nonetheless should not consider Satan as a joke. | 5:49 | |
| We should take Satan very seriously | 5:54 | |
| in whatever form we understand him to exist and to operate, | 5:57 | |
| personally or impersonally. | 6:03 | |
| In the not-too-distant past, | 6:06 | |
| enlightened, well-educated people | 6:09 | |
| had pretty well come to the conclusion | 6:12 | |
| that Satan, however perceived, | 6:14 | |
| could be dismissed from our thought, | 6:16 | |
| that we did not need to take into account | 6:19 | |
| any diabolic force or power | 6:21 | |
| at work among men and in this world. | 6:24 | |
| Not so today. | 6:28 | |
| Now, great many of our serious writers | 6:30 | |
| are addressing themselves cogently | 6:32 | |
| to the need for mankind to grapple | 6:36 | |
| with a power that is properly called Satan. | 6:40 | |
| We find in such poets as W.H. Auden | 6:45 | |
| various central references to Satan and the power of Satan. | 6:49 | |
| Novelists such as Mann and Gide and Dostoevsky | 6:54 | |
| deal in existential fashion | 6:57 | |
| with a power and an influence in the world | 7:00 | |
| which they call Satan. | 7:03 | |
| Well now, for the purposes of this sermon, | 7:05 | |
| when we're talking not so much | 7:08 | |
| about the metaphysical aspects of Satan | 7:10 | |
| as we're talking about the operation of Satan | 7:12 | |
| and how we get rid of Satan, | 7:15 | |
| let's define and Satan as being all of those qualities | 7:17 | |
| and habits and attitudes and attributes | 7:24 | |
| in mankind and his behavior | 7:29 | |
| which block the coming of the kingdom of God | 7:31 | |
| as revealed in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. | 7:35 | |
| Whatever more than that Satan may be, it is at least that. | 7:40 | |
| Now, therefore, the question which we face practically today | 7:47 | |
| which mankind has always faced, | 7:52 | |
| but has faced particularly ever since the Incarnation | 7:54 | |
| is the question of how do we cast out Satan? | 7:57 | |
| Undoubtedly, there is a great deal | 8:04 | |
| of iniquity in the world, which needs to be cast out. | 8:06 | |
| How do we do it? | 8:09 | |
| How do we get rid of hatred, of murder, of warfare? | 8:11 | |
| How do we get rid of drunkenness and alcoholism? | 8:19 | |
| How do we dispel ignorance and poverty | 8:23 | |
| and racial inequality? | 8:27 | |
| How do we get rid of illegitimate births | 8:30 | |
| and marital infidelity? | 8:33 | |
| How do we dispel from the life and practice of mankind | 8:35 | |
| all of those things | 8:40 | |
| which tear down the good and the beautiful and the true? | 8:42 | |
| That's the question which we face, | 8:48 | |
| and there is no more important question | 8:51 | |
| which mankind ever faces than this one. | 8:53 | |
| We are talking this morning, | 8:57 | |
| not about one of the marginal issues | 8:58 | |
| of human life and endeavor, | 9:00 | |
| but about one of the central issues, | 9:02 | |
| where decision cannot be avoided, | 9:05 | |
| because whether we seek to avoid decision or not, | 9:08 | |
| we do, in fact, make decisions in this area | 9:10 | |
| which have far-reaching consequences. | 9:14 | |
| Now, the answer | 9:18 | |
| which Jesus Christ gave to this question was clear. | 9:18 | |
| Jesus said we do not cast out Satan with Satan. | 9:25 | |
| We cast out Satan by the power of the kingdom of God. | 9:29 | |
| We cast out Satan | 9:35 | |
| by the insight and the strength of the Holy Spirit. | 9:37 | |
| We cast out Satan by love, | 9:44 | |
| by truth, | 9:47 | |
| by a dedicated imagination, | 9:48 | |
| by a dogged determination to be faithful to duty. | 9:51 | |
| We cast out Satan by truth and the spread of truth. | 9:57 | |
| We cast out Satan by the qualities of life and action | 10:02 | |
| which make up the kingdom of God. | 10:09 | |
| Now, in order for us... | 10:15 | |
| Truth really clearly, | 10:18 | |
| in order for us to get the full impact | 10:19 | |
| of what it is that Jesus is saying, | 10:22 | |
| there is one aspect of this truth | 10:24 | |
| which we need to bring into sharp focus before our eyes, | 10:27 | |
| and we need to study this. | 10:32 | |
| It is the truth that Satan is not simply a bad way | 10:36 | |
| or a method of casting out Satan, | 10:45 | |
| but that Satan cannot, | 10:47 | |
| does not cast out Satan, as a matter of fact, | 10:50 | |
| that if you want to cast out Satan | 10:57 | |
| and you're looking around for a methodology | 10:59 | |
| by which to do it, | 11:01 | |
| you do not seize upon Satan himself as the method, | 11:03 | |
| because it does not work. | 11:06 | |
| Consider an analogy. | 11:10 | |
| Suppose that you want to take the 6:02 plane this evening | 11:12 | |
| out of the Raleigh-Durham Airport, | 11:16 | |
| and suppose at five o'clock, you borrow your roommate's car, | 11:19 | |
| and you start southward on US Highway number 15. | 11:23 | |
| Now, you will be disappointed before 6:02, | 11:30 | |
| and the reason you will be disappointed | 11:36 | |
| is not that, when you arrive at the airport, | 11:38 | |
| the airport manager will say to you, | 11:41 | |
| "Now, my friend, you have taken the wrong road | 11:43 | |
| from Durham to the Raleigh-Durham Airport." | 11:46 | |
| No. | 11:49 | |
| The problem will be that you will miss the 6:02 plane | 11:51 | |
| for the reason that you chose a highway | 11:55 | |
| which does not go to the airport. | 11:57 | |
| It goes somewhere else. | 12:00 | |
| The high school quarterback | 12:04 | |
| who told his halfback in the huddle | 12:06 | |
| that he was going to give him the ball, | 12:09 | |
| and he wanted him to go over right tackle, | 12:10 | |
| where the opposing tackle was a 160-pound boy | 12:14 | |
| who had not much strength, | 12:18 | |
| and by all means, not to go over left tackle, | 12:20 | |
| because there was a 250-pound bruiser, | 12:22 | |
| found that as the halfback took the ball, | 12:27 | |
| he went toward left tackle. | 12:30 | |
| He got his signals mixed up, | 12:34 | |
| but the main difficulty was not | 12:36 | |
| that he did not carry out the orders of the quarterback. | 12:39 | |
| The main difficulty was he did not go through the line, | 12:43 | |
| because that particular halfback | 12:47 | |
| could not go through the 250-pound tackle. | 12:50 | |
| He didn't get anywhere. | 12:53 | |
| Now, this is what it is that Jesus is saying, in effect. | 12:56 | |
| He is not saying to us that Satan is a poor method | 12:59 | |
| for casting out Satan, | 13:02 | |
| because it would be an embarrassment to the heavenly Father | 13:03 | |
| to learn that one of his helpers was Satan, | 13:07 | |
| or that it is somehow a means of offending | 13:10 | |
| or hurting the feelings of Jesus Christ | 13:14 | |
| if we use his adversary to help establish his kingdom. | 13:15 | |
| The only point in this connection that Jesus is making | 13:22 | |
| is that, as a matter of fact, | 13:25 | |
| just as highway number 15 does not go to the airport, | 13:27 | |
| so the methodology of Satan | 13:30 | |
| does not establish the kingdom of God, | 13:32 | |
| and if what you are interested in | 13:37 | |
| is in establishing the kingdom of God, | 13:39 | |
| then let Satan and all of his methods alone. | 13:41 | |
| Do not think that you can establish the kingdom of God | 13:45 | |
| by using the tools and the methods | 13:47 | |
| and the methodology of Satan. | 13:50 | |
| It does not work that way. | 13:53 | |
| One of the most charming and popular legends | 13:56 | |
| that came out of the end of the Middle Ages | 14:00 | |
| was the legend about a character named Robin Hood, | 14:03 | |
| who was supposed to have been greatly enamored with the poor | 14:08 | |
| and to be very sorry for their plight. | 14:12 | |
| His heart allegedly burned within him in indignation | 14:16 | |
| as he looked at the rich, | 14:20 | |
| and he said, "They're too rich, | 14:23 | |
| and they don't deserve all that which they have. | 14:24 | |
| These poor people over here need what they have, | 14:27 | |
| and so I will craftily steal the property of the rich | 14:31 | |
| and give it to the poor." | 14:37 | |
| Well, we do not know | 14:40 | |
| whether any such individual actually lived or not, | 14:41 | |
| but the presumption is that there must have been | 14:44 | |
| some historical basis for all of the legendary myths | 14:46 | |
| which arose at the end of the Middle Ages in Great Britain. | 14:51 | |
| But this much we do know from history. | 14:57 | |
| Myth or not, | 15:01 | |
| the circulation of this legend | 15:02 | |
| led not so much to the feeding of the poor, | 15:06 | |
| as it led to teaching the poor to steal. | 15:11 | |
| The circulation of this legend | 15:18 | |
| encouraged a great many people | 15:21 | |
| to think when they were in need, | 15:23 | |
| that they were somehow justified, because they were in need, | 15:26 | |
| and because Robin Hood loved the poor, | 15:30 | |
| in going to the granaries of the rich, | 15:34 | |
| and by robbery, filling their own pockets. | 15:37 | |
| And the question which we cannot escape | 15:42 | |
| is whether Robin Hood, real or legendary, | 15:44 | |
| did the poor any benefit by teaching them to steal, | 15:48 | |
| that this is the way to get what you need in life. | 15:54 | |
| Now, one of the things | 16:00 | |
| which makes this possibility so appealing | 16:01 | |
| is that we are tantalized by the assumption | 16:04 | |
| which a great many people make, | 16:11 | |
| that if we can only keep Satan | 16:14 | |
| in the employ of the righteous, | 16:17 | |
| that he will become sanctified. | 16:21 | |
| If we can keep Satan under the control of the church, | 16:25 | |
| now to be sure, use Satan, | 16:30 | |
| but keep him under firm control in the church, | 16:32 | |
| so that we can use him as much as we want to | 16:36 | |
| and cut him off and put him out when we're through with him, | 16:38 | |
| that this will be a contribution | 16:43 | |
| to the establishment of the kingdom of God. | 16:44 | |
| Now, we ought not to be hoodwinked. | 16:49 | |
| by this assumption, however tantalizing it may be. | 16:52 | |
| Although it is a temptation sometimes | 16:59 | |
| to think that a wolf in sheep's clothing becomes a sheep, | 17:01 | |
| he actually does not become a sheep. | 17:04 | |
| A wolf in whatever clothing is still a wolf. | 17:06 | |
| Satan in the employ of the church is still Satan, | 17:10 | |
| and Satan cannot cast out Satan. | 17:13 | |
| Over and over again, the church in times of great stress | 17:17 | |
| and in times of crisis | 17:22 | |
| has brought Satan inside the church, | 17:24 | |
| thinking that it could control it | 17:26 | |
| and use it for the glory of God. | 17:29 | |
| But it doesn't work that way. | 17:32 | |
| Simply taking a cut out of Satan's wages | 17:35 | |
| or taxing his salary | 17:38 | |
| does not make him a servant of the kingdom of God. | 17:40 | |
| Churches have sometimes had gambling operations | 17:45 | |
| inside the church or its program | 17:48 | |
| in order to raise money for good causes. | 17:50 | |
| The principle thing which the church did on those occasions | 17:53 | |
| was to teach gambling. | 17:56 | |
| As long as good people do it, | 17:58 | |
| it isn't bad. | 18:01 | |
| Two years ago, I was in another city, | 18:04 | |
| talking to a Wesley Foundation Director. | 18:07 | |
| We were discussing his program | 18:10 | |
| and he was talking about one phase of his program, | 18:12 | |
| in which he was very much interested. | 18:15 | |
| I said to him, "Do the churches in this area | 18:18 | |
| know that you are doing this in your program?" | 18:23 | |
| And he said, "No, they do not." | 18:25 | |
| I said, "Well, what effect do you think this would have | 18:28 | |
| upon the financial support | 18:30 | |
| which these churches are giving you for your program, | 18:31 | |
| if they did know it?" | 18:34 | |
| Well, he said, | 18:35 | |
| "I think it would cut off my financial support." | 18:36 | |
| I said to him, "Do you ever go out | 18:39 | |
| to talk to the people in the churches about your program | 18:42 | |
| when you ask for money?" | 18:45 | |
| And he said, "Yes, we take deputation teams out." | 18:46 | |
| He said, "We don't mention this part of our program." | 18:49 | |
| And I said, | 18:52 | |
| "Well, what do you say if they ask you about it?" | 18:52 | |
| Well, he said, "If they ask me about it, | 18:55 | |
| of course I have to lie about it and say we're not doing it, | 18:57 | |
| and if I didn't, we wouldn't get the money, | 19:02 | |
| and we couldn't have our program." | 19:04 | |
| Well, I said to him, | 19:07 | |
| "I think that the main thing you are doing | 19:07 | |
| is not on these occasions raising money | 19:10 | |
| to help establish the kingdom of God, | 19:14 | |
| but the main thing you're doing | 19:15 | |
| is teaching the students who go with you | 19:16 | |
| that there are times, | 19:18 | |
| when it is necessary to get along, for us to lie." | 19:19 | |
| Is this a contribution | 19:24 | |
| to the establishment of the kingdom of God? | 19:26 | |
| As long as we lie to get money for the church, | 19:29 | |
| it becomes sanctified lying, or does it? | 19:33 | |
| Can, as a matter of fact, Satan cast out Satan? | 19:38 | |
| When you read your Old Testament, | 19:45 | |
| if you read it knowing the historical background, | 19:47 | |
| you get something of what the prophets thought about this. | 19:51 | |
| You remember over and over again, | 19:55 | |
| they cry out against the Baal worship of Palestine, | 19:57 | |
| how the Israelites went over to the temples of Baal, | 20:02 | |
| and the prophets seemed to be very, very angry about this. | 20:06 | |
| Well, why do you suppose the children of Israel | 20:10 | |
| went over to the temples of Baal anyway? | 20:13 | |
| They had their own God. | 20:16 | |
| They had their own worship. | 20:17 | |
| What was it that brought them over to the temples of Baal? | 20:19 | |
| The thing which took them over to the temple of Baal, | 20:24 | |
| that which attracted them and drew them | 20:28 | |
| was this very tantalizing possibility | 20:31 | |
| that we have just been talking about, | 20:35 | |
| namely that as long as we practice evil within the church, | 20:38 | |
| as long as we practice evil for the glory of God, | 20:44 | |
| it's all right. | 20:47 | |
| In the temples of Baal, | 20:50 | |
| there were a great many so-called sacred prostitutes | 20:52 | |
| who stayed at the temples | 20:57 | |
| and who offered their bodies to whomever might come, | 20:59 | |
| but with a great portion of the income | 21:03 | |
| going for the temple treasury. | 21:05 | |
| And so you see, it was really for the glory of God | 21:08 | |
| that they were practicing prostitution, | 21:12 | |
| and it was for the glory of God | 21:14 | |
| that the pagans and the Israelites | 21:16 | |
| were going to the temples. | 21:20 | |
| And this the prophets heaped their anger upon | 21:23 | |
| and taught that the religion of Jehovah | 21:29 | |
| has no place for worshiping God in this way. | 21:31 | |
| We can worship God and can serve God only in God's way. | 21:37 | |
| We cast out Satan not with Satan, | 21:44 | |
| but with the power of God and the Holy Spirit. | 21:48 | |
| Now, a great many people, though, have one other thing | 21:53 | |
| which tempts them to try to cast out Satan with Satan, | 21:56 | |
| and that is the evident short-term success on the surface, | 22:02 | |
| which we can achieve by linking forces with Satan. | 22:08 | |
| You remember, Jesus was tempted | 22:12 | |
| to get in league with Satan | 22:16 | |
| to accomplish the highest and holiest mission imaginable, | 22:18 | |
| namely to bring the whole earth to worship Christ, | 22:21 | |
| and figuratively speaking, | 22:28 | |
| Satan took Christ up on a higher place | 22:31 | |
| and showed him all the world and said, | 22:33 | |
| "It's yours, if you'll fall down and worship me." | 22:34 | |
| Well, I dare say that if Jesus had made a pact with Satan, | 22:41 | |
| he could have been successful instantly, widely. | 22:45 | |
| But he rejected this. | 22:51 | |
| He was not willing to get a short-term surface victory | 22:54 | |
| by compromising himself | 22:59 | |
| to the extent of linking his force with the force of Satan. | 23:01 | |
| Success here would in and of itself be defeat. | 23:09 | |
| When I was in high school, | 23:14 | |
| two of our classmates who were girls | 23:15 | |
| were trying to get the affection | 23:18 | |
| of one boy who happened to be a friend of mine. | 23:20 | |
| These two girls became bitter enemies | 23:24 | |
| over their attempts to win the affection of this boy. | 23:26 | |
| On one occasion, their words became hot and bitter, | 23:31 | |
| and finally, it ended in a hair pulling contest | 23:34 | |
| and an actual fight, | 23:37 | |
| where they were clawing the skin of each other | 23:38 | |
| and hitting each other. | 23:41 | |
| One of them was successful over the other and won the fight, | 23:44 | |
| but the loser got the boy, | 23:49 | |
| for the reason that my friend said | 23:52 | |
| the criterion of a good girlfriend for him | 23:55 | |
| was not the one | 23:58 | |
| who was best able to pull hair and scratch skin. | 23:59 | |
| He would rather have the one on who was less able to do that | 24:03 | |
| so that when the girl won the fight, | 24:10 | |
| she lost the man by that very act. | 24:13 | |
| Many times, when we attempt to establish the kingdom of God | 24:17 | |
| by the use of Satan, | 24:23 | |
| we are successful in our short-range goal | 24:26 | |
| of what it is we've set out to do, | 24:29 | |
| but by our very success in that, | 24:31 | |
| we undermine the kingdom of God, | 24:34 | |
| which theoretically was the reason | 24:36 | |
| why we entered into it at all. | 24:38 | |
| Is it a high and right and noble thing | 24:41 | |
| for a man to join a fraternity? | 24:44 | |
| If it is, then he should be rushed | 24:47 | |
| by high and noble methods. | 24:49 | |
| Is it right for us | 24:52 | |
| to establish racial brotherhood and democracy? | 24:54 | |
| Then let us do it by ethical means. | 24:58 | |
| Is it right for us to have world peace? | 25:01 | |
| Then let us do it in God's way. | 25:04 | |
| Whatever it is that we need to do, | 25:08 | |
| and there's much that we need to do | 25:10 | |
| to establish the kingdom of God, | 25:12 | |
| let us have the good judgment | 25:14 | |
| to follow the answer | 25:17 | |
| which is implied in the question of our Lord | 25:18 | |
| when he asks us all to consider how can Satan out Satan? | 25:22 | |
| O Lord, our heavenly Father, grant unto us thy Holy Spirit | 25:35 | |
| to give us wisdom to see through falsehood. | 25:39 | |
| Grant unto us thy Holy Spirit | 25:42 | |
| to give us strength to be faithful to Christ, | 25:44 | |
| and to cast out Satan from our own hearts | 25:48 | |
| by the Spirit of Christ. | 25:50 | |
| And now as we go from here, give us physical safety, | 25:52 | |
| and give us spiritual safety, | 25:56 | |
| and what we pray for ourselves, we pray for all mankind. | 25:59 | |
| Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, | 26:03 | |
| the love of God the Father, | 26:06 | |
| and the fellowship up of the Holy Spirit | 26:07 | |
| be with you and abide with you now and ever more. | 26:09 |