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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church's pastor, Wolf Mueller. This is the Sunday drive home for Sunday, June 9. I think that's what day it is, the year of our Lord 2024. Recording this episode in Belfast, Ireland. Oh, before we get started, I wanted. We had our service last night. I'm recording this Sunday morning, which means you're all asleep in the middle of the night. We had our Sunday service with Pastor Semi okay from the south of England. Flew up yesterday, and he's been meeting with a handful of families here in Belfast, Ireland, who are all thinking about the lutheran confessions, studying the lutheran confessions and rejoicing in the lutheran confessions. And we had our service with them and got to meet them last night. Please pray for these irish, almost Lutherans, as they there's a lot of opposition to the gospel and to our lutheran confession here in Ireland. So pray for them. They need our strength and our help. I'll tell you more when we get back, but a few, I don't have too much time, so just a few thoughts on the texts today just to get you ready for Sunday. But first, let's, we'll pray the collect for today.
[00:01:15] Almighty and eternal God, your son Jesus triumphed over the prince of demons and freed us from bondage to sin. Help us to stand firm against every assault of Satan and enable us always to do your will through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. A few thoughts on the Old Testament and the gospel lesson today. Genesis three, eight to 15, and mark 320 to 35. I think we mentioned last week how mark front loads a number of things to show their importance. And one of the things he front loads is the discussion of Jesus overcoming the demons. And we have it right here in chapter three that Jesus tells this parable. How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
[00:02:14] And he goes on to. Here's the parable, verse 30 27.
[00:02:18] I love this parable. This is one of the most important parables in all of the holy scriptures. He says, no one can enter a strongman's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strongman, and then he can plunder his house. Now, that's an amazing parable to think about.
[00:02:43] Who's the strong man, what are his goods, and who's the stronger man.
[00:02:50] It's just a simple picture of a soldier or a strongman, a big guy who has a lot of treasure and he's guarding it. And you think, well, that treasure's pretty safe until a bigger guy comes. This is the point.
[00:03:07] And he ties him up and then he takes all his stuff. Well, it turns out that when we look at the parable in context, that the strong man that Jesus is talking about is the devil and that the stuff is you and I and the stronger one is Jesus.
[00:03:24] So Jesus is not giving us instructions on how to be cat burglars or how to loot somebody. He's giving us a spiritual picture of what he is doing in his ministry, casting out demons, rescuing people from the kingdom of darkness, overthrowing the devil's kingdom. And he's the stronger one who's doing it so that we are the loot.
[00:03:45] He is the one who rescues us and delivers us and brings us into his kingdom of light. He's transferred us. This is how Paul says it in Colossians. He's transferred us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his most glorious light.
[00:03:59] So that we are the prisoners of war that are, that our captain now comes and overcomes the one who's guarding us and sets us free, brings us to eternal life. It's a beautiful picture. And all of this is in fulfillment of the promise that's given to us in the Old Testament. So I want to, because the parables, there's a parable, or really a riddle here in Genesis 315 that needs most of our attention.
[00:04:28] We know the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden, how the devil tempts them. God knows that you will not surely die, for when you eat it, you will be like God. And so Eve sees that the fruit is desirable for food and good for food and desirable to make one wise. So she reaches out her hand and she takes it and she eats it. And the eyes of, and then she gives some to Adam, and he eats, and the eyes of both are opened, and they see that they're naked, and they make fig leaves to cover themselves.
[00:05:00] And then they think everything's fine. This is the point is they think that everything is fine with their fig leaves, that they've solved the problem.
[00:05:10] If you were to pause the moment when Adam and Eve eat the fruit and realize they're naked, and you say, oh, what's your problem? They say, oh, our problem here is we're naked. And then you let the tape play forward and pause it. Now they have their fig leaves on, and you're like, well, what's your problem? They're like, we got no problem. We solved it. We were naked, but now we're clothed in these fig leaves. And so we've taken care of it. We've covered our own shame, which is a picture of every single human effort at salvation to cover our own shame by our own works. It's the religious instinct that is in our hearts. But it is a failed instinct. It cannot do what we want it to do. It cannot accomplish what we need it to accomplish.
[00:06:00] We cannot cover our own shame. We just don't have the capacity to do it. But we think we do, and that's the point. When Adam and Eve hear the sound of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and all of a sudden they realize who these fig leaves are insufficient.
[00:06:18] This is the preaching of the law that shows us that our own attempts at righteousness are not enough.
[00:06:27] And so the Lord comes down and he talks first to Adam. Who told you you were naked? The woman you gave to me gave me the fruit. What have you done? The serpent deceived me. And then the Lord turned straight to the serpent. And notice how I think this is a little detail that's very important. The Lord talked to Adam and talked to Eve, but he does not ask a question to the devil. Why did you do this? What's your problem?
[00:06:54] He just lays straight into them.
[00:06:59] You'll go on your belly, you'll eat dust all the days of your life.
[00:07:03] And then we get to verse 15.
[00:07:06] Now this verse, Genesis 315, is perhaps the most important verse in the entire Old Testament for us to understand.
[00:07:17] If we understand Genesis 315, then we have a shot at understanding the rest of the scriptures. And if we don't, we don't, especially the Old Testament. This verse, Genesis 315, is given the name the proto evangelion, which means the first gospel.
[00:07:35] And in it the Lord is talking to the devil. And he says, kind of two strophes or two parts of this poem. He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.
[00:07:50] He will crush your head and you will crush his heel.
[00:07:56] So the picture there is that the Lord is going to set the devil and the woman and her offspring at war with one another, but there will be one offspring from this woman who, like a barefoot man in the wilderness, stomps the head of a serpent while the serpent bites the heel of the man so that they'll both deliver a death blow to one another. But one is on the heel and one is on the head. In other words, one is you can recover from and the other you cannot.
[00:08:32] And this prophecy we understand to be speaking of Jesus. In fact, there's no other way around it. Because while Adam and Eve could have resisted the devil, they did not have the authority to destroy the devil. And the fact that this is the seed of the woman and not the seed of the man indicates that there will be a man born without the help of another man, the seed of the woman, who will have divine power to be able to destroy the devil, but that his destroying the devil will also cost him his life, but not forever. In other words, we have in this verse already almost the fullness of the apostles Creed, and Adam and Eve believe it. We see indications of their faith in this word. First of all, when.
[00:09:18] Wow. When it's time. Now, afterwards, after the Lord makes the skin covering for Adam and Eve.
[00:09:29] And that's significant in itself. They thought the fig leaves could cover their shame. And now the Lord takes an animal and kills it and spills the blood and skins it and wraps the warm flesh of the animal around the naked bodies of Adam and Eve.
[00:09:45] And you can imagine them saying, this is what it takes to cover our sin. And the Lord says, I'll just wait.
[00:09:52] And then he expels him from the garden. But then Adam is giving Eve a name, and he doesn't name her mouth death or trouble or sin or something like that. He names her Eve, which means life, because Adam says, you are the mother of all the living. And it is a reference to the fact that from Eve will come every single human being. But it's more than that. From Eve comes the seed, capital s seed, who will destroy the devil and destroy the devil's kingdom.
[00:10:21] That's just amazing. We also see it when Eve gives birth to Cain and names him. It's hard to see in the English, because let me look this up here. Because in the English, it says, I have begotten a man with the help of the Lord. In Hebrew, it would be much better to just say, I have begotten a man. Who is the lord?
[00:10:44] Here it is. Genesis four one. Now, Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain and said, I have acquired a man from the Lord. Literally in the Hebrew, I have acquired a man, that is, the Lord, or, I have acquired a man, the Lord.
[00:11:01] So that Eve already was confessing that she thought Cain. Now, Cain obviously was not that promised savior, the Messiah.
[00:11:10] He was quite the opposite.
[00:11:13] But at least she understood the promise and the implications of the promise and what it meant. But it wasn't for Cain to be born of a woman without the help of a man who would be God and man united together, who would die and in his death would destroy the power of the devil. But our Lord Jesus would do it and would fulfill this promise. Now, this promise is what tracks all the way through the Old Testament, especially with Abraham, for example, when it says that your seed will be in your seed, all the nations will be blessed, to David, two, Samuel, seven, your seed will sit on the throne. So this promise extends all the way through the Old Testament as the golden thread which culminates in our Lord Jesus, who's telling us this parable about how he's the strong man who's going to overthrow the devil. Just glorious. Just glorious.
[00:12:08] All right, I think that's going to have to do it today. Let's see how we did. Twelve minutes. It's a short one, but we'll make it up for you, hopefully next week. God be praised for you. We're praying for you today. Keep praying for us. We're traveling from Ireland over to Scotland today, and we're going to check on some of the spots where the Lutherans were martyred trying to get the gospel into Scotland. We'll see that tomorrow. So pray for us, and God's peace be with you. Sunday drive to church.