Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany (C)

January 30, 2022

Text: Luke 4:31-44

            This morning we witness a war of words.  It is a war between the dynamic and creative Word of God, and the destructive and deadly words of the devil.  God brought all things into being by speaking His Almighty Word.  Ex nihilo, out of nothing, God brought forth something, all that is, the heavens and the earth.  But it was all formless and void.  And dark.  Therefore God spoke.  “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3; ESV).  And there was light.  God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness.  Over the course of six days, six repetitions of evening and morning, God spoke, and so gave form to the formless creation.  God spoke, and He filled the void.  Vegetation.  Fish of the sea and birds of the air.  Beasts of the field.  And… Man.  Adam.  The pinnacle and crown of His creation.  His image-bearer.  His likeness.  His steward.  And from His side, the woman, Eve, a helper corresponding to the man, also bearing the divine Image.  Together they would fill the earth, fill the void with life, and have dominion, the rule, the stewardship of creation.  They would live in Communion.  Faith toward God.  Fervent love toward one another.  In God’s light.  By His Word.  According to His form.  Enjoying His fulness. 

            But then the serpent spoke.  The serpent spoke a word different than the Word of God.  The serpent’s word cast doubt on the Word of God.  The serpent’s word is the anti-word of God’s Word.  Now, we know who this is.  That ancient serpent, who is the devil, and Satan, a liar and the father of lies.  God created him as an angel of light, Lucifer, literally “Light Bearer,” but in wicked rebellion, he fell into the darkness.  And now his goal is forever to speak God’s creation, and man in particular, back into the darkness with him, back into chaos, into the formlessness and the void, back into the nothingness.  His goal, and the goal of all his lying words, is to drag us down with him into the outer darkness, out of Communion with God, out of Communion with one another, in hatred and enmity down to hell and eternal death.  And it worked on our first parents, didn’t it?  In spite of God’s clear Word of life, “Do not take and eat from that one tree.”  They listened to the serpent’s words.  They believed the serpent’s words over God’s Word.  They took and ate, and they died.  Spiritually, immediately.  And they began to die physically.  Image lost.  Cast out from Paradise into a fallen world of curse and bitterness and death.  And they drug us, their children, with them.  Creation, including our own bodies, no longer holds its form.  Things fall apart.  We fall apart.  What should be full is all too often empty.  What should be light is all too often dark.  Man is fallen, and all creation with it.

            But God was not done speaking.  Therefore the Word, through whom all things are made, the Word that was with God in the beginning, the Word that is God, became flesh.  He came down into the darkness and the chaos.  He came down into our sin and misery.  He came down and made His dwelling among us (John 1:1-3, 14), right in our very midst.  God saves us as He created us.  By His Word.  Jesus of Nazareth, the eternally begotten Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, has come down to be our light, and to be our life, to restore the form, and to fill the void.  To lift up the fallen and to raise the dead.  To create anew and set right all that has gone wrong.  To refashion us in His own Image.  To save us from the nothingness of eternal death.

            So there He is, speaking, teaching His Word on a Sabbath Day in the synagogue at Capernaum, and the demons know what’s up.  They cannot leave God’s Word unchallenged.  That is why the unclean demon speaks: “Ha!  What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  I know who you are—the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34).  The demons speak their words of destruction.  They learned it from Satan himself.  But their words have no authority.  Their words are lies.  Even when they speak true things, as the demon does in his identification of Jesus, it is all in service to the lie, to deceive, or to accuse.  It is all a cloak for the darkness, the bending, the turn toward nothingness.  It is all to introduce chaos, despair, misbelief, and death.  If you’ve ever said a little bit of false doctrine won’t hurt anything… you’ve bought the lie! 

            But now Jesus speaks, and His Word has authority, for it is the very Word of the Father.  His Word is substantial.  His Word is almighty.  It does what it says.  His Word is Truth.  He rebukes the demon, and the demon must obey.  “Be silent and come out of him” (v. 35).  “You are not to speak, and you are no longer to afflict this man, whom I have claimed for Myself.  Be gone!”  And while the demon makes a great show of the whole thing, casting the man down before them all, seeking to inflict one final theatrical blow (demons are such drama queens), his words are cut off, and he departs.  As he must.  Because Jesus has spoken.  The dynamic, creative, almighty Word of God silences the anti-word of the demons.  It casts out the unclean spirits.  It casts out Satan himself.  It restores the afflicted man and raises him up. 

            But this Word is not only powerful over the demons.  So also their works.  When Jesus enters Simon Peter’s house, for example, for the Sabbath afternoon meal, what does He find but Simon’s mother-in-law, ill with a high fever, and the disciples praying to Him on her behalf.  He rebukes the fever in the same way He rebuked the demon.  And the fever leaves her in the same way the demon left.  You see, where the demons bring sickness and death, Jesus brings healing and life. 

            And then, as the Sabbath concludes, at sunset (the evening being the beginning of the new day, incidentally, Sunday, the eighth day), the whole town comes out, bringing all their sick and afflicted to Jesus.  And He speaks, and He touches them, and He heals them, and casts out demons.  When the demons speak, He silences them, because they are not authorized to speak, and their words are harmful and destructive lies.  But this is what Jesus’ Word does.  It re-creates and resurrects.  It refashions and restores.  It gives light and life.  It heals and it saves.  “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

            And such is the power of Jesus’ Word for you.  Jesus speaks here and now.  In His Scriptures.  In the preaching.  He speaks you righteous and forgiven, absolving your sins.  He speaks you reborn in the waters of Holy Baptism, re-creates you out of nothing, making you God’s own child.  He speaks His Spirit over the baptismal waters, casting out all evil spirits, taking possession of you, body and soul.  He speaks, and then He touches you, His true Body, His true Blood, given to you to eat and drink in the Holy Supper.  He heals you.  He restores you.  He enlivens you.  His presence, His Body, is the medicine you need to undo the damage of your sin and the anti-word of the demons.  You take and eat, and you live.  Spiritually now, in a  hidden way.  Bodily then, on the great Day for which we pray. 

            Jesus speaks.  And so He must (Luke 4:43).  It is divinely necessary.  This is the purpose for which He was sent: To preach the good news of the Kingdom of God in every place.  Jesus goes to the other towns as well, to the synagogues of Judea, and now, right here in Moscow, Idaho.  He speaks into the darkness, to fill it with light.  He speaks into the void, to fill it with life, and with Himself.  He speaks into the chaos, to mold it and shape it, to bring it to order and into proper form.  When you hear a sermon, He is doing this very thing in your life.  He speaks into your chaos.  He speaks into your sin and doubt.  He speaks into all those places, the dark corners, where the demonic lies have taken you captive and led you to false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.  He speaks His creative, forgiving, enlivening Word.  The demons are silenced, and you are restored.  He speaks to your sickness, and you are healed.  Spiritually now.  Perhaps even bodily.  Certainly His healing will be yours in all its fulness, body and soul, when He comes again in glory.  Jesus speaks, and He fills your void with Himself and all the fulness of His gifts.

            And He forms you.  He teaches you.  He gives you to walk by the light of His Word.  He undoes the effects of the satanic lies.  He shows you what it means that you are restored to God’s Image, to be His steward and representative in His creation.  He has given you works to do.  Works of service to form and to fill the creation around you.  Just as He raised Peter’s mother-in-law, and immediately she began to serve Him and His disciples, so you are raised up to serve, and to love.  Such is the power of His creative Word. 

            And He opens your lips.  He gives you to speak, to spread the report about Him into every place (v. 37); to pray for those in need, as Peter and the disciples prayed for Peter’s mother-in-law; to bring before Jesus all those who are sick with various diseases, oppressed by demons, or in any need; to comfort and console the grieving and despairing with the precious Gospel of life; to fill what is empty and form what is bent or broken, by speaking God’s restoring Word; to confess boldly; to suffer boldly; to proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Peter 2:9). 

            A war of words this morning, between God’s dynamic and creative Word, enfleshed in the Person of Jesus and spoken by His mouth, and the anti-words of the demons.  But the Word of Jesus Christ is final and decisive.  Jesus wins.  For He gave Himself into the dark void of death and hell on the cross.  And it could not hold Him.  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  The serpent’s head is crushed, and his twitching tongue is even now being silenced as God speaks.  Our old evil foe is cast into the outer darkness.  But you… you have been called to a holy calling, manifested in Christ Jesus, who has abolished death, and brings you life and immortality through the light of the Gospel (2 Timothy 1:9-10).

            The crowds were all amazed at His speaking, and said to one another, “What is this word?  For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” (v. 36).  By His Word, what was not, is.  Creation is formed and filled with His goodness.  Darkness is scattered, and there is light.  Man is restored to the Image of God.  You have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son (Col. 1:13).  “Let there be,” God says, and so it is.  And God saw everything that He had made anew in Christ, and behold, it was once again very good… The very best.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.