"No, Satan. Christ has died for me, and I am forgiven!" Oculi 2026

08. March 2026
Oculi
Luke 11:14–28

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

This business about devils is difficult. We don’t like to talk about it. We are reluctant. We are embarrassed. We are, if we are being honest, a little afraid of being laughed at. After all, who still believes in devils? Intelligent, educated people have outgrown such things. The devil in red tights with a pitchfork and a pointy tail. A cartoon. A joke. Something for Halloween and horror movies. We have been to the moon and split the atom. We have mapped the genome and connected the globe. We have intelligent robots and large language models. Surely we have moved past all of this?

And right there—right in that moment of highest sophistication—you are looking at one of the devil's most tremendous victories. He has gotten himself disbelieved in. He can go about his business, and nobody even suspects he exists, let alone that he is working on them. Think about that! It is not a small thing. It is a masterclass in strategy. The greatest trick the enemy ever pulled was convincing the world he is not real.

But the Scriptures are not embarrassed to speak of him. And this morning's Gospel puts him right in front of us. "And [Jesus] was casting out a demon, and it was mute. So it was, when the demon had gone out, that the mute spoke; and the multitudes marveled" (Luke 11:14). There it is. Jesus is doing what Jesus does. He is setting people free. He is driving out the enemy and loosening tongues to speak and praise God. And what do the people do? Some of them marvel. And some of them—watch this—accuse Him of doing it by the power of the devil. "He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons" (Luke 11:15).

You can’t make it up. The Son of God is standing in front of them, delivering a man from demonic oppression, and their response is to call it satanic. This is what hardened hearts do. This is what happens when you are so committed to your own version of how God should work that you cannot recognize Him when He actually shows up. It happened with Pharaoh. The magicians said to Pharaoh, "This is the finger of God." But Pharaoh's heart grew hard, and he did not heed them (Exodus 8:19). The finger of God was right there, and Pharaoh would not see it. He could not afford to see it. Because seeing it would mean surrendering the throne.

And that is exactly the issue. The throne. There is a throne in the heart of every person. God made us to have Him seated there, ruling over us in love, giving us the happiness, freedom, and strength He designed us to have. But we dethroned Him. We sinned. We listened to the old lie: “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). And we believed it. We believed we could climb onto that throne ourselves. It is as impossible as a horse trying to mount the saddle on its own back. We cannot sit on God's throne. We were not made for it.

And so when we pushed God off, someone else climbed on. If God does not sit on the throne of your heart, the devil does. There is no third option. There is no neutral ground. Scripture runs this line from beginning to end: either of darkness or of light, either of Satan or of God. "He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters" (Luke 11:23).

That is difficult to hear. We would prefer something gentler, something that allows for a comfortable middle ground. We want to be spiritual but not overly committed, open-minded but not restrictive. However, Jesus does not work with half-measures. He is not concerned with your preferences; He cares about your rescue.

So what does He do? He tells a short parable that cuts right to the heart of it. “When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armor in which he trusted, and divides his spoils” (Luke 11:21–22). There is the strong man—Satan—fully armed, guarding his palace. And his palace is you. His goods are your body and soul. He has taken up residence, and he is not leaving without a fight.

But here comes the Stronger Man. And the Stronger Man is Jesus. He does not negotiate with the devil. He does not sit down and have a conversation about terms. He comes upon him and overcomes him. He strips him of his armor. He divides his spoils. Christ came to dethrone the usurper. Our text proclaims the fulfillment of the ancient promise: “But if I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). The finger of God—that same finger that struck Egypt with plagues, that same finger that wrote the commandments on stone—is at work in Jesus of Nazareth, casting out the devil and restoring the kingdom of God in the hearts of men.

This is not the time for polite instruction. This is war. And the battleground is the human heart—your heart and mine. It is an unrelenting war, Satan against God, and it has been raging since the Garden. The enemy is a fallen angel. He is of an order of being we cannot fully comprehend. He and his crew were thrown out of heaven, and they set themselves to overthrow the works of God. When God made people whose hearts were to be ruled by His love, Satan sought God's dethronement. He deceived us into thinking we could be our own lord and master. And so we came under his dominion. Scripture calls him “the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And there in the world, for all that we could do, we would remain forever lost, separated from God, and so dead.

But God in mercy looked on our misery and had pity. He promised One who would overthrow the dominion of Satan and restore the rule of His love in the hearts of His people. Christ came to do exactly that. The forty days in the wilderness, the temptations, the skirmishes with demons throughout His ministry—all of it was leading to the decisive battle. And that battle comes on Good Friday. There at the cross, the Stronger Man spent His utmost strength against the strong man. There at the cross, where it looked to all the world like Satan had won, the devil was vanquished. Christ absorbed the full weight of sin and death into His own body and destroyed them from the inside out.

Now here is the thing we better not miss. The devil has not given up. He has changed his strategy. He is more dangerous now, not less, precisely because he works with subtlety. He does not often come at you with direct frontal assaults anymore. He works quietly, patiently, in ways you do not suspect.

Try giving up a particular sin. Try being kind to someone you despise. Try simply going to church every Sunday without finding a reason to stay home. Try keeping your mind on Christ in your prayers for five consecutive minutes without wandering. You will discover very quickly that there is an extraordinary power hindering you. The simplest acts of the Christian life are met with resistance that can only be explained by the presence of an enemy who does not want you anywhere near Jesus.

And the more earnestly you strive for Christ, the harder it gets. This is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that something is right. The devil does not bother much with the godless—they are already in the bag. He bends his attacks on the children of God. The greatest saints have known more of the devil than anyone else, precisely because they were closest to Christ. “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). That is not a metaphor. That is a field report from the war front.

But hear now what Jesus says at the end of our Gospel, because it is a warning we can’t ignore. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he says, 'I will return to my house from which I came.' And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24–26).

A swept and empty house. Clean. Tidy. Vacant. That is the danger. You can reform your life, clean up your act, put everything in order—and if Christ is not dwelling there, you are nothing but a nicely furnished home waiting for the devil to move back in with reinforcements. Moralism without Christ is a swept-and-empty house. Religion without the Gospel is a clean room with a vacancy sign on the door.

The house must not be empty. Christ must dwell there. He must sit on the throne. And He does this by His Word and Sacraments. He comes to you in Baptism and claims you as His own. He comes to you in Absolution and drives the accuser out with the declaration: “You are forgiven!” He comes to you in His Supper and feeds you with His own Body and Blood so that He dwells in you and you in Him. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). You are not an empty house. You are the dwelling place of the living God.

So when the devil comes—and he will come—you can say this: "No, Satan. I am not yours. Christ has died for me, and I am forgiven. He has conquered you, and so shall I." When our faith is in Christ the Stronger One, we can laugh in the face of the devil with bold defiance. He cannot bear such scorn. He must depart, for our Lord Jesus sits on the throne in our hearts. Then the kingdom of God comes upon us.

This is the Word of the Lord that came to me, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in His + Name. AMEN.

Rev. Christopher R. Gillespie
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church & School - Sherman Center
Random Lake, Wisconsin

Based on a sermon by the sainted Rev. Dr. Norman Nagel.