Courageous Conversations, Friday

Transcript (edited for readability).

The first lesson, from the first book of Moses called Genesis, beginning with the 26th verse.

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him. Male and female he created them.

O Lord, have mercy on us. Thanks be to God.

The second lesson, from the 12th chapter of the Revelation of Jesus given to St. John, beginning with the 7th verse.

Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who was called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ have come. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short."

And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood, but the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon became furious with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.

Amen.

O Lord, have mercy on us. Thanks be to God.

Common responsory, page 230. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth. Incline my heart to your testimonies, that I may walk in your truth. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Saints of God, we know what God thought about the work of the sixth day, when he was there in the dirt crafting Adam, and then pulling out of his side the rib and fashioning Eve, and putting them together as one flesh. In fact — and I don't know, this might be because my son was married last summer and my daughter's getting married this winter, so I've been thinking a lot about getting ready for marriages — it turns out that the whole first six days of creation were just basically God getting ready for a wedding. He was hanging the lights. He was preparing the venue. He was preparing the meal, and everything. And then the sixth day comes, the wedding, and the Lord looks at it and says, it's good. In fact, remember what the Lord says? It's very good.

But what do you think the devil thought about the work that the Lord did that day? What do you think he was doing? What was going on in his own mind as he watched the Lord scoop up this clay and build this man, and breathe into him, and then put him to sleep and take this rib and craft it into this woman, and as the Lord gave them to one another — what do you think?

Now I don't know if at this point the devil is already fallen or not, so let's just pretend like he's not. But he has to be sitting there looking at Adam and Eve and saying, well, they're not complete without one another. They have to eat. They're going to have children. I wonder what the devil thought about that — that there is more of them. They're made out of the dust, out of the dirt. They're crafted in this humility. And then, can you imagine the astonishment when the Lord turns to Adam and Eve — not to the devil, to Lucifer, I suppose, at the time — and says to them, dominion is given to you. All the old church fathers thought this is what provoked the devil to jealousy and caused him to fall.

There's something marvelous in the Lord's humble creating of Adam and Eve, and the Lord's creating of the gift of marriage, and the Lord's giving of dominion to our first parents, and the Lord's command, "be fruitful and multiply," that the Lord loves so much, but the devil hates. That's why I don't think it's ironic that when the devil succeeds in tempting Adam and Eve into eating from this fruit that was forbidden, and they recognize that they're naked and they're hiding from the Lord in the bushes and they're afraid of the Lord — this first spiritual death — the Lord comes to them and gives them the gospel, preaching to the devil about the seed. It's not accidental that the thing that belongs to Adam and Eve, the seed and the womb and the gift of children, is what the Lord says will overcome the devil. He says to them, "I will put enmity between your seed and her seed. He will crush your head; you will crush his heel."

And I don't wonder if the Lord is rubbing it in when he says to the devil, "your seed" — the devil has to say, I don't have any seed. I can't have babies. And from that moment on, the devil has been hell-bent on destroying the babies — killing them with Pharaoh's decree in Egypt, killing them with Herod's decree in Bethlehem, killing them in every possible way. And we see it in our own day, as we will consider today and tomorrow, the brokenness of this world and the seeming assaults of the world on the Lord's gift of family. And it seems so overwhelming and so confusing, unless we put it in simplicity: the devil is doing what the devil has always done. He's sitting there, like it said in Revelation 12, right before our text, waiting for the woman to give birth so that he can devour the child. And he can devour the children in a number of different ways — by divorce, by sexual immorality, by abortion, by destroying people's fertility through hormone treatment or whatever — it's all the same idea. The devil hates babies.

I'm not quite done. Especially one. Can you imagine, if the devil was astonished watching the Lord get his hands dirty on day six, how astonished he must have been watching God take on our own human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. How astonished he must have been when the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin that she would be with child. How astonished he was when the star showed, so that they knew that the Messiah was born, and that now God himself is a child — a child for us, a child for you, a child who could grow up into a man, who could have hands to nail to a cross and blood to spill, so that you would be saved, so that he could have a heel that could be crushed, and with that heel could crush the head of the serpent. And that victory over sin, death, and the devil is yours.

There are a lot of incredibly difficult things for us to think about in this time, in this day, in this age, but we need to know this above all: that victory of the Lord Jesus belongs to you. It says it like this in Revelation 12, that the child was caught up into heaven. The devil failed to devour the child, and he was caught up — the one who would rule the world with a rod of iron — and the devil is thrown out of heaven, because no longer can he do his accusing, sataning work. There's nothing left to accuse. There's not a single thing that you've done that is not covered by the blood of Jesus and acquitted in the heavenly courtroom.

So now the devil comes down to you, but listen to what the text says. It says that you overcome him — not resist him, not stand against him, but that you in fact overcome him — with three things: with a word, and with the blood, and with your not being afraid to die. And when you, dear saints, have this — when you have the word of God that tells you that you're God's created, redeemed, sanctified person, and when you have the blood, which washes your conscience and gives you the confidence to stand before him, and when you know that to live is Christ, and so to die is gain — you are not only resisting the devil and all of his fighting and growling and roaring, you're actually overcoming him. And then we rejoice.

It looks like the devil is winning. But that's because the Lord has hidden for a while his victory for us. He's left us to believe it by faith, to walk by faith and not by sight. But you have these things — the word, the not loving your life unto death — and by these the ancient serpent continues to be cast down. So we rejoice. The devil hates babies. But God loves them. God became one. And that baby grew up to die and to rise for you. He loves you. And this is your confidence and your peace, in the name of Jesus. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.