I once heard of a preacher in Chicago who advertised three sermons on the devil.  The titles of the sermons were grammatically strange, but guaranteed to get attention: “Who, the devil, he is,” “What, the devil, he does,” and “How, the devil, he does it.” I am not trying to emulate that preacher, but only trying to make some sense out of Jesus’ dialogue with His audience in the 8th chapter of John.  You recall that immediately after Jesus told His listeners that “The truth will make you free,” they protested that they were descendants of Abraham and, therefore, had never been in bondage to anyone.  As we saw in the previous sermon, that was not literally true.  But Jesus was talking about a deeper kind of bondage.  “Everyone who commits sin is the slave to sin,” He said.  Then Jesus accuses them of the most serious sin of all: their inability to see God at work in Him.  In essence, He was saying, “If you are really descendants of Abraham, and Abraham was a man noted for his great faith, how come there is so little of that faith in you?” To be descendants of Abraham was not a matter of bloodline, but of spiritual kinship.  To be a real child of Abraham was to share the faith of Abraham. 

Again, Jesus’ audience became angry at His words.  Their reaction was to make an even greater claim: not only were they children of Abraham, they were children of God!  “We are not illegitimate children,” they said.   Again and again in the Hebrew Bible, what we call the “Old Testament,” the refrain is heard that God is, in a very special way, the Father of His people Israel.  It was God’s command to Moses that he should say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD: Israel is my firstborn son.” (Exod.  4:22) The same theme is repeated over and over again in the Hebrew Bible, culminating in the words found in the last book of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi: “Have we not all one father?  Has not one God created us?” (Mal.  2:10) So, the members of Jesus’ audience claimed God as their divine Parent.  “We,” they said, “are legitimate children.” Now, two things may be going on here.  In the Hebrew Bible the loveliest depiction of the relationship between God and God’s people was the image of husband and wife, lover and beloved.  But, unfortunately, the prophets proclaimed that God’s spouse, God’s people, were not always faithful to that relationship.  In blunt language they accused their people of “whoring after other gods.” Israel had forsaken their one true God and gone after strange gods, which are no gods.  Therefore, the basic sin of God’s special people was that of spiritual adultery, the breaking of their marriage covenant with God.  Jesus’ audience seems to have forgotten that message of their own prophets.  They proudly proclaimed that they were not the children of any such adulterous union; they did not belong to a nation of idolaters, but had always remained faithful to their covenant, had always worshipped the one true God, and Him alone.  That was an astounding claim to make in light of their history as it was recorded in their own sacred Scriptures!  It was akin to the preposterous claim that they had never been “in bondage” to anyone, while Roman soldiers were standing on their very street-corners reminding them of their subservience to Rome.  The fact of the matter is that spiritual adultery had always been a problem for them, as the prophets of the eighth and sixth centuries B.C. had pointed out.  They were making a claim that was simply untrue, and only a people steeped in their own self-righteousness would have even dared to say such a thing.  That is one possible meaning of their words. 

But there may have been a deeper, more sinister, more personal meaning behind their words.  Many early Christians believed in the miraculous birth of our Lord, as it is recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  But Jesus’ enemies quickly twisted the story of the Virgin Birth and spread the malicious slander that Jesus had been an illegitimate child.  They even went so far as to claim that Mary had been unfaithful to Joseph with a Roman soldier, and they even gave that soldier a name.  (See Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus, New York: Doubleday, 1991, Vol I, pp.  222-230) It is just possible that Jesus’ enemies in this dialogue were flinging at Him an insult about His birth.  That is a tactic people often fall back upon when they run out of logical arguments.  They cast aspersions on your paternity. 

Jesus’ answer is that their claim is utterly false.  They are not really children of God, for if they were, they would act like it.  If God were really their Father, He says, then they would have recognized the Son of God who came into the world to reveal the Father.  Here again we find repeated a strain which occurs over and over again in the Fourth gospel: the real test of people is their reaction to Jesus.  His mere presence in our world is judgment upon that world.  If a person sees in Jesus the presence of God at work in the world, then that person is on the way to becoming a true child of God.  But if a person sees nothing whatsoever attractive in Jesus, and seeks only to eliminate Jesus from his or her life as a nuisance, then that person is not really a child of God at all.  In fact, (and now comes the really scary part), such a person is really a child of the devil!  Jesus says strong words: “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

Those are, indeed, strong words.  What are we to make of them?  Is Jesus here stepping out of character and being unkind, or is He merely revealing the true nature of things?  And what are we to make of Jesus’ words about the devil, anyway?  Over the years many of us have abandoned any belief in the devil.  We have been embarrassed by the fact that Jesus seems to have believed in his Satanic majesty.  We have tried to deal with Jesus’ language in several different ways.  One way is to say that Jesus was a child of His age, and shared the popular belief in angels and demons; therefore, we who are of a more “enlightened” age have no need to believe in the devil simply because Jesus did.  Others insist that Jesus actually knew that there was no such personage as the devil, and that He merely went along with popular belief, tailoring His message for less sophisticated hearers.  (This argument sounds strange to me, because I cannot recall anywhere else where our Lord toned down His message just because it might upset His listeners.) Others insist that Jesus was right: there is a Power at work in the universe against which God (and we) must struggle.  In fact, the original meaning of the word “Satan” was the “Adversary” - God’s adversary and ours.  As a professor of mine in seminary said a long time ago, “If there is no devil, there is sure somebody getting His work done for him!”

Some years ago people rejected such language as outworn mythological ways of thinking which have no place in our modern world.  The famous New Testament scholar Rudolph Bultmann even wrote an essay in which he flatly stated that “Now that the forces and laws of nature have been discovered we can no longer believe in spirits, whether good or evil...” He went on: “It is impossible to use electric light and wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of demons and spirits.” (“New Testament and Mythology” in Bartsch, Hans Werner, Ed., Kergyma and Myth: A Theological Debate, London: S.P.C.K., 1957, p.4) To which the only proper response is...  “Oh???” ( One of the best recent critiques of Professor Bultmann’s rather naive world-view which allows no place for miracles, spirits, or demons is to be found in the book by John Meier I cited previously, especially pages 520-521) One need only note that Bultmann’s quaint words were written during the Second World War which was a particularly vivid example of people who used electric lights and wireless and the latest medical and surgical discoveries, and still were caught up in demonic forces which almost destroyed our world. 

We are no longer as optimistic about our world as was Prof.  Bultmann.  One might even say that our age has discovered the demonic.  In our lifetime we have seen decent, law-abiding people, people who would not ordinarily harm a fly, do horrible things to other people.  One could cite the madness of Hitler’s Germany, or screaming mobs shouting obscenities at little children at the door of an elementary school because they do not approve of the mingling of the races, or a supposedly “Christian” nation waging an interminable, illogical, and immoral war in Southeast Asia, or the bombing and shelling of innocent civilians in the Balkans, or modern religious fanatics who, in the name of God, explode terrorist bombs which kill hundreds of innocent people on buses and airplanes, or supposedly God-fearing people blithely assembling weapons of mass destruction which could put an end to life on this planet, or militant groups in our own nation who would foment the kind of hatred which resulted in the tragedy which occurred in Oklahoma City.  We have a tendency to do things in groups which we would never think of doing alone.  We often call ourselves children of God; but all too often we act like children of the devil.  We may no longer throw ink wells at the devil as Martin Luther is reported to have done.  We are far too sophisticated for that.  Yet one of the most sophisticated and civilized nations in the world, a nation which has given the world its greatest music, philosophy, and literature, allowed the extermination of six million of God’s children!  I think that we must frankly face the fact that Jesus and the writers of the New Testament may have known exactly what they were talking about when they said that evil is real, endemic, and pandemic.  The Bible is right on target when it says that there is a mighty contradiction at the very heart of the universe, and in the hearts and lives of all people.  The New Testament is right on target when it pictures a world in which good and evil are locked in mortal combat. 

Part of our problem is that we have faced the question of the devil with highly literal, unimaginative minds.  Of course I am not talking about the devil as depicted on tins of canned meat or in popular paperbacks: the fellow with the red skin, pointed ears, pitchfork and pointed tail.  Such a comical creature might be one of Satan’s favorite tricks to get us to dismiss him out of hand.  The Devil we meet in the Bible is much more subtle.  St.  Paul spoke of the devil and the sinister powers operative in this world in nearly every letter he wrote.  He spoke of “elemental spirits” which hold our world in bondage; the “god of this age” who has blinded people’s minds to reality.  He wrote: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6:12) .  .  .  forces which seem to be very much alive and active in our world; or haven’t you been reading the newspapers lately?  As psychoanalyst Ernest Becker once wrote, “The Demonic is real.  It comes into being when men fail to act individually and willfully, on the basis of their own personal, responsible powers.  The Demonic refers specifically to the creation of power by groups of men who blindly follow authority and convention, power which engulfs them and defeats them.” And so, as Cervantes said in his famous book Don Quixote, we must “give the devil his due.”

But we must not give him more than that!  One of the unfortunate side effects of our modern rediscovery of the devil is that many people seem to have given his Satanic majesty credit for more power than he really has.  “The devil is a liar and the father of lies” said Jesus in John 8, and one of the lies which he has foisted upon us is the notion that he is really in control of this world.  Back in 1973 a fellow named Clyde Nunn wrote an article for the “Center for Policy Research” in which he described what he called “The Rising Credibility of the devil in America.” He compared 1973 with 1964 and noted that during that time the percentage of Americans who were “absolutely certain” that the devil existed increased from 37 to 50%.  In addition, he reported that another 21% in 1973 thought that it was “probably true” that the devil exists.  Then he said, according to that study, that 71% of the American public was convinced - or at least fairly sure -that the devil exists and is alive and well.  And this occurred at precisely the same time that belief in God was declining in our culture as a whole.  In other words, people were becoming increasingly convinced that the devil exists while they were becoming less convinced that God exists!  A strange state of affairs, to say the least.  Indeed, during this time a popular author wrote a best-selling book titled, “Satan is Alive and Well on Planet Earth” in spite of the fact that Jesus said precisely the opposite in Luke 10:18! 

One can understand how such a state of affairs might come to be, for belief in the devil rises when people feel that their lives have somehow gotten out of control.  Our generation has found it easier to believe in the demonic because we have witnessed such immense evils: the twentieth century with its death camps, torture chambers, atomic rubble, fanatical violence, terrorism, mindless brutality, and “ethnic cleansing.” How can these horrors be comprehended without some notion of the radical and endemic nature of evil?  But belief in a power of evil at work in the world does not necessarily mean that you and I must succumb to that power.  As I said, one of the most dangerous lies which the devil has foisted upon us is the notion that he is really in control of this world.  According to Jesus, he is not.  In the 10th chapter of Luke’s Gospel we have the strange story of the seventy disciples whom Jesus sent forth to preach the Good News of the Gospel, returning with joy, and saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” (Luke 10:17) Then it was that Jesus said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.” What he seems to be saying is that the disciples’ victory over the demonic forces was so easy because the ultimate fall of Satan had already occurred.  The New Testament speaks of a gigantic cosmic battle which God had waged against all of the forces of evil in this life and won a victory through the life, death, and resurrection of the Christ.  With the coming of Christ into the world the forces of evil were already on their way out.  The devil had already been defeated, though he still had a lot of life left in him, and the new age had already begun in Jesus.  That is the message of the Gospel.  That is the message of the familiar hymn: “This is my Father’s world, O let me ne’er forget; that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet!” In other words, the old excuse “The devil made me do it” is a cop-out!  Belief in the devil thrives when people feel overwhelmed by the complexity of life; and that certainly describes our kind of world.  But the New Testament message is that the demonic forces which so often hold our world in slavery have already been defeated in principle through Jesus Christ.  When we forget that fact, it then becomes easy for us to succumb to the devil’s lies and the devil’s methods. 

It seems that our era bears a striking resemblance to the first century in this regard.  In Jesus’ day it was easy for people to see the devil’s hand in the daily frustrations of life and the tragic persistence of evil.  It seems that way to us, as well.  One cannot turn on the television without hearing of a new and horrible example of our inhumanity toward one another.  One trouble spot on the earth seems to quiet down, only to be replaced by another, more troubled spot.  It is easy to see the devil’s hand in all of this, and when we do, it gives us an excuse to justify using any means at our disposal to fight against it.  In Jesus’ day there was a whole sect (the “Zealots”) who believed that any and all means were permissible in fighting against the hated Roman occupiers of their land, much like the terrorists in our own day who justify the wanton murder of hundreds of innocent people in the name of a supposedly “higher cause.” “You’ve got to fight fire with fire,” they say.  But the problem with this is that if we fight fire with fire, then everybody gets burned!  If we become a devil in fighting the devil, then the devil has won all the way around!  Jesus rejected this point of view by asking pointedly, “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (Mark 3:23) One of the tragedies of the Middle East is that all sides seem to see themselves as being “on the side of the angels” as we say, while the other side consists of “devils.” If your enemy is the devil, then there can be no possibility of compromise.  Thus the struggle for peace in the Middle East limps along, generation after generation, and Jesus still weeps over Jerusalem (and the world) saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.  “ (Luke 19:42)

How, then, do we deal with the devil?  The Bible gives us, I think, a surprising answer to that question.  As theologian Karl Barth once put it, “The only devil we know is a defeated devil.” The devil may think that he is in control of this world, but Jesus said that the devil is a liar.  Our Lord may have been thinking of the Garden of Eden and the story where the devil promised immortality to our first parents if they disobeyed God.  In that case the serpent promised freedom and happiness, but they discovered that the devil is a liar.  He promises, but he doesn’t deliver.  Or, Jesus may have been thinking of His own time of temptation in the wilderness when the devil took Him to the top of a high mountain and showed Him all of the kingdoms of the world, and promised to give them to Him if He would only adopt the devil’s methods...as though they were his to give!  I admit that sometimes they look as though they belonged to the devil, but Jesus knew better.  He said, “Away with you, Satan!  for it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ “ (Matt.  4:10)

How do you deal with the devil?  As an already defeated foe!  Luther said that the best weapon against the devil is to laugh at him; he is so vain that he cannot stand it!  Jesus said that the devil is a liar and murderer and the way of lies and murder is on the way out.  The Gospel message is that Jesus Christ came into the world to defeat all of the evil powers of the world, and it proclaims that in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ God has dealt a mortal blow to all of God’s foes.  In fact, for the first thousand years of Christendom, that was the prevailing view of what happened on Calvary.  They believed that in Christ, God had entered into battle with the powers of evil, God has taken the worst that the world could do, met it head-on, and won the victory over it!  Do you recall the words of Jesus as He went to the cross: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:31-32) We therefore should deal with the devil as the liar he is, as a power whose nerve has been cut, and of whom, we need not be afraid.  The evil is defeated.  He’s still got a lot of “kick” left in him, but he is defeated, and he knows it.  Satan is not Lord.  Jesus Christ is Lord.  That is what makes the Gospel “Good News.”

I came across the story of a man who was brought into court one day, charged with running a gambling device known as a slot machine.  The man chose to defend himself, not subscribing to the old adage that a man who has himself for an attorney has a fool for a client; and he didn’t do a half-bad job of it.  When the prosecutor had finished presenting his case, the defendant’s turn came.  “Judge,” he said, “I am charged with operating a gambling device.  Will you tell me what gambling is?” “Gambling,” the judge said, “is risking something of value on an event the outcome of which is uncertain.” “Well, judge,” said the defendant, “according to your definition, I am not guilty.  When a person puts a coin into my machine, the outcome of that event is not in the least uncertain.  The inside mechanism is adjusted so that no one can win.  The thing is set against the person.  He or she is bound to lose.  Thus, it is not gambling.” And the man won his case! 

The story is relevant to our struggle with evil in this world.  Thanks to Jesus Christ, there is no real gamble in it; the final outcome is not in the least uncertain.  “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning,” He said.  One of Satan’s biggest lies is to convince us that he is in control of this world.  He is not.  God is.  The authentic attitude of the Christian facing the rampant evils of this, and every other age, should be that of Martin Luther over four centuries ago, when he wrote the stirring words:

And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear for God has willed His truth to triumph through us;
The prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him,
His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure;
One little word shall fell him! 

That little word is Jesus.  For His is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever!  Amen!