Judica 2025

in

When God made our first parents, He made them to be the crown of His creation. He made them in His image.

This is the source of Satan’s rebellion. He envied man’s place. He despised that material creatures— he despised that a man and woman of flesh and bone—would be so exalted, would be God’s image-bearers in the cosmos. That—man’s place in God’s creation—is the point of attack.

Temptation to sin therefore is not a temptation to do this or that bad thing. The demonic temptation is for “man to cease being man” [Weinrich]. The goal of temptation is to destroy man….

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Judica Sermon 2022

in

“You are of your father the devil.” If we want the comforting words of Jesus to apply to us, we must first wrestle with the confrontational ones. “You are of your father the devil.” The words address the entire human race.

The first three Sundays of Lent show Jesus in combat with the devil, first in the wilderness temptations, then in two exorcisms. The fourth Sunday is a kind of interlude, with rose vestments and food in the wilderness. Now the fifth Sunday of Lent holds up a mirror and says, “If you want to know where the devil is busy, take a look at your own life.” …

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Judica 2019

in

“The lie is the death of man, his temporal and his eternal death.” Thus wrote Hermann Sasse in 1933. Sasse was among the greatest theologians of the 20th century, and vigorously opposed the Nazis, a dangerous position for a German pastor to take. But Sasse saw the lies of the National Socialists as part of a larger lie – a single great demonic lie that holds the world captive.

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