Romans 10:1-10 • Matthew 8:28-9:1
Glory to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We read this morning from the story of the Gadarene demoniacs in the Gospel of Saint Matthew.
There is one line in this account that stands out to me: The demons say to Christ, “What have we to do with you, Jesus, Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?”
Before the time! The demons know their future and their destiny.
In another place, the Lord says, “I beheld Satan fall from heaven like lightning” (Luke 10:18). And Saint John sees, “the great dragon was cast out. That ancient serpent called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him… Woe to those who dwell on earth, for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has but a short time” (Revelation 12:9,12).
We confess in the Creed, Christ “shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom shall have no end.”
“Then shall he say unto them on his left hand: Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).
Everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.
…And not for you.
Before creation began, before you were conceived in the womb, before you were baptized into Christ, God the Father knew you and called you by name. “For whom God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,” (Romans 8:29) who is patient, who is kind, who is Love.
“And you, who were dead in trespasses and sins, God has made you alive… together with Christ. And raised us up together and made us sit together with him, in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:1-7).
“Brethren, I do not count myself to have [already] apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are ahead, I press on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).
You have a destiny. You have a purpose. A high calling from the God of creation.
Do you know what humility is? Humility is not fixating on how bad or unworthy you are. When we are crippled by shame and self-doubt, or when we believe we deserve to fail and suffer, we are not being humble. Who is our attention on? Ourselves.
The humble person isn’t thinking about himself. He’s not moved to pride or despair, because he knows that God is his Judge and his Savior. Look at the icon of Christ: He holds a book, and out of it “he shall judge the living and the dead.” And at the same time with his other hand he is blessing you.
That’s why at confession, we stand before the scriptures and the cross: By the law of the Kingdom, Christ judges your actions – and by the cross, Christ carries your sins away to hell, and offers you his mercy. The Gospel and cross are there to draw your attention away from your list of failures and fix your eyes on the high call of God. To unite your repentance to confident hope.
Apostle James advises us, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he will lift you up” (James 4:6,10).
So let’s humble ourselves and think of ourselves as God thinks of us: “What is man, that thou dost take thought of him? Or the son of man, that thou dost care for him? Thou hast made man a little lower than the angels; and crowned him with glory and honor to rule over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet” (Psalm 8:5-6).
“Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, then how shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?” (Hebrews 2:1-3).
Here’s where we come to it: God has so thoroughly stacked the cards in our favor that the only way we can fail to enter into glory is through neglect.
St James again: “You have not because you ask not… Ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed… A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 4:2; 1:5-8).
“He that wavers.”
“Waver” means to hesitate between two paths. Like a car that can’t decide whether to take a highway exit or not – Turn? Go straight!? and finally plows right up the grass median and is wrecked between both lanes!
“One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may abide in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple” (Psalm 26:4 LXX)
To abide, to remain and live in a place, is the opposite of visiting. The place you abide is where you have made your home. Unless you’re a nun, you probably can’t physically live here in the temple. So you and I need to practice the presence of God with intention. While we are driving, working, caring for kids, serving customers, chatting with one another, we need to intentionally live and abide and dwell in the shadow of the Almighty.
The Lord said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing. Abide in me, as I also abide in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must abide in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me.” (John 15:5,4).
There is a school of thought in American Christianity that asserts salvation is by grace, alone. God must do everything, and any effort on our part is the dreaded “works righteousness.” O no! How awful!
But neither scripture nor historical Christianity know anything about a blessing on passive inaction. O God, bless my lack of effort!
The Lord doesn’t command us to wait and see if fruit emerges: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) Instead, he commands us to act with intention and abide in him.
Grace is the action of the Holy Spirit. Grace acts in us for our transformation when it is united to cooperation. Everything is cooler in Greek, so: Synergy. Experience says that in your struggles, the Lord empowers you to will and to do according to his good pleasure.
Action means you’re active. Passions mean you’re passive.
When you’re passive, then things are being done to you. Thoughts are coming and using your brain; familiar sins are playing out without your consciously choosing them, because they’ve become normal for you.
Every sinful word or deed is synergy with demons, and we become more like them. Here is how the Gadarene man likely got started. By synergy with demons, he became demonized.
And it’s the same when every good word or deed is synergy with God, and we become more like him: We become divinized. We call that theosis. Salvation.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
You know what a yoke is? It’s put across the shoulders of two oxen and they pull the plow together. When the Lord tells us to take up and carry the cross, it’s a way he has already walked, and he intends to walk it with us, carrying the load together with us.
When you read the lives of some of the saints, with miracles happening around them, you recognize that they are living with one foot in the resurrection. They’ve walked that way of the cross toward the resurrection, and they’ve begun, here and now in this life, to participate in the life of the age to come.
So we pray, daily, “Let thy kingdom come! Let thy will be done here and now as it is in heaven.”
If you go to Costco, you might get there planning to buy Tylenol or broccoli, sensible things. But before you even get in the door, you can smell the tollhouse cookies baking. You didn’t even want sweets, and now it’s all you want! Maybe you heroically resist, but for the next few days, the rich, semi-sweet aroma still follows you around and you are still hungry for chocolate chip cookies. The struggle is real!
That’s an acquired hunger. You weren’t hungry when you left for the store – you might have just had lunch. But now, exposure has make you desire it.
If you have a daily habit of reading the four Gospels, the firsthand eyewitness accounts of Christ, then you know how that reading builds in you a hunger and thirst for righteousness. You start measuring your choices and preferences against what you are starting to see in Christ. Are you reading a chapter a day from the Gospels? Keep it up! If you’re not really a reader, do a page a day. Like your daily vitamins, it only takes a minute or two and it makes the difference between doing your dry and grudging duty to God, and being shaped and conformed to Christ.
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 36:4 LXX). Not that he will give you everything you want, but he will start making you love what he loves and hate what he hates. The desires of your heart need not only to be redirected but increased.
C.S. Lewis writes, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” (in The Weight of Glory).
So, may God grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, unto ages of ages. Amen (Ephesians 3:16-21).
