Third Sunday in Lent

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There is an ancient prayer that a priest recites when he is vesting for the Holy Eucharist Service in the Church. It goes: ‘LORD, you are my portion and my chalice. You are He, who shall restore my inheritance. For you, LORD, are my inheritance.’ The grace of GOD, by the Presence of His Son in the Bread and Cup, is the Church’s inheritance – our ancient land of promise, if you will, is Christ – His Body and Blood. — In the Old Testament, an inheritance was a promise of a blessed future with GOD, sacramentally presented in the form of land. For example: “So GOD created man in His own image; in the image of GOD, He created him; male and female He created them. Then GOD blessed them [with an inheritance], and God said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth … Then the Lord GOD planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed” (Genesis 1.27-28; 2.8). — Land is a grant of blessing from the LORD GOD – an inheritance.  That inheritance communicates provision, sovereignty, and identity. Land is never possessed because a people can claim a natural right to it, or that they deserve it because of ethnicity or virtue. Rather, they possess the land because the GOD of the whole earth and cosmos bequeaths the land to the possessors. Therefore, in all of the Bible and its historical narratives, poetry, and prophesies, “This idea frames the entire conquest narrative of Israel in the Old Testament as an act of the grace of GOD, rather than national or ethnic prowess.”¹ Possession of land in the Bible is an outcome of covenantal blessings from GOD, while removal or exile from the land is a symbol of His judgment and curse. Further, when the land is blighted with famine, pestilence, wild animals, and or invading foreign peoples, the land and its supposed titled possessors are said not to be ‘at rest.’ In essence, when man is in the land without GOD, there is no peace – there is no home. 

As a sign of covenantal blessing to Abraham – GOD being the Benefactor – He swore to the patriarch that he would possess an inheritance; the entirety of the land of Canaan. Upon leaving Egypt and heading north into the lands south of Syria, along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and just east of the Jordan River, all of which his eyes could see, GOD promised as an inheritance to Abraham and his seed yet unborn. We read in Genesis 13 how GOD said to Abraham: “Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are—northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever [as an inheritance] … Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you” (vv. 14, 16-17) — Canaan, through the divine covenantal promise, would become Judea and Samaria – the provision, sovereignty, and identity of Israel in GOD – her portion and her chalice.  

Not to be overlooked is the fact that faithlessness in the covenant of inheritance with GOD, brought expulsion from the land and GOD’s Presence. For example: “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: Cursed is the ground for your sake’ … Therefore, the LORD GOD sent Adam out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So, GOD drove out the man” (Genesis 3.17,23-24). — When Abraham’s descendants walked away from trusting in the LORD and they turned away from His Whole Word and Statutes, then the bequeathment of the land, all of its blessings, and the identity of Israel were at risk. Again, an inheritance was and is a gift of covenantal grace from GOD; it comes not by national identity, nor physical or mental prowess. — As we learn from GOD Himself, who promised to Israel through His mediator Moses: “When you beget children and grandchildren and have grown old in the land, and act corruptly and make a carved image in the form of anything, and do evil in the sight of the LORD your God to provoke Him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land – (your inheritance) – which you crossed over the Jordan to possess; you will not prolong your days in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the LORD your GOD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you” (Deuteronomy 4.25-27).  

Ultimately, in Holy Scripture, an inheritance of blessings and or curses, through land, was a symbol or metaphor for the morality of one’s metaphysical – or better yet – spiritual choices. GOD’s blessings and curses were due to one’s moral ascendency to His Whole Word, by faith; curses came because of the lack of faith in His Whole Word. — As King Solomon the Wise has written: “As righteousness leads [to the inheritance of] life … He who troubles his own house, will inherit the wind” (Proverbs 11.19a, 29a). — In the Bible, “The human soul is pictured as a house that needs a [godly] occupant – and if left empty [of virtue], an undesirable tenant [and harvest] will take up residence therein.”² — “I went by the field of the man devoid of understanding. And there it was, all overgrown with thorns; its surface was covered with nettles; its stone wall was broken down” (Proverbs 24.30-31). If the human mind and heart are lawless and lazy toward the Whole Word of GOD, he shall never come into an inheritance of peace or of rest. True rest – true peace – is the refuge we find under the shadow of the wings of the Almighty. For He is our portion and our chalice – our inheritance – and he who puts his trust in the LORD, “His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the land” (Psalm 25.12).   

In the Holy Bible, the ideal state of ‘Sabbath peace and rest’ is the Seventh Day, when GOD rested from His works after the Creation – the day when all the world and the cosmos were good, perfectly ordered, and free from all chaos. This Seventh Day Rest – this Sabbath – is the Christian aim – it always has been and ever shall be. Yet, during this current age of the Church, we are not yet completely free from our wrestling and skirmishes with chaos; viz., the world, the flesh, and the devil. Not yet. — In this life, even after the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and glorious Ascension of JESUS the Christ, there is a tension that remains- though it is much less intense and somewhat less effective than it was at one point in human history. — Intense and serious is the Church’s struggle for her inheritance and rest in this age, yet it is not what it used to be in JESUS’ day. — C.S. Lewis reminds us that it was once much worse – ‘always winter, but never Christmas’. That was, until the Great Lion of Judah parachuted back into His magical world, invading it like a thief in the night, and affording the ancient prophecy the opportunity of fulfillment: “Wrong will be right, when the Lion comes in sight; At the sound of His roar, sorrows will be no more; When He bares his teeth, we will have spring again.”³ 

In ancient Israel, it was always winter, but never Christmas, until that Day when JESUS the Christ was born. — For on that day, the angels of Heaven brought glad tidings of great joy, that a babe – the pride of GOD ALMIGHTY – wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, would bare His teeth and resurrect spring once again. — And though He was uncredentialed in the world of men, the demons who oppressed GOD’s people with lameness, blindness, and deafness were cast out by His roar. He was anointed of YHWH GOD and went about healing all who were oppressed by the devil. (cf. Acts 10.38) And though “He came to His own; His own did receive Him” (John 1.11).    

The religious leaders said of His roar and fierce teeth: He casteth out devils – making every wrong, right – through Beelzebub, the chief sorrow maker and leading proponent of the ‘winter, but never Christmas’ enthusiasts. (cf. Luke 11.15) “Being stung with envy … the Pharisees called out, as it were, and said, ‘Even if you have expelled from a man a bitter and malicious demon, there, as yet, is no such great matter, nor anything  worthy of admiration.’ What is done up to now is no proof of divine ability, but only the workings of Satan – [a roar that falls on deaf ears, and teeth that cannot even break the skin].'”⁴ — Discerning even their thoughts, the LORD JESUS counters by telling his critics from Jerusalem that He is not casting out Satan by the power of Satan. On its face – nonsensical! — If you throw yourself out of your own house, you will be homeless for the sake of insisting on a home for yourself. You would be a king dethroned in your own kingdom, by your own kingly decree. Again, nonsensical! — Not by Satan, JESUS said, but “I, with the finger of GOD cast out devils,  you know, [as evidenced], that the Kingdom of GOD has come upon (unto) you – [because a new portion and chalice of peace has come unto the liberated]” (Luke 11.20).  

By His retort to His critics, JESUS is trying to help them understand the spiritual reality that was in their midst: the outward and visible sign of the inward and metaphysical thing: peace and rest in GOD through Christ. By the finger of GOD (that is, the Holy Spirit), the reality of Christ’s invading Kingdom had come. The religious leaders in Israel either could not see this because of their spiritual dullness or because they refused to see it. — Demon possession was the evidence of Satan’s reality in Israel, and the religious architecture of Jerusalem did not understand its malignant potency. — Satan’s kingdom rule, of chaos and unrest, was ever-present over many souls in Judea and Samaria, whom he had subjugated to his lordship, in darkness, where it was always winter but never Christmas. He lured many into the shadows of deceit and despair, willingly, and some even came running to him, eyes wide open, to partake in his so-called ‘Turkish delights.’ Others, though, he had to take by force, being a strong man with mighty spiritual weapons at his disposal to bind them – his assault rarely rebuffed. — It is easy to identify Satan’s rule in the heart and soul of man, then and now; you can see it by the dark, metaphysical fruits that they bear. St. Paul details the marks of the soul’s spiritual calamities bound by Satan’s power in Ephesians five from today’s Epistle Lesson. Those baleful marks of darkness are fornication, uncleanness, covetousness, filthiness, foolish talking, crude jesting, deception, vanity, and idolatry. And as Satan knew and relished in, a life imbued and pervaded by these corrupted spiritualities is always excluded from the inheritance of rest in GOD’s kingdom of light.     

And so, JESUS came, as He told the Syrophoenician woman in St. Matthew fifteen, to liberate GOD’s people from the Devil’s bondage and to give them an inheritance of peace in His provision, identity, and sovereignty. And by doing this, not as a parlor trick or in theory alone, JESUS said that the Kingdom of GOD had come to them (to us) in the truest and most real form imaginable – in the spiritual realm of the soul. And when a human soul is liberated from the kingdom of darkness unto the Kingdom of Light in Christ, they go from cutting themselves in the darkest despair of the graveyards of their minds, to walking instead, in the confidence cast by the Light of GOD, expressing the fruits of the Spirit of Truth in goodness, self-control, godliness, and all edifying speech. You see, as St. Cyril of Alexandria put it: “Houses are established [in blessing], when those who belong to them in no way, whatsoever, thwart one another, but on the contrary, agree in will and deed [to live at peace in a common inheritance].”  

Friends, Christianity is ultimately an inheritance of a home in peace and rest with GOD. Christ has brought this about by the Finger of GOD. On the other hand, “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy [GOD’s promised inheritance” (John 10.10a). Christ came into the world to take back what was rightly His baring His teeth to dispel sorrow and roaring loudly to set things right that were wrong. JESUS has come among us to overpower and disarm him who stole, deceived, and killed human souls from the beginning. In the Person of JESUS Christ, GOD has reached forth the Right Hand of His Majesty to defend His Church from our enemies, and to take from the strong man all his armor and all the spiritual weapons that he has used against us; rendering the Devil powerless and ineffective against the Church and her Great Commission. — On this, the Third Sunday in Lent, let us remember, dear brothers and sisters, that we are to reflect Christ’s glory in the world – to assist Him in the ministry of reconciliation and liberation of the spiritually oppressed in this world with GOD’s Whole Word. This is our duty, and this is our call, for by His grace, Christ has delivered us from the strong man. He is the Stronger Man in whose House we dwell. He is our portion and our chalice. In Him is our inheritance. For when Christ bares his teeth and He roars, shaking out His glorious and kingly mane, the strong man flees, and for the Church (you and me), spring has reemerged, and Christmas never ends! Amen.  

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1 BibleHub.org. “Commentary on Ezekiel 47.14.” Accessed 3 March 2026. https://biblehub.com/hebrew/5157.htm.    

2 Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament III – Luke, ed. Just, Arthur A., Oden, Thomas C.,(Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 192.  

3 Lewis, C.S., The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, (London: Collins, 1950), 75.   

4-5 ACCS: NT III – Luke, 193.