Third Sunday in Lent

^†

Lent, believe it or not, is halfway complete. How has your Lent been going? How are you doing in your inner man/woman? – Has your journey to this point, with JESUS, been fruitful? Blessed? — Lent is a holy time for Christians, as we fast, pray, and pay special attention to our walk with GOD in Christ, so that we might approach the Holy Cross of JESUS on Good Friday, sensing the great price He paid for our spiritual liberty by His death and sacrifice. We take the season of Lent, the season of spiritual preparation, seriously, so that we might walk with JESUS to Jerusalem, without the distractions of the world’s allure for shiny objects, the flesh’s ache for attentions, and the devil’s attempts to confuse and confound our steadfast obedience to GOD. – We began our Lenten journey together by singing a beautiful 6^th century hymn, with the following verse: “The glory of these forty days, we celebrate with songs of praise. – Grant us LORD like [the saints] to be, full oft’ in fast and prayer with Thee; our spirits strengthened with Thy grace, giving us Thy joy in seeing Thy face.”1 

Is that what a holy Lent is – to be often in fasting and prayer, focused on GOD, that we might be strengthened in seeing His face? Seeing GOD’s precious face… Well, if it is, what does it mean, to see GOD’s face? – In Exodus 33, GOD had called Moses to the top of Mt. Sinai, that He might give to Moses the Ten Commandments. While there, Moses prayed that he might have a greater understanding and experience of GOD’s majesty. He made this request by asking if he could see GOD’s face. – He said to the LORD, simply: “Please, show me your glory” (Exodus 33,18). – GOD promised to be with Israel, and Moses, leading GOD’s chosen people forward to the Promised Land. And Moses, believed that their protection depended upon GOD’s Presence to keep them safe from all the peoples on the face of the earth, if only he could see the face of the King of all the Earth. – Like Israel and Moses, today, we know, in this season of Lent, that we too can be kept safe from the powers of all our enemies, if we will seek GOD’s face.   

Why should we seek GOD’s face?  – It is not easy to walk with the LORD through this world without His protection – without the presence of His glory in our lives – without seeing His Face. – In fact, this is the theme of our Collect prayer today, on Lent III Sunday: “Almighty GOD, look upon the hearty desires of Thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of Thy Majesty, to be our defense against all our enemies.”2  — In a special way throughout Lent – through prayer, fasting, and study – we have been on a journey to experience GOD’s glorious majesty on the Cross; trusting Him for divine protection. Starting on Ash Wednesday and continuing up through today, we have been able to see in Holy Scripture, and I pray, in your lives, what the ALMIGHTY can do. “He prosper thy way and defend thee. Surely His goodness and mercy shall ever attend thee; ponder anew, what they ALMIGHTY can do; Who with His love doth befriend thee.”3 If only we will continue to seek His face. 

As you might suspect, we have a role to play in this relationship with GOD, though He prospers and attends us freely. For our part, we must pursue Him, like Moses did, imploring the LORD: ‘show me Thy glory.’ – This pursuit to see GOD’s face, and to experience His glorious majesty anew, began in earnest on the first day of Lent, when we prayed that GOD would make in us, new and contrite hearts, that we might worthily lament our sins and acknowledge our wretched tendency for sin. – In all times and in all places, but particularly in the Lenten season, when we take this pilgrimage to the Cross to see the Divine Love at work in selfless sacrifice, we must trust GOD to ‘clean our house’ from all sin and wretchedness. by giving us a heart that is contrite, lowly, and humble – a heart that finds the dirt and clutter of sin, as the Prayer Book says, ‘grievous and intolerable’.  

GOD must be the One that does this work of purifying and cleansing, and this is why we must seek His Face.  We must invite Him into the home of our hearts, our minds – our very souls – to drive out all evil and godless influence. We must seek GOD’s Face, to experience His glorious majesty in our lives; to be our defense against all our enemies – particularly, the ‘strong man’.     

JESUS’ lesson from St. Luke 11 about defense again the ‘strong man’ was meant for Israel as a sign of prophetic warning as to what could happen to the nation, if they rejected, (which they did), their Messiah. The proof is in the historical events of A.D. 70. Yet, for the Church today, we can learn our LORD’s lesson individually, as well as corporately. So let us turn our focus to the text. 

The scene opens when JESUS heals a man of his muteness, casting out the demon from him that was causing his speechlessness. We would be careful to note that JESUS often acted in the micro, to show signs of the power and intention of His Kingdom in the macro. By His miracle of ‘casting out the demon of muteness’, JESUS showed the people of Israel that GOD cares for their words, desiring that they would ever have ‘His praise in the mouths, calling unto one another to praise the LORD, magnifying His Name together.’ (cf. Ps. 34, 1 & 3). — Like with Adam, GOD desires to walk and talk with His children in the cool of the day. Thus, JESUS came into the world to reconcile the world unto Himself, so that men and women might again, talk with their Father. (cf. 2 Cor. 5,19) 

And yet, out of jealousy and spite, the religious leaders, and some of the people, resisted GOD’s Kingdom reconciliation, by opposing JESUS’ message. They said of Him: “He casts out demons by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons” (Luke 11,15). – JESUS took offense at their attempts to assassinate His character by quickly dismissing their charges, by saying that if He was casting out demons by the power of Satan, (which is who they meant when they said ‘Beelzebub’), then Satan would be dividing, and ultimately destroying, his own kingdom. If JESUS was an agent of Beelzebub, the LORD argued, then He would be expelling his own agents from dwelling in the hearts and minds of people. He would be, in other words, working against Himself. This would be antithetical, so JESUS said, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and a house divided against a house, falls. If Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?” (Luke 11,17-18). 

It was apparent that those who resisted JESUS were not seeking the Face of GOD, and in fact, were steadfastly opposed to His Presence in their lives. – These people were like Egypt’s Pharaoh in the time of Moses, who seeing the wonders of the miracles and plagues that GOD did through Moses, remained obstinate and steadfastly opposed to GOD’s Kingdom rule. These two incidents, the plagues of Egypt, and the healing of this mute man, are meant to break the stubbornness of those who hardened their hearts against GOD. Both the people in Israel in Christ’s day, and Pharoah in Moses’ day, hardened their hearts and did not heed GOD. They hardened their hearts, even though JESUS and Pharoah’s magicians both said, that the miracles being displayed were by ‘the Finger of GOD,’ (Ex. 8,19 & Lk. 11,20), making it clear that the Kingdom of GOD had come among them, and was being made known to them with power and authority. 

Another parallel exists between these two scenes, Moses with Pharoah, and JESUS with His adversaries, in how GOD deals with the ‘strong man’ that would oppress His people. In essence, Israel had been made captive in Egypt by a ‘strong man’, that the Bible says did not know Israel or Israel’s GOD. (cf. Ex. 1,8) This Pharoah had put out of his mind all the good things that YHWH GOD had done for Egypt, and the whole world, through Joseph, during the seven-year famine. As such, he “set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens” (Exodus 1,11). — The same burdensomeness was inflicted upon GOD’s people in JESUS’s day, not by Pharoah, but by Satan. We read many times in the Gospels, where Israel’s people were demon oppressed, and they suffered in body, soul, and mind by the cruel subjugation of demonic taskmasters. And like Moses who liberated Israel from Egypt’s bondage by overpowering and rendering powerless the Pharoah by ‘the finger of GOD’, so JESUS came to earth and “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for GOD was with Him” (Acts 10,38). – As a result of JESUS Incarnation and ministry in Israel, He was rendering Satan powerless and vulnerable, like a warrior without his armor. – St. Paul writes of JESUS work and victory over Satan, bringing His Kingdom in, through invasion – JESUS “disarmed principalities and powers, making a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them” (Colossians 2,15) by His ministry, Passion, and ultimately His Cross. – JESUS was making visible what He was accomplishing in the spiritual realm when He liberated people from demon oppression, overpowering the devil, rendering Him powerless, and taking back from him, all the poor souls he and his minions were oppressing. 

Now, this emancipation from Satan’s possession, JESUS warns, is not something to take casually. – Christians’ warfare against the principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age, and the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places, is kinetic and not, somehow, suspended. We are in an active spiritual war zone! — In fact, as the Book of Revelation says, after JESUS’ victory over Satan on the Cross, the devil was cast down from Heaven to earth, full of “great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time” before the final judgment cometh (Revelation 12,12). Thus, JESUS makes it plain that His deliverance from Satan’s oppression of body, soul, or mind, is not a once-and-done act of His Grace. Whether the universal Church, the local, visible Body, or individual believers, JESUS’ warning must be taken seriously. The LORD said: “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places (lifeless and absent of GOD’s Presence and blessing), seeking rest; and finding none, [he returns to his previous, human home]. And when he comes, he finds it swept and put in order [by the finger of GOD]. Then, [if that human soul is left unguarded], he takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter the [human soul] and the last state of the man is worse than the first” (St. Luke 11, 24-26). 

The lesson is plain and simple. – If we seek the face the LORD GOD, we must be careful to keep our house, our abode, our souls, continually swept, clean, AND heavily guarded. It is not enough for us to have a conversion experience alone, where we come to faith and put our trust in the LORD JESUS Christ. We must also seek GOD’s face continuously, through study, prayer, and fasting – asking Him to ‘look upon the hearty desires of His humble servants, (you and me), and to be our defense against all our spiritual enemies – especially those who seek a clean and swept soul to re-occupy with seven of their vilest friends in tow. 

The easiest way for us to prevent a reoccupation by the dark forces of the evil one is to heed St. Paul’s encouragement to the Ephesians. There he says, “But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once be named among you, as becometh saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not convenient, but rather giving of thanks to GOD” (Ephesians 5,3-4). This, restraint and praise, is not only a cleansing, but also a barrier of protection. – Our call this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Lent, is to continue to seek GOD’s face and to implore GOD for His glorious majesty in our lives; especially as we journey towards the Cross … inevitable and necessary. 

“Now, perhaps if you were not just politely listening to a preacher in a pulpit, you would say to me ‘All that is obvious enough, (father), but easier said than done. In the world of practical affairs, moral problems are not simple, not black and white, but a thousand different shades of gray; how do I know what the Word of God says about this or that particular situation?’ … Well, certainly, I dare not pretend that it is easy. I do not find it so, and I don’t suppose that you do, either. But at the same time, we do know something of what the Word of God demands of us. Let’s start with the little bit that we do know, and let’s not make the complexities of our problems an excuse for doing nothing. Let’s start with the little that we do know, in humility and obedience, and trust God for the rest.”4 Let us keep our houses clean – let us seek the face of the ALMIGHTY – let us continue in our steadfast journey unto Calvary, to see and be overwhelmed by the grace of GOD in JESUS Christ on the Cross, who gave His all, that we might not be worser off than when we first began our journey of faith. Brothers and sisters of St. Mark, let us ‘taste, and see, how gracious the Lord is: for blessed is the man that trusteth in him” (Psalm 34, 8). For the man, woman, and child that seeks the LORD’s face, who have been touched by ‘the finger of GOD,’ fearing the LORD – they shall lack nothing.  

1 Book of Common Praise. “The glory of these forty days”, (Newport Beach: Anglican House Media Ministry, Inc., 2017), 95. 

2 1928 Book of Common Prayer, 128. 

3 Book of Common Praise, 349. 

4 Crouse, Dr. Robert. LectionaryCentral.com. “The Price of Liberation”. Accessed 21 March 2025. https://www.lectionarycentral.com/lent3/Crouse1.html