Jesus Came to Steal Back from Satan all his Brothers and Sisters!

Divorce hurts. Divorce hurts, even when it is done for good reasons and to protect from further harm. Divorce hurts the two people once together and if there are children involved, it hurts them too. One way to define divorce is the rejection of a once common path between two individuals. In other words, divorce is when two people are no longer in harmony. Divorce is rejection by one or two individuals to remain a family.

A long time ago, your family was hurt by the rejection of a common path. It was not a divorce that ruined a common path for your family, but the rejection of God the Father. When Satan rebelled against God, he chose to take a different path. His choice was the definition of evil; to go against God, the Creator’s will. Satan did not stop at defying God, but also went to attack God’s family. Satan went to Adam and Eve to make them doubt God and reject his will for their life. Adam and Eve’s decision to reject God also sent them on a path different than what God wanted, a path of evil, sin, and death. When the weight of Adam and Eve’s decision to reject God and ruin the harmony between them hit them, they were afraid. They were so afraid that they tried to hide from God, but God went to them. God asked them why they were hiding, which turned into a blame game where Adam blamed Eve, then Eve blamed Satan. God’s response to their fear and attempts to pass the blame is recorded in Genesis 3, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. 15 And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” God promised to crush the devil and save Adam, Eve, and all people from their fall into sin. We would all be saved through one offspring, one male offspring born of a woman named Mary, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the answer to the broken family in the garden of Eden, your broken family, as a descendant of Adam and Eve.

Jesus was not recognized by most as the one to repair the damage between God and man. In chapter three of the gospel of Mark, we read that the teachers of the law who were very familiar with all that happened in the book of Genesis and with Adam and Eve rejected Jesus as the promised Savior. We even read that Jesus’ own family did not understand what he was doing. Mark’s gospel was written so that there would be no doubt that Jesus was the one who came to repair the damage between God and man. Mark was written to Christians and people in Rome and Italy. This gospel focused on Jesus’ power as it was written to a large Gentile audience, which is different from Matthew’s gospel for example, which was written to a much larger Jewish population and included details that would be understood by people familiar with the Old Testament. Jesus’ great power and teachings drew large crowds, which also brought great jealously and opposition.

Rejection of Jesus comes out clearly in Mark 3 as Jesus preached in parables to the teachers of the law. It was not time for Jesus to be handed over to death, so he spoke truths with illustrations. Jesus was facing serious accusations from the teachers of the law and even his family. The teachers of the law accused him of demon possession and using the power of Satan to drive out demons, while his family wanted to reel in their eccentric brother and keep him from over working himself and his disciples. Jesus revealed how both groups were wrong with the parables saying, 23 … “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come.” Jesus’ point rested on simple logic. If he was from Satan, then he would be encouraging demon possession, not driving them away. Therefore, Jesus was not from Satan, but fiercely opposed him as he went on to say, 27 “In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.” Jesus had come to tie up Satan and plunder the world of those lost to rejection of God, unbelief, sin, death, and hell. Jesus took away the devil’s power and was in the world to take back people into his family to be with him forever in heaven. He went on to show how serious doubting his mission was, 28 “Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” The teachers of the law and others rejected Jesus as the Savior, but there was still time for them to turn to faith. Jesus warned though of the unforgivable sin, which would be to reject the Holy Spirit and reject faith. There is no forgiveness for rejecting faith because rejecting faith is a rejection of all of God’s forgiveness.

Satan wants you to be part of his family. Living as a member of the devil’s family sounds foolish at first, but remember the devil is the father of lies. You have often wondered how Adam and Eve could have thrown away harmony with God for hell. The devil is crafty, he keeps people in his family and works to pull you back with this promise, “You can do whatever you want.” Satan’s promise is to let you do whatever feels good, makes you popular, powerful, admired, accepted, etc. The small problem with this promise is that everyone’s idea of what feels good is different, so the world you live in is full of conflict and disharmony. The big problem with living as a member of Satan’s family is that you are not in harmony with God, which leads to an eternity in hell experiencing punishment for rejecting your loving Creator, Savior and Giver of Faith. Being in God’s family is clearly better than being in Satan’s, but the difficulty for you as a believer, a brother or sister of Christ, is that so many around you do not believe, and are lost in Satan’s clutches. Your life as a believer is more difficult than others because Satan and the unbelieving world is against you.

Your Father in heaven has an answer for your troubles living as one of his children among so many who reject him. Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4, 17 “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” God has given you hope in something good and real after living in the broken world. There is no hope for those who reject God because hope in anything else is hope in something that does not exist; hope in something other than the one true God is hope headed for hell. You have hope in someone real, your brother, who gave his life to save you as we hear in John 3, 17 “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” You have been saved by Jesus. God treated Jesus as someone lost to sin and caught in the devils lies by putting him to death on the cross. Through his death, he saved you from hell, and through his resurrection, you have the guarantee of eternal life with him in heaven.

Jesus was clear about who is his brother or sister. Jesus made it clear who would be part of his family in heaven at the end of our reading from Mark 3. As Jesus was preaching, 32 … “they told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’ 33 ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked. 34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’” Jesus called those who do God’s will his family. The misconception we can fall into here is understanding God’s will primarily as following God’s commands to be saved. Yet, that cannot be what Jesus means since we read in Galatians 3, 10 “For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’” If doing God’s will means following God’s law, then none of us would be saved or have any hope. And we know God wants all to be saved according to 1 Timothy 2, 3 “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” In John 8, we hear the truth, 31 … Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.’” And in Matthew 4, we hear the basic teaching of Jesus, 17 “From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” The brother or sister of Jesus repents. Following God’s will in your life is to admit before God and all people that you have sinned, and that you trust in Jesus’ for the forgiveness of all your sins and his gift of eternal life in heaven.

Divorce hurts. Divorce hurts because it is two people who were once in harmony going down the same path rejecting one another to go down different paths, away from one another. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve followed the devil on a path away from God, but God would not let them be lost. God promised he would restore harmony again and bring his people back into his family. Jesus, your brother saved you and the Holy Spirit has brought you back into the family of God by faith. You are Jesus’ brothers and sisters because Jesus came to steal you back from Satan to live with him in heaven forever. Amen.