Howard C. Wilkinson - "On Casting out Satan" (January 28, 1962)

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-	The sermon today is on casting out Satan.	0:23
	The text is Mark 3:23.	0:27
	It is a question from Jesus Christ.	0:32
	How can Satan cast out Satan?	0:36
	One of the favorite preaching techniques of our Lord	0:42
	is the asking of a question	0:46
	which compels his hearers	0:49
	to fix their attention upon the impossibility	0:52
	of something which they are doing,	0:55
	or upon the error of their ways.	0:58
	Jesus had the ability to ask a question in such fashion	1:02
	that the hearer would be almost compelled	1:07
	to give himself the correct answer,	1:10
	without the answer being given verbally by Jesus Christ.	1:13
	For example, his question, "What shall it profit a man	1:19
	if he gained the whole world and lose his own soul?"	1:23
	fairly demands the answer, "It shall profit him nothing."	1:29
	His question, "Why call ye me Lord, Lord,	1:36
	and do not the things which I say?"	1:41
	has a built-in, obvious answer.	1:45
	It shall profit him nothing under these circumstances.	1:50
	Nothing is gained by it.	1:55
	And so Jesus turned to his critics	1:59
	on the occasion out of which our text comes this morning.	2:04
	These critics were seeking to discredit him	2:09
	for curing an insane man.	2:13
	They were saying that he cast out the insanity or the devils	2:16
	within this unfortunate man	2:23
	by using the power of Beelzebub,	2:26
	the alleged prince of devils,	2:28
	and it was at this point that Jesus taxed their minds	2:31
	with this question.	2:34
	How can Satan cast out Satan?	2:37
	It will be profitable for you and me	2:46
	to face this question ourselves this morning.	2:48
	Now, of course, this is not the time to labor	2:53
	the question of whether Satan	2:56
	is some kind of personal potentate	2:59
	which is the source of unlimited evil,	3:02
	who dwells in the cosmic basement	3:05
	and thinks up all kinds of damnation	3:08
	for as many people as he possibly can contrive it for.	3:10
	Some Christians have believed one thing about this,	3:15
	and other Christians have believed something else about it.	3:17
	It is worth noting in passing, however,	3:21
	that many, many Christians	3:23
	have derived their conception of Satan	3:26
	more from Dante and Milton	3:29
	than they have from the holy scriptures.	3:31
	In his "Paradise Lost," Milton pictures Satan	3:34
	as a crafty, hardheaded, devilish kind of potentate,	3:38
	who is so proud that he would rather rule in hell	3:44
	than to serve in heaven.	3:47
	But whatever your conception	3:52
	of the personalistic Satan may be,	3:54
	people who have the personalistic view of Satan	4:00
	agree with other Christians	4:02
	that the only form in which we mortal humans	4:04
	actually meet Satan	4:08
	is in certain qualities of character	4:09
	in individual human beings whom we know and meet,	4:12
	or in certain unfortunate practices in society	4:15
	which have a depressing effect upon mankind.	4:19
	That much seems to be quite clear.	4:23
	This is the only form in which we meet Satan.	4:26
	Even Martin Luther, who traditionally on one occasion	4:31
	threw a bottle of ink at Satan,	4:35
	failed to leave us any description	4:38
	of the physiology of Satan	4:40
	at whom he supposedly threw the bottle of ink.	4:42
	I presume that about the only individual	4:46
	who claims to be Satan	4:51
	that anybody in the Durham area has actually encountered	4:53
	has been that person that we see when we move	4:57
	into Duke Stadium down at the other end of the campus,	5:00
	for the purpose of watching an athletic contest.	5:03
	There we see the antics of a university student	5:07
	who is dressed in blue,	5:11
	who has an elongated appendage	5:13
	affixed to the backside of his lap,	5:15
	and who is sometimes cast out	5:18
	by the cheerleaders of the opposing team,	5:21
	and sometimes is cast out by the Dean's office.	5:24
	That is about the only person we actually encounter	5:29
	in the flesh or in the spirit, either,	5:33
	who calls himself personally by the name of Satan.	5:35
	Now, although in a given day's journey,	5:40
	we do not normally expect to encounter an individual	5:43
	who will call himself Satan,	5:46
	we nonetheless should not consider Satan as a joke.	5:49
	We should take Satan very seriously	5:54
	in whatever form we understand him to exist and to operate,	5:57
	personally or impersonally.	6:03
	In the not-too-distant past,	6:06
	enlightened, well-educated people	6:09
	had pretty well come to the conclusion	6:12
	that Satan, however perceived,	6:14
	could be dismissed from our thought,	6:16
	that we did not need to take into account	6:19
	any diabolic force or power	6:21
	at work among men and in this world.	6:24
	Not so today.	6:28
	Now, great many of our serious writers	6:30
	are addressing themselves cogently	6:32
	to the need for mankind to grapple	6:36
	with a power that is properly called Satan.	6:40
	We find in such poets as W.H. Auden	6:45
	various central references to Satan and the power of Satan.	6:49
	Novelists such as Mann and Gide and Dostoevsky	6:54
	deal in existential fashion	6:57
	with a power and an influence in the world	7:00
	which they call Satan.	7:03
	Well now, for the purposes of this sermon,	7:05
	when we're talking not so much	7:08
	about the metaphysical aspects of Satan	7:10
	as we're talking about the operation of Satan	7:12
	and how we get rid of Satan,	7:15
	let's define and Satan as being all of those qualities	7:17
	and habits and attitudes and attributes	7:24
	in mankind and his behavior	7:29
	which block the coming of the kingdom of God	7:31
	as revealed in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.	7:35
	Whatever more than that Satan may be, it is at least that.	7:40
	Now, therefore, the question which we face practically today	7:47
	which mankind has always faced,	7:52
	but has faced particularly ever since the Incarnation	7:54
	is the question of how do we cast out Satan?	7:57
	Undoubtedly, there is a great deal	8:04
	of iniquity in the world, which needs to be cast out.	8:06
	How do we do it?	8:09
	How do we get rid of hatred, of murder, of warfare?	8:11
	How do we get rid of drunkenness and alcoholism?	8:19
	How do we dispel ignorance and poverty	8:23
	and racial inequality?	8:27
	How do we get rid of illegitimate births	8:30
	and marital infidelity?	8:33
	How do we dispel from the life and practice of mankind	8:35
	all of those things	8:40
	which tear down the good and the beautiful and the true?	8:42
	That's the question which we face,	8:48
	and there is no more important question	8:51
	which mankind ever faces than this one.	8:53
	We are talking this morning,	8:57
	not about one of the marginal issues	8:58
	of human life and endeavor,	9:00
	but about one of the central issues,	9:02
	where decision cannot be avoided,	9:05
	because whether we seek to avoid decision or not,	9:08
	we do, in fact, make decisions in this area	9:10
	which have far-reaching consequences.	9:14
	Now, the answer	9:18
	which Jesus Christ gave to this question was clear.	9:18
	Jesus said we do not cast out Satan with Satan.	9:25
	We cast out Satan by the power of the kingdom of God.	9:29
	We cast out Satan	9:35
	by the insight and the strength of the Holy Spirit.	9:37
	We cast out Satan by love,	9:44
	by truth,	9:47
	by a dedicated imagination,	9:48
	by a dogged determination to be faithful to duty.	9:51
	We cast out Satan by truth and the spread of truth.	9:57
	We cast out Satan by the qualities of life and action	10:02
	which make up the kingdom of God.	10:09
	Now, in order for us...	10:15
	Truth really clearly,	10:18
	in order for us to get the full impact	10:19
	of what it is that Jesus is saying,	10:22
	there is one aspect of this truth	10:24
	which we need to bring into sharp focus before our eyes,	10:27
	and we need to study this.	10:32
	It is the truth that Satan is not simply a bad way	10:36
	or a method of casting out Satan,	10:45
	but that Satan cannot,	10:47
	does not cast out Satan, as a matter of fact,	10:50
	that if you want to cast out Satan	10:57
	and you're looking around for a methodology	10:59
	by which to do it,	11:01
	you do not seize upon Satan himself as the method,	11:03
	because it does not work.	11:06
	Consider an analogy.	11:10
	Suppose that you want to take the 6:02 plane this evening	11:12
	out of the Raleigh-Durham Airport,	11:16
	and suppose at five o'clock, you borrow your roommate's car,	11:19
	and you start southward on US Highway number 15.	11:23
	Now, you will be disappointed before 6:02,	11:30
	and the reason you will be disappointed	11:36
	is not that, when you arrive at the airport,	11:38
	the airport manager will say to you,	11:41
	"Now, my friend, you have taken the wrong road	11:43
	from Durham to the Raleigh-Durham Airport."	11:46
	No.	11:49
	The problem will be that you will miss the 6:02 plane	11:51
	for the reason that you chose a highway	11:55
	which does not go to the airport.	11:57
	It goes somewhere else.	12:00
	The high school quarterback	12:04
	who told his halfback in the huddle	12:06
	that he was going to give him the ball,	12:09
	and he wanted him to go over right tackle,	12:10
	where the opposing tackle was a 160-pound boy	12:14
	who had not much strength,	12:18
	and by all means, not to go over left tackle,	12:20
	because there was a 250-pound bruiser,	12:22
	found that as the halfback took the ball,	12:27
	he went toward left tackle.	12:30
	He got his signals mixed up,	12:34
	but the main difficulty was not	12:36
	that he did not carry out the orders of the quarterback.	12:39
	The main difficulty was he did not go through the line,	12:43
	because that particular halfback	12:47
	could not go through the 250-pound tackle.	12:50
	He didn't get anywhere.	12:53
	Now, this is what it is that Jesus is saying, in effect.	12:56
	He is not saying to us that Satan is a poor method	12:59
	for casting out Satan,	13:02
	because it would be an embarrassment to the heavenly Father	13:03
	to learn that one of his helpers was Satan,	13:07
	or that it is somehow a means of offending	13:10
	or hurting the feelings of Jesus Christ	13:14
	if we use his adversary to help establish his kingdom.	13:15
	The only point in this connection that Jesus is making	13:22
	is that, as a matter of fact,	13:25
	just as highway number 15 does not go to the airport,	13:27
	so the methodology of Satan	13:30
	does not establish the kingdom of God,	13:32
	and if what you are interested in	13:37
	is in establishing the kingdom of God,	13:39
	then let Satan and all of his methods alone.	13:41
	Do not think that you can establish the kingdom of God	13:45
	by using the tools and the methods	13:47
	and the methodology of Satan.	13:50
	It does not work that way.	13:53
	One of the most charming and popular legends	13:56
	that came out of the end of the Middle Ages	14:00
	was the legend about a character named Robin Hood,	14:03
	who was supposed to have been greatly enamored with the poor	14:08
	and to be very sorry for their plight.	14:12
	His heart allegedly burned within him in indignation	14:16
	as he looked at the rich,	14:20
	and he said, "They're too rich,	14:23
	and they don't deserve all that which they have.	14:24
	These poor people over here need what they have,	14:27
	and so I will craftily steal the property of the rich	14:31
	and give it to the poor."	14:37
	Well, we do not know	14:40
	whether any such individual actually lived or not,	14:41
	but the presumption is that there must have been	14:44
	some historical basis for all of the legendary myths	14:46
	which arose at the end of the Middle Ages in Great Britain.	14:51
	But this much we do know from history.	14:57
	Myth or not,	15:01
	the circulation of this legend	15:02
	led not so much to the feeding of the poor,	15:06
	as it led to teaching the poor to steal.	15:11
	The circulation of this legend	15:18
	encouraged a great many people	15:21
	to think when they were in need,	15:23
	that they were somehow justified, because they were in need,	15:26
	and because Robin Hood loved the poor,	15:30
	in going to the granaries of the rich,	15:34
	and by robbery, filling their own pockets.	15:37
	And the question which we cannot escape	15:42
	is whether Robin Hood, real or legendary,	15:44
	did the poor any benefit by teaching them to steal,	15:48
	that this is the way to get what you need in life.	15:54
	Now, one of the things	16:00
	which makes this possibility so appealing	16:01
	is that we are tantalized by the assumption	16:04
	which a great many people make,	16:11
	that if we can only keep Satan	16:14
	in the employ of the righteous,	16:17
	that he will become sanctified.	16:21
	If we can keep Satan under the control of the church,	16:25
	now to be sure, use Satan,	16:30
	but keep him under firm control in the church,	16:32
	so that we can use him as much as we want to	16:36
	and cut him off and put him out when we're through with him,	16:38
	that this will be a contribution	16:43
	to the establishment of the kingdom of God.	16:44
	Now, we ought not to be hoodwinked.	16:49
	by this assumption, however tantalizing it may be.	16:52
	Although it is a temptation sometimes	16:59
	to think that a wolf in sheep's clothing becomes a sheep,	17:01
	he actually does not become a sheep.	17:04
	A wolf in whatever clothing is still a wolf.	17:06
	Satan in the employ of the church is still Satan,	17:10
	and Satan cannot cast out Satan.	17:13
	Over and over again, the church in times of great stress	17:17
	and in times of crisis	17:22
	has brought Satan inside the church,	17:24
	thinking that it could control it	17:26
	and use it for the glory of God.	17:29
	But it doesn't work that way.	17:32
	Simply taking a cut out of Satan's wages	17:35
	or taxing his salary	17:38
	does not make him a servant of the kingdom of God.	17:40
	Churches have sometimes had gambling operations	17:45
	inside the church or its program	17:48
	in order to raise money for good causes.	17:50
	The principle thing which the church did on those occasions	17:53
	was to teach gambling.	17:56
	As long as good people do it,	17:58
	it isn't bad.	18:01
	Two years ago, I was in another city,	18:04
	talking to a Wesley Foundation Director.	18:07
	We were discussing his program	18:10
	and he was talking about one phase of his program,	18:12
	in which he was very much interested.	18:15
	I said to him, "Do the churches in this area	18:18
	know that you are doing this in your program?"	18:23
	And he said, "No, they do not."	18:25
	I said, "Well, what effect do you think this would have	18:28
	upon the financial support	18:30
	which these churches are giving you for your program,	18:31
	if they did know it?"	18:34
	Well, he said,	18:35
	"I think it would cut off my financial support."	18:36
	I said to him, "Do you ever go out	18:39
	to talk to the people in the churches about your program	18:42
	when you ask for money?"	18:45
	And he said, "Yes, we take deputation teams out."	18:46
	He said, "We don't mention this part of our program."	18:49
	And I said,	18:52
	"Well, what do you say if they ask you about it?"	18:52
	Well, he said, "If they ask me about it,	18:55
	of course I have to lie about it and say we're not doing it,	18:57
	and if I didn't, we wouldn't get the money,	19:02
	and we couldn't have our program."	19:04
	Well, I said to him,	19:07
	"I think that the main thing you are doing	19:07
	is not on these occasions raising money	19:10
	to help establish the kingdom of God,	19:14
	but the main thing you're doing	19:15
	is teaching the students who go with you	19:16
	that there are times,	19:18
	when it is necessary to get along, for us to lie."	19:19
	Is this a contribution	19:24
	to the establishment of the kingdom of God?	19:26
	As long as we lie to get money for the church,	19:29
	it becomes sanctified lying, or does it?	19:33
	Can, as a matter of fact, Satan cast out Satan?	19:38
	When you read your Old Testament,	19:45
	if you read it knowing the historical background,	19:47
	you get something of what the prophets thought about this.	19:51
	You remember over and over again,	19:55
	they cry out against the Baal worship of Palestine,	19:57
	how the Israelites went over to the temples of Baal,	20:02
	and the prophets seemed to be very, very angry about this.	20:06
	Well, why do you suppose the children of Israel	20:10
	went over to the temples of Baal anyway?	20:13
	They had their own God.	20:16
	They had their own worship.	20:17
	What was it that brought them over to the temples of Baal?	20:19
	The thing which took them over to the temple of Baal,	20:24
	that which attracted them and drew them	20:28
	was this very tantalizing possibility	20:31
	that we have just been talking about,	20:35
	namely that as long as we practice evil within the church,	20:38
	as long as we practice evil for the glory of God,	20:44
	it's all right.	20:47
	In the temples of Baal,	20:50
	there were a great many so-called sacred prostitutes	20:52
	who stayed at the temples	20:57
	and who offered their bodies to whomever might come,	20:59
	but with a great portion of the income	21:03
	going for the temple treasury.	21:05
	And so you see, it was really for the glory of God	21:08
	that they were practicing prostitution,	21:12
	and it was for the glory of God	21:14
	that the pagans and the Israelites	21:16
	were going to the temples.	21:20
	And this the prophets heaped their anger upon	21:23
	and taught that the religion of Jehovah	21:29
	has no place for worshiping God in this way.	21:31
	We can worship God and can serve God only in God's way.	21:37
	We cast out Satan not with Satan,	21:44
	but with the power of God and the Holy Spirit.	21:48
	Now, a great many people, though, have one other thing	21:53
	which tempts them to try to cast out Satan with Satan,	21:56
	and that is the evident short-term success on the surface,	22:02
	which we can achieve by linking forces with Satan.	22:08
	You remember, Jesus was tempted	22:12
	to get in league with Satan	22:16
	to accomplish the highest and holiest mission imaginable,	22:18
	namely to bring the whole earth to worship Christ,	22:21
	and figuratively speaking,	22:28
	Satan took Christ up on a higher place	22:31
	and showed him all the world and said,	22:33
	"It's yours, if you'll fall down and worship me."	22:34
	Well, I dare say that if Jesus had made a pact with Satan,	22:41
	he could have been successful instantly, widely.	22:45
	But he rejected this.	22:51
	He was not willing to get a short-term surface victory	22:54
	by compromising himself	22:59
	to the extent of linking his force with the force of Satan.	23:01
	Success here would in and of itself be defeat.	23:09
	When I was in high school,	23:14
	two of our classmates who were girls	23:15
	were trying to get the affection	23:18
	of one boy who happened to be a friend of mine.	23:20
	These two girls became bitter enemies	23:24
	over their attempts to win the affection of this boy.	23:26
	On one occasion, their words became hot and bitter,	23:31
	and finally, it ended in a hair pulling contest	23:34
	and an actual fight,	23:37
	where they were clawing the skin of each other	23:38
	and hitting each other.	23:41
	One of them was successful over the other and won the fight,	23:44
	but the loser got the boy,	23:49
	for the reason that my friend said	23:52
	the criterion of a good girlfriend for him	23:55
	was not the one	23:58
	who was best able to pull hair and scratch skin.	23:59
	He would rather have the one on who was less able to do that	24:03
	so that when the girl won the fight,	24:10
	she lost the man by that very act.	24:13
	Many times, when we attempt to establish the kingdom of God	24:17
	by the use of Satan,	24:23
	we are successful in our short-range goal	24:26
	of what it is we've set out to do,	24:29
	but by our very success in that,	24:31
	we undermine the kingdom of God,	24:34
	which theoretically was the reason	24:36
	why we entered into it at all.	24:38
	Is it a high and right and noble thing	24:41
	for a man to join a fraternity?	24:44
	If it is, then he should be rushed	24:47
	by high and noble methods.	24:49
	Is it right for us	24:52
	to establish racial brotherhood and democracy?	24:54
	Then let us do it by ethical means.	24:58
	Is it right for us to have world peace?	25:01
	Then let us do it in God's way.	25:04
	Whatever it is that we need to do,	25:08
	and there's much that we need to do	25:10
	to establish the kingdom of God,	25:12
	let us have the good judgment	25:14
	to follow the answer	25:17
	which is implied in the question of our Lord	25:18
	when he asks us all to consider how can Satan out Satan?	25:22
	O Lord, our heavenly Father, grant unto us thy Holy Spirit	25:35
	to give us wisdom to see through falsehood.	25:39
	Grant unto us thy Holy Spirit	25:42
	to give us strength to be faithful to Christ,	25:44
	and to cast out Satan from our own hearts	25:48
	by the Spirit of Christ.	25:50
	And now as we go from here, give us physical safety,	25:52
	and give us spiritual safety,	25:56
	and what we pray for ourselves, we pray for all mankind.	25:59
	Now may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,	26:03
	the love of God the Father,	26:06
	and the fellowship up of the Holy Spirit	26:07
	be with you and abide with you now and ever more.	26:09

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Title:

Howard C. Wilkinson - "On Casting out Satan" (January 28, 1962)

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https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r4m61gr4p

Date:

January 28, 1962

Speaker:

Wilkinson, Howard C.

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Duke University. Chapel

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UA.17.01.0003 RR-0171
ref5546_gv0
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duke:628211
dcrau002184
ark:/87924/r4m61gr4p
1587343b-1860-4c7b-b035-e54f3b5c05de

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Howard C. Wilkinson - "On Casting out Satan" (January 28, 1962)

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