John 9 || Do you renounce Satan and all evil?

Do you renounce Satan and all that is evil

Readings: Matthew 4:1-11, John 9:1-41

Introduction

In December I’ll have been minister for 10 years. Over that time, I’ve had the honour of celebrating scores of baptism services for all sorts of people.

Before every baptism service I meet with the person or their parents (if they’re a baby) and work through the baptismal vows they will make to help them make the most informed decision. This is sort of what we’ve been doing over the last four weeks as a church as we’ve explored the questions:

Do you turn to Christ?

Do you repent of your sins?

Do you reject selfish living and all that is false and unjust?

Today we’ve reached what I used to think was the most controversial question of the lot:

Do you renounce Satan and all that is evil?

Now I grew up being told that Satan was kind of like Santa. A red man whose job it is to punish naughty boys and girls. Instead of living in a cold place up in the north pole, the devil lived down in hell which was a fiery place underground. And as I grew older, I stopped believing in Santa about the same time I stopped believing in Satan.

It was only when I started reading the Bible for myself that I was forced to wrestle with the existence of Satan and what this means for my life. So, when I finally confirmed my baptismal vows when I was in my teens, this was the vow I struggled with.

And I took this assumption into my ministry, so when I first got to this question at baptism interviews I kind of blushed and mumbled out why I believed in Satan. The response I got floored me. While there were some skeptics, most people I interviewed believed in Satan. Many had had personal experiences of demons, and encounters with evil that would make your skin crawl.

Over the last ten years I’ve found people are more confident in the reality of spiritual darkness that ever in my lifetime. In fact, a Baran poll in the United States in 2020 found that 51% of Americans surveyed believed the traditional view of a biblical all powerful creator God, 56% of people believed in Satan.

Let that sink in. More people are willing to acknowledge the existence of Satan and evil than those who acknowledge the existence of God.

So when we renounce Satan and all evil we’re doing something bold, powerful, and glorious all at the same time.

I renounce Satan…

To renounce something is to protest and reject it. In baptism we announce before God, family, and the world that we follow Christ and in doing so we reject all spiritual forces that challenge His authority over creation. In thinking about Satan it’s important to recognise that he’s a liar, an abuser, and a loser.

• Liar

The word Satan means the adversary or accuser and we see his deception throughout Scripture. Satan is the serpent who deceives Eve and Adam into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He’s the one who tries to wreck Job’s life and get him to curse God and die. He’s the one who meets Jesus as he’s fasting in the wilderness and tempts him to make a bread buffet out of stones.

Jesus calls Satan a liar and the father of lies. The devil loves to muddy the waters, confuse and disorientate us with half-truths. This is where we need to build our lives on the authority of God’s Word.

Bank workers being taught to detect fraud study real bank notes intensely rather than look at fake ones. This is because there are many and evolving ways to fake real notes, so it’s much more effective to study the real deal, as people who know the genuine article well can spot a lie from a mile away.

This is why we need to study the Word of God and know how to apply it in context. When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness by the devil’s lies, he repeatedly uses the Bible to refute him. Even when Satan quotes scripture out of context, Jesus exposes him using Scripture because he knows it better than his accuser.

Friends let’s fill our lives with the truth of scripture and keep running to Christ, who is the Way, the truth, and the life.

• Abuser

Satan is a liar and an abuser. Probably the saddest example of this is in the life of Judas Iscariot. Judas was one the twelve disciples, a close friend of Jesus who he later betrayed. Judas was entrusted with looking after Jesus’ money but he was overwhelmed by greed as John 12:6 tells us that Judas frequently stole from the money bags that kept Jesus and his disciples afloat.

It’s tragic that Judas saw Jesus feed over 5000 hungry people, heal sick people, and bring joy wherever he went, and yet all he focussed on was money. Luke’s gospel tells us that Satan entered Judas as he was bribed with silver to hand Jesus over to his enemies. Satan convinced him to choose money over his friend, and Judas didn’t even get rich but was so disgusted by himself that he tried to give the money back and then took his own life. (Offering illustration)

Friends let’s not kid ourselves, anything Satan offers us is fool’s gold and it will drive us to despair.

The words of Jesus in John 10:10 are worth memorising: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

• So Satan is a liar, an abuser, but he’s also a loser.

Sometimes it’s tempting to think that Satan is like Yin and Yang, the opposite of God. Like two footy teams on grand final day, we can think there’ God and his angels, and there’s Satan and all his demons and they’re at 50/50 odds of winning.

This is not the picture the Bible presents at all. While Satan has victories, he’s never presented as the Lord’s equal. In Genesis he’s a serpent who gets banished and cursed. In Job he’s just a visitor before God’s throne. In Revelation 20 Satan is set free from where the Lord had imprisoned him and he goes out a deceive the nations gathering up a huge army that surrounds the people of God.

The Revelations 20:9 says:

“[Satan’s armies] marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 10 And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.”

Satan brings his worst against God’s people and the Lord bops him in the head with fire. It’s not even a fair fight!

Ultimately at the cross Satan was dealt a death blow from which he could never recover, so to renounce him is to jump from a sinking ship.

And this is why the second part of today’s vow is so important.

Do you renounce Satan and all evil

• And all evil

We need to remember that Satan is responsible for some evil, but not all evil.

Anglican author C.S Lewis notes that Christians often make two errors when it comes to Satan, one is to disbelieve in his existence, the other is to obsess over him and see devils behind every bush!

This is why our gospel reading from John 9 is such a fitting text for today. In John 9, Jesus is in Jerusalem during the feast of Tabernacles. During this time faithful Jews would flock to the temple to remember how God guided his people out of slavery in Egypt and into the promised land.

After slipping away from a mob who wants to stone him, Jesus meets a man born blind. His disciples ask the big question about evil that was on their minds: “Rabbi, who sinned, was it this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:3)

It’s a horrible question that reveals a cruel way of thinking about God. The disciples assume that because this man was born blind, it was either his sin, or his parents that landed him in this situation.

Jesus answers:

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned” (John 9:3)

Jesus is saying that we live in a fallen world full of evil and we can’t simply pin our suffering on our parents or on our sin. Evil and suffering are a consequence of our rejection of God and his rule over our lives and our world, but to try to draw neat lines from general suffering to specific sins is pointless.

And this is where Jesus takes the opportunity to overcome evil with good. Look at v.9 again where Jesus says:

“this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.. As long as it is day, we must do the works of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

God did not arbitrarily make this man blind simply to prove himself. Instead, he allowed this condition to exist for a higher redemptive purpose, to reveal Jesus as the light of the world, and expose evil.

So Jesus spits on the ground and makes some mud which he wipes on the man’s eyes. It’s a bit of a strange miracle but many commentators reckon Jesus does this intentionally to expose the religious leaders who forbid moulding clay on the sabbath.

Sure enough, the man born blind faithfully goes to the pool Jesus sends him to and he’s miraculously healed. Something that was evil is healed by God’s goodness.

But this is where the story gets interesting as people notice that the blind man who used to sit and beg is blind no more. They ask him what happened and he testifies to Jesus’ healing, and so the crowd takes him to the Pharisees who had the power to include people in religious life or exclude them.

And this is where their spiritual blindness is exposed. They hear the man’s story and in v.16 they say:

“This man cannot be from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

They then interrogate the man, who makes fun of them, and suggests they should follow Jesus, and then they threaten to kick his parents out of the synagogue if they won’t challenge their son’s story. How sad that the religious leaders, and even the man’s parents can’t celebrate his miraculous healing because they’re so overcome by evil.

The Pharisees again try to get the man to change his story, but he makes fun of them and suggests they should follow Jesus if they’re so infatuated by his work. They don’t take kindly to this ribbing so they do the only thing they know to do and throw him out.

When Jesus hears about this, he comes and find the man and the man finally gets to see his healer. Jesus reveals his identity to the healed man and he bows down and worships him. There’s no need to be overcome by the evil that surrounds you when you can worship at Jesus’ feet.

And friends this is where we need to see that in renouncing Satan and all evil have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Evil is a sad destructive, sinking ship, but in Jesus there is wholeness, light and life. Evil chokes and confuses us but Jesus helps us see the world for how it truly is and he empowers us truly sing: “I was blind but now I see.”

And this is where we need to see that renouncing Satan and all evil isn’t just about rejecting these things, it’s about actively working against them.

• Every time you make an honest decision you are renouncing Satan.

• Every time you give to the mission of God and his church, you are overcoming evil.

• Every time you bring healing and wholeness into the life of your neighbour you are overcoming evil with good.

So friends let’s be like Jesus and ask the Holy Spirit to help us renounce evil and give us the vision to do exactly that. History is full of faithful saints who actively worked against the Devil’s schemes and renounced evil with their lives.

Whether you’re a doctor healing sickness in your patients, or a teacher inspiring your students to love truth, or you’re a grandparent teaching the next generation about the goodness of Jesus, you are renouncing evil.

(possible illustration of Iranian football players renouncing their citizenship)

If you’re not yet baptised, it’s worth considering today whether you’re ready to renounce Satan and all evil and embrace the fullness of life in Christ.

If you are baptised, then now is the perfect time to ask God how you can live into your baptismal vows and let the Holy Spirit inspire you to do his redemptive work.

Wherever you’re at in life it’s worth asking yourself:

Do you renounce Satan and all evil? I do and hope you will too.