I have borrowed some ideas and a few sentences for this sermon from an audio lecture by the Rev. Dr. John Kleinig, and some other ideas from his book, "Grace upon Grace" (CPH, 2008).

Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Epistle reading which has already been read.

Dear friends in Christ, when we lived in East Texas, we had a mole problem. A bunch of them had burrowed into both the front and the back yards and were constantly making those annoying hills that mess up the grass and are so easy to trip over. We really wanted to get rid of them, so first we tried poisoning them with some earthworm-shaped bait, but that didn't work. Then my dad loaned us a spring-loaded plunger-style mole trap, which we buried partially in the mole hills and hoped that they would trigger it, so that the sharp prongs would put an end to those little nuisances, but we never caught one. And then one day I was talking to a man in our congregation who had owned a pest control business, and he said the best way to get rid of moles was to get rid of the bugs and worms in the yard.

This idea seemed sound, though it would be easier said than done. If there were no food for the moles to eat, they'd begin to get hungry and head for wormier pastures in other people's yards. Perhaps you have had a similar experience with stray animals or raccoons or buzzards. If you throw your scraps in the garden or compost heap, then the critters will come around, but if there's no scraps, then no critters, since they'd starve at your house.

Later on I'll tell you how we finally were rid of our moles, but in the meantime I want to examine this concept of starving the rodents to keep them away and compare this practice with how we should deal with the biggest rodent of them all-the devil, Satan, the Evil One-our enemy who roams about seeking to destroy the faith of Christians, tempting them in order to drag them down to hell with him. Satan is our only real enemy in life, and he has only one goal: that is, to get between us and Jesus so that he can isolate us and lead us into unrepentance, despair, and unbelief so that we lose our salvation. That is all he cares about: getting us to forsake Jesus.

So in the Epistle reading, St. Paul warns us Christians, "Give no opportunity to the devil." Let's connect this saying to the rodent analogy. Let's say that each of us is like a back yard, and our hearts, minds, and consciences are the ground where Satan wants to hunt for food so that he can establish residence and wreak all sorts of havoc. If we are not to give any opportunities to the devil to get into our minds, hearts, and consciences, then what is our best strategy going to be? Can we use self-discipline to trap him, or other techniques to poison him? Perhaps those work sometimes, but a better approach is going to be to starve Satan, that is, to keep the things that he likes to eat out of our lives so that he needs to go look for food elsewhere. But if our lives and hearts are filled with the bugs, worms, and scraps that he likes to feast on, then he is going to have lots of opportunities to thrive in our lives and hearts and destroy our faith in Jesus. So what are the things Satan likes to eat that we need to keep out of our yards? The devil loves to feast on guilt and anger, and I'll talk about both of these. Guilt is Satan's front door attack, and anger is Satan's back door attack.

In the Bible one of the commonest descriptions of Satan and his cronies is "unclean spirits," filled with impurity and sin. And so the devil's goal is first to defile our lives and hearts with sinful filth, sins of thought, word, and deed against God and against our neighbors. So he tempts us. And I don't know about you, but I find that he's pretty good at getting me to sin and defile myself. And after I've sinned, if Satan can get me to start making excuses for my sins, so that I justify my sins and think they are no big deal, then he can destroy my faith through impenitence, if I harden my heart and dig in my heals and refuse to admit my guilt. That's the first thing Satan likes to do with guilt.

On the other hand, Christians will usually recognize their guilt and not excuse it but rather feel sorry for it, so Satan will often swoop in after we sin and remind us of how terribly guilty we are by pointing us to the Ten Commandments, which we have all broken horribly. But that in itself does not destroy my faith, because I know that in Christ, I have a way of getting rid of the guilt of my sins-after God's Law convicts me of my sin and brings me to be sorry for it, I then know I can be given complete forgiveness in the body and blood of Jesus in the Lord's Supper, and in my Baptism, and in the word of Absolution, where Jesus says to me as He said to the man in the Gospel reading, "Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven." Jesus is "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world," and if I have my heart fixed on him, then I know that my sins cannot damn me.

But if I don't get rid of that guilt by making use of Christ's Word and Sacraments, then Satan eats up that guilt, takes up residence in my yard, and uses that guilt to produce even more guilt and fear. If Satan is allowed to take up residence in my conscience, then he accuses me of being an orphan instead of a child of God. Did you know that the name "Satan" means "accuser"? Satan is like a prosecuting attorney-he takes my sins and accuses me of them, and then takes the threats of God's Law and tries to convince me that I'm getting that punishment.

Of course, I know that I am guilty, and I know that it is true that I deserve to be sent straight to hell, and Satan knows that too. And since he is the father of lies, then one of his favorite techniques is to use the half-truth against me. He wants me to believe only in the truth of God's judgment against my sins, and he tries to get me to disbelieve that Jesus is my Savior from sin and death. He says, "No child of God would act that way. You have way too many sins to hope to be forgiven. You are beyond the reach of God's forgiveness. And you haven't done nearly enough good works." At that point, unless Jesus steps in with His Word and Sacraments here in the Church to take away my guilt, then I will be left in fear of condemnation and despair, hopeless about eternal life. But if I flee to Christ's forgiveness in Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord's Supper, then I again hear Jesus saying, "Take heart my son, your sins are forgiven."

So what I have just described is what you might call Satan's front door attack: he gets me to sin, then feeds off my sin by getting it to multiply into impenitence, or else he feeds on my guilt and makes my guilty conscience more and more guilty, and tries to drive me to despair and destroy my faith. So the key to keeping Satan from feasting on my guilt is to make faithful use of Christ's Word and Sacraments, which drive out our guilt and starves Satan, sending him out to look for food elsewhere.

But Satan also has a back door attack, and this is the one we are less likely to notice happening to us. He not only feeds on guilt, but also on anger, and so if we have anger in our lives and hearts, then that gives an opportunity to the devil to come into our yards, have a feast, and take up residence. And this is what St. Paul is warning us about in the Epistle reading when he says, "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil."

Here's how it works. Instead of the devil getting me to sin, he gets someone around me to sin against me-perhaps my wife, or my parents, or my children, or my pastor, or my fellow Christians-because being sinned against hurts most when it is done by those we love, doesn't it? Those are the deepest wounds. So if I've been sinned against, and I am not in the wrong, what do I naturally feel? First, I feel hurt, and then I feel angry. And that is not wrong! Listen again to what St. Paul said: "Be angry and do not sin." In other words, anger is not sinful because it is a natural response to injustice.

The Bible often speaks of God being angry, and Jesus Himself shows anger (see Mark 3:5). You can actually diagnose what sins have been committed against you by going through the Ten Commandments; by examining God's Law, you can identify not only your own guilt, but also what injustices have been committed against you so that you can seek reconciliation and healing with the offending party. So Paul says, "Be angry and do not sin." When you have been sinned against, be angry about it, acknowledge that it is a real offense that has been committed against you. Don't blame yourself for someone else's sin. Don't pretend like nothing has happened. Be angry that a sin has occurred against you.

But don't sin! And that's the tricky part, isn't it? Because what does Satan want me to do? He wants my justifiable anger to convert into sinful rage, into malice, into spite, into a grudge, because he can have a feeding frenzy on those things-and when we're filled with those things, then the devil takes up residence and has lots of opportunities to destroy our faith. So when we have been wounded deeply by others, we can be justifiably angry, but we must not sin by letting our anger take over. Yet Satan tempts us to lose control, and then create all sorts of collateral damage because of our anger.

It works like this: we get angry, very emotional about what someone has done to us, and we keep on replaying that sin over and over in our heads. Have you ever watched CNN Headline News? It's maddening, since every five minutes they seem to replay the same story. Well when we've been sinned against, our minds turn into CNN, constantly replaying the offense against us. But even worse, we magnify the offense and make it seem like a bigger deal than it really was. The anger that we had been able to control begins to control us.

And then something awful happens. We start to remember all the other offenses that this person has ever committed against us, and we stew over those things and begin to conclude that this person has not only done bad things, but is a bad person, our enemy. And therefore we have good reason not just to be angry with this person but to begin to hate this person. Even though we should know that hatred is a sin, we keep thinking, "Look at all the bad things this person has done! That is my enemy! And poor me, victim me, I'm in the right." And so we begin to take the moral high ground. We sit in God's seat and begin to pass judgment on that person.

And in that case Satan tempts us to do one of two things: we want affirmation that we are in the right, so we go to my friends or family and tell them about this terrible person who has done these terrible things, because we want them to agree with us and to say, "You're right, that person's wrong." And it grows and spreads. Perhaps we even twist the truth a little bit; we omit any bad things we might have done or said, and we paint ourselves as completely victimized. And by sitting in the seat of judgment, we not only condemn that person in our own eyes, but in the eyes of others. And we slander that person by not giving them a fair chance to defend themselves.

But what does our rage do to that person? We murder them in our heart. That's what Jesus says hatred does. Hatred is murder. It's not a murder with the hand, but a murder in your heart, and this is deadly to our faith, since St. John writes that "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15). But there's more. The murder doesn't usually just stay hidden in our heart, but we usually go on and execute that murder with our tongue. Our hatred usually comes out in the form of some verbal abuse, a cutting word, a put down. With our tongue we attack that other person. We take revenge on that other person through our words. As St. James says, the tongue is "a restless evil, full of deadly poison," that we use to "curse people who are made in the image of God." What do you do with poison and curses? You murder another with your hateful words.

But what happens then? Once we've let our tongue spew venom, we have now sinned against that person who sinned against us in the first place. So then how does that person feel? They go through the same scenario that we just went through, becoming filled with rage, and in order to prove ourselves right, we both drag in our friends and family, and there is a huge fallout. There is horrible collateral damage that comes once anger takes hold of us. When we're angry, we can't see things clearly. When we're angry we can't act coolly and carefully and lovingly. We lash out, and we lash out indiscriminately, we take revenge, usually with our tongue-putting down that person, gossiping and complaining about what they did.

What do you think? Does this scenario sound familiar? And guess who is there manipulating this whole situation behind the scenes, and rubbing hands and saying, "Oh, goody, goody, goody. What fools these people are!" Who is it? Satan. This is why St. Paul says, "Be angry and do not sin." Because he knows that uncontrolled anger, hatred, is the devil's favorite food, which lets him take up residence in our lives and destroy everything. This problem occurs in marriages, families, friendships, congregations, denominations-all over the place-and it creates huge damage. I'm sure you can think about your own life and see how this scenario has worked out time and again, and you also can see how it has affected the congregations you have been part of.

So how do we prevent this fallout on a personal and congregational level? Listen again to what St. Paul said in our Epistle: "Be angry and do not sin." If you feel angry, then be angry, but the problem is that anger usually leads to sin if it's held-if you cherish it, if you internalize it, if you dwell on it. So "be angry and do not sin" by following Paul's simple, practical piece of advice. He says, "Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger." In other words, don't put off doing something about the anger. Don't go to bed without dealing-in some way-with the thing that makes you angry. Now this doesn't necessarily mean that you confront the person and try to settle everything-but it means that you have to do something about the anger to make sure that you don't go all night angry, and you don't rise the next day angry. Don't carry your anger from day to day. Because what happens when you carry over anger? It grows and feeds off itself. It can lead not only to hatred but also to self-pity and ultimately depression, when you drink your own vinegar. If you bottle it up, at some point the pressure is going to build up like a pressure cooker and then you're going to spew out over somebody inappropriately-you might even take it out on everyone around you. So Paul says, "Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil."

What can you do with the anger before the sun goes down to keep the devil from feeding off your anger and taking up residence? Hand it over to Jesus. Look at a crucifix, and remember what Jesus was there doing for you, and how He did it. He showed only love for His sinful enemies (which includes us!). St. Peter writes that when Jesus "was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:23-24).

Jesus suffered and died for all of your sins-all of your rage and slander and gossip and murderous hatred, and so by His wounds you are healed of your guilt, you are set free from God's condemnation for your sins. Throughout His life, when Jesus was attacked, He became angry but did not sin, since He entrusted His cause to the One who judges justly, God the Father. As the Psalm says, "Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him, and He will act" (Psalm 37:5). Jesus did that perfectly for you.

So when you become angry, then entrust everything, especially your anger, to God through prayer, as Jesus did on the cross: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing." Remember that when others are sinning against us, they don't realize that they are being controlled by Satan, and so what they need more than anything from us is our prayers. Ask God the Father to release them from the bonds of Satan, who has taken up residence in their lives in order to attack you. Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you" (Matthew 5:44). They don't need your wrath, but they need your prayers for God's help. As Dr. Luther says in the Large Catechism, "Prayer can prevent [Satan] and drive him back."

So pray the Lord's Prayer, especially the Fifth Petition: "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." Here we are reminded that if we expect God to forgive us, we also must forgive the sins of others against us. St. Paul said in the verses after our Epistle, "Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:31-32). So through prayer, put away from you all the raging anger in your heart, and pray that God would forgive you just as you have forgiven your neighbor. Put off your old sinful, spiteful self, and as St. Paul says in the Epistle, "be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." Since you have been baptized into Jesus Christ, that is who you truly are: a new creation, forgiven of all your guilt and recreated after the image of Jesus Christ, who is God's love and mercy personified.

"Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil." That is what we should do, through by trusting in Christ and by praying to our Father that He would renew us in the image of Jesus. But which of us has ever trusted as we should, or prayed as we should? None of us poor miserable sinners can, so ultimately we do still struggle with anger, with hatred. So what is the final, ultimate solution to our problems with not only guilt but also anger?

I mentioned earlier that our mole problem in East Texas was finally solved, but it wasn't by anything we did. On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike barreled over Livingston, and caused all sorts of damage to our house and yard, and also dumped several inches of rain on us. After the storm, we were out surveying the debris, and out in the street in front of our house, we saw several rodents lying dead. At first I thought they were mice, but as I looked more closely, I realized that they were moles! What all of our efforts to get rid of the moles failed to accomplish, God had done by dumping buckets of rain on our yard, washing those moles out of their tunnels and into the street.

So by all means, starve Satan as much as you can by working to keep guilt and anger out of your life, out of your heart, out of your conscience. But remember that the only final solution to defeat Satan can come from above, in the flood of Christ's blood that He pours down upon you in Baptism, in Absolution, and right here at the altar in Holy Communion. St. John wrote, "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil" (1 John 3:8). He did that on the cross, and now also today as He continues to pour out the blood that He shed on the cross upon His faithful people. For St. John also wrote, "the blood of Jesus [God's] Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:6-7). Ultimately, the only way to destroy the devil and to drive out guilt and anger is by drowning them and the devil, and there's only one flood that can do it: the blood of Jesus Christ, our Savior, as Martin Luther put it so beautifully in his hymn about Baptism:

7. All that the mortal eye beholds
Is water as we pour it.
Before the eye of faith unfolds
The power of Jesus' merit.
For here it sees the crimson flood
To all our ills bring healing;
The wonders of His precious blood
The love of God revealing,
Assuring His own pardon.

Only the blood of Jesus Christ can bring healing to all our ills, of both guilt and anger. So let us pray without ceasing that God would flood His grace, Christ's precious blood over us, and even into our mouths, the blood that was given and shed for the forgiveness of all of our sins. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.