Sunday Sermon with Dr. King #13

p. 133

The Answer to a Perplexing Question

“Why could not we cast him out?”

Matthew 17:19

With just two sermons left after today, I’m feeling like those people who reach the climax of a novel or a movie and don’t want it to end because it’s just SO GOOD! This experience of exploring Dr. King’s sermons through Strength to Love* has been very educational for me in various ways. Education Mosaic –- is all about learning and achieving educational goals. I have learned much about myself and my business through the exploration of Dr. King’s sermon. Today’s sermon is about evil and what it takes to cast it out. First of all, here is the caveat – and I should have mentioned this at the beginning – to believe that evil exists, one should first explore their belief in God, the Bible as the living Word, and their faith. Dr. King breaks down how man, by himself, can not cast out evil, nor can man rely solely on God to do it. Instead, it needs to be done in tandem: God working through people to cast out the world’s evils.

First, Dr. King lays out how man has tried to remove evil through “his own power and ingenuity in the strange conviction that by thinking, inventing, and governing, he will at last conquer the nagging forces of evil” (pp. 134-135). However, he does state: “I would be the last to condemn the thousands of sincere and dedicated people outside the churches who have labored unselfishly through various humanitarian movements to cure the world of social evils, for I would rather a man be a committed humanist than an uncommitted Christian” (p. 136). 

Secondly, the idea that waiting upon the Lord passively, while God alone redeems the world, is also not the answer to cast out evil. Dr. King goes on to say how we put pray for peace, but also work for disarmament. We must pray for racial justice, but we must also use our minds to organize into mass nonviolent action. We must pray for economic justice but also work to bring social changes for a more fair distribution of wealth. This balance is the ultimate answer Dr. King provides in the final part of the sermon.

“Both man and God, made one ina  marvelous unity of purpose through an overflowing love as the free gift of himself on the part of God and by perfect obedience and receptivity on the part of man, can transform the old into the new and drive out the deadly cancer of sin” (p. 140). Dr. King then illustrates that the way to join forces is through faith. God transformed many people in the Bible to do great works for Him. This illustrates how God wants people to act through faith to change the world. God is waiting for us to open the door, through faith, to invite Him in so He can begin working in us to cast out evil.

*King, M. L. (1963). Strength to love. New York: Harper & Row.