1 March 2020
Text: Matt 4:1-11
In the name of +
Jesus. Amen.
Jesus
is tempted, and Jesus overcomes temptation. And so we are tempted to say, “So what? He’s God.
He wasn’t really tempted.” But
this is to deny our Lord’s humanity.
It
is a mystery, dear friends. Jesus is
completely God, and completely man. And
yet, He is not two Christs, but one Christ. Theologians have all kinds of technical
explanations and terminology for this, but the bottom line is that Jesus is God
who broke into space and time – and even into our flesh – to rescue us. His divinity makes Him the perfect sacrificial
Lamb, whose death isn’t a payment for what He deserves, but rather His death
pays for what we deserve. And at the
same time, His humanity means that He can, in fact, die. If He couldn’t die, He couldn’t pay for our
sins.
When
He was on the cross, He was mocked by those who said: “He saved others, but He
cannot save Himself.” Of course, He
could have saved Himself. It was within His
power to come down from the cross. He
could have turned the tables on the world that crucified Him. But He could not have saved the world by doing
so. So there is some truth in what was
said. His love for us meant that He
could not come down from the cross – and at the same time atone for the sins of
the world.
Such
is our God, about whom we can use the word “can’t” – not for want of power, but
because, by His nature, He is incapable of not loving us.
And
so our God in the flesh deals with all of the things we ordinary human beings
deal with: anxiety, pain and suffering, and even death. Jesus suffers all of these things even as we
do, only He suffers more – knowing that He deserves none of these things.
Temptation
is one such thing. Unlike the rest of God’s
creation, we have a rational mind. We
can be taught and instructed. We have a
moral compass. We know right and wrong. And this is what temptation is: our desire
wrestles with our morals. And to
complicate matters, we have an enemy, the devil, the serpent, whose hatred of God
and of mankind makes it impossible for him to love, impossible for him not to
interfere in the affairs of man. He is
truly the anti-Christ, but he can only appear to us in various forms. Unlike our Lord, Satan is not human, and certainly
does not come to us out of love and a desire to rescue us.
Jesus
is described as the Second Adam, the reboot of humanity. The first Adam yielded to temptation from his
wife, who yielded to temptation from the devil, the serpent. Not content with his place in the cosmic
pecking order, Satan enlisted humanity in his cause of overturning the order of
creation. He tempted the woman to take
charge and wear the pants in the family. And she in turn tempted her husband to join
her in the Satanic rebellion against God’s authority, defying God’s Law, and
desiring to be godlike himself. Temptation
became action, sinful action, and the cost of this violation of God’s Law was a
mortal tear in the fabric of the universe. Since that day, hell has been unleashed on our
planet. Satan has taken charge of the
world and of the hearts of man, largely through the weapon of temptation.
Hence
God’s rescue mission. Hence Adam 2.0. Hence the incarnate God, the Christ, doing battle
with the serpent, the devil, yet again. Only
this time, the New Adam does not fall like the Old Adam. The bride of the New Adam, the Church, will be
saved by her bridegroom, unlike the bride of the Old Adam, Eve, whose bridegroom
assured her death by succumbing to temptation himself.
And
this is what this temptation in the wilderness is all about, dear friends. The fate of the universe hangs on our Lord
being victorious in this battle.
And
what’s more, our Lord reveals the kind of thing that repels and repulses the
crafts and assaults of the devil. Three
times, Jesus cites Scripture, the Word of God, and hurls it at Satan, the
accuser and the tempter, the serpent, the father of lies. For a lie is a powerful thing. It can confuse. It can mislead. It can lead directly to death. But it cannot abide truth. Truth is like a small light that dispels
darkness. And a liar, once exposed,
loses his power.
The
Word of God is incapable of lying, dear friends. And so when you hear “Thus says the Lord,” you
are hearing something that causes the devil to shrink away defeated, even as his
power and malice were destroyed by the cross, as Jesus completed His mission to
crush the head of the serpent and to gather His sheep into the green pasture of Paradise in which God placed us at Eden, before the serpent corrupted Paradise
and mangled creation by his lies and temptation.
And
so when we are tempted, we have a blueprint for pushing back. Jesus came to rescue us, not merely to give us
instructions to save ourselves. But
there is an element of teaching going on here. For even though Jesus saves us, we are still
rational creatures with a will. God will
not physically restrain you from sin. He
loves you too much to turn you into a robot or a zombie. You are not a brute beast; you are a human
being with a mind. God will not impose
salvation on you. You can indeed choose
to follow the serpent, though we know where this leads. Jesus saves you by calling to you, by urging
you to follow Him, by offering you opportunity to hear His Word, to be absolved
of your sins, to be baptized, and to partake of the body and blood of the Lord
for the strengthening of your faith. But
Jesus will not force you to do anything.
You are free.
And
so if you want to serve truth instead of the lie, if you want to resist the
temptations of the devil that you know will lead you astray and cause you harm,
if you want to turn in repentance and follow Jesus instead of the serpent – you
can see how to do it, and what your greatest weapon is: the Word of God.
The
pure Word of God in Scripture is what Jesus – who is the incarnate Word of God –
uses to repel the devil. Three times, He
says, “It is written.” Satan tries to
distort the meaning of the Word of God, but Jesus is having none of that. Jesus shows us how important it is to know the
Scriptures, and to be guided by their light. It isn’t enough to know right from wrong, dear
friends. For we all know that. We need the Word of God to repel the devil
and deliver us from temptation.
When
the serpent first tempted mankind in Eden, notice that he did not directly
attack God nor did he threaten or coerce Eve. Rather, he just injected a little doubt, a
small wedge of disbelief and distrust of God’s Word: “Did God actually say…?”
We
are surrounded by this temptation, dear friends. Nearly every image we see on TV, in the
movies, in magazines, books, websites, and in our schools and universities, we
are bombarded with “Did God actually say...?” and we are tempted by Satan to
pursue our own desires instead of the will of God.
The
kind of Satanism that used to be quiet and behind the scenes in Hollywood, in politics,
in sports and entertainment, in public schools (and even some Christian schools),
in universities, in public libraries, and in popular music, has now become open
Luciferianism. Secret societies
dedicated to Lucifer (that is, the devil, the false angel of light) are finding
their way into the popular culture. You’ll
see the tee shirts with pentagrams and the goat-headed Baphomet idol when you
simply go to the store to pick up groceries. Disney cartoons now feature demons and deviant
sexuality – not to mention disrespect of parents and hatred for normal social
institutions.
“Did
God actually say…?”
And
still, Christian parents allow their children – and even themselves – to be
seduced by the serpent. What we should
be doing, dear friends, is learning the Word of God. In the words of the ancient prayer, we must “read,
mark, learn, and inwardly digest” the Bible. There is no excuse today. We have so many resources for reading and
understanding the Scriptures. You don’t
need to read Hebrew and Greek and understand the technical theological terms
for how Jesus is both God and man. You can if you want to, of course. But what you actually need to do is to read
and understand the Scriptures so that you can recognize the truth, discern the
lie, and rebuke the devil. And you
cannot do that if your worldview is shaped by Hollywood and Big Media while
your Bible is a dusty, decorative coffee-table prop, or a pristine relic of
your baptism or confirmation.
Once
again, dear friends, Jesus will not force you to do anything. But if you call upon Him, He will protect you,
and the Holy Spirit will guide you to the truth and lead you where you need to
be for the sake of yourselves, your families, your friends, and if you have
children – for them as well. There is
still time to board the Ark.
Now
it is Lent. “Behold, now is the
favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Now is the time to say, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written….” Amen.
In the name of the Father
and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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