10 March 2019
Text: Matt 4:1-11 (Gen 3:1-21, 2 Cor 6:1-10)
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
In the days before GPS, we used maps. And if you took a wrong turn or got lost, you were not automatically rerouted by a computer. You had to go back to the point where you got lost, back to the point of the wrong turn, and start over.
In Genesis chapter three, it is written, and we learn where we got lost, where we took the wrong fork in the road, where we chose death over life, evil of good, darkness over light, and the word of the serpent over the Word of God.
God had laid out a roadmap for mankind so that he would be all that he was created to be. And at that particular time and place in God’s plan, we were not to partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Maybe we were never to have that knowledge. But maybe we were, but we just weren’t ready for it yet.
And like children who see no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to do all those things that adults can do, and like adolescents who often act impulsively based on emotion and not on what is reasonable, Adam and Eve did not need much of a nudge to be convinced that they knew better than their Father.
The serpent asked, craftily, “Did God actually say…?” The serpent contradicted God, saying, “You will not surely die.” The serpent promised (untruthfully): “You will be like God.”
Adam and eve were tempted. God had given them the freedom to obey or to disobey. He had trusted them. But they betrayed His trust. And this violation of the plan put mankind on a different road than the beautifully paved superhighway that God had laid out for them. Now mankind found himself spinning his wheels on muddy trails with no map, surrounded by beasts and danger, lost, and at the mercy of the now-chaotic elements.
So now, dear friends, all sorts of things befall us that were not part of the original plan: the divine roadmap to becoming what God intended us to be. Nature was affected. Animals fear man and one another. Animals (and men) are predators. And we have things like earthquakes and floods and hurricanes and tsunamis. None of that was in the original plan.
God told the serpent, “On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.” God told Eve that bearing children would now become a painful experience: “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.” And there would also be conflict between husbands and wives. None of that was in the original plan.
God told Adam (whose curse is shared by all human beings): “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you.’” God told Adam that the ground would bring forth thorns, and farming would be backbreaking work. And worst of all, you will die. You will die. None of that was in the original plan.
We are lost, dear friends. Our world is devastated by this wrong turn. Our deviation from the plan, our willingness to eat the poison pill, our rejection of God’s perfection in favor of our rebellion have placed us where we are today.
And some people still blame God for the existence of evil in the world.
So how do we get out of the mess? How do we turn around and get back to the fork in the road? We can’t. We cannot go back, at least not with ourselves in charge. We need nothing less than God Himself to bring us back to that fork in the road and guide us back to His plan. And this is why Jesus was born, dear friends. This is why we have recently completed the “Christmas” part of the church year. And this is why Jesus dies on the cross, dear friends. This is why we have now moved into the “Easter” part of the church year.
The Second Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ, begins His ministry by encountering the serpent, who once again resorts to trickery and temptation to cause the Man to reject the Word of God. The tempter entices Jesus to use His divine power for selfish reasons, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But instead of accepting the serpent’s word, Jesus, the Word of God in the flesh, hurls the Word of God back at him: “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
The serpent returns and tempts the Man a second time, this time to throw Himself off of the top of the temple in a perverse use of the Psalms to test God. Jesus again uses the Word of God correctly as a weapon: “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
A third time, the serpent tried to lure Jesus in the same way that he snared Adam, showing Him the “kingdoms of the world and their glory,” saying, “All these I will give You if You fall down and worship me.”
And this third and final time, our Lord casts away the serpent, revealing his true identity: “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’ Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to Him.”
And so, our Lord Jesus took us back to that fork in the road, and reoriented us back toward God’s highway and away from Satan’s dirt road. We begin our Lenten journey with these steps. We confessed our sins and we remembered that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We acknowledged that we are lost, and we sought to “return to the Lord [our] God, for He is gracious and merciful!” We have surrendered control to Jesus. We have begun our way of repentance, by turning anew toward the Lord. And He is guiding us along the way: the way of the cross, the way of redemption, the way of victory, the way of resurrection. The way of returning to Paradise. In Christ, we go back to Eden, and when the serpent says, “Did God actually say…?” we reply, “Yes, it is written!” And when the serpent says, “You will not surely die,” we reply, “Yes, you are right this time, O serpent! We shall not surely die! For we reject your word and we cling to God’s Word.” In Christ, we expose the serpent for what he actually is, and we say to him: “Be gone Satan. For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve,” even as we worship Jesus and serve Him, gratefully confessing Him not only as our Lord, but also as our Savior, not only as the Word made flesh, but also our Champion in the flesh.
Jesus puts us on the right path, for “Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
And the devil’s lies are exposed. The grandiose promises of the devil that lead only to death and decay are laid bare for all to see. And the lies of the world have been overturned by our Lord Jesus Christ:
“We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”
For Christ, by means of the cross, and for us men and for our salvation, has crushed the serpent’s head and silenced his lying mouth. It is written. It is done. It is finished. Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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