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The February 17, 2013, Concordia Publishing House bulletin cover refers to Luke 4:2 from the copyrighted English Standard Version and uses a photo copyrighted by Robertstock.com.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
What an “evil” bulletin cover greeted you this morning when you arrived here at church! The dark‑colored background; the man’s short, dark hair; his dark t-shirt; the look on his face; pretty much the only light shining on him coming from the computer screen; our worst-case imagination of what might be on the screen; and the caption “Tempted by the devil”—all those elements combine to evoke evil. Evil—evil is an appropriate “power” to have in mind, especially on this First Sunday in Lent, our 40-day season of repentance and other preparation for our celebration of Easter. Our Gospel Reading this day tells of Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil, and it recalls the people of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness being tested by God and themselves testing God. This morning, as we consider Jesus’s being tempted by the devil, we consider also our own being “Tempted by the devil”.
Jesus’s being tempted by the devil in the wilderness is likely, for many of you, a familiar Bible narrative. The three‑year cycle of appointed Readings we follow gives us an account of Jesus’s being tempted by the devil on the First Sunday in Lent in each of its three years. St. Luke’s account that we heard today, like St. Matthew’s account that we will hear next year, is considerably longer and more‑detailed than St. Mark’s account that we heard last year. Yet, our having three accounts accents the event’s importance for us, as we are tempted by the devil.
By divine inspiration, St. Luke tells us that Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from His Baptism in the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, essentially in order to be tempted by the devil. When the forty days were ended, Jesus was hungry, and the devil tried to use that hunger, among other things, in tempting Jesus to misuse or otherwise forsake His relationship with His Father. Jesus faithfully responded to each temptation with words from Deuteronomy’s recapping of the people of Israel’s unfaithfulness in the wilderness, and, when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Jesus until another time. (We might primarily think of the time Jesus was in Gethsemane, but Jesus was no doubt tempted throughout His ministry.)
Today’s Gospel Reading can raise questions about the devil that we cannot really answer. For example, the devil claimed that all the authority and glory of the kingdoms of the world had been delivered to him and that he could give it to whomever he wanted. Jesus and others in Holy Scripture do refer to the devil as “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), but the devil is also a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). Ultimately, what the devil said is untrue and is not to be trusted, as the man and the woman found out the hard way in the garden in the beginning. You and I might at times overestimate or underestimate the devil and his tempting us. We might overestimate the devil by thinking that he has god‑like powers or abilities, when the devil is only a fallen angel, after all. We might underestimate the devil by thinking that he is not a serious threat to us, when the devil is a fallen angel, after all! As a fallen angel, as The Rev. Dr. Luther writes in the Large Catechism, the devil “baits and badgers us on all sides”, especially “where the conscience and spiritual matters are at stake.” Dr. Luther writes that the devil wants:
… to make us scorn and despise both the Word and the works of
God, to tear us away from faith, hope, and love, to draw us into unbelief,
false security, and stubbornness,
or, on the contrary, to drive us into despair, atheism, blasphemy, and
countless other abominable sins. (LC III:104)
The blurb on the back cover of the bulletin about the front cover is right in saying that the devil is the author of temptation, but the devil is not the only source of temptation. The Rev. Dr. Luther writes the following in the Large Catechism of the world:
[The world] assails us by word and deed and drives us to anger and impatience. In short, there is in it nothing but hatred and envy, enmity, violence and injustice, perfidy [that is, deliberate betrayal of trust], vengeance, cursing, reviling, slander, arrogance, and pride, along with fondness for luxury, honor, fame, and power. No one is willing to be the least, but everyone wants to sit in the chief seat and be seen by all. (LC III:103)
The blurb on the back cover of the bulletin is right that the devil wants to “bind [us] in the shackles of sin”, but by nature we are already bound in the shackles of sin. Our sinful flesh not only binds us in sin but also tempts us to sin further. Of the sinful flesh, Dr. Luther in the Large Catechism teaches us:
[It] goes to work and lures us daily into unchastity, laziness, gluttony and drunkenness, greed and deceit, into acts of fraud and deception against our neighbor—in short into all kinds of evil lusts which by nature cling to us and to which we are incited by the association and example of other people and by things we hear and see. (LC III:102)
Like the woman in the Garden, some might say, “The devil made me do it”, but, really we have no one to blame but ourselves. We ourselves give in to temptations—whether temptations of the devil, temptations of the world, or temptations of our own sinful flesh—and, on account of giving in to those temptations, we deserve death—death now and death for eternity.
But, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, St. Paul writes to the Romans, “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” (Romans 10:9-10) Jesus as Lord and as raised by God from the dead is the content of our belief in our hearts and so it is also the content of the confession of our mouths, as is the confession of all of the sins we commit, whether or not we are even aware of them! And, being justified and being saved are the same things: having our sins forgiven through faith in Jesus. Jesus was tempted in every respect as we are, but He remained without sin (Hebrews 4:15), and He died on the cross and rose again from the grave for us, to save us from our sin.
Not to the devil but to Jesus has God given all authority in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18). Jesus suffered when He was tempted, and He sympathizes with our weakness (Hebrews 2:18; 4:15). Jesus came to destroy the devil’s work (1 John 3:8), and, on the cross, Jesus indeed defeated the devil—a deliverance far greater than that from Egypt referred to in today’s Old Testament Reading (Deuteronomy 26:1-11). When we repent of our sin—that is, when we turn in sorrow from our sin, when we believe God forgives our sin for Jesus’s sake, and when we want to do better—then God forgives our sin—no matter the specific temptation that we gave into. When we repent, then God forgives all our sin and even our sinful natures themselves.
As Jesus in the Gospel Reading responded to being tempted by the devil with God’s Word, so God forgives our sin and our sinful natures with His Word in all its forms: both preached and administered in the Sacraments. God’s beloved Son Jesus was baptized and then tempted, as we heard in the Gospel Reading. Similarly we are made God’s children in Holy Baptism, filled with the Holy Spirit at the Font, and then tempted in the wilderness of our lives. (The devil does not really need to tempt us before we are God’s children, for then he already has us!) As Jesus was sent with authority, Jesus gave His apostles and their successors a special gift of the Holy Spirit and the authority to forgive sins on His behalf in individual Holy Absolution. As God had miraculously fed the children of Israel in the wilderness with manna, Jesus was tempted to miraculously feed Himself in the wilderness, by commanding a stone to become bread, and now, in Holy Communion, God miraculously feeds us His children in the wilderness of this life, with bread that is His body, given for us, for the forgiveness of our sins and so also for life and for salvation. In these ways—preaching, Baptism, Absolution, Communion—God forgives our sin and brings forth from us the fruits of faith.
Up until yesterday I did not know there was in the last decade a popular hair style called “Bird’s Nest Hair”. There apparently were a number of “Birds Nest Hair” variations, from “big and bushy” to a bun, with “crimped hair secured in bunches” somewhere in between. Though I do not think any birds actually nest in any of those styles, the idea of birds building a nest in someone’s hair has long been used as an illustration in discussing dealing with temptations. The illustration is said to go back to the church father Jerome, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries, but the illustration was a favorite of Martin Luther’s (I found nearly half-a-dozen of his uses of it in just 54 volumes of the American Edition of his works [6:133; 13:113; 16:311; 21:88; 42:73]). The idea is that, just as birds fly over our heads, we will feel temptations and have vexing thoughts. But, just as we would not let the birds build nests in our hair, so we should not give in to the temptations and let them lead us away into sin. Rather, we resist and invoke God’s assistance in prayer, and the temptations’ victory over us is prevented. (See also LC III:108.) Yet, as with our Lord, so with us: being tempted by the devil serves a role in God’s larger purpose. Our faith grows and becomes firmer amid “temptations and dangers, so that we become even stronger in the conviction that God cares for us, forgives us, and hears us for Christ’s sake. No one learns this without many severe struggles.” (Ap IV:350) In the Large Catechism, the Rev. Dr. Luther writes that “As long as we remain in this vile life … we are constrained to cry out and pray every hour … Otherwise it is impossible to overcome even the least temptation” (LC III:105). And, even though temptations might remain after we pray, God answers our petition not to lead us into them by giving us the power and strength to resist them (LC III:106).
Our Lord Jesus Christ was tempted by the devil yet was without sin. We who are sinful by our very nature are tempted by the devil and yet live in the forgiveness of sins received because of Jesus, His baptism, fasting, temptation, and so forth. We indeed pray God to “guard and preserve us” so that we may not be deceived or mislead “into unbelief, despair, and other great and shameful sins, but that, although we may be so tempted, we may finally prevail and gain the victory” (SC III:18). Thanks be to God, Who gives us that victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ (Romans 7:25; 1 Corinthians 15:57)!
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +