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+ + + 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.
Five weeks ago as we observed the Baptism of Our Lord, we heard God the Father’s voice from heaven say to Jesus, “You are My beloved Son, with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). In his Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, St. Luke then goes on to trace Jesus’s genealogy as ultimately the son of Adam and the son of God (Luke 3:38). Today, as we observe the First Sunday in Lent, we hear, in two cases, the devil tempt Jesus based on the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. Commentators differ as to how much they think that the devil holds that fact to be true, but we know from elsewhere in St. Luke’s Gospel account that the devil’s minions know who Jesus is (for example, Luke 4:41), so we should not be surprised that the devil, who may have even heard the Father’s voice from heaven, knows that Jesus is the Son of God, even if the devil seems to demand proof of that fact or tries to lead Jesus into sin based on or casting doubt on that fact. This morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “If You are the Son of God”.
Today’s Gospel Reading about Jesus’s Temptation is especially tied to Jesus’s Baptism, despite the intervening genealogy, in St. Luke’s Gospel account. The themes of sonship and the Holy Spirit carry over from one to the other, as the Holy Spirit, Who at the Baptism descended on Jesus in bodily form like a dove, led Jesus in the wilderness for forty days, where Jesus was being tempted by the devil, whom all three persons of the Godhead allowed to serve a role in their plan. The wilderness was a place of tempting or testing, as there in the Old Testament God had tested the faithfulness of His people of Israel (Deuteronomy 8:2), and there they had fallen into sin by testing God (Deuteronomy 6:16; confer Marshall, 169). But, unlike the children of Israel and even their common ancestor Adam, who succumbed to temptation (Genesis 3:6), in each of the three representative temptations reported, Jesus proved to be a faithful Son of God. Jesus trusted the Father to sustain Him; Jesus would not take what the devil, a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44) presented (with detail unique to St. Luke’s account) as an easy escape from His mission to the cross; and Jesus would not test God as to whether or not He was present with Jesus. In each case, even as the devil misused verses from today’s Psalm (91:11, 12), Jesus rightly used passages of Deuteronomy, all related to when the people of Israel were in the wilderness (Deuteronomy 8:3; 6:13, 16). Jesus truly is the faithful Son of God.
Although you and I cannot be sons or daughters of God in precisely the same way that Jesus is, we can still ask: are you and I faithful children of God? Do we always trust God the Father to sustain us, to give us all we need to support our bodies and lives (Small Catechism, II:2)? Do we not take what appear to be easy escapes from the responsibilities of our various callings in life, whether spouse, child, sibling, or neighbor? Do we not test God as to whether or not He is present with us? To be sure, we all are tempted by “the devil, the world, and our own sinful nature”, and all too often we are deceived or misled “into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice” (Small Catechism III:18). For such sins, we deserve both to die in this life and to be tormented for eternity, but God calls and enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin—sins of not trusting Him, of escaping our responsibilities, of testing Him, or whatever our sin might be. God forgives all our sin, for the sake of His Son Jesus Christ.
Anticipating today’s being Valentine’s Day, I wrote in my newspaper column for yesterday that “The Bible speaks very little about erotic love but very much about God’s love for sinners in Christ.” The truest love is not the love we have for one another or even the love we have for God, but the truest love is that God loved us and sent His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins so we might live through Him (1 John 4:9-10). True God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, the Son became flesh, and as a man He hungered in the wilderness and thirsted on the cross (John 19:28). In today’s Gospel Reading St. Luke uniquely tells us that, when the devil ended the forty days of temptation, the devil departed from Jesus until an opportune time. St. Luke also uniquely tells us of such an opportune time, when Satan entered into Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, who conspired to betray Jesus (Luke 22:3). Of course, Jesus faced the forces of the devil throughout His ministry, until His work of destroying the devil was finished on the cross (1 John 3:8; John 19:30). Thus, Jesus’s whole career was “an unshrinking and victorious confrontation with the power of the Evil One” (Roehrs-Franzmann, 63). Jesus in every respect was tempted as we are but without ever sinning (Hebrews 4:15). The benefits of Jesus’s perfect obedience and of His dying the death we deserve to die are graciously available to us by faith. So, St. Paul can write by Divine inspiration in today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 10:8b-13) that “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”.
That salvation is given to us who believe through God’s Word and Sacraments. In Holy Baptism, we are made children of God by “water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word”. At the Baptismal Font, our sins are forgiven; we are rescued from sin, death, and the devil; and we are given eternal salvation. Yet, our sinful nature still clings to us, and we continue to sin. When sins that we know and feel in our heart particularly trouble us, we confess them privately to our pastor for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, “forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself”. And, so individually absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar and receive at this rail bread that is Christ’s Body and wine that is Christ’s blood, given and shed for you and for me, for the forgiveness of our sin. We do not doubt, but we believe that the Son of God, Who in the wilderness could have commanded that stone to become bread, here does command that bread is His Body and wine is His Blood. They strengthen and preserve us in body and soul to life everlasting.
And, that everlasting life is arguably what this life is all about. Here we are not exempt from suffering anymore than Jesus was exempt from suffering, and only in Him does our suffering make any sense. Our Triune God permits the devil to work against us and uses the devil’s temptations and the resulting afflictions for the good of conforming us to the cruciform image of His Son, so that that Son might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters (Romans 8:28-29). The devil’s misuse of today’s Psalm to some extent resonates with us, for, when what seems to be evil befalls us, we wonder if God really is with us. But, at those times, too often we fail to see that God is protecting us even then, not letting anything ultimately separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).
No “ifs” about it: Jesus is the Son of God, and, in a similar sense, we believers are also children of God. Jesus perfectly resisted the devil’s temptations and conquered the devil for us. Because Jesus sympathizes with our weakness, we can confidently draw near to His throne of grace in order to receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need (Hebrews 4:15‑16). There is no greater way of worshipping Him than such seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins. Then, so delivered, as the people in today’s Old Testament Reading were commanded to do (Deuteronomy 26:1-11), we joyfully and liturgically offer our gifts of thanksgiving, which gifts of thanksgiving themselves come from God. And, as we will sing in today’s Closing Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 531:6), we pray now for His final deliverance:
Jesus, send Your angel legions / When the foe would us enslave.
Hold us fast when sin assaults us; / Come, then, Lord, Your people save.
Overthrow at last the dragon; / Send him to his fiery grave.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +