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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.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags through its second week, many of us may continue to be enthralled by the war, especially its somewhat surprising slowness, apparently at least in part due to the Russian army’s corruption, morale, maintenance, and supply issues, and in part due to what has been called the Ukrainian people’s “courageous resolve” and the “fierce tenacity”. The Ukrainian people are fighting for their very lives, but you and I are also engaged in a battle for our very lives, even if in many ways our battle is less obvious. For example, the Divinely-inspired St. Paul writes to the Ephesians that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12 ESV). Even though the account of the devil’s tempting Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading does not use the language of spiritual warfare, Jesus’s victory over the devil in the account’s three specific temptations is certainly a decisive battle in “Our Spiritual Warfare”.
Importantly, today’s Gospel Reading presents Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the devil, and God all as real, and the Gospel Reading presents the temptations and their outcomes as consequential. Over the years, popular surveys of Americans in general and American Christians in particular have found that fewer and fewer people believe that the Holy Spirit and the devil are real—in one case less than half of the self-described Christians surveyed said the Holy Spirit and the devil are real—with another recent survey even finding that more people believed in the devil than believed in God. Certainly the devil is gaining ground for his cause when people do not think that either he or his adversary exists and so more or less ignore his role in “Our Spiritual Warfare”. And, even if you and I believe that the devil exists, we may have become desensitized to his very real threat to us, instead picturing him as a harmless cartoon character on our shoulder or as comedian Jon Lovitz in a red body‑suit complete with a satin cape and a cowl with black velvet horns.
To be sure, the Bible and our Lutheran Confessions based solidly on the Bible have a more serious view of the devil and of “Our Spiritual Warfare”. For example, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism’s explanation of the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer refers to the devil, the world, and our sinful nature as not wanting us to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come. And, the explanation of the Sixth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer similarly refers to the devil, the world, and our sinful nature trying to deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. And, too often the devil, the world, and our sinful nature succeed in keeping us from hallowing God’s name and letting His kingdom come, and in deceiving us or misleading us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice! Corrupted by the first man and woman’s original sin passed down to us, we commit countless actual sins of our own, and we fail to think, say, and do the good that we should. On account of our sinful nature and our actual sins, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, unless we heed God’s enabling call to repent.
However, when we turn in sorrow from our sin, trust God to forgive our sin, and want to stop sinning, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and our actual sin, including our not hallowing His name and not letting His Kingdom come, including our false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. God forgives us all our sin, whatever our sin might be. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Today’s Gospel Reading emphasizes that Jesus is the perfectly obedient Son of God in human flesh, which flesh is, for example, capable of becoming hungry. As perfectly holy God, Jesus could not possibly succumb to temptations, but that does not mean His temptations were any less real. To those temptations, Jesus responded with God’s Word associated with the people of Israel’s wilderness wanderings correctly understood and applied. And, eventually the devil departed from Jesus until an opportune time, which in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account would seem to be when Satan entered into Judas Iscariot to betray Jesus to the Jewish leadership in the absence of a crowd (Luke 22:3-6). As that betrayal and the subsequent crucifixion and death took place, Jesus won not only a decisive victory over the devil but the whole war itself, defeating the devil on the cross. There, on the cross, out of God’s great love and mercy, Jesus died for you and for me and for the sins of the whole world. There, on the cross, Jesus has redeemed us lost and condemned creatures, purchased and won us from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood, and with His innocent suffering and death.
Jesus was tempted in every respect as we are and sympathizes with our weakness, so we with confidence draw near to His throne to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:15-16). Especially by the water and word of Holy Baptism we are rescued from death and the devil, united with Christ in a death like His and so also united with Christ in a resurrection like His (Romans 6:5). When sins particularly trouble us, we confess them to those whom Christ has sent in order to receive His forgiveness at their hands in Holy Absolution. And, so absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar to receive bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we also receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Because we are sacramentally united with Jesus, His journey through Lent and Easter is in many ways our journey through Lent and Easter.
U-S House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy Friday described the Ukrainian people as fighting tanks with sticks. We may think or feel like we are fighting tanks with sticks when we try to resist temptation from the devil, the world, and our own sinful nature either by quoting the Word of God or by pointing to our baptisms. But, so thinking or feeling is a problem not with the tools but with our lack of faith in the tools! The devil’s power admittedly is greater than that of Russian tanks, but so is the power of the Word of God and our baptisms greater than sticks! And, ultimately, the devil is significantly weaker than our all-powerful God! When it comes to “Our Spiritual Warfare”, Jesus is far more than an example for us to follow, for Jesus has won the war, as it were, and we are fighting the less-consequential battles that remain. As we are in Him, we are victorious over the devil. As we trust in God, God either delivers us from temptations, by enabling us to successfully resist them, or He forgives our succumbing to temptations, as we live every day in repentance and faith. And, the day is coming when He finally and fully will deliver us from all temptations and afflictions and other evil, graciously taking us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.
With the Divinely-inspired St. Paul writing to the Romans, we can be sure that in tribulation, distress, persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword we are more than conquerors through Him Who loved us. And, we can be sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 37-38.)
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +