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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. (Amen.)
When Jesus was baptized, the heavens were opened to Him and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him, and a voice from the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, with Whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:16-17). Then, as we heard in today’s Gospel Reading appointed for the First Sunday in Lent, Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, at least two of which temptations explicitly related to Jesus’s being, as the Father’s voice had declared Him, the Son of God. We may move past that first sentence of today’s Gospel Reading so quickly that we may fail to consider and appreciate fully what we are told. Immediately after His baptism, (Mark 1:12) the Holy Spirit brought Jesus, from the Jordan River into the wilderness, for the purpose of being tempted by the un-holiest spirit of all un-holy spirits. In today’s Gospel Reading that unholiest of spirits is called “the devil”, which emphasizes him as “the slanderer”; he is also called “the tempter”, which could be translated as “the tester”; and he is also called “Satan”, which has to do with his being God’s “adversary”. In some ways Jesus’s experience of being led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil is unique to Him—for example only He was tempted to be unfaithful in His calling as the Messiah, the Savior—but in other ways Jesus’s experience of being led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil is common to all believers—for example, He was, as we are, tempted to be unfaithful to God. This morning we consider primarily today’s Gospel Reading, directing our thoughts to the theme “Led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil”.
As we consider today’s Gospel Reading, relevant are the other two Readings appointed for the First Sunday in Lent. Today’s Old Testament Reading (Genesis 3:1-21) recounts the first man and woman’s succumbing to the serpent’s temptation in the garden and thereby plunging humankind into sin. Where Adam failed in the Garden, today’s Gospel Reading makes clear, Jesus succeeded in the wilderness! Today’s Epistle Reading (Romans 5:12-19) contrasts well Adam and Christ, contrasting the one trespass that led to condemnation for all with the one act of righteousness that leads to justification and life for all, and contrasting the one man’s dis‑obedience that made all sinners with the One Man’s obedience that, at least potentially, can make all righteous. And, also relevant, as we consider today’s Gospel Reading, are things that we know from elsewhere in Holy Scripture, such as the Lord’s letting Satan tempt Job, or “test” Job, as it were, on the Lord’s behalf (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6); God’s testing Abraham by telling Abraham to offer his only son Isaac, whom he loved, as a burnt offering (Genesis 22:1-19; confer Hebrews 11:17); and the whole way that the Lord God led the people of Israel for forty years in the wilderness, testing them in order to know what was in their hearts, whether or not they would keep his commandments (Deuteronomy 8:2).
God’s testing us and God’s letting Satan tempt us may not be as dramatic as God’s testing and letting Satan tempt the first man and woman, Job, Abraham, the people of Israel, and Jesus, but then God’s testing us and God’s letting Satan tempt us hardly needs to be as dramatic, for we fail much‑less‑dramatic testing, and we succumb to much-less‑dramatic tempting. Of course, the first man and woman were created good and were still rightly-oriented towards God, but, since their fall into sin, Job, Abraham, the people of Israel, and we ourselves are by nature evil and are wrongly‑oriented against God. But, even we who are led by the Spirit and so re‑created and re‑oriented to God—and so, with faith in Him and the right use of His Word, should be better able to pass the testing and resist the tempting—even we still fail the testing and succumb to the tempting. In thoughts, words, and deeds, we fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, and so, in thoughts, words, and deeds, we also fail rightly to use His Name and to regard His Word, to honor His authorities, His gifts of human life, human sexuality, reputation, and possessions. And so we deserve death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, apart from God’s calling and thereby enabling us to repent and so to be forgiven for the sake of Jesus, true God in human flesh.
Because Jesus was truly human, He could experience both hunger, as today Gospel Reading tells us that He hungered in the wilderness, and thirst, as Holy Scripture elsewhere tells us that He thirsted on the cross (John 19:28). Because Jesus was truly God, He could not succumb to temptation, but that in‑ability does not make His temptation any less real. Rather, as the Divinely-inspired author of Hebrews says, Jesus in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15; confer 2:17-18). Thus, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice for our sin. For, as Jesus was led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil, so the author of Hebrews also says that, through the eternal Spirit, Christ offered Himself without blemish to God the Father, in order to purify us to serve God (Hebrews 9:14). Jesus’s victory over the devil by resisting the devil’s temptations in the wilderness anticipate Jesus’s victory over the devil by defeating the devil on the cross. There on the cross, the woman’s Offspring bruises, or “crushes” (NIV), the serpent’s head, though the serpent bruises, or “strikes” (NIV), the woman’s Offspring’s heel. Such is God’s great love for us! Far better than the first man and woman’s attempting to cover their shame with fig leaves, there on the cross is the atoning for all sin with the blood of Jesus. In the wilderness, we see Jesus, the “Stronger Man”, begin to bind the devil, the “strong man”, and so, as it were, to plunder his goods (Matthew 12:29; Mark 13:27; Luke 11:21; confer Isaiah 53:12), and that binding and plundering are at least essentially complete with Jesus’s death on the cross and resurrection from the grave (confer Foerster, TDNT 7:159, and Grundmann, TDNT 3:401), even if we do not fully realize their completion until the Last Day. As St. Paul said in the Epistle Reading, those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness will reign in life through Jesus Christ. When we in repentance receive God’s grace, then God forgives us our sinful nature and all of our actual sin. God forgives us through His Word in all of its forms.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the tempter came to Jesus, and, when that un-holy angel left Him, holy angels came and were ministering to Him. God’s heavenly messengers also are sent out for the sake of us who are to inherit salvation, and God’s earthly messengers also minister to us (confer, for example, Revelation 2:1). God’s earthly messengers read and preach His Word to groups such as this, and they apply His Gospel to individuals in the Sacraments. At the Baptismal Font, God gives birth to us from above by water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5), and so Holy Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God about Holy Baptism (Small Catechism IV:6). As beloved children of God with whom, in Christ, He is well-pleased, we converse with our father confessors about the sins that we know and feel in our hearts for the sake of the Spirit-breathed consolation of Holy Absolution (John 20:22-23; Smalcald Articles III:iv; vii:1). And so, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us and so forgive our sins and thereby, with the involvement of the Holy Spirit (John 6:63), give us life and salvation.
Led by the Spirit, in turn, we are tempted by the devil—not to mention by the world and by our sinful nature. The devil, the world, and our sinful nature do not want us to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come, but they try to deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice (Small Catechism III:11, 18). Such is the life of the baptized! God certainly tempts no one, but God Himself does test us, and God permits others to tempt us (for example, James 1:13-15). The devil, the world, and our sinful nature are not greater than God or equal to God, nor are they even free to do whatever they want to do outside of God’s authority. God will not let us be tempted beyond our ability to endure it with His help (1 Corinthians 10:13). In temptation, those who wrongly think that they are strong on their own actually are weak, while those who rightly know that they are weak and so depend on God actually are strong, for His power is made perfect in our weakness; if we succumb to temptation, we do so solely by our own fault, but, if we resist temptation, we do so solely by God’s grace (Pieper, I:563-564 including n.50, with reference to 2 Corinthians 12:9‑10). God rules over all in order to accomplish His saving purpose in us, and so we submit to Him even in suffering that we cannot otherwise understand (confer Seesemann, TDNT 6:25).
Like our Lord before us, we are “Led by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil”. And, enabled to repent by the Holy Spirit, we are forgiven for Jesus’s sake by God the Father. We count meeting trials, such as testing or tempting, all joy, for the testing of our faith produces steadfastness, and steadfastness leads to our being perfect and complete, lacking nothing (James 1:2-4). We rejoice in that ultimate salvation, even if, for a little while, we are grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of our faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:6-7).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +