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 + + +
