Sermon - Invocavit - Matthew 4:1-11 - 2018

“And lead us not into temptation,” we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. Open up your hymnal to page 324 where you’ll find the Small Catechism, let’s read together Luther’s explanation to the 6th petition: “God tempts no one. We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.”

It is true that God tempts no one, however, God does permit us to be tempted by Satan. “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say...?” Or later we read about Job’s life, “And the LORD said to Satan, “Behold, all that Job has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.” So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.” 

Have you ever wondered why God permitted Adam and Eve to be tempted, or why Job was so relentlessly attacked by Satan, or why you today must suffer so much temptation? Why does God allow us to be tempted and to sin? God permits us to be tempted at the hands of the devil with poverty, prosperity, and spiritual error so that our faith would be tested and strengthened to rely upon God’s clear Word. 

Returning to Adam and Eve, it makes you wonder why God ever let the serpent tempt Eve. It makes you wonder why God ever created the tree of knowledge of good and evil and placed it in the midst of the garden and then told them they can’t eat of that one tree. Why would God do that? Why would God even give Adam and Eve the ability to choose sin?

The answer is quite simple; it’s because He loves us and He wants us to love Him. Consider this: If I created a robot to serve my every will, and I programed it to obey my every command, and I command it to love me, does it actually love me? No! It doesn’t love me, it’s just programed to do what I tell it. It doesn’t have the choice, it’s just a slave to my demands. God didn’t create us to be robots because He loves us and He wants for us to be created in His image. He also wants for us to love Him, which means that we have to be created free to also not love Him. For Adam and Eve, not eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was an act of love and worship towards God. 

God may not actively tempt us towards evil, but He certainly does passively allow us to be tempted by Satan. Such is the life of the Christian. The Christian life is not one free from temptation, but in a sense it’s one filled with even more temptation and testing than ever before. Because you’ve been baptized, you’ve been marked with the cross both on your forehead and your heart; like a bullseye the devil now knows where to aim.

The life of the Christian is little more than a life that mirror’s Jesus’ life. Prior to Jesus being tempted by Satan, He was baptized by John in the Jordan river. Immediately afterwards, “Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” We Christians who have been baptized haven’t been led by the Spirit into heaven, but we’ve been led by the Spirit into the wilderness of this life. Here Satan is like a roaring lion, who prowls about, seeking whom he may devour. 

When Jesus tells us that we must take up our cross and follow Him, He doesn’t mean that you have to go out and search for your cross or try to invent one. The Spirit is already going to lead you into more than enough crosses and trials. Today, we see that Jesus has gone before us to be tempted by three major classes of temptation. 

After Jesus had been fasting for forty days and forty nights, understatement of the year, “He was hungry.” “And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”” How tempting is it for us that when things in life go sour, we despair of God’s goodness! Perhaps at the loss of money or health we begin to question whether God loves us or is even there. What kind of a Father is He if He doesn’t even give us the basic necessities of life? 

To which Jesus resists this temptation by replying: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus recognizes that Satan wants us to focus so intensely on bread, on things that pertain solely to the body, so that we would neglect God’s Word. Instead what Jesus does is He uses the opportunity to not see bread, but instead to see and cling to God’s Word, by which Jesus strengthens Himself and strikes the devil with! It is as if Jesus says “What if the world were full of bread? Who cares! Man still wouldn’t live by bread alone, but there is more to life, namely, the Word of God! These Words are so beautiful and powerful! These words give me true life!” 

Then the devil, when He sees that His temptation over poverty wasn’t enough, He tempts us with riches and great wealth! “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”” If we weren’t enticed away by the devil with poverty, want, need, and misery, then He’s going to attack us on the other side with riches, favor, honor, pleasure, and power.

This is a mistake I think we make all too easily today. We mistake prosperity for something that only the Lord gives us because He is rewarding us. When it could very well be Satan who is giving us these riches in order to entice us away from the Lord. We’d make all sorts of sacrifices for our prosperity: we’d move, we’d leave our friends, we’d spend less time with our family, we’d spend years getting a certain education, we’d work countless extra hours, all to sacrifice for our riches. We gladly worship our work and our pleasure! But would we do any of those things for our faith in God? Jesus replied to Satan with God’s Word: “It is written: You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” 

Then Satan attacks a third time, this time however not with poverty or riches, but instead with something far more insidious and malicious. “Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’””

This attack of Satan is not physical but instead purely spiritual. He tempts and tests you using the very words of scripture, but he twists them in a way in which they weren’t intended to be used. He so cleverly tricks you into believing that God says something that God never said.  In fact, He uses God’s Word against you in order to make you put God to the test. We see this temptation happen to us whenever we’re taught that God’s Word says something that it doesn’t say. We either reject God because we think He’s not doing what we think His Word says, or we simply create and worship a false god while we claim to still believe in the true God.

But in response to all of these temptations, Jesus turns us again and again to scripture, saying “it is written.” In the face of our temptations that we must each confront, God gives us His Word as the weapon to defend against Satan. He gives us His word, sharper than any two-edged blade, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit. Against all temptations of the Devil, God’s Word is our great refuge and against it no forces of hell shall overcome.

Instead, through these temptations and testings, your faith is strengthened by being forced to turn again and again to scripture. God permits these temptations to strike you so that your heart may be turned away from itself, and your faith is given the opportunity to love and trust in God who promises you salvation. 

But as we sit here and reflect upon Christ’s temptations, we remember also our many temptations. Instead of looking like Christ and spurning Satan with God’s Word, we look more akin to Adam, Eve, and Job, who eventually gave in to Satan. Which is precisely why Christ was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. He was tempted not in order to show us how we should resist the devil, but He was tempted and withstood because we can’t resist the devil.

Jesus came to fulfill the Words spoken by the Father to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall crush your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” Jesus suffered under the serpent, He was tempted and tested just like we are, and ultimately He was bruised by the devil upon the cross. Yet, in bruising Jesus, Satan’s head was crushed under the load of the cross. Our sins have been crushed along with Satan.

The temptations and the testings that we have failed, are forgiven by Jesus who never faltered even though He bore the agony of everyone’s udder failure. Instead, just as God’s Word promises, Jesus fulfills the Word and forgives us.

When His testing was ended, “behold, angels came and were ministering to Him.” Jesus is God, He doesn’t need angels, but you do, so find comfort in these words and know that when one devil attacks you, there are many angels that minister to you. Though we now fight with God’s Word as our great sword, like knights, God sends the angels of heaven to be our bakers and waiters to minister to us and bear us to heaven to live with our God who comes to our rescue.