Sermon for Lent 1B, February 22, 2015

Text: Mark 1:9-15

            Beloved in Christ, today’s Gospel may disappoint us if we are familiar with what Matthew and Luke tell of the same incident. Mark simply tells us that Jesus was tempted for forty days in the wilderness. He doesn’t bother to tell us what those temptations were. Matthew and Luke fill in the details. They tell us that Jesus was tempted to change stones into bread, to jump from the pinnacle of the temple, and to bow down to Satan. In each temptation Jesus was challenged to do these things to prove that He truly was God’s beloved Son. And in each instance Jesus quoted the Scriptures to refute Satan.

            Yes, Matthew and Luke have much more to say than does Mark. And yet today’s Gospel offers us a rich feast to digest, if we are but open to hear it. We see three vignettes: before, during, and after our Lord’s temptation. Let us look at what is happening in each situation.

            First of all, we see that before His temptation our Lord was given a Word by His Father. God said to Him, “You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.” Before there can be any temptation, God must have spoken. Either God must have commanded us to do or not do something or He must have promised that He would do something for us. But if we have not received either a word of His law or of His gospel, there is not any way for us to be tempted. Brute animals have neither God’s commandments nor His promises. They cannot be tempted in the way we are. But every human being has the law of God written in their hearts, and this law is loudly proclaimed by our conscience. Therefore, every human being can be tempted, for we have that word of law, if nothing else, from God. But Christ knew more than just God’s law. He had this clear promise that He was God’s beloved Son, in whom His Father delighted.

            Now often when God speaks His Word to us, we feel spiritually strong and are overjoyed to hear that Word. This is the moment of glory before we enter into the wilderness to be tested. When Christ heard the good words spoken by His Father and saw the Holy Spirit descend upon Him, He must have been filled with joy. At last, His ministry was under way. He felt close to God, as close as He had ever been, and He was surely willing to march through any wilderness. He was unbeatable. But all this would be sorely tested when He was banished to a desolate place. In the same way we too delight to hear God’s Word in this church. We leave here, having been forgiven all of last week’s sins, and we are eager to take on the challenges that lie ahead of us. There is no foe that can stand before us, or so we think. This is the pattern of the saints throughout history. Abraham heard God promise that He would give him a child through his wife Sarah. And “Abraham believed God.” It was as simple as that. But in the moment of testing, that word seems to be taken from us. God seems to be not as reliable as He had appeared initially to be.

            And so it is not going to be here that we face our greatest temptations. Instead we face them when we leave this oasis and return to the wilderness of the world. There the sweet promises of God seem to be absent and His commandments seem to be irrelevant to daily living in a modern world. And so the Word of God we had just heard is directly challenged. If we truly are God’s beloved children, then why has He given such archaic rules to follow? Well, okay, maybe His law is good, but surely we have to admit that the times require us to take certain shortcuts, right? Maybe we can make up for the damage we’ve done later. And if we are God’s beloved children, why does He not fulfill all His promises quickly? Why do we suffer? Why do we grieve? Why are we lonely?

            Our Lord faced a similar challenge, but an even deeper one. You see, we are sinners and we have to admit that we have brought much of our grief upon ourselves. But Christ was the holy Son of God. Why then was He driven into the wilderness, by the Holy Spirit no less? He was the Lord of creation. Why then were the wild animals all around Him, possibly roaring or threatening Him somehow? Why wasn’t “the desert [blossoming] like the crocus” and showing all “the glory of Lebanon,” as Scripture had foretold? Was it fair for Him to be treated worse than a slave when He was the Son of God?

            But if you look more carefully, you see that all is not as it appears. Yes, Christ was in the wilderness, but He did not die there. Yes, He was surrounded by the wild animals, but He was not harmed by them. And He was not alone. The holy angels were there. They did not just stand from a distance and watch. They “were ministering to Him.” And so the wilderness was not as horrible as it might have seemed. He was still with God. He still had His Father’s promises. And our Lord clung to them.

            Christ knew that the Holy Spirit wanted Him there so that He could obediently cling to God’s Word in a way that all other human beings had failed to do. It doesn’t take much of a wilderness experience for us to succumb to sin. But Christ “was in the wilderness forty days.” He was not tested by his peers or by a demon of a lower rank, but by Satan himself. He endured this testing and clung to God’s Word because He was learning obedience. He had always been the holy Son of God from eternity. But now He was experiencing this profound testing in His body, indeed, a fiercer test than you or I or anyone else has ever undergone. Because He passed this test, He was then able to go on and suffer and die on the cross, so that our sins could be forgiven. If He had not been perfectly holy, including during this time of intense temptation, He would not have been qualified to be our Savior. Sinners cannot save other sinners. Only someone completely holy can save us. And just as gold cannot be discerned as true gold until it has gone through the fire and been tested, so He could not save us until He had shown that He was who He said He was: the eternal, righteous Son of God in human flesh.

            Christ learned to trust His Father in all things as He was driven into the wilderness to be tested. Let us also learn to trust God in all things as we find ourselves tested in our wildernesses. Yes, the Word seems to be absent there, but it is not. For Christ has gone into our wildernesses and He is with us as we are being tested. He has won the victory over sin. He has atoned for our guilt. He has reconciled us with His Father. Therefore, He bids us open our eyes and see what is really happening. Angels are with us, ministering to us. The wild animals are being held at bay and kept from devouring us. It may not be a pleasant place to be in the wilderness, but it is still a place where God is. And if we remember that and cling to God’s promises, we will be victorious.

            Today’s gospel doesn’t end there, though. Not only did our Lord win the victory when He was in the wilderness, He was empowered by the experience to begin His ministry and to do so with great vigor. It didn’t matter that John the Baptist had been arrested. Nobody could stop our Lord now. He proclaimed that God’s kingdom was at hand; this was the time that everybody had been looking forward to during the days of the Old Testament.

            Our Lord added the words, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” Above all else, this is what He wanted people to know after His wilderness experience. He had resisted temptation, not just to give us an example, but to make up for all that we had done wrong. We learn the wrong lesson from today’s Gospel if all we learn is to handle temptation better. Of course, I want you to learn how to handle temptation better. I don’t want you falling for the devil’s lies again and again. I want you to learn from your past mistakes, and I want you to vow to cling to God’s Word better and really strive to do so. But that in and of itself won’t make you a Christian. Christians know that they have not been perfect. They have yielded to temptation far too often. They cannot make up for their sins. Instead, they trust in Christ as their Savior from all their sins.

            You see, the real strength comes not when we turn away from the tempter, but when turn to Jesus Christ. Only then do we truly enter God’s kingdom and experience all that He has prepared for us.

            Beloved in Christ, may you cling to your Savior whether you are here in this church or stuck out in the wilderness of life. For Christ in due time will bring you through the wilderness into the Promised Land that He has prepared for you by His holy life, death, and resurrection. In Jesus’ name. Amen.