Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, February 14, 2016

Text: Luke 4:1-13

            Beloved in Christ, Lent is a time for renewed discipleship and a time to focus upon Christ our Savior. The two go hand in hand. The more we take seriously the call to discipleship and struggle, the more we see that we need a Savior. And the more we see all that our Savior has done for us, the more eager we are to be truly His disciples.

            One of the first things we need to learn is the struggle against temptation. No one can be a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ without earnestly wanting to avoid sin. And no one can be a disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ without understanding how quickly and unthinkingly we surrender to temptation. Some temptations are severe, some more ordinary, but temptations aplenty there will always be.

            Perhaps the one thing that is most distressing is how simple but successful temptations are. Yes, the devil can use all sorts of subtle tricks, but he usually doesn’t have to resort to such measures. He can use the very same temptation that has tricked us a thousand times before, and he will still succeed far too often. We are like Charlie Brown, who has seen Lucy pull the ball away a thousand times before whenever we try to kick the ball. It doesn’t matter. We believe Lucy when she says that this time is different and that she will really hold the ball. And then we are surprised to see that she has lied once again. In the same way, we are tempted to believe Lucifer when he says that this time is different and that the forbidden sin will bring us happiness this time. But in the end we see that we are as disappointed as always.

Simon Benning
The Temptation of Christ

            Temptations come in several forms, but there are three worth mentioning today. There is the temptation that says, “Your immediate need outweighs God’s law.” This temptation recognizes that God’s law is a worthy ideal, but it asks us to make compromises. It tells us that it is no good killing ourselves by keeping the law, but that rather we should do what we need to do to live another day so that we can keep the law then. A second temptation tells us that the only way to acquire power and glory is to go along with evil to some degree. It flatters us with the thought that we, of course, would use that power for good, but first we have to acquire it so that we can make good use of it. And then there is the third temptation that often goes with the first two; it tells us that God really wouldn’t let any serious thing happen to us if we were to break one of His rules.

            These are three common temptations that are nonetheless still successful, despite the fact that the devil has been pulling these tricks for millennia. In truth, when Adam and Eve fell into sin, they succumbed to these same three temptations. First, they said that their need outweighed God’s command. As far as they were concerned, the fruit was good to eat and a delight to behold, and that was all that mattered. Second, they craved godlike power. I’m sure they could easily justify their aspiration for power by saying that they planned on doing a lot of good in the world with it. And, third, they believed the devil’s lie that there would be no consequences. They wouldn’t die, he had reassured them, and they fell for that lie.

            And so the first thing that we need to do is to discern that temptation is all around us. It won’t come with a warning sign. There will be no notice that this is a test. And so you will likely not see that it is a temptation until it is too late. And so if you can’t think of any temptations you’ve had to face this past week, it is probably because you yielded to all of them without even realizing what you have done. If that is the case, be on the alert. Understand that you cannot escape being tested from time to time, as long as you are in this world. And so be ready for temptations when they come.

            You see, being a faithful Christian means that we should be on the lookout for temptation and be ready to fight it. But being a faithful Christian also means looking to the one person who has defeated temptation again and again, namely, our Lord Jesus Christ. We look to Him for help in two ways. First, we ask that He would be our Savior amid temptation and that His victory over sin would defend us from all evil. And then we look to Him as an example so that we too can conquer temptations when they come.

            It begins with Christ being our Savior. It isn’t that we cannot learn from His example, for we certainly can. We’ll talk about that in a minute. But first and foremost Christ is our Savior. Try as hard as we might, we will not leave this world without succumbing to a number of temptations. And so we need someone who can conquer—indeed, has conquered—the devil and all the forces of evil. We need someone to win the victory that our will power just isn’t strong enough to accomplish.

            That is why Christ underwent a more severe testing than anyone else has done so that He could overcome Satan on behalf of all humanity. Very few people go without any food for forty days. Moses and Elijah did, when each of them spent forty days with God, but we do not read in either instance of them being hungry. In fact, an angel gave Elijah a special meal to last him through the forty days so that he wouldn’t become hungry. But Christ underwent this serious ordeal and suffered horrible pangs of hunger. Furthermore, none of us have been tempted with all the kingdoms of the world. The best we might hope for is the corner office or a small company to manage. We’re not even one of the umpteen people who ran briefly for president. But Christ was tempted with all the power in the world. And we are unlikely to find ourselves transported miraculously to the top of a tall building and then told that we could be equally miraculously delivered if we jumped from it. So, even if we face some temptations that resemble our Lord’s, none of them match in their intensity what He went through.

            Nonetheless, He did not succumb even for a moment to the devil’s lies. And so He lived a truly holy and perfect life on our behalf. That was the first step He had to undertake in order to redeem us. You see, Christ had to do two things if He was going to save us. He had to live a perfectly holy life to substitute for all our rotten deeds. And then He had to suffer the punishment we had deserved by going to the cross and dying there. In today’s text we see the first step rather than the second one. But without that first step of Him living a perfect life for us there wouldn’t have been a second step. Instead, He would have gone to the cross for His own sins, not for ours. But because He lived a holy life in our place, He could also go on to die in our stead, too.

            But as I mentioned, Christ is not just our Savior, but our example, too. We appreciate the fact that He has delivered us from the devil’s power and from hell. And we show that gratitude by trying to fight temptation whenever it comes along. We can learn a lot by watching Christ in action, as recorded in today’s Gospel. The main point is to rely upon the power of God’s Word. Notice that Christ didn’t invoke His own divinity. He didn’t say, “I am the Son of God. I have power over all creation. Be gone!” That is a good thing, because we wouldn’t be able to do the same thing. Instead He quoted the Scriptures. He had obviously studied them in advance and was prepared to quote them. And that is a tool you and I have. The Ten Commandments and other passages of the Scripture give us more than enough guidance to determine what is the right thing to do in any circumstance. We need only repeat them, as appropriate.

            But as the way Christ handled the last temptation clarifies, when we quote the Scriptures, we really must understand what they are saying and why they are saying it. We have to put each Scripture passage within its own immediate context as well as the context of the entire Scriptures. If we don’t, the devil will be able to mangle the Scriptures and confuse us.

            Skeptics, cynics, and other followers of the devil love to take one passage from the Bible and try to set it against another. You can quote them a clear passage from the Bible, but it won’t make an impression because they can twist fifty other passages to prove their point. For example, have you noticed how people will quote the words of our Lord, “Judge not,” whenever someone shows from the Scriptures the difference between right and a wrong and ever so gently calls people to change their behavior? But, of course, such people don’t really want to look at what our Lord is saying there. Instead, they quite judgmentally chide others for being judgmental. But if you look at the immediate context of Matthew 7, you will see our Lord criticizing all sorts of bad behavior and even calling people “hypocrites” and worse. So if “judge not” is supposed to mean “never criticize,” then clearly our Lord did wrong. But a more natural explanation is that we should never write someone off as being irredeemable. Yes, we may and should criticize bad behavior and evil attitudes, but we should do so with the attitude of leading people to repentance.

            And so our Lord was not fooled when the devil tried to quote a Bible passage that said that God would send His angels to protect His people and then drew a false conclusion, namely, that one should provoke God into acting and giving this protection. But Christ knew that that wasn’t what that passage meant, and so He quoted another passage of Scripture. So while the devil was trying to set one passage of the Bible against another, Christ was interpreting one Scripture passage in the light of another. He was making sure that He was interpreting in its context.

            And so, beloved in Christ, may you be armed with the Scriptures and with the forgiveness of Christ as you confront temptations this week. Christ has already won the war. Now let Him help you in your daily battles. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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.