Lent 1

Matthew 4:1-11- Invocavit, Lent I - February 17, 2013

To Keep You in All Your Ways

The eternal Son of God became Man and placed Himself under the law to redeem humanity whom the law condemned. 

Jesus did not pretend to humble Himself.  He didn’t pretend to be an ordinary man in order to put on some sort of show of heroism and holiness.  No, He was truly humbled.  In His mercy and wisdom, He declined to make full use of His divine prerogatives as the eternal Son of God in order that He might, as a man, fulfill what we could not.  This is a mystery.  And it means not only that, although He was God, Jesus hungered and thirsted as a man—and that He got tired and slept.  It means also that, as a man, He trusted the word of God.  He trusted the word of God as one who needed the word of God, as one who had no strength apart from it.  He relied on it completely.  Jesus did not claim a relationship with the Father other than the relationship that the Father revealed by speaking His word.  Think of that! When Jesus prayed, He didn’t take a break from His state of humiliation in order to tap into some spiritual connection unavailable to you and me.  No.  He prayed as one who believed God’s promise to hear Him.  “Call upon Me in the day of trouble.  I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me” (Psalm 50:15).  Jesus believed this.  That’s why He prayed so much. 

And talk about the day of trouble.  Our Gospel lesson this morning sums up for us what trouble does—what trouble looks like when the devil’s wiles and cunning afflict the weakness of human flesh.   It wasn’t just a generic trouble that Jesus faced, like some obstacle course.  It was an attack specifically designed against the Son of God.  The attacks of the devil that Jesus faced are not the attacks that the unbelieving world experiences.  They are the attacks that only he experiences who can rightly call himself a child of God.  They are the temptations of a Christian.  The devil attacks those whom God has claimed. 

Remember Jesus’ Baptism.  It took place immediately before our text begins.  God claimed Him.  When Jesus was baptized, the Father spoke from heaven and identified Him as His beloved Son in whom He is well pleased.  And as this word could be heard, the Holy Spirit could be seen descending upon Him in the form of a dove.  God claimed Him.  “This is My beloved Son…” Of course He is.  He is His Son from eternity.  “…In whom I am well pleased.”  Of course He is.  As the Son of Man, He has obeyed the will of God in every way.  And so the devil attacked. 

Remember your Baptism.  God claimed you.  Water was applied like any other water, but with the word of God attached, it had power to give you a new birth, and make you His child and heir.  You are His beloved.  Consider what Paul writes in Galatians 3: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26-27).  So then, having put on Christ, you have put on His spotless robe of righteousness; you are adorned with His obedience by faith in the promise that requires nothing of you.  With you, God is well pleased.  And to you His Holy Spirit is given so that you can call out “Abba, Father” in the day of trouble.  And He will deliver you.  And yet, how shaky our faith is.  We are threatened on every side. 

It is no coincidence, that, having received God’s love and favor and mark of approval, that the Holy Spirit immediately led Jesus to where the devil would tempt Him.  God didn’t tempt Him.  No! God doesn’t tempt.  He chastens.  God tests our faith in order to plant it more firmly in His word.  And so we see in Jesus, and even in our own lives, the Scriptures fulfilled:

Whom the Lord loves He corrects,
Just as a father the son in whom he delights.

God allows us to suffer the devil’s assaults precisely because we are His dear children.  We are His children by faith alone.  Not by sight or experience.  We must know this.  And so, in our place, as our Substitute as well as our example, Jesus lived the life of faith for us, and so was tempted for us. 

The reason Jesus fasted was to make His body weak.  Because in weakness He found strength.  In weakness He had nothing to rely upon but God’s almighty word.  He was hungry.  It wouldn’t have been wrong for Him to eat.  But the devil didn’t just tempt Jesus to eat – as though breaking His fast would have somehow ruined everything.  No.  It wouldn’t have.  But the devil tempted Jesus to claim His right as the Son of God apart from God’s word.  That’s what the temptation was.  It was to act like He had the right to have what His body desired apart from Him who opens His hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing.  But for a son to act like he deserves what his father gives him is to deny his father and to denounce his sonship. 

And how often does this temptation succeed in us without so much as a fight?  We go without.  We suffer loss or must wait for what we want.  “Ah, but no,” we complain, “I must claim it for myself now, because God might not give it otherwise.”  So it goes. We don’t deserve what we have.  But we sure act like we do.  Do we thank God for what He graciously gives us?  Or do we credit our own labors?  Is working on Sunday morning so that God can bless you more important than hearing His word?  You do your job.  I do mine.  We all gotta make a living, right?  That’s how we get our daily bread in the real world, right?  Wrong.  For where do we go so that we might know God as our Father in the first place?  Where do we go that we might be His children, who gives us all things by grace?  Jesus tells us.  “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”   

In his second temptation, the devil again appealed to Jesus’ Sonship.  “If You are the Son of God,” he said, as he brought Jesus to the top of the Temple, if You really live on every word that He speaks, then “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.’” 

Now, the devil wasn’t just tempting Jesus to have a joyride or to live recklessly like by driving fast without a seatbelt.  He was tempting Jesus to enjoy God’s gracious protection on His own terms.   “God will take care of you.  If you are truly His beloved, if He is truly well pleased with you, then He won’t let anything happen no matter what you do.”  So the devil tempts.  And of course there’s a grain of truth in what he says.  He quotes Scripture, after all.  It’s true that God sends His angels to tend to our needs.  It’s true that God defends us against all danger and guards and protects us from all evil, as the Catechism puts it.  But how does God do this?  Consider Psalm 91, from which the devil quoted – these words – that served as our Gradual reading this morning.  See if you can pick out the line that the devil omitted. 

For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways.
In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. 

God protects us by keeping us in all our ways.  God protected Jesus from harm and danger by keeping Him firmly planted where He was standing on top of the temple. I am standing here.  I am not falling to my doom. By this fact alone I know that God is defending me.  I don’t need to do something dangerous in order to experience His saving presence.  No.  Because it is not by straying from God’s word that one experiences its power.  It is by remaining firmly grounded in it. 

The devil will use religious experiences and spiritual feelings to distract the Christian from the plain meaning of God’s word, just like he tried to distract Christ.  And so many Christians fall to this temptation.  They tempt God, and so shipwreck their faith.  “My faith is strong enough,” they say. “I believe in God, and the Gospel, and all that.  I can rest securely in this, that I am a child of God.”  And then all the while they neglect to hear God’s word.  They throw caution to the wind, thinking that they could not possibly lose their faith, until the wind is blown out from under their wings, and they fall.   

To identify yourself as a Christian apart from where God makes you a Christian is to tempt God.  That is to say, it is to tempt God to think that you can retain saving faith without hearing the word of God upon which your faith relies.  We think we can bear ourselves up on our own religious thoughts, and our own spiritual feelings.  But we can’t.  There is not a day in our lives that we can safely go without hearing God’s word.  Sin and lust and temptation rise up every minute.  And when a bad conscience is left untreated by the forgiveness we need to hear, then the heart grows numb, and divine mercy loses its appeal.  God forbid. 

Jesus resisted the devil’s temptation by standing firm on the word of God.  That’s really the point here.  Every temptation the devil concocts is centered in this. He aims to rip us away from God by ripping us away from what God says.  He says, “If you are God’s son, if you are His beloved, if you are forgiven and justified and in God’s good favor, if you are baptized, then these are the things that you can expect from Him.”  But the devil is a liar.   We can expect that.  We can expect to be deceived by everything he says, by everything in the world, and by every affection of our sinful hearts.  We can expect disappointment.  And in the midst of temptation, when our flesh is weak, we might wonder why God doesn’t just pluck us out and rescue us.  Why must we be tested so?  But it is in order that we might be drawn to His word.  This is how He keeps us in all our ways – not by giving us a trouble-free life, but by giving us a way out of every temptation, and mercy in every failure.   This is what we expect from God. 

The final temptation in our Gospel lesson seems like the easiest to resist.  Worship the devil?  What is Satan thinking?  “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”  But take a look at what the devil promised Jesus.  He promised what Jesus wanted the most!  He took Him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”  All these.  But it is all these that God the Father already promised His Son if His Son remained faithful to Him.  Listen to these words from Psalm 2:

“I will declare the decree:
The Lord has said to Me,
‘You are My Son,
Today I have begotten You.
Ask of Me, and I will give You
The nations for Your inheritance,
And the ends of the earth for Your possession” (Psalm 2:7-8).   

What was the devil hoping to accomplish?  He was trying to keep Jesus from going to the cross.  That’s what.  He was trying to keep Jesus from His day of trouble, when He would glorify God by bearing the sin of the world.  He was trying to retain his rule and authority over the sinful world stuck in darkness.  But Jesus did not heed the devil’s temptation.  He trusted His Father to deliver Him.  Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance.  That’s what He did.  He called upon God in the day of trouble.  God delivered Him – He delivered Him into death, and Jesus glorified God. 

Jesus glorified the Father and inherited the nations, not by avoiding pain, but by enduring pain.  By enduring the weakness of our flesh, and by being fully acquainted with every way in which we suffer and struggle, Jesus truly sympathizes.  He was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.  But He does not just bear with us like a counselor (although He most certainly does).  But He bears for us as our Savior.  He prays for us.  He intercedes for us and pleads His own obedience and victory in our place.  Jesus didn’t become man and live by faith for His own exercise.  He came down from heaven to redeem sinners who fall into temptation and sin against God every day.  He came to fulfill what God demands of His children in order to give it to us.  He came to receive in His body what God threatens the sons of disobedience in order to spare us.  He came to earn all authority in heaven and on earth in order that He might exercise His authority over all nations by forgiving us all our sins.  He inherits us.  He makes us His brothers and sisters and rescues us from the wiles of Satan. 

The devil promises what your flesh feels entitled to.  He promises pleasure apart from pain.  He promises what the nations have to offer, and what it seems God has failed to give us.  But the devil is a liar.  He leaves us high and dry and bemoaning our own guilt and shame, and the disappointment that our flesh is so weak.  But God’s word is strong.  And in human flesh and blood, our God took our place to give to us by faith in His word the strength we need to defeat the devil, and the righteousness we need to stand before God as blameless. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.