Sermon Text: Luke 4:1-13
Grace, Mercy and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Temptation! It is something you deal with on a daily basis. Our very faculties of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch are subject to temptations. The Greek definition of temptation is: that which puts us to the proof - whether by good or malicious design. In other words, temptation is designed to bring out what is really in our hearts.
Most often temptation is used to get you to do the wrong thing rather than the right thing. Temptations are also meant to attack our emotional state of mind. What is it that tempts you?
Are you tempted by new gadgets? new tools? new computers or video games? How about the internet, are there websites that you go to and shouldn’t? Maybe you are tempted by food? Is Cheesecake too much temptation? For me it is a thick juicy medium- rare rib-eye steak. If I am in back home, it is a chicken wing place that I can not pass up if I happen to be in that particular neighborhood. Maybe you are a vegan or vegetarian and Eggplant parmegian is your weakness. When it comes to temptation we are all weak and we all fail to resist those temptations that take us down that dark road to sin.
Weakness! That is what Satan wants to find when he tempts you. That’s what he was trying to find out with Jesus in the desert. Satan has been watching Jesus very carefully ever since he was born. He had tried on a few occasions to have him killed, but to no avail. Now he sees him in the desert and sees that he hasn’t eaten a thing for the past 40 days. He has got to be hungry! Have you ever fasted? If so, how long did you fast, a day, a week, a couple of hours? In truth we all fast during the time that we sleep and therefore when we wake up the next morning we call our first meal of the day “Breakfast” because we are breaking the fast we have been on all night.
Now he also knows that before Jesus came to the desert He had been at the Jordan River where He was baptized and Satan, like all the others had heard the heavens open and God’s voice say to Jesus, “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.” Satan was noweager to work his wiles on Jesus. “Son of God? Yeah right. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Perhaps you have had a parent or mentor, someone you looked up to tell you they were proud of you? I can remember my father, who passed away 18 years ago last Sunday, telling me every now and again how proud he was of the person I had become. My mother continually tells me that he would be proud of me. Today, I tell my children that I love them and that I am proud of them despite my continuing failures as a parent. Jesus has heard his very own Father tell him he is pleased with him. It is at this time that the Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove.
Satan waits for just the right time. He has heard God tell him that he is pleased with his son and he probably figures that if Jesus is God’s Son he has the ability to fast a lot longer than the average human. At the forty day mark he says to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, say to this stone that it becomes bread.” Now put yourself in Jesus place for one moment. If you are hungry after fasting for forty days and you possess the power of God in you, wouldn’t this be tempting to you? Jesus’ human nature was very hungry and weak. How easy would it have been for Him to do what Satan was asking?
Most of you, when you get hungry we begin immediately to forage for food. In this age of convenience you might go to your kitchen and prepare a snack, or pick up the phone and get a pizza delivered. If you had this power and were as hungry as Jesus, how quickly might you be tempted to change a stone into a loaf of bread?[SLS1]
Satan’s goal is to get Jesus to use his Godly power to end his fast. Jesus mission was, is and always will be pure obedience to God and his will. He trusts his father to sustain him in all things. Do you trust God for your sustenance in ALL things or just those moments when you need him most? When you pray the Lords prayer do you mean it when you speak the petition on daily bread?
Jesus is being tempted to use his powers for his own benefit rather than trusting in his Father’s will and not using them at this time. If you look back to Genesis you would see that this is similar to the temptation Eve faced. God had created the World with them in mind. Adam and Eve had so much including free will, but still God wanted them to rely on him for everything and he needed to know if they would do so. He allowed their faith to be tested. The only way that it can be tested is to allow them to exercise the gift of free will.
The serpent had one goal in mind to take aim with temptation at God’s word. He deceived Eve to take something she already possessed in her fellowship with God and take as her own without the need for a relationship with God. God’s very nature possesses the knowledge of good and evil, but the serpent being the craftiest of beasts, found a way to get between Eve and God’s word. Because of this deception, Eve thought that God wanted to withhold this “Knowledge” from her rather than share it with her in a pure and perfect relationship.
Isn’t this where you fall most often? Your sinful nature is one that is self-centered and when Satan tempts you he will twist ever so slightly, God’s word, to persuade you into believing that God is a spoil sport who wants to deny you those things which you really desire. Like moving in with the person you intend you marry before the wedding with the excuse that you need to find out if you can live with each other first. Or maybe you are withholding money from the church because you want to get that new car just a little quicker than you had planned. Or perhaps you feel wronged by someone so you feel entitled to hold a grudge rather than forgive them.
The temptation he put before Jesus was designed to challenge Jesus to do the easy thing and just create something on the spot to satisfy his hunger. It was a challenge to Jesus identity within the triune God and most of all tempted his human will to supersede God’s will.
Jesus responds to Satan’s temptation with God’s pure and perfect word from Deuteronomy 8:3 “Man does not live on Bread alone, but by ever word that comes from the mouth of God.” God’s Word is the Bread from Heaven. Just as bread gives sustenance to your physical life, so God’s Word is life-giving. When you hear pastor invoke the words of institution before Holy Communion, he is attaching Christ’s mandate to the elements of bread and wine and because of this invocation, the mystery of Christ’s real presence is there as you receive his body and blood. Jesus’ response to the temptation is a firm NO!
Remember two weeks ago, David, in his sermon, mentioned how Moses was on the Mountaintop and God was showing him the glory of the Promised Land, but that he would not enter because of his sin at Meribah where he struck the stone with his staff in his anger and water came forth from it. Satan has also taken Jesus up a Mountain just like Moses but instead of showing Jesus the Promised Land. Our text says that He is shown the glories of the world in an instant. At this point Satan tells the Grand-daddy of all lies. “To you I will give this authority and their glory, because to me it has been delivered and to anyone I please I give it. If you, then, worship before me, it will all be yours.” What Satan wants is Jesus lying prostrate before him paying homage to him and all the evil therein.
Today we might say to Satan, “Who died and made you king dawg?” The only world you are king of, is the fallen world. Who created the world? Was it not Almighty God? Where does it say that the devil has any authority or ownership of anything but fallen creation? Satan as the serpent receives his glory only in deceiving man with his lies. He really has no true authority and that was evident when God cursed the serpent.
God said to the serpent in Genesis 3 that he would put enmity between his seed and the woman’s seed. You will strike his heel and he will crush your head. Satan was defeated already because if he had been given the authority over all the things he told Jesus he had, God would not have been able to curse him in that way. The devil is a created being and he has no power over God, but he wants to make you think he does.
Jesus answers Satan’s lie with scripture again, “The Lord your God you will worship and him alone will you serve.” This is the first commandment: You shall have no other Gods before me.” In the Divine Service we are receiving God’s word and sacrament. You confess that you are a sinner and receive absolution from God through the Pastor. Your worship is not like the pagans who put all their efforts into sacrificing themselves to a God they can’t appease. God tells us that he desires mercy not sacrifice. God wants your hearts to be for him, but he knows that you can not do this on our own behalf.
Jesus has successfully rebuffed Satan with scripture on two temptations. The first one attacked his identity and his power, the second, tried to lure him to a shallow victory, one without suffering but Jesus doesn’t succumb to it because he knows that God’s will for him is to suffer first before receiving his glory. Anything short of that is not part of God’s plan.
As we look at the final temptation. Satan takes Jesus up to the highest pinnacle of the Temple and again tempts him with a question to his identity. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here: for it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, in order to guard you, and on their hands they will lift you up, lest you hit your foot against a stone.” The quote Satan seemingly uses is from Psalm 91:11-12 which reads:
For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
Either Satan doesn’t know scripture as well, or he is purposely leaving out the words “in all your ways”. You will see that it is the latter not the former. If you remember when the serpent was tempting Eve, he deliberately asked her: “Did God really say that you should not eat from any of the trees in the Garden?” Eve’s response was, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" She misquotes God’s command to Adam and in doing so give Satan a wonderful window of opportunity.
Satan knew God’s word and he used her misunderstanding of God’s command to deceive her into believing God was not the benevolent creator he was cracked up to be. Satan was up to his old tricks when he took Jesus to that pinnacle. But Jesus, knowing God’s will for him doesn’t give in to this temptation either. His answer to Satan is once again from scripture only Jesus gives him God’s full word in his answer—“You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Three times Jesus faced temptations that were given to him to make him fail in his mission. Three times Jesus used the Word of God to show Satan that he would not succumb. Our text says in verse 13 “And when every temptation was brought to an end, the devil departed from him until an opportune time.” And in weeks to come we will see just when that opportune time is, but truthfully Satan dogs Jesus throughout his ministry just as he does with God’s children in theirs.
[SLS3]Jesus had faced the tempter in our place and was victorious! His victory was completed on the cross when he took your place and was judged for your sins. In your confession of sins you lay your sins at the feet of Jesus cross telling him that you are not worthy that he should die for you. We are poor sinful beings and we deserve the kind of death he went through. Jesus overcame temptation for us in the desert and he overcame it on the cross. And by his sacrifice he overcame death, hell and the grave when he rose again on the third day. He did it for you, He did it for me. His victory is our victory!
Our hymn of the day, written by Martin Luther is one of his most famous. “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” In the third verse we sing of Christ’s victory over Satan.
Though devils all the world should fill,
All eager to devour us,
we tremble not, we fear no ill;
They shall not over pow’r us.
This world’s prince may still
Scowl fierce as he will,
He can harm us none.
He’s judged the deed is done;
One little word can fell him.
Jesus is the Word that fell the devil. His Word and His Sacrament give us the power to defeat Satan. The temptation of our Lord is not meant to be a Moral story where Jesus is the example. It is not about teaching your children to find the right bible verses when they feel tempted. It is about Jesus taking your place and facing your temptations for you and because he was led by the Spirit into that desert, the same Holy Spirit he received in his baptism, you too receive power from the Holy Spirit given to you in your baptism to face temptations and resist them.
In Baptism you became a child of God and he says to you “You are now my child through faith in my Son in whom I am well pleased.” You now have received the same affirmation from the Father that Jesus received when he was baptized. You have the power to resist temptation because you have Christ’s Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul assures us in 1 Corinthians: No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
He knows your limitations he knows your abilities and he is faithful to help you through it when you call upon him.
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