Invocabit, the First Sunday in Lent + Matthew 4:1-11 + March 5, 2017
Order of Holy Communion - Pg. 15
Hymn # 262 A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
Introit
HE - SHALL - || call upon Me, and I | will | an- | swer | him; *I will deliver him | and | hon- | or | him. -
|| With long life I will | sat- | is- | fy | him, *
And show him | My | sal- | va- | tion. - (Psalm 91:15–16)
|| He who dwells in the secret place | of | the | Most | High *
Shall abide under the shadow of | the | Al- | might- | y. -
|| I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my | for- | tress; | My | God, *
In | Him | I | will | trust.” -
|| Because you have made the Lord, who | is | my | re- | fuge, *
Even the Most High, | your | dwell- | ing | place, -
|| No evil | shall | be- | fall | you, *
Nor shall any plague come | near | your | dwell- | ing. -
|| You shall tread upon the lion | and | the | co- | bra,
The young lion and the serpent you shall tram- | ple | un- | der- | foot. - (Psalm 91:1–2, 9–10, 13)
Collect for Invocabit, the First Sunday in Lent
O Lord, mercifully hear our prayer and stretch forth the right hand of Thy majesty to defend us from them that rise up against us; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Collect for the Season of Lent
Almighty and Everlasting God, our Father, Who hatest nothing that Thou hast made and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent, create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with the Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Readings
Sermon
Grace
and Peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1) When
temptation comes upon you, the first thing Satan attacks is the Word that God
has given you. If He can separate you from the Word, either by putting it from
your mind or by twisting its meaning, then you have no defense left against the
temptation and will easily fall into sin. This is how the ancient serpent
subtly attacked poor Eve in the Garden. He approaches her in her primordial
innocence with a simple question. “Has
God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree from the garden’?” The
question seems innocent enough. After all, the lowly serpent is simply asking
for clarification about the Word God has given them. And that is how Eve takes
it. But that simple question upends poor Eve. She replies, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said,
‘You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’” The original
command the Lord gave Adam and Eve prohibited them from eating from the tree.
But Eve subtly begins to think of God as stingy. They aren’t even to touch it.
The trap is set and Satan has done it. He has taken Eve away from the Word by
getting her to twist her understanding of it. Then he proceeds to further
distance her from the Word of God by outright denying the truth of the Word. “You will not surely die. For God
knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). That did it. He first twisted the Word in Eve’s mind,
then he removed it entire. “God has lied to you. He’s holding back good things
from you.” Eve puts aside the Word of God and believes the Word of the devil.
She looks at the tree as desirable for the first time. She eats. She passes it
off the Adam. He eats. And Satan’s attack is complete. Humanity has left God’s
dominion and care and has become enslaved to sin, liable to death, and now they
and all their descendants will live under the Devil’s power.
2) It is only by providing another Word that God is
able to save these sinners. The Lord curses the serpent, the woman, and the
earth. The serpent will crawl on his belly and eat dust. The woman will have
toil and pain in childbearing and the man will have the same in his vocations. But
in the midst of these curses the Lord gives the Word that saves them. He says
the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her
Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). There will be
great enmity and strife between the woman’s seed and the Devil’s seed. The
serpent’s seed will have his head crushed. He will be overcome and his power
destroyed. The seed of the Woman will not get out unscathed though. His heel
will be bruised in the fight. The Lord is merciful towards His creatures. They
willfully transgressed God’s Word of command. They did not do it. So the Lord
gave them, not a Word to do, but a Word to simply believe. Adam and Eve
believed that first Gospel Word, that the Seed of Eve would destroy the Seed of
the serpent, and by that faith in God’s Word they were restored to life, though
the wages of sin and the curses remained upon their earthly life. As long as
they clung to that Word of promise in faith they were victorious over the devil’s
accusations.
3) The Promised Seed arrives in the person of Jesus.
He is the Seed of the woman, and only the woman, because of His virginal
conception and birth, for God is His Father from all eternity. The second
person of the Holy Trinity assumes flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary so that
He might combat Satan as the second Adam. They have their first skirmish when
Christ is young in the flesh. The devil incites King Herod to jealousy so that
he murders the innocents of Bethlehem, hoping to destroy the newborn king of
the Jews. But that’s just the prequel. The main event begins immediately after
Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan. As Jesus was baptized the heavens
opened, the Holy Ghost comes down upon Christ in the form of a dove, and God
the Father speaks a wonderful word: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Jesus comes up out of the
water, with that Word of God in His ears. And that same Spirit then leads Him
into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, for Christ is the second Adam,
who has come to do what the first Adam was unable to accomplish and destroy the
work of the devil.
4) Satan does to Jesus, God in human flesh, exactly
what He did to Eve and exactly what he does to each of us in the hour of temptation.
He attacks the Word of God given to Jesus in the Jordan River, This is my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased.” Satan attacks that Word first. “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
It is as he did to Eve. “The Lord said you were His Son, but then why do you
lack food? Why is your Father driving you into the wilderness? Why is He
withholding good things from you? Some Father He is, if this is how he treats
his ‘Beloved Son.’ So turn these stones into bread.” But Christ does not let
the devil separate Him from that Word of God given to Him in His Baptism. To
turn stones into bread would be no different, externally, from multiplying
loaves and fishes for the multitudes. Except to turn stones into bread now
would be to believe the devil’s accusation that God was not truly Christ’s
Father, and that He had to provide His own daily bread. The Lord Jesus clings
not only to His baptismal word, but to the entire Word of God. “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” Part of
being a Son of God means living by every Word of God that is written. Christ
shows the devil that even in suffering and lack, hunger and great need, a Son
of God trusts that what God has provided is enough and that God will provide
whatever He knows, in His wisdom, to be best.
5) Rebuffed, Satan tries a different tactic. If Christ will
not mistrust the Word, then perhaps He can tempt Christ into presumption. He
leads him to the pinnacle the temple and tries a new way of tearing the Word
from Christ. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself
down. For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you,' and, 'in their hands they shall bear you up, lest
you dash your foot against a stone.'” Satan tries to use God’s Word against
Jesus. He wants Jesus to tempt God. “Put God to the test, see if He will really
take care of you as He’s prophesied in the prophets and Psalms. Since you rely
upon His Word, put that Word to use.” But the devil is the master of twisting
Scripture, for though the Lord promises to guard the Christ and all the saints
with His holy angels, they are not to test this by putting themselves willfully
in danger to prove God’s divine promises. In this temptation Satan shows how deceitful
he can be. The very thing upon Christ relies, the Word, can be manipulated so
that it speaks against the promises of God and leads us to doubt God’s
provision and care. But Christ responds, “It
is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'" Satan excels
at pitting one Word of God against another to get us to doubt God’s Word and
eventually separate ourselves from the Word as something sure and certain. We
must never presume to put ourselves in harm’s way to test God’s promises to us,
for if we willfully put God to the test, we have no promise that He will aid
us.
6) Satan’s final attempt is the crass temptation to
apostasy. He offers the kingdoms of this world to Christ if Christ only turns
away from His heavenly Father and worships him instead. But Christ is not
tempted with the wealth and prosperity of the world. He is not swayed by
earthly glory and honor. He is not tickled by the temptation of worldly
pleasures and creaturely comforts. In this way we see that Satan tempts many to
abandon God entirely for the sake of the things of this world, even Christians.
But Christ once again uses the Word of God and says, “"Away with you, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall worship the
LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'” Christ accomplishes what
Adam and Eve were unable to do in the Garden. Where they fell in a garden
paradise, Christ overcame in a desert. Where Adam and Eve allowed themselves to
be separated from the Word of God, Christ clung to the Word of God as the
source of His life, even more so that food, protection, prosperity and
pleasures. Satan would leave Him but only for a time, for on the cross, we
would hear the voice of Satan again, “If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross”
(Matthew 27:40). But He will not. For the cross is how Christ crushes the
serpents head for good, breaking his power over mankind by earning the
forgiveness of sins so that all who believe in Him have all that earns in that
bitter suffering and death, including victory over the tempter and His many
varied and manifold temptations.
7) Christ
defeats the devil in the wilderness for us, so that all who are in Christ by
faith have also defeated the devil. Faith is our victory over the devil in the
moment of temptation. No matter what the temptation be, Christ gives us His
Word to cling to it, to hold on to it, and to believe that it is true beyond
all other sensations, feelings, and realities. Like Christ, you have been
baptized and given divine sonship, so that “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). You are sons
of God through holy Baptism and as an adopted son of God, all the promises of
God are yours. Faith in the Word given to you in Scripture, in your baptism, in
the Lord’s Supper, and in the absolution, this faith in the Word of God is the way
out which God your Father provides for you in every temptation. Faith in these
very same words is your fortress when you fall into sin, so that you do not succumb
to the devil’s attacks to despair because of your sin, an equally terrible
temptation. Remember that God is your heavenly Father through Holy Baptism, so
that in every temptation of the devil, the world, and your own wicked flesh,
you are a reconciled Son of the heavenly Father and have all the blessings of
Christ, including victory over the evil one. Amen.