Invocavit, the 1st Sunday in Lent + Matthew 4:1-11 + February 18, 2018

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. This was necessary for our salvation because it was by the temptation of the devil that mankind fell into sin. We heard again in the Old Testament lesson, how the devil used a piece of fruit that was “was good for food” and “pleasant to the eyes” (Genesis 3:6) to deceive Eve. All mankind fell in Adam’s fall since He was the head of our race. The guilt of Adam’s sin is counted against all of Adam’s descendants. Every man, woman, and child bear this hereditary guilt. Not only that, but our hearts are defective so that no one truly fears God, no one fully loves God, and no one certainly trusts God above all things. The devil’s temptation was about so much more than disobeying God’s command. The devil’s temptation was for Eve, and Adam who was there with her, to make themselves their own gods and make their way. The serpent told them, “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). But there is no one like God. If they were like God they could follow their own commands, their own desires, and their own wills. But they didn’t become like God at all. They became a son and daughter of the devil, who were now spiritually dead and enslaved to sin. It is for this reason that Jesus is driven into the wilderness. Having been baptized, He must now do battle with the devil and defeat temptation to provide a victory, not for Himself, but for us.

Like the temptation in the Garden of Eden, Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness begins with food, and like in Eden, the temptation is about so much more than food. “If you are the Son of God, the devil says, “Command that these stones become bread.” To us who have eaten breakfast, and who have eaten regular meals for the last forty days, this seems a slight temptation. But for Jesus who has been fasting forty days, this temptation appealed to His flesh. It is important for us to remember that just as Jesus is true God, so He is also true man, and as a true man He suffered hunger. The devil holds out, not forbidden fruit, but a handful of stones. “If you are the Son of God, use that power to make bread from rocks. The desert is full of rocks! There’s no reason for you to hunger!” But the temptation is about far more than food. It is about faith, just as it was in the Garden of Eden. This is why the devil begins with the words, “If you are the Son of God.” What the devil means to say is, “If you’re God’s Son, then why are you hungry? Shouldn’t a Son of God have plenty to eat? Shouldn’t the Son of God have everything that He needs? Shouldn’t the Son of God lack nothing?” The temptation is to believe that God the Father will not provide, to trust Himself, not God the Father, to provide His daily bread. The temptation is to think that God the Father is holding out on Him, and therefore can’t be trusted, and if you can’t trust God, then you certainly can’t love Him, nor will you fear Him. It is a temptation that pricks the stomach, the flesh, the daily need, and says, “Why isn’t God giving you what you think you need? Get it yourself. If you rely upon yourself then “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5).

Where Eve fell and at the point where Adam transgressed, Christ stands fast upon the Word of God. “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” Jesus defeats the devil’s temptation by the Word of God. He refuses to listen to His flesh and instead listens to what is written in the Scriptures. St. Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that “whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.” Jesus relies upon what has been written by Moses in Deuteronomy 8:3. There the Lord says, “So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.” The Lord God humbled Israel through hunger and lack to teach them to trust Him and believe His Word no matter what. So it is here. Jesus lives by the true bread, the Word of God, and lets God the Father worry about what He will eat. The Son of God, in humility, relies upon His Father’s provision and refuses to “be like God,” even though He was God’s Son, begotten of the Father from all eternity.

Next the devil takes Jesus the pinnacle of the Temple. “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.’” This temptation is to pride and recklessness. The first temptation was to doubt God’s promise. This temptation swings too far in the opposite direction. It looks like faith. “God says in the Psalms, the ‘it is written’ that you rely upon, that God will not let you dash your foot against a stone! Make Him prove it.” The first temptation was doubt God’s Word. The second temptation is to treat God’s Word presumptuously. It would sound ludicrous by itself, to throw oneself from the highest building in the city. But when combined with God’s Word it becomes a dangerous temptation to test God’s promises. God doesn’t give us His Word so that we can test it, but believe it. The Lord doesn’t give us His promises so that we willingly put ourselves in harm’s way. Tempting God with His own promises shows a lack of faith. The Word says that God gives His angels charge over His believers and faith simply believes that to be true. The temptation is to get God to prove His Word so that we then might believe it. And although the devil uses, and actually misuses God’s word, Jesus rebuffs him with the Word, “It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'”

The third temptation is to brazen unbelief. Jesus will trust God the Father, no matter what cross He must bear. He will not tempt God the Father to prove His love or protection. So the devil lays before Jesus’ eyes “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” Riches. Power. Comfort. Pleasure. All of this passes before the eyes of Jesus. The devil promise all the worldly wealth and pleasures he can muster and says, “All these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.” It seems so crass to think about the devil tempting the Only-begotten Son of God to worship him. But remember that Jesus is also truly man, and don’t we see men in every age striving to gain the entire world yet losing their souls in the process? The final temptation is no different than others. To not trust God the Father. Do not trust His written Word. But look to the devil, “the god of this age,” as St. Paul calls him in 2 Corinthians 4:4 for all good things. And again, our Lord Jesus Christ slays the temptation with the Word of God, the great “It is written.” “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’” Man was not meant to “be like God,” relying upon himself and living for pleasure. Man was created as creatures of God, who were to fear, love, and trust the creator for every good thing.

With this word Jesus sends the devil away defeated. But He doesn’t defeat the devil for Himself. He defeats the devil for you. Where humanity was conquered by the devil in the Garden of Eden, in Christ, fully God and fully man, humanity has conquered the devil. When we believe the Gospel, that victory of Christ is credited to us, just as all Christ’s perfect life and merits are credited to us by faith. Christ conquered the devil and broken his power over humanity in His only flesh. Now He wants to fight within us and conquer the devil. Christ, who dwells in our hearts by faith, wants to strengthen us so that we can daily defeat the devil and not fall to temptation. When we are tempted, we are not to simply give in, imagining that since we are tempted, our fall is inevitable. Rather we are to look to Christ and His victory because it is our victory as well. We look to Christ’s defeat of the devil. The way He defeated the devil in His flesh is the same way He defeats the devil in ours. St. John writes in 1 John 5:4, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith.” Faith trusts that all God’s Word is true, so that we can rely upon every word of it in Scripture. Faith in God’s Word, that is the way of escape of which Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:13, “God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.” Faith in the Word was Christ’s way of escape in temptation. Faith in Christ’s victory, that it is ours, and faith in Word of God, is our escape as well.

Christ’s three temptations are all our temptations. All of our temptations are to look to ourselves rather than trust what God says in His Word. When we feel that we lack something that God is not giving us, Satan still tempts us to turn stones into bread and try to provide what we need, instead of trusting God to provide for us like He has promised. When we feel that we need proof that God is with us, when we look for a sign to hang our hopes on, we stand and the pinnacle of the Temple, ready to jump to make sure that God is actually trustworthy. When we are tempted to trust in wealth for security and seek comfort and happiness in physical pleasures, the devil is showing us all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of all the world has to offer us. As Christ was tempted in the flesh, so are His Christians tempted. But since Christ was victorious over the devil, He promises that that victory is ours by faith. Since God credits us with Christ’s merits and victory over the devil, we strive against sin. But when we falter, and we falter often, we know that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who was tempted like us in every way and is sympathetic to our plight, but who is also  “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Go in peace. Fight temptation. Christ’s victory is yours.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.