IN NOMINE JESU SOLI DEO GLORIA
Sermon Text: Luke 4:1–13 February 21, 2010/Lent 1
St. John Ev. Lutheran Church Mukwonago, Wisconsin
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ Jesus, our Lord, on this February morning:
Right now the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada are in full swing. Perhaps you and your family have been enjoying some of the events on television. The United States is having its most successful Winter Olympics in history, winning twenty-three at only the half way mark of the games. Four years ago in Torino, Italy, the USA won only 25 medals for the entire games. Perhaps the two most amazing aspects of the Olympic Games is how long these athletes train just to compete in the Olympics and how little the margin can be between winning a medal and going home empty handed.
This past Wednesday began the penitential season of Lent, a season of forty days which helps us prepare for the celebration of Easter. During this time, God’s people are called upon to take an inventory of their lives and focus on how much they are sinners in need of a divine Savior. God’s people are also called to follow the Lord Jesus in spirit through the season of Lent and hear the Passion Story that never gets old, how the Lord Jesus suffered and died to atone for their sins and the sins of the whole world. Part of the Lenten season in also reviewing how God’s people like you and me can be better equipped to do battle with the forces of Satan, the devil. While the difference between victory and defeat in the Olympic Games can often be just a tiny fraction of a second, the difference between victory and defeat in our spiritual battle with the forces of Satan is essentially whose voice we focus on listening to: the voice of the hound from hell, Satan, or the voice of our Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. On this first Sunday in Lent, God the Holy Spirit will show us how to consistently achieve spiritual victory. Let’s hear the story of the temptation of Jesus under this sermon theme:
LET JESUS TEACH YOU HOW TO BEAT THE DEVIL!
I. Recognize the tricks which Satan uses.
II. Use the word of Scripture as a weapon.
God has a long history of doing quality work in a desert region. For
forty years God disciplined and shaped a new generation of Israelites in a desert region, a generation that eventually crossed the Jordan River and conquered the land of Canaan, which became the homeland of God’s Old Testament people. It was in a desert during a period of forty days and forty nights that the LORD disciplined a despondent prophet Elijah and gave him new marching orders. Now in the time of the New Testament, once again, God had important work to do in a desert. The time came for the second prototype of humanity, the God-man, Jesus Christ, to go out and do battle with the forces of evil with the devil himself.
Jesus had just been baptized, which marked the beginning of his public ministry. Dr. Luke tells us what happened next: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.”
Once again the Lord was testing one of his servants in a desert region. This time it was God’s own Son, whom Isaiah, the evangelist of the Old Testament, called the suffering servant. Luke tells us that the Spirit led him into the desert where he was tempted during a period of forty days by the devil. The specific temptations mentioned in Matthew, Mark and Luke’s account appear to be near the end of these forty days.
In what way did Satan try to trick Jesus into sinning? The same way he successfully tricked our first parents, Adam and Eve, into sinning, with food. Look at how he tried to sow doubts into Jesus’ mind, to get him from focusing on the providence of his heavenly Father. Jesus must have been hungry after fasting for forty days, and that is when the devil came to him with this temptation: “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:4).
Recognize the tricks of Satan! The devil tried to raise doubt in Jesus’ mind that he was the Son of God and the promised Messiah with the word if.
He wanted Jesus to prove that he was the Son of God by doing a miracle. But by doing this, Jesus would doubt the protective care of his heavenly Father. Jesus successfully saw the devil’s trick and did no miracle, although he certainly had the power to do one. Instead he responded with an appropriate word of Scripture: “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’”
But Jesus would soon need to use more discernment in dealing with the devil’s temptations. While the Bible teaches in Psalm 24:1: “The earth is the LORD’s and everything in it,” the devil took Jesus to a high mountain and acted as if he owned the world and had the power to give it all to Jesus. He told Jesus: “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will be yours.”
Can you imagine what would have happened if Jesus would have bowed down to Satan, instead of going the way of the cross and winning salvation for the world, for you and for me? Not only would we be slaves to sin, but so would Jesus. Adam and Eve listened to Satan’s lie instead of God’s truth and brought sin into the world. Instead of bowing down to the devil, Jesus submitted in perfect obedience to his heavenly Father, kept his holy demands perfectly for us, and went all the way to the cross and completed his mission of being our Savior from sin. What was Jesus’ response to the devil’s tricks? “It is written: ‘Worship the LORD your God and serve him only.’”
Being able to quote a Bible passage from memory, including Bible book, chapter and verse can impress people. Scripture however has to be believed correctly and used correctly if it is to benefit a single soul. The devil had one more trick up his sleeve when he met Jesus in the desert of Judea at the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry. The devil took Jesus to the highest point in the Jerusalem temple and misquoted the Bible about how God protects believers from physical harm. The devil tried to get Jesus to jump down from the top of the temple, saying that God’s angels would brace his fall. Here he used Scripture for an evil purpose, to tempt or to challenge God. But Jesus once again discerned the trickery of the devil. He again quoted from the book of Deuteronomy and overcame the temptation with the Word of God: “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Three times the devil went after Jesus with an enticing temptation, spiritual trickery tailored made for Jesus, and three times the Son of God said “no” to the devil. How did he do it? How can Jesus teach you and me how to beat the devil? Job one is understanding what the devil is after when he comes to tempt us. He is after our souls. He wants to seduce us to first become weak and wobbly in the faith and then slowly fall away from it. Jesus recognized that the devil tailored-made temptations to try to catch him off guard. Do we recognize these devilish tactics in our walk of faith?
What pleases you? What do you like? What do you like to do? The devil right now is tailor-making temptations to try to trick you into sinning and weakening your faith based upon your weaknesses. As someone once said, “Sin always begins by being fun.” Everything Satan will ever suggest you do will sound like a good idea at first, but stop and look at the consequences of listening to someone who only wants you to go to hell. His trickery comes in many forms. He puts doubts in our minds, he tells us outright lies; he puts monstrous ideas into our minds which are against everything God stands for. What are we to do? James writes in his epistle: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
Resistance comes first with a resolve to listen to the voice of our Good Shepherd Jesus Christ and not the Prince of Darkness. Resistance comes in the form of dedicating yourself in this season of Lent and after Lent to making the devil afraid of you. Is the devil afraid of you right now as he looks at your walk with Jesus Christ? Do you live your Christian life in such a devout and dedicated way that the devil is afraid of you? In order for you to win the good fight of faith and achieve victory over the unholy trinity of the devil, the world and your own sinful flesh, job one is picking a daily fight with the devil by daily contrition and repentance.
But if you and I try to fight the devil alone, it will be a losing battle. But God has not left us alone in this world. He has given us his Holy Spirit and the Word of God to resist the devil and win the victory. Let Jesus teach you how to beat the devil by using the word of Scripture as a weapon.
Jesus knew his Bible from previous contact with the Word. His Bible was the Old Testament and he cherished it. So when the devil came to seduce him to sin, he was ready with an appropriate word of Scripture, which turned back his temptations. Jesus knew that the Word of God was powerful and he used it. When you and I face doubt and temptation, the first thing we are called to do is to believe and take God at his Word. When we busy ourselves with listening to and trusting in the Lord, then how much time will we have to listen to the devil whisper sugarcoated lies into our ears?
Moreover when we make a priority to possess the Word of God, to read and study the Word of God, in church, in Bible class, with a daily Spirit Lifter, as part of personal or family devotions, then God’s ways and God’s thoughts fill our minds and not the devil’s. A luxury could be defined as something that is nice but not necessary to have. Has the devil seduced you to think that studying the Bible on your own is nice but not necessary? Has he convinced you to believe that more and more material things are now in the category of “got to have” instead of luxuries? God has given us heaven and yet so often we complain about what we don’t have on this earth! The devil is often behind that complaining. Isn’t it comforting to know that Jesus Christ never made the mistake of confusing what he needed with what he wanted? Jesus lived perfectly and died innocently, but he died to redeem our bodies and our souls, not our material possessions. Our possessions we have to leave behind when we die because those have not been redeemed with the blood of Jesus. When we use the word of Scripture as a weapon, we can easily discern error, we can turn away from what seems trendy, popular and cutting edge, but which contradicts the Word of God. People misuse and twist the words of the Bible in order to justify practically any sinful behavior today, but we don’t have to fall for it if we know how to use the Bible properly, the way Jesus did when he beat the devil.
This morning because Jesus won the victory over the devil, you and I can use the Word of Scripture the way God wants us to use it, to instruct us, to
comfort and encourage us, to build us up and save us. St. Luke tells us that when the devil had finished tempting Jesus, “he left him until an opportune time.” When we resist the devil, he will leave us too. But the opposite is also true. If we don’t resist the devil, the devil will not flee. He will stay around
and try to slowly seduce us to hell. Let’s continue to learn from Jesus how to beat the devil. We won’t be awarded a gold medal for winning the victory with the help of the Holy Spirit, but by the grace of God, we will receive a crown of life in heaven. May God bless our efforts to pick a fight with the devil. If we do, not only will we be like Jesus, we someday will be with Jesus forever. Amen.