Grace and Peace to you from God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ and may our Lord and Savior sanctify you in
the truth, for His word is truth. Amen
The First
Sunday in Lent (2010)
Christ’s Call to Arms
Luke 4:1-13 (ESV)
And Jesus, full of the Holy
Spirit, returned from the
" 'You shall worship the
Lord your God,
and him only shall you
serve.' "
[9] And he took him to
" 'He will command his
angels concerning you,
to guard you,'
[11] and
" 'On their hands they
will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot
against a stone.' "
[12] And Jesus answered him,
"It is said, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.' "[13]
And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an
opportune time.
Once again the
Church begins her forty-day journey through Lent and the Gospel lesson points
us to the forty-days of our Lord’s temptation in the wilderness. For forty
consecutive days our Lord is beset by Satan with one temptation after another
in an effort to reduce our Lord to nothing more than Adam; to nothing more than
one of us.
Twice before, Holy
Scripture shows us the power of Satan in tempting God’s Creation. In the
Moreover, the
Gospel Reading for today also shows us the ongoing battle between two wills;
the will of Satan and the will of the Holy Spirit. These two wills are the very
same wills which control every day of your life and today’s Gospel shows us
this clash of wills.
After His baptism,
our Lord Jesus is directed by the Holy Spirit to enter the wilderness where He
will be tempted by Satan: this to prepare Him for His ministry. Our Lord Jesus
in His humanity is to be severely tested by the father of all lies. This battle
will be the greatest struggle the world has ever known; Satan versus the Holy
Spirit in the heart and mind of our Lord, Jesus Christ. If our Lord Jesus fails,
all will be lost!
The evangelist Luke
describes the last three temptations; the greatest to which Satan subjected our
Lord.
After forty-days of
having gone without food and of having been brow beaten by Satan’s constant
temptations, our Lord is in a highly weakened state. Now, Satan surmises, “he
has our Lord just where he wants Him; at the point where it no longer matters.
Now, he thinks, Jesus will gladly agree to anything just to get this ordeal
over with. Surely, He wants to satisfy His hunger and get some much needed rest.”
How many of you have found yourself in this position. Oh, my goodness, enough
already. I’m tired of the fighting and squabbling, of the constant friction,
I’ll gladly do whatever is necessary just to get the ordeal over with! Satan
may believe he is about to gloat in his victory, but as Satan always does, he falls short when it
comes to understanding the strength of God.
The first of these final
temptations is directed squarely at the hunger of our Lord. Satan says, “If you are the Son of God,
command this stone to become bread” (v. 3).
First, Satan tries to put doubt in our Lord’s mind by questioning
whether He is truly the Son of God. If
you are who you say you are, then nothing is impossible for you. Unlike with
Eve, Satan is not able to ask our Lord, “did God really call you His Son?”
because in fact, God has just done that, when at His baptism God said, “This
is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17 ESV). Our
Lord Jesus may be exhausted and hungry, but He hasn’t forgotten who He is. Yet,
Satan never tires of trying to take every advantage he can. He then addresses
our Lord’s hunger and implies, I know you’re starving, save Yourself, use Your
divine power to satisfy Your hunger, turn these stones into bread so you can
eat! However, even starvation is not sufficient to cause the course of our Lord
to waver. Instead, our Lord Jesus turns to Satan and says, “It is written, ‘Man shall not
live by bread alone’ ” (v. 4). Here our Lord Jesus recalls the words
Moses gave to the people after they had sojourned for forty years in the
wilderness. Reminding them that God had curbed their hunger with manna, but, “man
does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the
mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3 ESV).
Then Satan changes tactics, and promises Jesus all the kingdoms of the
world. Yet, once again, when Satan offers
Jesus all the authority and glory which he claims has been given to him, he
lies. He says these are his; they have been delivered to him. Although he did
not create these kingdoms, he speaks of them as if he is their rightful owner,
as if God Himself has given them to him. However, rather than the legitimate
owner, Satan is an illegitimate thief who acquired his authority by usurpation.
He is, as Jesus says in John 10:10, the thief who comes to steal, kill, and
destroy. He makes the claim that he is the supreme ruler and thus he can make a
gift of what is his to anyone he pleases. However, all that he claims to posses
was begotten through subterfuge, lies, and theft. None-the-less, if Jesus will
bow to him and worship him, he will gladly grant all this to Jesus.
What a lie! Satan
has no authority to offer any of God’s Creation to Jesus. Moreover, Satan was
only offering to Jesus what was already His? Although, in His human form, our
Lord Jesus was just like us, subject to every temptation; He never flinched, He
never wavered, He was faithful in all thing; He was without sin (Heb. 4:15).
Therefore, Jesus reminds Satan, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall
you serve’ ” (v. 8).
Once again, our
Lord relies on Moses (Deut. 6:13) and reminds Satan His allegiance and worship
is reserved for the true God for to do anything else would be to violate the
First Commandment and become guilty of idolatry, which is exactly what Satan is
trying to get our Lord to do.
Finally, in one
last, desperate attempt, Satan appears to return to the first of the final
three temptations; get Jesus to doubt His divinity. Taking Him to the pinnacle
of the
Once more our Lord stands firm in His love for His Father. He responds
to Satan’s temptation by saying, “It is said, 'You shall not put the Lord
your God to the test” (v. 12).
Throughout His entire ordeal our Lord Jesus remained firm in His love
for His heavenly Father and He girded Himself with God’s Word. This was His
defense to all of Satan’s attacks. He not only put on the whole armor of God,
He is the whole armor of God, the shield and protector that we turn to in order
to win the battle against the temptations of our flesh, the world, and Satan.
However, this defeat of Satan in the desert is not the end of the story.
Today, we find ourselves in this battle of wills between the Holy
Spirit and Satan. Each and everyday we walk in the wilderness of the world
surrounded by temptation on every side. Satan is constantly putting one
obstacle after the other in our path, hoping to make us stumble. Hoping that
that one stumble is all he’ll need to claim victory over the Holy Spirit taking
our soul as his prize. Moreover, he knows that when we begin to rely on our own
powers, he has already won the day. Therefore, to win the battle against Satan
you need the power of the Holy Spirit. You need to take up the Arms to which Christ Calls you in this
war against Satan.
Someone once said, “The devil is
a clever debater. Grant him one false premise, and he will draw thousands of
false deductions from it.” Oh, how true this statement is!
One of the false
premises he promotes is there is no hell; there is no Satan; there is no he.
Goodness, how clever can you be? If you’re the greatest liar in the world, you
don’t go around telling everyone, you’re the greatest liar. If you’re trying to
destroy the Church, what better way than to pretend to be the greatest
churchman ever? This is Satan, a master of disguise and the greatest master of
guile. He has proven time and again his ability to get people to believe his
lies. However, God knows of Satan’s wily ways and He has provided His Creation
with a means of defense.
Through His Word we
know that we are at war. He tells us, “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood,
but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over
this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly
places” (Eph. 6:12 ESV). That present darkness; those spiritual forces
of evil are none other than Satan and his minions.
Thus, Calling us to Arms through His Holy
Word, our Lord directs us to the armament required to succeed in this struggle,
He says, “Take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in
the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having
fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of
righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given
by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with
which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the
helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,
praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that
end keep alert with all perseverance” (Eph. 6:13-18 ESV).
Most certainly we are aware of what is at stake—nothing less than our
eternal salvation.
Today, as a country, we are threatened by fanatical Muslims whose only
aim is the destruction of our faith. Some might argue they’re true aim is the
conquest of
Then, when that attack failed, Satan thought, oh, well, let’s attack
from within. This tactic had the effect of corrupting the church, but not God’s
Word. To meet this challenge from Satan, God raised another apostle, Martin
Luther, to defend the Church through no other means than the very armor God
calls us to use; His Holy Word. One of Martin Luther’s greatest achievements
was the translation of Holy Scripture into German: His native tongue. Now, for
the first time, peasants could sit and read the Word of God and learn of their
salvation and the great need of proclaiming the Gospel to a dying world. Therefore,
through His Word, God led Martin Luther to reform the church.
Today, it appears that Satan is using a two-pronged approach, attack
the followers of Christ both from without and from within the Church; through
those who deny that Jesus is the Son of God and through those whose theology
would undo the Reformation. However, I am convinced that the outcome will be
the same; complete and total failure for Satan. Yes, there will be casualties,
this was the case before and I see no reason for it not to be the same again.
However, we must heed Christ’ Call to Arms in order to defend ourselves
against Satan’s attacks.
In our sermon hymn today we sang, “Deep
guile and great might Are his dread arms in fight; On Earth is not his equal.” I
ask you, would you go into battle armed with pea shooters when your enemy has
tanks, cannon, battleship, and bombers? Would you match your battle wits against
Alexander the Great? Of course you wouldn’t. Why enter the fray without arms,
why struggle with your own inabilities when you already have the One who can
and has accomplished all that you need in this defense against Satan? Satan
knows his time is short and a day will come when our Lord will claim His
victory for us and demand Satan’s banishment into the eternal fires of hell for
eternity. Therefore, Satan is going to do all he can to drive you to despair,
to convince you to say, “Oh, forget it, I have had enough.”
Our Lord, Jesus
Christ, has already fought and won the war. He did so in the wilderness and on
May the Peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen