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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The text is the reading about the temptation of our Lord Jesus Christ for you. You may be seated.
In the Old Testament reading, enter the serpent, or really rather the evil one. The one who seeks someone to devour and the only people for him to devour are just Adam and Eve. They had not had any children yet. Adam and Eve, who were the crown jewel of God’s creation. Adam and Eve, who are the only creatures that bear the image of their creator and the only creatures who are endowed with an eternal soul. Enter the evil one, who wishes to bring corruption to holy Adam and to holy Eve. Enter the evil one, who wishes to cause a divorce between the Creator and His beloved creatures, man.
Enter the evil one, who wishes to infect immortality with mortality. Death where there was no death. And since that time, in that garden that we heard read to us, he has continued to wage war against each one of you, sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, by faith. He seeks you. He has all of the unbelievers in the world already. A very small part of his job is keeping them continually intoxicated and filled with the drugs of this world, meaning pride, power, money, possessions, avarice, and so forth and so on. Keeping them stoned and drunk on the world, that’s a minor part of the evil one’s desire.
What he wishes to do is to rape and pillage your soul. You, who are the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve by faith. He wishes to tear you away from your Father. Not just remove you, but rip you away from your Father. Severing the umbilical cord that brings you God’s grace and God’s mercy.
Satan knows me very well. And he knows where I am weak. And he knows where I am anxious. And he knows where my pride lies. And he tailors all of his attacks on me to fit me. His attacks on me aren’t the kind of way that he attacks you, because each of you have your own weaknesses. Each of you have your pride and your anxieties. Each of you has your own will that you wish to express opposing God, just like I. And Satan tailors all of his attacks upon you to fit you.
And when he attacks you, as he attacks me, he wishes us to cave in upon ourselves, to look around and compare ourselves and to get us to be convinced that no one else struggles like we struggle. No one else suffers like we suffer. No one else is going through what we’re going through, which just simmers us in this cesspool of self-absorption and narcissism, which is abhorrent to the Father. And it is what we inherited from Adam and Eve.
He accurately aims at your will and your desire so that you and I doubt what our Lord has proclaimed to us regarding His benevolence and His care. Did God actually say He would be your Father? Did God actually mean that He would forgive you? Did God say that His grace would cover all things or only these things? That is exactly what Satan does to you and to me constantly. He did it to Adam and Eve in the garden with that very statement. Did God actually say?
Now, this is interesting. Interesting. Because if you are a son or daughter of the Father, that means you only have how many fathers? One. If you are a son or daughter, you only have one father. Not two. But Satan wishes you to subvert your one true Father and allow you to pick what you desire so that you can make it look good like you’re honoring the Father and at the same time you’re honoring yourself.
The devil seeks to make you deny your Father as your Father, but not outright. He encourages your insight. What did God give you but a brain? Let that be what you use, Satan says, to figure out how to make God happy, how to please God, and please who? Yourself. Our Lord Jesus said no man can serve two masters. That is why you can’t serve and honor two fathers. You can only serve and honor your Father in heaven or the one who wishes to be your Father, Satan.
Enter your champion, your champion. Enter the righteous one who wins all things for you, the second Adam, about which Paul wrote. The perfect Adam who fixes and champions God’s cause for you so that you then can be adopted as son or daughter. Notice, it was God who led Jesus into the wilderness to be what? And what do you pray in the Lord’s Prayer but the exact opposite? Lead us not into temptation.
And we said as we read that God indeed tempts no one, but He did tempt who for you? His very beloved Son. You and I spend our entire life always on the defensive. And God led His precious Son into the very lair of the enemy, the dragon, and allowed the dragon to eat Him. And then He burst His belly on the third day, shattering the power of the evil one. That’s your champion.
This text that we just read from the Gospel reading, do not interpret it as if it’s seven steps, three steps, six steps, 21 days, or however long or however many, for you to be a champion of God. That’s Satan’s temptation. Because if you think you can be a champion of God, then you are supplanting the only true champion, who is the crucified one for you.
This text is not about how to defeat Satan as if you can defeat him. Looks like you and I bear the scars of our own failures to defeat him, haven’t we? And if we bear the scars of having been chewed upon by the evil one, then that already negates our ability to ever be the champion. But that again is Satan’s temptation, isn’t it? He even takes a text that’s supposed to be proclaiming to you what the champion did for you, twisting it and saying to you, you too can be like God by following God’s Son. If you do it right, you too can be the champion.
What is the road to hell paved with but good intentions, including yours and including mine? And the only place where good intentions should be laid on the shoulders of Him who alone walked to hell and back for you. Enter your champion who is the only one who lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. In this text, he shows that. Not you and me.
We’re always trying to figure out, how can I make myself happy and God happy? How can I walk this fine line of compromise? Because all of us as God’s children want to make God happy. But all of us as God’s children also want to make ourselves happy. And when God causes us to choose, we don’t listen to the Word of God. But He did. Your champion did. Your mighty fortress and your God, a trusty shield and weapon, He did.
Jesus is the only one who refuses to put the Lord God to the test. Did your parents take any time in their life in raising you to teach you how to test them? No, no, that came from Adam and Eve. No. We’ve been testing our parents. We’ve been testing our employers. We’ve been testing our marriages. We’ve been testing everyone in our life and every institution in our life so that we can also make the institution happy and make us happy. Make the family member happy and make ourselves happy.
There’s only one, only one who always did not test the Lord his God, and he did it for you to cover over that. Enter your champion, who alone is the only one who worships the Lord his God, and him only does he serve. You and I are always caught between our flesh and our spirit. We’re always caught between that which feels good and seems right to that which is good and is right. And only one can. Only one serves the Lord your God and Him only. Not you and not me. And He gives it to us.
That’s what He did to make you His child. He’s your champion. He is your fixer of all things, as Paul wrote. The Gospel reading is about His accomplishment for you. For the great statement that’s made by Jesus at the last temptation… Our two words, be gone, Satan. That’s the only reason you can say it. It’s because he said it, and Satan had to listen. Because Satan is only a creature. Satan cannot predict the future. Satan cannot read your mind. Satan only knows your desires because he’s been seeing it since Adam and Eve. And as we know, from Scripture, there is nothing new under the sun, and as the world has said, history always repeats itself.
Therefore, Satan is seeing nothing new in you that he didn’t see in Abram. He’s not seeing anything special about you or unique about you that sets you apart from David and his peccadilloes. He is getting you, that is God, to fight for your identity. Whose are you? Are you God’s? Satan wishes you to try to walk this compromise line of I can have both cake and eat it too. And it is God who is driving you to say there’s only one who did it all. You can’t even try to walk both sides of the line. All you can do is cry out to the one who lived righteously for you.
Satan obeyed the Word of God from the Word made flesh when he said, Be gone, Satan. You carry that victory. You have that victory already won because he won it for you. All that God is proclaiming to you through this text is to live out what He’s done for you.
You have a fortress. You have a mighty God. You have a trusty bulwark. You have a shield and protector. Let Him be that to you. There is nothing else. You are not that. You and I will never be that. In the beginning of our service, that’s why we cry out, Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy. What else can we say?
Amen. You owe me? I did it this time for you, God. Let’s not look at the other 99 that I didn’t. God has fixed your problem with the champion, the problem that we’ve all inherited, and Satan will not stop attacking his people, that is, God’s people, because you are the one that was given immortality back. He took it from man, and Christ gives it back to you. You are the one who divorced yourself from your Father, and He is the one that brings you back to your Father and makes you a family and a son or daughter again.
You are the one who is without holiness, and He makes you a virgin again. A virgin, holy and pure, who has not compromised yourself. That makes Him mad. Let Him be mad. We’re working our way to where the one who bursts the belly of the dragon bursts it as we head toward Good Friday and the glorious resurrection of Easter. And we begin our walk with these words: Him only shall you serve, for He only served one for you, the Father, Jesus Himself. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
