[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, with might of ours can nothing be done.
Soon our loss would be effected.
But for us fights the valiant one chosen by God.
You ask who this is?
Jesus, who fights for you to keep you
and to bless you, and to give you all that you need.
Jesus Christ it is, Lord of hosts, the Valiant One.
If we can receive the storms of this last week as Christians,
by the Holy Spirit, that is, as a gift from God to benefit us,
then we will receive them this way.
we will receive them as a reminder of our own humility,
of our own creatureliness, of our own smallness.
We’ll remember that while there’s a lot of powerful buttons
in Washington, D.C. that can blow things up or do whatever,
there’s no button to turn off the weather.
There’s apparently no button even in Austin
to turn on the power.
As much as we think we have achieved this technological greatness and might,
the Lord reminds us that no, we are never without need of his help, his
deliverance. By might of ours cannot be done. So we stand even before nature
humbled, but more, before God, humbled, knowing that we need a helper, and delighting that
He is here to help.”
Now this is the great import of this text of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness,
but I can’t pass by the Old Testament or the Epistle without just saying a couple of
words about them.
Genesis 22 is our Old Testament reading, the account of Abraham sent to sacrifice Isaac
on Mount Zion, Mount Moriah, the place where the temple would be built and the sacrifices
would be offered in the days of Jerusalem.
And they go, you can just imagine the stunningness of it.
They’re getting ready to go up the hill after going three days’ journey, and there the wood
is on the back of Isaac, and he says, Father, here’s the fire and here’s the wood, where’s
the sacrifice and he says the Lord will provide himself the sacrifice.
And Abraham goes to offer Isaac.
Now I think there’s something that’s easy to miss about this text because we often see
the sacrifice commanded of Abraham to offer Isaac on the altar as a test of Abraham’s
obedience or a test of Abraham’s love.
But if we read the text that way, we’re missing it.
It is a test of Abraham’s faith.
Faith, remember, which believes the promise.
Isaac was the child of promise.
Isaac was the one that the Lord said,
through him, you will have as many children
as the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea.
Through him, the promised seed given to,
the promise given to Eve in the garden
that your seed would crush the head of the devil.
Well, through Isaac that promise will be fulfilled.
In other words, the Lord had said to Abram, and now Abraham, that through Isaac you’ll
have generations, you’ll be a blessing to the nation, the Messiah will come, and Isaac
didn’t have any children.
Not yet.
So Abraham knew that God, who hadn’t kept his promise yet, would keep his promise, and
so he was not afraid to sacrifice Isaac, because he knew that if he did, God would give him
back to him from the dead.
that’s what Hebrews tells us and that’s why Abraham sacrificed Isaac knowing that
God would raise Isaac and Hebrews tells us in a way he did. Why? Because on Isaac
the promise rested, the promise of the Messiah, the promise of blessings to the
Gentiles and so Abram goes and is able to to lift the knife to kill his son
Isaac knowing that Isaac would not stay dead. That’s the test there and that’s the test that
Abraham passes. And the Lord does provide a ram caught in the thicket. We can’t miss the picture
of Jesus crowned in thorns there. The ram in the thicket that takes the place of Isaac.
The sacrifice in his place. In James we heard a beautiful text
explain the anatomy of temptation.
It’s your homework to go and read
through James chapter one again,
and especially this verse 14 and 15.
When each person is tempted,
he’s lured and enticed by his own desire,
and then desire, when it’s conceived, gives birth to sin,
and when sin grows up, it’s death.
So that every sin starts in the ninth
and tenth commandments, covetousness,
and winds its way through all the other commandments
until finally it ends in breaking the first commandment,
idolatry and spiritual death. Sin starts in us. Now, we need to think about that a little
bit because the temptation of Jesus is different. The temptation of Jesus is outside only. The
temptation of Jesus is from the world and the devil, not from his sinful flesh. He didn’t
possess a sinful flesh, but nonetheless the temptation comes to Jesus as equally fierce,
And that’s where we turn our attention now, Mark chapter 1.
The temptation of Jesus is recorded for us in all three of the synoptic Gospels, that
is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
But we notice when we turn to this account in Mark that it’s a lot shorter than the
others.
For whatever reason, St. Mark has decided that we don’t need the accounts of the three
different temptations that we’re used to hearing about.
The temptation to turn the stones into bread.
After Jesus had not eaten for 40 days and, the text tells us, was hungry.
Or the temptation to throw himself off of the pinnacle of the temple in accord to Psalm
91, the Psalm we just sang, that he will give his angels to guard you in all of your ways.
You won’t dash your foot against a stone.
The devil misquotes the text and tries to tempt Jesus to test God.
He refuses.
You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
or the temptation to bow down and worship the devil.
That is the temptation to avoid the suffering of the cross,
just to get it all over with.
The devil says, I’ll give you everything you want,
all the nations, if you only will bow down and worship me.
But Jesus refuses also.
You shall worship the Lord and him only.
He refuses in all of these places.
But Mark just says that he went out into the wilderness
to be tempted by Satan.
That’s all it says.
In fact, Mark adds a couple of things, it’s easy for us to miss this when we compare it
with Luke and with Matthew.
It says in chapter 1, verse 12, the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
I think in Matthew it’s he took him out and Luke, he led him out, but here it’s he threw
him into the wilderness.
The word that’s used there in the Greek is the same word used to describe what Jesus
does to the demons.
He casts them out.
So the Spirit hurls Jesus into the wilderness, and we should remember that that’s what it means to be baptized.
When we’re baptized, we are marked by the Lord on our foreheads and on our chests as those redeemed by Christ the crucified.
And when we are marked by the Lord, we are marked for the devil’s attack.
We are set apart for the devil’s assaults.
The Christian life is a wilderness life.
It says he, in verse 13, he was in the wilderness for 40 days being tempted by Satan.
Matthew and Luke call the devil the devil.
Here Mark reminds us that the devil is Satan, the accuser, the one who afflicts us not only
in body but also in soul, who tries to bring the judgment of God against our conscience.
And Mark tells us, none of the other Gospels mention this, that Jesus was with the wild
animals.
I don’t know how you’re, I have to correct my own imagination because when I imagine
Jesus in the wilderness, he’s kind of out, I kind of imagine like the desert in Arizona
with the cactuses sitting there, you know, and the tumbleweeds kind of rolling around
and it’s just sort of empty and Jesus is all there by himself, but he wasn’t by himself.
You have to picture, you have to put the beasts in there, the jackals and the hyenas and the
serpents and the scorpions.
And maybe there’s nice beasts too,
but this is not pleasant beasts here.
It’s the undoing of the Garden of Eden.
Remember how Adam and Eve were surrounded
by all the animals and he had given them,
and Adam was there to give them all of the names.
Now Jesus is in the wilderness surrounded by the beasts
and he is there, make no mistake,
to stand where Adam and Eve fell.
I think that this temptation of Jesus
is preached a lot of times as advice, and it should be advice for us. I don’t want
to take it away from this, but normally you hear a sermon something like this, like, the
devil came to tempt Jesus, and look, Jesus withstood the devil, and he stood against
the temptations by using the Word of God, and we should do the same. And that’s right.
We should do the same. And we have the same Word of God that Jesus uses. Jesus resists
the devil, not with his divine power, but with the power of the Word of God. With the
preaching of Moses three times, he quotes from Deuteronomy, and that’s right, but
that’s not the only thing that’s happening. Mark wants this to be clear to
us, that Jesus is restoring paradise lost in the fall, brought back now in the
wilderness, that Jesus is standing where no one else stood before, and he’s doing
that for us. Imagine, or maybe not imagine, maybe just remember, how good the devil is
at tempting, tempting people to sin. When there was only two people, and they were perfect,
Adam and Eve, he succeeded, and Adam and Eve fell. And the devil has succeeded ever since
then. There’s not a single person in the history of the world that the devil has not
tempted to sin, including you, including me. The devil is 100% effective in his
scandalous work of temptation. 100% minus one. There is one who stood and withstood.
There is one who was tempted in every way like us and did not fall.
And he did that for you.
When I was 19, I was wandering around Israel and I ended up in this little village in Palestine
and there was a priest there who was building a college and I was kind of helping his electrician
for a few days, kind of get things up and running.
and so we would have devotions and he would always speak of Jesus in what I
thought was a sort of funny at least a curious way he would always call Jesus
our friend and our champion our champion Jesus Christ and I always thought it was
funny but the more I think about it the more I think that is right Jesus is the
one who goes out and fights for us like the armies of Israel trembling there as
Goliath stood before him and intimidated them and brought them all this fear and they didn’t
have a champion.
They didn’t have anyone who would go out and fight the giant until David comes along and
says, I’ll go and take him on.
So it is with Jesus.
He goes to fight for you, to stand for you, to fight against the devil, to destroy him,
to undo his kingdom, to unravel his power, to stand where Adam and Eve and you and I fell
and to do it all for you, in your place, to forgive your sins and to help you fight against
sin.
Now, there’s a huge advantage when it comes to the thinking about the temptation of Jesus,
because we don’t have to wonder about what it means, because the Bible tells us.
There’s two particular places, two texts that I want to read for you and just put in your
mind to think about when it comes to this temptation, and they are Hebrews chapter 2
and Hebrews chapter 4. First Hebrews chapter 2, verses 17 and 18. It says this,
In all things he, Jesus, had to be made like his brothers, so that he might be a merciful
faithful High Priest in the things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins
of the people. For in that he himself has suffered, being tempted, he is able to aid
those who are tempted.” Do you remember that the High Priest in the Old Testament
would go into the Holy Place once a year on the Day of Atonement, but he would go in there
twice. He would go in there first with the blood of a bull, sacrificed for his own sin,
and then he would go in a second time with the blood of a goat, sacrificed for the sins
of the people. In other words, the high priest, to minister faithfully, not only has to know
the sins of the people, but he has to know those sins himself. He has to feel it himself.
So, Jesus not only bears the iniquity of our sin, but He bears the trouble of our sin,
even the temptation of our sin, even the feeling of our own sin. It says more in Hebrews 4.
It says it like this. This is Hebrews 4, verses 14 to 16.
Seeing, then, that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus,
the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high
priest who cannot sympathize with our weakness, but was at all points tempted
as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of
grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. You have
have a High Priest Jesus who not only knows the trouble of sin, but knows the temptation
to sin. He knows the agony of it. He knows the struggle that you’re going through. The
desire to do what’s wrong. Now, we have to remember that Jesus always was tempted from
the outside, not from the inside, and that he never fell to temptation. He resisted it
all the way through, but how much worse is that suffering then
that he endured for you? So that Jesus
is your High Priest who takes away your sin, but who is not,
who is able to sympathize with you, who is
able to understand. When you go and pray
and carry before the Lord all of your struggles
and all of your difficulties, and all of your temptations, and you carry them
before the Lord, He says to you, I understand what you’re going through.
I know what you’re talking about. It’s true. We do not have a high priest who
cannot sympathize with us, but a high priest who can, a high priest who knows the struggle.
Now this is such great comfort for us. It’s such great comfort for me. Because when we
see the law of sin working in our own flesh, when we see our own weakness, when we see
our own miserable, dying, sinful, greedy, lusty, angry, bitter, idolatrous flesh
flaring up, and we see it, and we hate it, and we despise it. We come to
Jesus and we think, He must hate us for it, too. He must be disgusted with us. He
must hold His nose at our sinful flesh. He does not. He does not hate you. He
hates it with you. He hates your sin alongside of you, and He’s helping you
all the way, helping you help, bringing you through this life, at last to death, when
He will deliver you from sin. Deliver you from temptation, deliver you from weakness,
deliver you from death, deliver you from all of it. He does not despise you, He’s not
ashamed of you, He loves you. And He’s with you. This is the comfort of the temptation
of Jesus, that He was there for us, make no mistake, restoring the Kingdom of God,
He was there for you, forgiving sin, and that He’s here with you now. He has
compassion. He has affection for you. He smiles at you, even in the midst of all
of the temptation. He smiles at you and He says, we’re gonna get through it all.
I’m by your side.
With mine of ours, cannot be done.
Soon were the laws effected.
But for you fights the value.
God himself elected.
You wonder who it is?
Jesus Christ.
It is.
Lord of hosts.
Who holds the field forever.
He continues to hold the field for you. May God grant that in the midst of this
troubled life we have this comfort, that Jesus who is not angry at us, stands with
us, holds us, protects us, and keeps us. May God grant us His faith. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
