First Sunday in Lent 2/17/13

First Sunday in Lent 2/17/13 Text: 4:1-13 Title: Did God Really Say! Our Gospel reading for this morning is on the temptation of Jesus. It is often treated, as I have done in the past, as an example of how we are to use God’s Word to defeat Satan; sort of like a “how to” guide so that we can save ourselves from Satan’s attacks. You know; read this, do that and you will be blessed here and in heaven. We turn the text, in fact I think we could safely say we turn large parts of God’s Word into a “how to” guide because we by nature want to focus on what we do instead of on what God has done for us. This misreading of God’s Word causes us all sorts of problems in life, especially in times of trouble like we are going through right now after the tornado. When you read the story of Jesus’ temptation focusing on why he resists Satan instead of reading it as a “how to” guide you see that the purpose of the temptation story is not to give us a “how to” guide, as good as that is, but to show us, as we had been doing during the Epiphany season the true nature of Jesus as God. He is above all things our Savior, our champion, because it is he alone that defeats Satan. We had no part in that victory. He did it alone. By his grace we get to share in his victory, not by using his life, or the temptation story as a “how to” guide, but by trusting in Jesus as our champion and substitute just as he trusted God the Father to provide and do for him all he had promised to do. Jesus, and this is important, walked by faith and not sight. As all of you, unless you believe you can on your own please God in some way, are painfully aware that you cannot walk as Jesus did; perfectly trusting in God the Father to do what he has promised us he will do for us. You can’t do it. I can’t do it. No one can do it. And so we are all doomed, without Jesus’ saving act, to not only living our lives here in frustration, fear, and uncertainty, but also bearing the wrath of God. That is our fate when we try to use God’s Word as a “how to book” instead of what it was written for, our salvation. We have, on our own, no more capability to overcome the devil's temptations than we do to perfectly keep God's Commandments. Our salvation depends solely upon whether or not Jesus, our champion beat the devil in our place. We just can’t do it, no matter what you want to believe or have been told by your favorite author or preacher. There is absolutely no substitute for Jesus’ death on the cross. When Jesus cried out those wonderful Gospel words, “It is finished” it was finished once and for all time. Now we, who truly believe in those words, are safe from God’s wrath. We are safe, not because it is something we do, but because of what he did. Our faith does not save us, in that it is our faith that saves, but our faith, the faith given to us by God that grasps the saving act, trusting in the words, “It is finished.” Now we can say “Get out of here Satan, for I am a baptized child of God you have no power over me.” Again, we can say that, not because of some power we have created in us, but the power of Jesus’ words, “It is finished.” It is finished because what we are witnessing in the story of Jesus’ temptation is not just a testing of Jesus, but an attack on the very identity of Jesus which continued to his dying breath. We see that in his agony the night he was arrested, the opportune time that the devil was waiting for. We see the testing by Satan, as he hung on the cross when the very people Jesus was dying for called out, as it is recorded in Mark 15:31-32 "He saved others; he cannot save himself. 32 Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe." Jesus avoids the temptation, for he could have certainly come down from the cross instead descended into the jaws of death and in doing so Jesus “No” to Satan turned into God’s “Yes” to us. The account of Jesus’ temptation is thus not just a “how to book” for us because it shows us the necessity of his dying on the cross, for he was doing battle with Satan in our place. Had he turned those stones into bread, which he certainly could have done, he would have fed himself but not become a life-giving bread, manna from heaven, broken and given for us. Had Jesus willingly put himself under Satan’s authority which he could have, for he knew it would have been a sham he would not have that death-defying grip on us that no one can snatch from his nail-marked hands. Had Jesus thrown himself down, there is absolutely no doubt that angels would have protected him, for he is, how can I say it he is their boss, but they certainly would not have been able to proclaim him as risen from the dead. To be child of God is not about our resisting temptation, although we are to resist temptation. It is about trusting in who Jesus is, the Son of God, Immanuel, God with us; the one who died in our place. His victory has become our victory. And because his victory is our victory we now live our life through his life, death, and resurrection following in his footsteps and proclaiming his wonderful message of forgiveness and acceptance to those who, like us, are walking through the wilderness of life. In short, we go from one who is on trial before God to being one who is a faithful witness to the faithfulness of God. It boils down to one thing. It doesn't matter how good or bad life is going; it doesn't matter how or when the devil tempts you. The answer is always the same. Look to and hold fast to your Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus. Don't look to Him as a poster-boy model of what you need to do. Nothing makes the devil happier than getting you to foolishly believe that different circumstances call for different measures and that you can actually assist in working your salvation and deliverance. Instead look to and hold fast to your perfect and complete substitute who did it all, perfectly and completely, for you. Hold fast to Son of God and his victorious and eternal proclamation, "It is finished!" In Christ, all of God's promises of deliverance, life, forgiveness, and salvation are yours. “Resist the devil," as James says in his epistle, "and he will flee from you." For it is in Christ alone, the one who is our perfect and complete substitute, that the head of the devil has already been crushed, making us no longer enemies of God, but cherished and redeemed children of our Father in heaven. There are simply no ifs, ands, or buts about the truth of that statement, for it is what it is; God’s Word. Amen