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February 10, 2008
First Sunday in Lent
Matthew 4:1-11
Pastor Joel Zank

CHRIST TURNS AWAY THE TEMPTER!

(Matthew 4:1-11)  Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. {2} After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. {3} The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." {4} Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" {5} Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. {6} "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: "'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" {7} Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" {8} Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. {9} "All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." {10} Jesus said to him, "Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.'" {11} Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

In Christ Jesus, our Righteous Defender, dear fellow redeemed,

For a moment today, I want you to pretend that you’re the editor-in-chief of the Holy Land Herald, an ancient, make-believe newspaper, that among other things, covers the life of Christ. As you think about his 33 years on earth, what sorts of things did Jesus say and do that might make the headlines?  Well, how about his birth. The headline might read: “Immanuel – God with us!” Maybe you’d put his first miracle in print: “Teacher Turns Water to Wine.” I can picture this Palm Sunday headline: “Hosanna to The Son of David!” In the Good Friday paper: “Christ Crucified!” or “It is Finished!” And as for Easter Sunday, would it not simply read: “He Is Risen!”?
  
Of course, there were no newspapers in Jesus’ day, but if there had been, I’m not sure the events of our text would have seemed newsworthy. And yet I suggest to you that we have before us one of the biggest headlines of all. In fact if this headline were to read any differently, then none of the others would matter. With that said, let’s consider this most important truth: Christ Turns Away The Tempter! He turns him away as our Substitute who saves us, and as our Teacher who shows how to do the same.

The events of our text come on the heels of our Savior’s baptism at the Jordan River. He has just been anointed with the Holy Spirit, and now that same Spirit leads him into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Notice, will you, that this encounter with Satan is arranged by God. What an excellent reminder that the devil can do nothing without the Almighty’s permission.
 
As for as Jesus being led out to face the devil, understand that he goes not as an unwilling participant, but as one who seeks his Father’s guidance and is eager to do his Father’s will. You should also know, that while the devil did not arrange this meeting, he most likely did not oppose it either. He no doubt saw it as an key opportunity to destroy the would-be Savior before Jesus had any chance of doing the same to him.

St. Matthew tells us that Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. Typically Jews fasted only during the daylight hours. At night they would eat to replenish their strength. That’s not the case with Jesus. He has nothing to eat at all, day or night. But why would he do such a thing just when he needed his strength the most? Well, that was the whole point. Jesus meant to put himself entirely in his Father’s care, trusting not in his own power and strength, but solely in the Father’s promises.

We know from St. Luke’s account that the devil tempted Jesus throughout those days of fasting, but the Holy Spirit sees fit to share the details of only three temptations that come at the end of those forty days when Jesus is physically at his weakest. Let’s take a brief look now at each of the three.

Matthew reports: “ The tempter came to him and said, "If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread." {4} Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:3-4).  Our Savior’s response to Satan tells the whole story. At the Jordan, God the Father announced, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17). Satan’s temptation takes aim at those very words. In effect he says to Jesus, “Are you really God’s beloved son? This is how he treats his own? He lets you starve to death? Are you going to wait on him to feed you when you, the supposed Son of God, have all the power you need to turn stones into bread?” That’s a familiar temptation. It’s the same one Satan used in Eden where he convinced Adam and Eve that if God really loved them, he would have let them eat of The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil so that they could learn the divine secret and become gods in their own right.

It worked in Eden. That temptation has worked with you too, hasn’t it? Satan loves to play on our appetites. It doesn’t have to be food. How about your appetite for money and possessions. Be honest. More than once Satan has planted this seed of doubt in your heart: “If God really loved me, I’d have bigger house, a newer car, a nicer TV, more money in the bank.” Of course that’s only half the temptation. The other half goes like this: “There’s no reason for me to wait on God. I know what I want and how to get it. I’ll take a little cash and turn it into lots of money up at the casino. Or I’ll get some more credit cards and max them out. There will be plenty of time to pay it all off later. I deserve to be happy right now!”

You see, it’s no different than the temptation Jesus faced out there in the desert. The difference comes in how that temptation is handled. Like our first parents, we usually fall for Satan’s tricks. But Jesus didn’t. He knew that we don’t live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. How simple and yet, how profound. Without God’s word of blessing, food and wealth, power and possessions, mean nothing. They cannot satisfy us, not unless God says so. You know this for yourself. How many times haven’t you gone after something only to discover that what you thought would make you happy made you miserable instead? By falling for the devil’s temptation, you forfeited the blessing of God. That’s happened to me, more times than I’d care to admit. Of course the little bit misery we experience here wouldn’t even qualify as a down payment on the eternal heartache we deserve for doubting the Lord’s plan for our lives–all because we let Satan undermine our trust in God.

But you realize that’s not the devil’s only trick. Martin Luther once noted: “if the devil does not succeed in robbing us of our confidence in God, he will go to the other extreme and try to make us cocksure and much too daring.”  That’s what he tried next with Jesus. Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. {6} “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” {7} Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matthew 4:5-7).

The devil doesn’t miss a beat. Jesus had reaffirmed his trust in God and God’s Word. So here’s a new temptation: “You really do trust your Father’s love, but how much? It says in the Bible that if you really trust him and he really loves you, he’ll take care of you no matter what you do. Let’s find out if that’s true. Throw yourself down off the temple. God’s angels will catch you. That’s what he says!”

Satan is still whispering that same lie today and we’re listening. He says, “You can try those drugs; nothing’s going to happen – not to you.”  “Go ahead, have one more beer for the road. You’ll be fine.” Or how about this one: “You’re late. Push the pedal to the metal; the light just turned yellow, you’ll make it.” Will you? Will you be fine? Why? Because God’s going to take care of you? Because you have some special “in” with him? Taking foolish chances with our lives and the lives of those around us, is not a bold expression of Christian faith. It is sin. It’s putting God to the test, expecting him to do something that he has not promised to do.

We go from not trusting God to tempting God. What’s left? How about replacing God altogether? That’s what Satan tempts Jesus to do. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. {9} “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8-9).  The Father’s plan of salvation required that Jesus should win the world for himself through his sufferings and death on the cross. Why would Jesus want to worship such a God when there was an easier way to have what he was after? All he had to do was just bow down and worship Satan out there in the desert where no one else would see him. Never mind that the world wasn’t Satan’s to give away. We sure don’t seem to mind, not when Satan is offering us fun and excitement in place of boredom and sacrifice. Again and again he says, “Why should you wait till your married, when you can live together right now?” “Why should you stay faithful to your spouse, when that person will make you so much happier?” “Why should you wait for a tax refund when you can cheat and keep the money in your pocket?”  “Just bow down,” says the devil, “worship the gods of money, sex and pleasure. Never mind that doing so is a damning sin.” So we don’t mind, not till we meet up with God our Judge at doorstep of his First Commandment: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only [or else!]” (Matthew 4:10).  Now we mind. But now it’s too late. Life with God in heaven requires nothing but perfection. We have none. Even if we could stop sinning right now and never sin again, we could not make ourselves perfect. We have a past full of sin that we cannot undo. And our future is no brighter. Who of us can withstand the devil’s assaults? Even if we manage not to act on his temptations, by the time we’ve run them through our mind, we’ve already broken the commandment, whether it’s the one that forbids greed or lust or coveting or hatred – we’re guilty of them all. No, we cannot make things right with God. But Jesus could and he has.

We see it again today. Jesus faced all those temptations we know so well, but he did not sin. He did not even think to sin. Instead he told the devil: “Away from me!” Christ turned away the tempter. Good for him and good for us. Had Jesus caved to even one of those temptations, we would have lost our only Savior form sin and death. A sinful Jesus could not have offered his life for us on the cross as the perfect Lamb of sacrifice. But there is more to our salvation than that. For not only did we need Jesus to die as our Substitute, we first needed him to live as our Substitute. Yes, his death is our sin payment and his resurrection proves our sin-debt is canceled. But there still is that matter of perfection. It is not enough to have our sins paid for, not in and of itself. We also need holiness to live in God’s heaven. Since we have none of our own, this too, God in grace has provided for us in the person of his Son, our Savior Jesus. Don’t you see?  Christ turned away the tempter as our Substitute who saves us. In other words, when Jesus resisted temptation in your place, it was as if you were turning away the tempter. Listen again to how Paul says it in Romans: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man [Adam] the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Christ] the many will be made righteous” (5:19). It could not be said any clearer. Jesus’ perfect obedience counts as yours in the sight of our holy God. In Christ’s holiness you have everything you need to be right with God here on earth and forever in heaven.

This is what Jesus wants for you. He wants you to cling to his holy life through the faith he’s given you. He wants you to avoid the sin and impenitence that would trip you up and cause you to forfeit all that he’s done for you. You and I can’t win salvation. We do not have to; Jesus has won it for us. But we can throw it all away by falling prey to Satan. For this reason Christ turns away the tempter as our teacher to show us how we can avoid the devil’s trap.