Invocavit
5 March, Anno Domini 2017
St. Matthew 4:1-11
Pr. Kurt Ulmer
In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, you are Baptized. The Father has set His seal upon you. He has joined you to Jesus so that all the blessings of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection belong to you. By your Baptism you have been made a child of Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth and all things visible and invisible, the eternal and perfect Father who gives only the best of gifts to His children and never withholds what is necessary for you. You are baptized into Christ. The Law can’t accuse you because that accusation and guilty verdict were spoken against the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The world can’t harm you because Jesus has already overcome the world. The devil’s authority over you has been taken away because all authority in heaven and earth belongs to the Son of Man, your brother and Lord, Jesus Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father. By your Baptism God has spoken with perfect clarity, declaring you righteous, holy, and forgiven. And that is exactly what you are.
But as it goes with Jesus, so it goes with you. His Baptism didn’t assure Jesus a life of ease and comfort, that He would never have to engage Satan or endure suffering. Just the opposite. Rather than being God’s enemy, you are Satan’s. The devil knew what God had spoken of old. There in Eden he was told in no uncertain terms that a Messiah was coming who would crush his head. Ever since that day he had been waiting, terrified, playing those words over and over in his mind, going insane with the anticipation. He knew, as we so often forget, that if God promises a thing IT WILL HAPPEN. It’s not just a possibility. When Jesus said “Lazarus, arise” nothing else could have happened other than the once-dead Lazarus walking out alive from the tomb.
For nearly four millennia that terrifying promise of God rang in Satan’s ears. Four thousand horrifying years of waiting for an impending doom that couldn’t be avoided or stopped. And at long last, Satan saw his enemy. He watched as Mary’s Son stepped into the Jordan River to receive a sinner’s baptism. He saw heaven open and the Spirit of God descend upon Jesus, marking Him as Satan’s chief enemy and target. And he heard the Father’s voice thunder from heaven and tell everyone that Jesus was His Son, the Messiah, who had come to crush Satan once and for all and rob the devil of his spoil – you. The anticipation was over. The battle royale had finally begun.
The devil’s hatred of God and you is so infinitely deep that he will do everything in his power to keep Jesus away from the cross and away from saving you. That is the ultimate goal of his temptations. If he can convince Jesus that His Father’s promises are insufficient, that He will not provide for Jesus needs, that He won’t send His angels to keep Jesus’, that the devil can offer him an easier kingdom, one that doesn’t demand His bitter suffering and death, then your salvation is undone and he will have succeeded in accomplishing your eternal damnation.
It’s absolutely crucial that we see what Satan does, how he works, and really what his goal is. If we shortchange him or fail to appreciate exactly what he is trying to do, we will fall to him. We will either dismiss him completely and be destroyed or we will try to battle him with powerless weapons that will only lead to our death on the battlefield. That is exactly why God in His mercy drove His beloved Son into the wilderness and caused this confrontation to be recorded in Holy Scripture and proclaimed to you. So that you may know that Christ has done in our place what we frail sinners could never do and to teach you the one and only way that the ancient serpent is disarmed and defeated.
Satan knows that God’s Word is everything. He knows that God’s Word is life and without it there is only death. He knows that God’s Word is the perfect expression of God’s will and that by that Word God brings forth creation from nothing and life from death. That is why every attack of Satan is focused on that – God’s Word and His promises. Into the midst of your trials and tragedies, when all daily bread and earthly help is gone, Satan walks in, disguised as a delivering angel of light, offering you a different way, an easier way. He twists and perverts God’s Word to lead you away from the true, life-giving Word which God has spoken.
Listen to how Satan addresses Jesus. “If you are the Son of God…” He strikes at Jesus’ Baptism and the last thing that the Father had said to Jesus “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.” Just like in Eden, the tempter calls God a liar. “If God really loved you He wouldn’t let you suffer and hunger like this. What kind of a Father does that to his son? You could have bread right now and end this torment.” This is exactly the tactic that Satan takes with you. “God doesn’t want you to endure want or pain. Sure, he SAID that you were His child, but would a loving God allow this to happen to you? Maybe, maybe you’re not really His child?” The second and third temptations are simply variations on the same theme. If Satan can’t get Christ to doubt God’s promises, he will try to have Jesus call God a liar by demanding that God prove His promises. “Make your Father prove Himself. He SAID he would protect you and keep you from stumbling. Talk is cheap. He wants you to suffer the scourge and the cross. How do you know He will see you through that? Make Him prove it right here.” And if that doesn’t work, then offer Jesus power and authority and a kingdom that could be His without the cross. “All you have to do is worship me. Wouldn’t that be better than suffering and dying? Wouldn’t that be better than nails and thorns?”
Every temptation of Satan has one purpose, to undermine the promises of God and to get you seek another way to peace, salvation, and forgiveness. He knows that the Gospel, the promises of God that are proclaimed to you and delivered to you in the Holy Sacraments, and nothing else, is the power of God to save you. Which is precisely why there is only one weapon against temptation – the Word of God. Jesus doesn’t argue with Satan or get into a philosophical debate. He just throws back in Satan’s face the very Word which Satan is trying to manipulate. You don’t need anything else. Anything else would be worthless and powerless. God’s Word, His promise that you are forgiven, His promise that Jesus’ victory over Satan in the wilderness is your victory, His promise that Jesus’ death to sin is your death, that His resurrection is your resurrection, His promise that you will not suffer harm, His promise that you will have your daily bread even if angels need to serve it to you. These and these alone will cause Satan to flee back into the darkness he came from.
Dear baptized of God, Jesus went out into the wilderness not chiefly to give you an example but to conquer Satan for you so that in the hour of temptation you can beat back Satan by reminding him that Jesus has already conquered him. Your Lord, your champion, has already crushed Satan. Jesus shoved Satan’s lies back down his throat and revealed him as the liar that he has been since the beginning and so can you. However the devil would have you believe that he has another or a better way is nothing but lies and death. Christ Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the Word of God in the flesh, given into death as the full payment of your sin and He gives you nothing less than His Flesh and Blood in the Holy Communion as a pledge of the truth of God’s promises. In truth, Jesus IS the promise of God, the Savior who has overcome sin, death, and the devil FOR YOU. After three years of failing to dissuade Jesus from His mission, Satan had to watch in horror as Mary’s Son ascended the throne of cross. He saw the temple curtain tear in two and the way to God be opened to you. He had to hear those terrifying words that meant his destruction – “It is finished.” His rule over you was ended the day you were baptized into Christ’s victory and this day he is forced to listen again as Jesus pledges you His life “Take. Eat and drink. This is my Body and my Blood given and shed for you for the the forgiveness of all your sins.”
Temptation will come. You are Baptized and there is nothing Satan hates more. But for all his cunning and scheming, he is nothing. He has lost and Christ has won and brought you from the wilderness of death into the paradise of God’s presence. Your life, your hope, your comfort is the Word of God, His promise to you. He is faithful. When God speaks, it is done. You are forgiven. And He has given you His Word, His Son, so that no devil, no suffering, no cross or need will ever be able to rob you of the peace your Father has prepared for you.
In the Name of +Jesus.