- Psalmody: Psalm 91:15a, c–16a; 1; Psalm 91:11-12; Psalm 91:1–7, 11–16; Psalm 91:4; Psalm 91:4
- Lection: Genesis 3:1–21; 2 Corinthians 6:1–10; Matthew 4:1–11
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Brethren, we plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain, for His grace is sufficient for you. It is helpful at all times and in all places, in everything that comes upon you in this life. Yes, the cliché Jesus is the answer is true, yet do not leave your understanding and trust to shallow passing thoughts as when seeing those words on an interstate billboard. Rather ponder more that He is your Refuge and your Fortress: your God; in Him will you trust, if you do not receive the grace of God in vain. His strength is made perfect in your weakness and the sinful flesh, the world, and the devil are all top-notch professionals at exposing and exploiting weaknesses. But you have been baptized into the Victorious King of the heavens and the earth. You are in Him and His victory over sin, death, and the devil is yours. You need not be deceived or even emboldened to take anything on by yourself that this fallen place tries to use to cause you to deny your God or to keep you from seeking His aid. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Resist him by abiding in Christ and trusting what His Holy Word tells you about Him, the sure Victor, to Whom you belong unto all ages of ages. He has placed His Holy Name upon you in those blessed baptismal waters that you may not use His Name in vain, but in trust. Christ is the fulfillment of the second commandment. Therefore, it is good to call upon Him in every trouble, to pray, praise, and give thanks to Him.
Consider well your Lord’s early victory over Satan and his temptations, a foretaste of the crushing of the serpent’s head for you at the place of the skull on the glorious Friday to come. This fasting and temptation comes early, very early in Christ’s ministry. He had just been baptized by John in the Jordan River, then He was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The eternal Spirit, sharing in perfect communion and will with the Father and the Son, led the God-Man into a desolate place with perfect divine intent, to which Jesus submitted willingly as the Stronger Man coming to plunder us, the devil’s captive goods, away. The Spirit led Him not into a garden, a lush, bountiful place like where the first Adam failed in protecting his wife and himself from the evil foe’s lies, but into a place opposite a garden, the wilderness, where this second Adam succeeded in meriting life, sure life, for His Bride, you, the Church.
The wilderness is a place of sure and certain trial. It is sparse. It is arid. It is uninhabited. It is cruel and testing. It is most certainly a place of trial. In the same trying manner, this whole life, this world, this age, is a wilderness in which we face down tribulation of many kinds while looking ahead in hope to the day in which we shall cross out of it into the eternal promised land of the Lord. Thanks be to Christ, that Day of victory is coming with unstoppable certainty. Hope is not misplaced, nor is its fulfillment doubtful in the least bit. Christ, our Victor, has set the course and He will see us through, out of this wilderness and into a paradisical garden that cannot be taken away. This, Jesus has done as we see in the victorious first battle of His temptation after being led by the Spirit into the wilderness.
The devil’s tactics had not changed since the garden, and they remain the same unto this day. He has no other weapon than lies and murder. His only hope in taking down Jesus, or those baptized into His Name most holy, is to stir up doubt in what God has said. Did God really say? were his words that deceived the woman while the man failed at being the man. Our first parents had heard God give His good command about the one tree from which they could not eat, lest they die, when the crafty serpent slithered in with his forked-tongue full of doubting words. Beware of all things that cause you to doubt God’s goodness, His faithfulness, His holiness, or His love and provision for you in all matters. Similar to the hearing of God’s Word in the Garden in the Beginning, when Jesus had been baptized,He came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him. And suddenly a voice came from heaven, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus heard the Father’s word of delight in Him, His Son, and David’s, and against this Godly word the devil set his temptation of doubt. “If you are the Son of God,” he said to the hungry Jesus. Any sinful doubt within the Son would’ve led to a boastful proving Himself, to turning stones into bread, into casting Himself from the temple’s pinnacle. Yet, our Lord does not succumb to petty vanity and uncertainty about God as we do, but rests securely in His Word. O, what a beautiful Savior we have! He believes and trust that there is no “if” when God declares it. Christ fully trusts the word, thus showing all our trust in Him to be wise and good.
Let us also consider how He prepared for battle. He went forth in the courage of His baptism and in the joy of the Trinity’s full blessing, the same as what you have in your baptism into Him. He went forth into trial, neither shirking nor fleeing from it, but trusting His Father and the Spirit perfectly, knowing that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. His hope, His comfort, His trust was in the Lord, thus Jesus Christ is the great Fulfillment by Whom we have eternal hope; from Whom we receive comfort now and forever; and in Whom we trust as a most worthy Victor, Savior, and Lord. Having been baptized, He prepared more by fasting. When we fast, we feel the body weaken as it adjusts to less calories than it’s used to. Only in that limited sense may we consider Jesus entering into battle weakened. In all other ways that matter, in the honing of the will, in excellence of self-control, in trust in God’s Word more than bread, in command over the mind and body, was Christ not weakened by fasting, but strengthened. Fasting strengthens us. Thus, when we fast in holy endeavor of being like our Savior, in practicing fasting with Him, we are to remember that we are united to Him Who is our Head in Holy Baptism. This means that our self-denial, when the hunger pains strike during a fast, is a participation in Him, and thus our fasting, our Lent, our discipline, is hallowed in the Holy One, Who suffered as we do, and is made to be sublime.
So, let us look to Christ in season and out of season; when there are good times and bad. Let us remember that by the mystery of His holy incarnation, by His holy nativity, by His baptism, fasting, and temptation, by His agony and bloody sweat, by His cross and passion, by His precious death and burial, by His glorious resurrection and ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, this good Lord Christ is our Help in every time of need. Neither trials nor tribulations, nor things in heaven, nor things on the earth, nor things under the earth, nor death, nor devils need trouble us when we have such a blessed, mighty, and faithful Victor with and in Whom we have joy, comfort, peace, and deliverance in all things that come upon us as we walk together through this wilderness certain of the place that Christ has won and prepared for us to enjoy with Him for all time to come. No devil can separate us from the love of God that we have in the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord. May His Name ever been upon our lips to plead to in all times of need and to give thanks to in all times of deliverance.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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