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Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Don’t kid yourself for one single minute: The devil is smarter than you. The devil is stronger than you. And even at your most creative, sinister, manipulative best, the devil is craftier than you. The devil knows God’s Word better than you and I could ever hope to, also.

He knows it so well that he can use it whenever he wishes—often by taking it out of context or changing it just enough to make it untrue. Sometimes he does this out of the mouths of unbelievers. Sometimes he does this using pleasant, well-dressed, and articulate television preachers.

Sometimes he even does it within the Church, where pastors or other people seek to achieve their own goals with it, rather than the Lord’s.

It all started with the twisting and denial of God’s word to Adam and Eve in the garden, and continues even now. We see it today our Gospel lesson, as Jesus departs from John’s baptism in the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and faces temptation in the desert. Satan throws everything he has at Jesus: Forty days of relentless temptation, an overwhelming onslaught of evil that neither you nor I could withstand for even a moment.

From what we know from the Scriptures, Satan didn’t make much of a direct effort against Jesus for the first thirty years of His life. That might seem rather strange to us, given that we daily face temptation, though usually of a more subtle sort.

Yet other than Satan’s attempt to destroy the newborn Savior through the evil work of Herod, and even Mary’s questioning of Jesus’ presence in the temple when He was twelve, there’s no evidence that the devil paid much attention to Jesus or tried to deter Him from His mission at all. But we must never forget that Satan is both a coward and an opportunist.

For the first thirty years, of course, Satan might not have felt all that threatened by Jesus. He’d lived quietly with His earthly family, obedient to His mother and to Joseph. Presumably He worked to help support the family, worshipped regularly in the synagogue, and didn’t provide Satan any opportunities for others to take offense at Him. Satan kept his knowledge of Jesus under wraps—if he even knew Jesus’ true identity at that point. We must remember that, though powerful, intelligent, and dynamic, Satan does not have God’s attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence.

At thirty years old, though, Jesus goes to the Jordan and is baptized by John. The descent of the Holy Spirit, the words of the Father from above, and the testimony of John himself leave no doubt as to Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. Even a dolt of a demon like Wormwood would’ve figured out that trouble was brewing.

Now Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert, and the devil takes notice. Often when God sends His own into the wilderness, it is for their own good—to cleanse and renew and strengthen them to do His will, though they certainly faced trials and temptations while there. It was so for Adam and Eve, for Abraham, for Moses and the people of Israel, and for Elijah.

If this Jesus was the anointed Christ, it was necessary that He go into the wilderness and become more fully united with sinful, tempted humanity. Jesus’ temptation was every bit as much an indicator He was God’s incarnate Son as was His baptism and His commission from Father and Holy Spirit.

Satan recognized the signs. He saw the danger that Jesus might be the promised New Adam, the One who would rise up against him and crush his serpent’s head. The Spirit led Jesus, and Satan followed along, nipping at His heels. For forty days Jesus ate nothing. He emptied Himself and prepared Himself for the duties and challenges ahead, facing whatever the devil thought might deter Him from His appointed mission. We only learn of three specific temptations that took place at the end of the forty days, but Satan was there all along—nudging, cajoling, hinting that there was a better deal for Jesus, if only… if only… if only…

And isn’t that what the devil tries to do to us, too? It’s Satan who constantly presents us with a glorious and attractive buffet of choices, offering things sure to please and satisfy us for a time, but which are just as certain to damn us for eternity.

Deep down, that’s what sin always is: The devil offering, and us accepting, some “choice”—a choice that differs from what God tells us is right and true and loving and holy. The devil relishes the use of the word “if” on us: If you do this, then something you’ll like will happen. Don’t worry what God says.

At the end of the forty days, just when Jesus was physically the weakest in His human nature, Satan turns the temptation up a notch. Jesus was in the wilderness to prepare Himself spiritually, but the devil first attacks His physical limitations. Satan doesn’t challenge Jesus spiritually; he came at Him from another direction, trying to catch Him off guard. The devil already should have known that Jesus was the Son of God, for he, too, heard the words and saw the signs at the Jordan River. As evil and twisted as He is, though, perhaps Satan can’t recognize or accept the truth that God cannot and will not lie.

So, he wants to know whether or not this Jesus is truly his archenemy, the One who from eternity was destined to destroy his power; the One who from of old was prophesied to redeem the world from his greedy grasp. The devil didn’t want Jesus to turn a stone into bread simply to satisfy His hunger and break the discipline of His fast. Not at all—Satan wanted Jesus to do it as proof that He is God’s own Son, to validate His identity.

But Jesus had come to the wilderness to more fully connect Himself to the predicament of our humanity. He was taking His proper place among us there, experiencing all the temptations we face, not only deflecting and overcoming them, but showing that He, as Son of God and Son of Man, is truly Immanuel: God with us. He is the God who had become flesh and blood to stand alongside you and me, each of us in our own wildernesses of temptation, frustration, weakness, and sin.

The devil was wise in asking for proof, for then he’d know for sure who he was dealing with. But Jesus refused. It’s not that doing such a miracle would have been sinful in and of itself, really. Rather, it would have been doing a miracle at the insistence of the devil, a miracle to accomplish the devil’s goals. It was the devil’s spiritual “I dare you” to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t take the dare, for dares are always foolish. They are always meant to manipulate the taker of the dare into doing the will of the one calling for it. Jesus responded with the Word of God instead: “It is written, one does not live by bread alone.” In other words, Satan: What happens to me in the flesh matters; in fact, it matters a great deal. But what is more important is obedience to the Word and the will of God, not the satisfaction of the whims of others to impress them or to prove something to them. Certainly not the satisfaction of my own fleshly desires.

Bent but not broken, the devil raises the stakes in the next challenge. He tempts Jesus with worldly power. Satan knew that the Messiah would reclaim the world, and be the King of all creation. He knew that he couldn’t possibly defeat the power of God in this battle or any other, even if he didn’t completely understand the full and eternal implications of the outcome.

But the devil did know quite well that the Savior’s coming to power would require great suffering; the Scriptures which the devil knows so well say this plainly. And so, Satan offers Jesus a short-cut, an easier, less painful path to Lordship.

Jesus could have it all, at the simple bending of the knee. “Avoid the pain, Jesus,” the devil whispered. “You don’t need to be the Suffering Servant. I’ve been allowed control of all this, and I’ll be happy to give it all to you to do as you please with it. All you have to do, Jesus, is not take it forcibly from me by going through all that suffering and death.”

“You’ll get what you want: The world and all those precious souls you desire. I’ll get what I want, too: You showing respect to me in exchange for giving it up peacefully.”

Jesus doesn’t rise to Satan’s bait, though. Jesus knows full well, and He would later say clearly, that Satan is a liar and a murderer. The devil uses temptation, and false, misleading reasoning—first to cloud the truth, and then to kill. Even if his offer of the world to Jesus were genuine, Jesus knows he can’t be trusted.

Instead, Jesus again deals with the challenge by applying the Scriptures: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Jesus would indeed become King of kings and Lord of lords, but it would not come by cutting corners and making compromises with evil, but by passing through the difficult and painful gauntlet of suffering and death on a cross.

It would come in obedience to the will of God the Father in heaven, not to Satan, the master of the fallen earth. Jesus held fast, and Satan lost the second challenge, as well.

For his final challenge, the devil attempted once again to make Jesus demonstrate that He is the Son of God. From the wilderness, Satan takes the Lord to Jerusalem, to the very top of the temple. Here, he says “Prove it; I dare you,” once more. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”

Pretty clever, the devil was, this time. After twice being defeated by Jesus’ use of God’s Word, Satan now attempts to use the Scriptures to his own advantage. He quotes what the prophets had said about the Messiah, and how God would certainly protect Him.

If Satan thought that quoting Scripture against Jesus would confuse Him—would trip Him up—he was sorely mistaken. Yes, surely God the Father would protect Him; would send legions of angels if necessary. But Jesus was the Word of God; He is the Word made flesh. He not only knows the Scriptures perfectly, He is the Scriptures. Every prophecy, every promise, every truth. In tempting Jesus, Satan had endeavored to test the Lord God Himself. Thus Jesus answered: “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” That not only put an end to this 40-day period of testing and temptation, it demonstrated once and for all that temptation itself, especially temptation of God, is an evil and sinful act. But the devil has no other way.

Deflected but not yet fully defeated, the devil departs to lick his wounds, to marshal his powers, to sharpen his claws and fangs, and to practice his cunning on others—at least for a time, Luke tells us. Satan will be back in full fury, later on.

What do these temptations of Jesus tell us? First of all, we see and learn that the devil is wily and wise. He attempts to attack and deter us when we seek to do good and spiritual things. And, as we enter the season of Lent, we might even convince ourselves that this year we are going to do something very worthy and good for ourselves, if not for God.

Perhaps in rebelliousness against Jesus’ words in our Ash Wednesday Gospel lesson, we’ll contort our faces so that others will see how hard it is for us to give up some favorite habit or treat for Lent. In a world where hundreds die daily of malnourishment, we’ll consider it a huge sacrifice to skip one meal a week. We’ll lament—aloud or silently—what an inconvenience it is to attend midweek Lenten worship services. Yes, we love to have something we can use to demonstrate to ourselves or others just how committed we are.

The devil is always lurking there, tempting us to turn a good work bad. Just show a little pride. Hope for recognition from others. We do well to guard against the devil on our Lenten journey, but we must always remember that our battle cannot be fought—much less won—apart from the Word who comes to us; the Word who dwells with us and in us.

Sometimes when we are weak and feeling alone and forsaken in life, our own evil thoughts and desires do get the better of us. We forget that the Word has been given to us, and we may be tempted then to test God ourselves. We’ll demand in our prayers that He prove His existence, and His love, by fulfilling our wishes and desires; by conforming Himself to our will, rather than we to His will.

In such times, when we think we have been forgotten or abandoned by God, in the midst of grief, sickness, anxiety, financial difficulty, or relationship struggles, the devil knows just how to toy with us. He’ll plant thoughts to increase our pain, heap up doubts, and turn us away from God and toward dependence upon ourselves or things of this world.

At such times, it’s a great danger to think we can do what Jesus did—to fight against temptation, and win. This might be the most dangerous temptation of all. We hear about Jesus struggling against the devil and coming out on top by using God’s Word, and we might start to believe that we, too, can fight this battle and emerge unscathed, or even victorious.

But the reality of the situation is that we are often our own greatest enemies. The devil is certainly of great concern. But he only has fertile ground on which to plant his own destructive seeds on account of our own propensity for sin, our habit of reasoning and rationalizing our bad behaviors away, of thinking ourselves good enough and strong enough and righteous enough.

If nothing else, the temptations of Jesus ought to make it clear that we are not God. We are not able to fight Satan off one little bit, much less save ourselves. Only Jesus was able to fight against temptation and win. Only He can enter into the wilderness of sin where Adam and Eve and all their children were cast, and emerge victorious. His obedience, faithfulness and righteousness moistened that desert of despair with life-giving blood and cleansing water, and restored Paradise for us.

As we begin this season of Lent, our first remembrance ought to be that Jesus has come forth as champion over Satan, sin, and death. He responded to the devil not with power or glory, but with truth: that God’s Word is truth; that God’s Son came full of Grace and truth, and that God is God—humanity’s true Good.

We observe Lent rightly when we do so not just with obedience or commitment to some Lenten discipline or sacrifice, but when we “worship the Lord your God, and serve only Him.” You mustn’t make the mistake of thinking you can fight the devil and win. Place all your faith and hope in Him, as Luther wrote: “Christ Jesus, mighty Lord; God’s only Son, adored. He holds the field victorious!”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.