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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Morgan and all the baptized, it is not by accident that immediately after his baptism, the Lord Jesus is driven into the wilderness by the devil. He fasts for 40 days. He’s tempted by the devil in every way, it says in the Gospel of Mark. And this is true for all of us. We are not baptized into paradise. We are not baptized into paradise. When we’re confirmed, for all of you, confirmants, we are not confirmed into a life of ease. When Jesus calls us to follow him, he says, come and follow me, take up your cross and follow me.
So the Christian life is one of affliction, not only from our own sinful flesh and from the temptations of the world, but also, and maybe even especially, from the assaults of the devil, whose flaming darts are flying at us all the time. Because he hates God, and he hates everything that God does, everything that God loves, everything that’s good, and that means that he hates you. Now, that’s good to be on that side of the ledger, the things that the devil loves and the things that the devil hates. If we’ve got to be on one side or the other, let’s be on the side of things that the devil hates.
But it makes it difficult, and it’s perhaps what the object of today is, and really not only today, but next week and the week after, in the gospel lessons, we hear about how Jesus is bringing the kingdom of God to confront the kingdom of the devil, to fight against the demons and the devil himself, and it’s good for us to remember that we are in the midst of spiritual warfare, that life is more than what we see. It’s not simply that we can look around and understand everything, that there are invisible realities. Not only God Himself, whose Spirit, the Father and the Holy Spirit, but also the angels and the demons are at work.
And especially our arch-enemy, the chief of them all, is the devil himself, who St. Peter tells us is like a lion prowling around seeking whom he can devour. Now, we have to be clear on this, that the devil wants to devour us. He wants to devour you. And so just as much as the Lord loves you, and you remember that the Lord loves you, you also remember that the devil hates you. And when you were marked with the sign of the cross on your forehead and upon your heart at your baptism, you were marked as an object of the devil’s wrath and anger.
Now, it’s good for us to remember that we’re in the midst of this spiritual warfare, but not so that we would worry about it, or distress about it, or even be afraid about it. In fact, because of what Jesus has accomplished, not only in his overcoming the devil in the wilderness, but most especially what he accomplished on the cross, then we are not to be afraid of the devil. We’re not authorized. In fact, Hebrews tells us, remember this beautiful verse in Hebrews chapter 2 where it says that he partook of flesh and blood just like we do so that through his death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and set all of those free who all their lifetime had been captive to the fear of death.
One of the ways that the devil tempts us is to make us afraid of him. As if going about this life and engaging in spiritual warfare, it’s a serious thing. But as if it was a gloomy thing or a desperate thing or a thing that would induce fear in the heart, that’s actually the opposite. What the Lord Jesus wants us to do today is to rejoice that he has overcome the devil for us in our place and that he gives to us that victory over the devil.
It must have been, so to the text, it must have been something that the devil who had a hundred percent success rate in his temptation column from the Garden of Eden, from the very first, from Adam and Eve all the way until the end. I don’t know who the devil was tempting the morning before he went to find Jesus in the wilderness, but he must have succeeded there. The devil has a hundred percent success rate in tempting human beings to sin until he meets this one, Jesus, who stands where Adam and Eve fell, who stands where you and I fall.
He stands there in the wilderness. But notice this, and this is important, he does not stand there by his divine nature. He does not stand there by the power by which he created the universe. He does not, when the devil comes to him, can you imagine that Jesus is 40 days fasting and the text tells us in case we were wondering if Jesus gets hungry, the text says he didn’t eat anything for 40 days and he was hungry today.
And so the devil comes along and he says, hey, you see this stone? Why don’t you, if you’re the son of God, why don’t you turn this stone into bread? And Jesus doesn’t radiate like he did on the Mount of Transfiguration. Drive the devil away by a show of his divine power or split the seas or make a star fall on top of the devil’s head or something like this. He doesn’t. He doesn’t resist the devil by performing a miracle.
Do you remember how he does it? He quotes Moses. Deuteronomy, man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Father. So Jesus stands there as the second Adam. He stands there as your brother. He stands there as flesh of your flesh and bone of your bone. And he resists the devil with the word of God.
The devil takes him up on the top of the temple, 450 feet tall, they think it was, because of the cliff there. That’s pretty tall. And he says, now why don’t you jump down, and the devil quotes, well, misquotes Psalm 91, the Lord will send his angels to protect you. And Jesus, again, doesn’t fly away or say, I don’t even need the angels to carry me. Look, I can walk on water. I can just float down from here. Devil don’t know. He responds with the scriptures, Deuteronomy. Again, Moses, he says, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
And then when the devil offers to give him the whole world, look, you don’t need to go through the suffering. You don’t need to, you don’t need the cross. You don’t need any of these things. Just worship me. Give me a little bit of worship and I’ll give you the whole world. And Jesus says, you should worship the Lord your God. Him only shall you serve. Again, Moses. So Jesus beats back the devil with the word of God.
It’s an amazing thing, an amazing promise, an amazing gift that the Lord Jesus is showing us. I mean, here, okay, here’s the temptation. The temptation is for us to think that the devil can have his way with us. The temptation is for us to think that if the devil comes against us, that we don’t have a choice, that he’s going to just devour us and destroy us. The devil, the temptation of the devil, he wants us to think that he is that much stronger than us.
And maybe he is, fine. But for us fights the valiant one. And the Lord Jesus has not given the devil authority to chew you up and to devour you. He stands with you. And he, when he overcomes the devil in the wilderness, he’s saying, look, this is all it takes. One little word can fell him. So that we are, you and I, are not authorized to be afraid of the devil. In fact, when we see the devil falling to Jesus in the wilderness, it leads us to, well, to this jeering of the devil, which he hates. He hates.
Luther loves to preach about the devil’s pride. It’s pretty amazing. We know that that was his chief sin, right? That he was lifted up in pride. And when someone’s proud, the last thing they can stand is being made fun of. And so we stand and fight against the devil, not with a dower seriousness, but rather with our joy. The devil hates Christian joy. He hates Christian laughter. He hates the clean conscience that you have from the forgiveness of sins.
He hates the fact that you know that you belong to Jesus and you’re going to live forever and he’s going to be in the lake of fire suffering with his companions, the demons. He hates that you know that about him. He hates that you know how Jesus ashamed him in the wilderness and overcame him in the cross, which the devil thought was a pretty good plan.
Remember, he was behind the whole thing, putting it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus, but then the Lord uses it against them. And that promise that God gave to Adam and even the garden, that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent is fulfilled when Jesus is nailed to the cross. And the devil, the one who has the power over death, is destroyed. The one who has the power over the fear of death. And who uses that to manipulate you, he’s done.
He’s the defeated enemy. He’s triumphed over him in the cross. He’s been defeated. He made a public spectacle of him. For this reason, John says it like this, for this reason, the Son of God was manifest that he might destroy the works of the devil, and he’s done it. And then, and here’s the amazing thing, The Lord Jesus lets you share in that triumph.
Here’s a couple of verses, and these are, I want us to keep these in front of us, especially as we’re thinking about spiritual warfare. James says it like this. James says, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. This is one of those texts that you wouldn’t believe unless it’s written there in the Bible. We would think, I would think, that if I saw the devil, I should probably run. Right? I mean, I don’t know how fast you have to run to outrun the devil, but I would think it’s on me to get out of there.
But James tells me and you that when we stand and resist the devil, not in our own strength, but in the power of the Word of God, when we stand and resist the devil, that the devil is the one who runs away from you. Let that sink in, that the devil runs from you. Or Paul, who writes this at the end of Romans… Remember, we’ve been waiting and waiting for this promise of Genesis 3 to be fulfilled, that the Son of God would crush the head of the serpent.
But now Paul writes to the Romans, The God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet. So that it’s not just the feet of Jesus that trampled the head of the serpent. It’s also your feet that stomp on his head, that tread on his corpse, that mock him in the strength of faith. Amen.
So that we go about this business of spiritual warfare, not with fear that there’s demons behind the trees getting after us, but in the confidence and in the joy and in the strength that the Lord has already overcome the devil. And he gives that victory to us.
Now today, the first week of Lent, and also next week, we’ll hear about the demons, and next week, we’ll hear about the demons, and the thing that we’ll hear over and over is that they are subject to the name of Jesus, and that when we belong to him, we’re safe, We’re free, we’re protected, and we’re rejoicing.
So may God grant us joy, not only in the victory that Jesus wins in the desert for us, but most especially for the victory that Jesus wins on the cross for us. Our sins are forgiven, our death is destroyed, and we are set free from the devil’s coercion. May God grant us this joy and peace in the name of Jesus. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.