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Sermon for Invocavit – Lent 1
2 Corinthians 6:1-10 + Matthew 4:1-11
You’re all familiar with the word “trial,” from the verb “to try.” A defendant is tried in court, where his trial will seek to determine his guilt or innocence. The Olympic Trials are challenging competitions that force athletes to show what they’re made of, to see who has the ability and the determination to represent their country well in the Olympic games. Teachers try their students’ knowledge by giving them tests. Trials, in the sense of testing someone, are neither good nor bad. There’s certainly nothing nefarious about them, nothing harmful, or at least, no harm intended, only getting at the truth, usually by forcing someone to pass through difficulties or challenges. Defendants are tested to see if they’re innocent or guilty. Olympians are tested to see who has what it takes to compete. Students are tested to see how much they know, or don’t know. And for a Biblical example, God tested Abraham when He commanded him to sacrifice his son Isaac. How will Abraham do with this test? Will he pass, or will he fail?
But the same word, “trial,” can be used with nefarious implications, intending harm, trying to get a person to do something wrong, to go astray from what is right. In that case, English uses the word temptation, although it’s the same word in the Greek of the New Testament for both “test” and “temptation.” It’s not for no reason that the devil is known as “the Tempter,” not “the Tester.” He intends harm. He’s trying to get a person to do something wrong. God tests, the devil tempts. God puts a person through a trial to test him; the devil puts a person through a trial to destroy him.
In many cases, the same situation ends up being both test and temptation. God tested Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by giving them that commandment not to eat from a single tree in the middle of a garden filled with good trees. How will they do? Will they honor the word of their Creator or not? Will they pass this simple test by keeping this easy-to-keep commandment? Or will they fail? Meanwhile, the devil used the occasion to tempt Eve, trying to get her to fail, and to fall, and, as we know, the Tempter was successful. Adam and Eve showed us the wrong way, how to fail a test and give in to temptation. And as a result of their failure, mankind was doomed to eternal death, because, now, no one, by nature, is able to pass any divinely given test. No one, by nature, is able to truly resist the devil’s temptations.
And so it was necessary for the Second Adam, the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus, to face harder tests, and to suffer worse temptations, to see if He would qualify to be the Savior of mankind. He did qualify! And in today’s Gospel, Jesus shows us the only way to pass a divine test and to resist a diabolical temptation. And it’s a good thing, because Christians often find ourselves facing them both. How to pass God’s tests? How to resist the devil’s temptations? By knowing, believing, and using the Word of God.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus’ Baptism at the beginning of His ministry, where the Father praised His beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus in the form of a dove. All three Evangelists also record what happened next: The Son of God was “led up by the Spirit”—or, as Mark puts it, was “driven by the Spirit”— into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil. There we see it, both the test and the temptation. The test from God the Father’s perspective, the temptation from the devil’s.
The devil, for his part, wasn’t there to test Jesus, but to tempt Him. After Jesus had fasted for forty days, without eating anything, He was hungry. And the devil took advantage of His hunger. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread!” It’s not unlike his temptation to Eve in the Garden of Eden, part of which was essentially, “You are a daughter God! You deserve to eat from this tree and to have the knowledge it would give you!”—in spite of the fact that she wasn’t hungry, she had a whole garden of trees she could have eaten from, and, if she lacked any knowledge, she could have approached God directly and asked Him any question, as a dear child asks her dear father. But just as the devil was successful with her, he tried the same trick on Jesus, who was very hungry and had no food at His disposal. He was trying to get Jesus to focus on what He deserved as the “beloved Son of God, with whom His Father was well-pleased,” as if He deserved to eat, right now, no matter what His Father wanted, as if His Father were actually cruel to allow His Son to go without food for so long.
Meanwhile, the Father was testing His Son through the devil’s temptation. Will He remain humble before Me? Will He continue to trust? Will He put Me first? Or will He put Himself before Me and let His stomach become His god?
Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’” You see how Jesus reaches back into the inspired Scriptures, back to the book of Deuteronomy, specifically, in order to resist the devil’s temptation. By not giving the Israelites food in abundance as they wandered in the wilderness, by giving them only the bread they needed for each day, it wasn’t to be cruel. God was teaching them, testing them, making them realize that they depended on God for everything, and that His word was dependable. He promised bread from heaven each morning, and each morning it appeared, showing, over the course of forty years, that God’s word was 100% reliable. So Jesus reached for that word, and stood upon it, refusing to do anything contrary to the Word of His Father. He passed the test and resisted the temptation.
Then there came a second temptation from the devil. The devil took him up into the holy city, set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, cast yourself down! For it is written, ‘He will put his angels in charge of you,’ and, ‘In their hands they will lift you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” It sounds like a strange temptation, but, again, it’s not unlike the temptation to Eve in the garden. Essentially, “You are a beloved daughter of God! Yes, He said you would die if you ate from this fruit, but you won’t. He wouldn’t let that happen to you. Go ahead, try it and see!” And she did. For Jesus, who obviously loved God’s Word, the devil added a verse from a Psalm to make the idea of jumping sound more appealing, as if God’s promise of angelic protection applied, even when a believer went out of his way to test God. He was trying to get Jesus to trust that word about God’s promised protection for the believer, while ignoring all the other words of God about how believers should behave, which certainly didn’t include jumping off tall buildings for no good reason.
Meanwhile, the Father was testing His Son through the devil’s temptation. Will He love all the words My Spirit has inspired, or will He only love one or two passages and forget the rest? Will He trust My loving care, or will He put it to the test? You see, teachers are supposed to test their students, but students are not supposed to test their teachers. And in the days of His flesh, in His state of humiliation, Jesus had agreed to live as a student of His heavenly Father.
He answered, It is written again, ‘You shall not test the Lord your God.’ Again, Jesus reached back into the Scriptures and found the answer to the devil’s temptation. Christian humility recognizes that God is right to test man. That doesn’t mean we have to enjoy the experience! But it means we recognize His right to do it and His goodness in doing it. At the same time, Christian humility recognizes that it’s not right for man to test God, to make Him prove His love and care in the ways we choose. Israel, in the wilderness, did put God to the test by demanding that He give them water in the time and manner of their choosing. But Jesus reached for God’s word, and stood upon it, refusing to do anything contrary to the Word of His Father. He passed the test and resisted the temptation.
Finally we come to the third temptation mentioned by Matthew, where the devil took Jesus up onto a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Once again, it’s not unlike the devil’s temptation of our mother Eve: “God doesn’t care about you. I do. God doesn’t want you to have what you deserve. I do. God wants to test you. I want to free you and give you happiness and glory and everything your heart desires. Give up on Him! And serve me instead!”
Meanwhile, there is the Father testing His Son. Will He take the easy path to glory, or My path, which will require sacrifice? Will He let the devil give Him the kingdoms of the world, or will He spend the next three years, toiling and struggling, suffering and dying, to earn salvation for mankind, according to My plan?
We know which path the Lord Jesus chose: Go away, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Nothing could distract Him. Nothing could deter Him from the path His Father had chosen for Him. God’s word demanded that the Israelites, and all mankind, worship Him and Him alone. Adam and Eve chose to serve the devil, and so did all their children, except for one, except for the Virgin’s Son, the Son of Man, who passed through the trials in the wilderness and came out spiritually unscathed, and fully qualified to be the Savior of mankind, because He reached for God’s word, stood upon it, and refused to do anything contrary to the Word of His Father. He passed the test and resisted the temptation.
As a result, Jesus proved Himself qualified to be our Savior from sin, who could be a valid Substitute for sinners, a Righteous One who would give His life for the unrighteous, to bring us sinners to God.
And now, having brought us to God through faith, Jesus says to His people, Follow Me! And that includes following Him through trials, through testing and temptation, watching how He was able to pass the tests and resist the temptations, and learning from His example. The devil hardly ever comes to anyone as openly and as directly as he came to Jesus in the wilderness. But sometimes that makes it harder, harder to recognize the source of those doubts about God’s goodness that arise in our hearts, harder to recognize the source of those ideas and teachings that sound so sweet but that contradict God’s Word, harder to recognize the source of those longings for things we should not have, or do, or where that unrighteous anger comes from, or those self-destructive thoughts, or those merciless, loveless attitudes toward our neighbor. Understand that the devil, the unbelieving world, and our own sinful flesh are always working together to tempt Christians, to harm us, to lead us away from God.
But there stands Jesus, our Savior, showing us how to reach for God’s Word when we’re tempted, how to stand on it and rely on it, how to throw it back in the devil’s face, how to use it as the sword of the Spirit that it is, to fight off every diabolical attack. And, at the same time, how to use God’s Word to pass the tests our Father sends, even in our weakness, because while we are weak, God’s Word is very strong, and our Father wants us to pass, and has promised to help us do it. If you rely on God’s Word, and put it into practice, and also pray fervently to God, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” you will be able to stand amid all the trials and temptations, and you will make it safely to the end of the trials, just as Jesus did, because they don’t go on forever, only for as long as your Father determines is needful and right, so that, in the end, He can rub it in the devil’s face: “This one believed in Me, in spite of all your attacks. This one trembled at My Word, in spite of all your temptations. Yes, this one was a sinful descendant of Adam and Eve and belonged to you by birth. But My Son has defeated you and won him back for Me. You can’t have him. He’s Mine.” You are His, and you will remain His, if you remain steadfast in the word of God. Amen.
