Invocavit, Lent 1

Jesse Jacobsen

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Last Modified: "Sat Feb 9 22:03:04 2008"

1  Fear Not the Foe

Who do you see as our worst enemy?

If you’ve been paying attention today,
the textbook answer is “Satan,” or “the devil.”

But do you really see him as your worst enemy? Do you think he has the most malice toward you,

with the greatest natural power to hurt you?

Until recently, we’ve lived in a “modern” world,
and one of its effects lives on among us all:

that what we can’t see or empirically measure

must not be real.

So angels, demons, and the devil?
The modern world says they’re not even real.

But arising now is a “postmodern” world,
which also has a great influence upon us.

Now, people are allowed to believe in things invisible,

but it’s their own business, not to be imposed upon anyone else.

So angels, demons, and the devil?
The postmodern world says they only matter
to those who believe in them.

So the worst enemies as seen by those around us
are things like
poverty, expensive health-care, unemployment, terrorism, a weak economy, or someone in political office.

Despite the world’s preoccupation with other things,

the devil is real. Satan hates us more than anything but God. He is cunning as a dragon,
with great power in himself not only to deceive, but also to harm us.

When we realize his strength and malice towards us,
we fear the devil.

But God’s Word to us today says: Fear not the foe.
Because he could not overcome Christ, and Because Christ has overcome for you.

2  Matthew 4:1–11

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ”

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.’ ”

Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’ ”

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly 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.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.’ ” Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.

2.1  Because he could not overcome Christ

Make no mistake, Satan tried his hardest to defeat Jesus.

In fact, temptation is Satan’s specialty. He is the tempter.

But where we would have failed to resist,

Jesus overcame each temptation magnificently and decisively.

First the tempter approached Jesus when His flesh was weakest.
Forty days and nights of fasting
and you know how weak your body would be. If we survived it, we would only think about food.

This was a new experience for the Son of God.

To me, the hunger would seem more real than anything else.

What could it hurt to have some bread from these rocks? Surely if I can do it, there must be nothing wrong. If I don’t, I will die of hunger!

So we would all be overcome by the tempter,

ruled by our own human flesh that Satan despises, just like Esau, who sold his birthright.

But see how Jesus responded. He quoted from the Bible, God’s Word:
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Even in his state of weakness,

Jesus resists Satan, and overcomes.

What hidden reserve of strength supported Him?
every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Without food, we would simply give in and die!
But even in His flesh, Jesus lives upon God’s Word.

Satan could not overcome Christ.

Second, the devil tried to turn Jesus’ trust in God’s Word
into a presumptuous temptation of God himself.

God’s Word was Jesus’s strength, and Satan wanted to take it away from Him.

Satan himself quoted scripture

to trap our Lord into presumption.

You see, any time we read our own desires into the Bible, we presume to replace God’s Word with our own.

It happens everywhere, all around us, so that Satan takes the real Word of life
away from those who desperately need it.

How tempting to think God’s Word says what we want!
But Jesus did not go beyond the letter of holy scripture. He pinpointed the problem with one clear passage:
You shall not tempt the LORD your God.’

Satan could not overcome Christ.

Finally, the tempter attacked Jesus’ holy mission.
You see,
the hunger, the torture of these temptations, the abuse and the cross
were all part of God’s plan.

According to His human nature, Jesus had to suffer a lot
in order to complete His task on earth.

Satan hates what he cannot understand:
that the Son of God took human flesh out of love for sinners.

Satan despises our humanity, and the humanity of Christ.

He knows our weaknesses,
and supposed that even Jesus
would take a shortcut around the cross.

The devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

What a cruel contrast:

the starving man Jesus,
knowing the great suffering His life will bring:
He must see the earthly honor that Satan enjoys,
and the glory of all the world’s kingdoms.

Satan offers to give these things to Him without the suffering,
an offer I’m ashamed to say that any of us would take.

Later on, some Christians who spared their own lives

by offering a pinch of incense to the false gods of Rome,
how could we, then, resist the temptation
of not only sparing our own lives, but receiving the glory of the world?

Yet again, Jesus finds His strength not in His own hungry body,
but in the plain Word of God:

You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.

Satan could not overcome Christ.

2.2  Because Christ has overcome for you

Fear not the foe,

because Christ has overcome him for you.

Let’s play “What If.”
What if I said that Jesus did all of this:
lived a holy life, loved his fellow human beings, resisted and overcame the devil, bore His cross and suffered patiently, and finally died for the truth,
all to be an example for you and me?

If the message of Christianity says that Jesus
came just to be our role-model,

then what?


Then, we can rightly suppose that God demands we
live a holy life, love our fellow human beings, resist and overcome the devil, bear our crosses and suffer patiently, and finally die for the truth.

I’m finished at the start.

Thankfully, Jesus is not only our example,
though He does demonstrate some good things we can imitate.

For instance:

we can use the Word of God to resist temptations.

But if you or I were

in that wilderness, or on the temple, or on the mountain,

then we would have lost to temptation in milliseconds.


We are not the Christ.
But Jesus is.

So Jesus’ victory over Satan is not an example for us to follow,
so that we, too, can be victorious over Satan.

No, Jesus’ victory is our victory.
He was our Substitute not only upon the cross, to die for us. He was our Substitute even in spiritual battle with the serpent.

You see, humanity had already lost this one back in round 1.
This devil was the same tempter who had said to someone else:
You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

That temptation succeeded,
and our race has been in bondage to sin ever since.

But our text shows round 2.
Here was a man.
Yes, Jesus is a man, a human being, in every respect.

Yet unlike all the rest at the time,
this man had never sinned.

Satan had done it before.

Now he would do it again, or so he thought.

But as we saw, Jesus defeated him every way possible,
on the strength of God’s Word.

Jesus’ victory is Man’s victory:
He was standing in for everyone from Adam to the End.

And He won.


So every time we are tempted now,
we are tempted by one who has already been beaten.

He can be beaten again.

But every time our resistance to that temptation fails,
we also have an advocate before the throne of God.

Hebrews 4:15, For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus knows your weaknesses,
and He made the atoning sacrifice for your sins.

Through His own innocent blood, you are forgiven.

For relying upon your strength instead of God’s Word, for presuming to test God beyond His promises, for lusting after the power and glory of the world:
You are washed by Christ Himself, and forgiven.

So fear not the foe,
for Christ has overcome for you.

Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

This document was translated from LATEX by HEVEA.