Bible Text: Matthew 4:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Lent 2020 | It’s very clear from the first temptation of Eve and then again from the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and then once again by the temptations we face, it’s very clear that the devil is nothing if not consistent. There’s an old Latin saying, fas est ab hoste doceri, it’s a good thing to be taught by the enemy. When the Bible teaches us how our enemy acts, how he tempts, we’re not just getting a history lesson, we’re seeing also how the devil tempts us, what he wants out of the whole thing, how we fail and how we overcome and win the victory.
First, the devil’s goal is always to rip our faith away. What we love as Christians, what we adore above everything in the world, our God’s love for us, that the Son would become our brother and take our sin and our suffering and our pain on Himself and die our death in our place, this love of God is what the devil hates above everything. Think of the famous example of Solomon’s wisdom, where two new mothers come to him, each claiming that the baby is theirs and that the other’s baby died in the night, and Solomon decrees that the living baby should be cut in half and shared between the mothers. Think of the love of the one mother, that she would say No, give the baby to her, and think of the hate of the other mother, the pure hate, totally unprovoked, that sees the real mother’s love and despises it with all her heart and says, no , go ahead and kill the child. That’s the devil. He hates Christian joy. He hates God’s fatherly love, hates his sacrifice for us, hates that we know this God and love Him and trust in him, and so totally unprovoked, out of petty but unbridled meanness, he comes against us with the goal of destroying our love and trust in our God.
And he knows our weaknesses. There are three temptations of Jesus, because the devil attacks in three ways. First, He tempted Eve with the fruit and Jesus with bread. We’re flesh and blood, our bodies need food, we expect our bodily desires all to be met, whether that’s eating, drinking, sleeping, sexual desires, the desire to be warm and clothed, have a roof over our heads, have physical exercise, none of which are bad things, but all of which we can turn into bad for ourselves by putting them above our God.
Our bodies are good things. God made them, and what God makes is good. We pray for our daily bread, and God happily gives us everything we need to support this body and life.
But the devil says you need more than what God gives, you deserve more, and our eyes grow big and our hearts are way too eager to agree. This is exactly what Satan did to Eve – God gave them every other tree to eat, he totally and lovingly provided them with all they could ever need and all they should ever want, but the devil said, No, there’s more, look at this, look at this fruit, isn’t this better than what God gives. He used the same tactic with Jesus, as if God’s Son couldn’t rely on what His Father would give him and had to turn stones into bread. And he uses the same tactic with us. This is why we covet, it’s why men look at other women who aren’t their wives, and women look at other women who aren’t their husbands, why the poor demand money from the rich, why the rich ruin normal people’s lives to make a quick extra million, why we won’t just be content with a drink, but demand more and more and more, and the list goes on. It’s these crass, bodily temptations that the devil pushes first. And so we pray God for self-control, to be content with what he gives us, to realize that we don’t live by bread alone, we aren’t here simply to satisfy our bodies, we live on every word that comes from the mouth of our God. And don’t forget the devil’s goal, it’s to use the temptation, your desire for more and more on this earth, to drive you from paradise, drive you from loving the God who has loved you to his death.
Next the devil twists God’s Word and makes us doubt it. He did this very obviously with Eve and more subtly with Jesus. With Eve it’s right in her face: Did God really say? The answer is yes. Of course, He really said it. And that settles it. The day you eat of it you shall surely die. With Jesus, the devil isn’t so obvious. With Jesus the devil actually quotes the Bible, says God will protect Jesus, and makes his temptation look holy and religious. We see this temptation play out all the time in our day. Politicians, Oprahs, televangelists, self-proclaimed religious Facebook zealots, using the Bible to say God loves you no matter what, so go ahead and sin, go ahead and test him, go ahead and practice your homosexuality, go ahead and have sex outside marriage, go ahead and never go to church, go ahead and do whatever you want, be you, your authentic self. And it’s an obvious trick of the devil, but it still tricks. It still works.
God loves. That’s as true as true can be. It’s what the Bible says over and over again. But then comes the switch, since God loves, you can freely dismiss everything this God says about love. But we respond with Jesus, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. God loves. It’s a very specific love. It’s a love that instead of approving of sin, which love can never do, it pays for it, God pats for it by his own blood and suffering, by taking it on himself, and this love of God, the real love the Bible continually teaches, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son into death, this love, it inspires us to confess our sins not justify them, to throw them on Jesus and die to them, not live in them as if the God who died to destroy them could possibly approve of them.
And we remember the devil’s goal, always, is to take this love of God from our hearts. And our goal, always, because it is the Spirit’s goal who dwells in us, is to love and trust in our God and remain in the faith until He takes us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.
Finally the devil tempts by inciting pride. Pride is the devil’s game. He’s obsessed with himself. And so it’s his nature to get us to be obsessed with ourselves. You will be like God. That’s the temptation of Eve. And with Jesus, it’s the same thing, I’ll give you control of all the world. He invites pride. Because pride is trust in ourselves instead of trust in God. It most directly and violently meets the devil’s goal of ripping us from the faith. If you’re trusting in yourself, you’re not trusting in God. This is why we reject every form of works righteousness, that we could work our own way to heaven. And it’s why Jesus responds as he does: you shall worship the Lord your God and him alone shall you serve. Because worshipping the Lord your God means once again trusting in His love. And that live dispels all pride, destroys it and replaces it with humility and gratefulness. Who am I that my God would come to be my brother? What have I done to deserve my God taking my place and my sin and my punishment? I am sin and he is righteousness, but now he takes my sin and gives me his righteousness. If I will have pride, if I will boast, it will be in the cross of my Lord.
And this, in the end, is the whole point of Jesus’s temptations. Why does he allow this? God being tempted by the devil? For us, that’s why he does everything. He is such a wonderful God. He was baptized and declared God’s Son from heaven, and now the Spirit drives him into the wilderness to do what the Son of God came to do, suffer our temptations as our Brother, show the devil and us and all the world that there is one Man Satan can never conquer, that God really has become a man, and will be man’s Lord and Savior, will fight our fight and crush the devil under our feet, will live our life and die our death and win for us a new paradise, where there is no temptation, where we are finally delivered from every evil and from the devil forever. We know the devil’s goal. We know also our Savior’s. To keep us in the true faith, keep us true to our baptism, receiving his body and his blood, and bring us at last to our heavenly home. Jesus conquered the devil in the wilderness by the Word if God. He’ll conquer him in our lives through the same.
Let us pray: O LORD JESUS CHRIST, who didst fast forty days and forty nights in the wilderness and didst overcome all temptations of the devil, we thank Thee that for our salvation Thou was in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin, and as our merciful High Priest canst be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; and we pray Thee, give us grace steadfastly to resist the allurements of sin, that, the lusts of our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey Thy godly leadings in righteousness and true holiness, to Thy honor and glory, who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.