Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
Fasting really isn’t a fun thing to do at all. It is hard. If you have to have a blood test, and are told to fast for 12 hours before they draw and check your cholesterol; and if 9:00am rolls around the doctor’s office is running behind your stomach will be aching. You will be cranky and would, if you could, draw the blood yourself if only to get a piece of toast in your belly. Try going 40 hours without something to eat – well actually, don’t. Because you will be a bear, and your family will think you have lost it because you will be so ornery, complaining how hungry you will be so weak and tired that you will be near catatonic. Most of us wouldn’t even consider doing something like a 40 hour fast by choice. Even if we did, it would be excruciating at best. Now consider 40 days of fasting – not a thing to eat. It is beyond our comprehension really. Unless you have been under an extreme situation like warfare or the seeming dissolution of civil society it wouldn’t even be possible. Somebody would have had you hospitalized before you hit day 40, your weight would be down drastically, you wouldn’t be able to think clearly and a whole host of physical ailments would befall you. Some of us here would certainly be dead before the 40 days even came to a conclusion.
Now, if you’ve been going to church for a good portion of your life you’ve heard the Holy Gospel before. You’ve heard how after his baptism Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And how He overcame the devil’s temptation and the devil’s twisting of the Word of God with the Word of God. You’ve heard right. Jesus overcame every temptation of the devil, completely and fully and he did this for you. Jesus is actively fulfilling the law of God in each case. And the thing about that is so very sweet is that He does this with his own real body! Consider though for a moment Jesus’ condition when all this happens and the power of the temptation that he undergoes. The scripture says he is hungry. What an understatement! Jesus does overcome the devil’s temptation by rebuking Satan with the Word, but what Jesus also does is overcome the devil’s temptation through his perfect flesh and blood. “For we do not have a high priest who is cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) What Jesus does here is allow Himself, to be thrown out by the Holy Spirit to be weak and to suffer and then at his weakest and in his hunger and suffering to be assaulted in mind and in body. And that is how you are tempted too, mind and body.
Temptations are common to us all; they have been since the beginning. And your falling into them is simply your falling into line with Eve, the mother of us all. Eve and Adam were both perfect in mind and body, but yet the temptation of the eye, of the flesh, food forbidden yet desired along with the mind’s desire to be like God. It was all too much even for the perfect in body and mind. How much more are you assaulted who are by nature sinful in body and mind? So sinful in fact that many times you do not even know that what is placed before you is temptation, or that it is actually sinful because your heart is so hardened to God’s Word. You do not think twice about talking about your brother or sister in Christ behind their back. Their sadness, sins and faults actually become part of a fun, jovial conversation at your dinner table. And you think nothing of it. And no one says stop. Stop. Confess. Repent. You berate your spouse, you speak to them not as if they were the apple of your eye, but you speak to them as if they were a horrible enemy. And they might ask you to stop, but you don’t. Stop. Confess. Repent. The sin of body and mind is so great that you don’t even realize what you are doing is sinful. See how very fall we all have fallen when there actually seems to be no temptation, but rather we live life body and mind so calloused to God and His Word.
But then there are the times of great temptation that are common. When you do know and feel in your heart the great struggle, the war within. And there seems to be no escape and you fall again, just like you did before. You want to stop, but you can’t. The flesh is so weak, as is the mind. You can’t justify your actions, you don’t want to, but there seems to be no means of escape - from your sinful mind or your sinful flesh.
Thanks be to our Father in heaven that He has provided escape for sinners who are tempted in body and mind; sinners who know, who confess, who repent. That escape is not following an example of Jesus dealing with temptation. The escape is Jesus and his temptation. The weak, frail, starving, hungry Jesus takes all the assaults of the devil can throw at him and his perfect flesh and perfect mind overcome them. His body and his blood are the escape. For you, hungry, crucified, risen. Actually keeping all of God’s commands, obedient, perfect sacrifice, having been tempted in every way to grant you the forgiveness of your tempted falling and given you His new life again today in His Body and Blood. The devil asked Jesus if he was the Son of God. Remember how the same thing was asked of him on his cross? If you are the Son of God – save yourself. No way. Jesus will not do that, he will not save himself. He will save you, and oh how he has; by going hungry to fill you with the food of everlasting life – his very body; by going thirsty on his cross – to give you the drink of the forgiveness of sins – his very blood. And the risen Jesus stands for you as high priest now, having overcome every temptation to give you his righteousness. When you are assaulted in body in mind, you have your Jesus praying for you, mediating for you, forgiving you. He hungers for your salvation, and for your peace. And he gives it, delivering you from it by his Word of promise, crushing the ancient serpents head and granting you to feast with him into life everlasting.
Amen.
