Dear Friends in Christ,
"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil."
Did you know one of the many interesting things about the language of Holy Scripture is the idea of "going up" and "going down?" Jesus' coming up out of the water and going up to the wilderness tells us that something spiritually important is going to happen. When God the Father declared Jesus to be His Son, the One in whom He was well pleased, Jesus' righteousness became something to be desired by Satan. God announced to all creation that the new Adam, the new man has come to fulfill His Promise.
As a result of the successful temptation of the woman, and the man, the serpent was cursed by God for his treachery. God proclaimed final judgement on the serpent saying, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed, he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel." For many generations of man this prophetic course hung over all creation, the children of Adam and Eve were born, they lived on the earth, had sons and daughters of their own, and then they died.
The curse remained unfulfilled until a man named Jesus known by men as the son of a carpenter went down into the Jordan River, and came up out of it revealed as the Son of God. This Jesus, "for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made man." He "came down from heaven" to this earth which is corrupted by sin to be a servant, to His Father in heaven, and all creation, and to you and I.
The Word of God, His Son enters into the corrupted creation to redeem it with His death and blood on the cross of Calvary. He purchases our salvation by being obedient to His Father because we are not able to. He stamps the guarantee on it with His resurrection, His rising from the dead on the third day "According to the Scriptures." In your Baptism that guarantee is stamped upon you as the living water washes over you in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You came up out of the water with a new spirit that is alive, it is Christ's living spirit.
When the serpent said to the woman, "Did God actually say?", he invited her to doubt that God had her good in His heart. This doubt is the heart of sin, and it is a very powerful thing even though it seems so small. When God led Israel out of Egypt they doubted the good will of God. They grumbled and complained for water and food. When Moses was up on the mountain with God, the people doubted and built a golden calf and worshiped it. When Israel despised the words of Joshua and Caleb, they doubted that God would deliver them.
So He led them into the wilderness to test them. For 40 years he led them until everyone who was not a child when they doubted had died, except Joshua and Caleb, because they believed God. Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tested, as Israel had been. He is all Israel in one person, and where Israel failed in the wilderness, Jesus succeeded. His 40 days and nights of fasting were for the 40 years of Israel. And the Devil was patient.
There was no doubt in Jesus when He went into the Jordan River. There was no doubt in Him when He came up out of it, and there was no doubt in Him when He was led up into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. He did not go on His own accord, but was willing to be led by the Will of His Father. It was time to reveal what kind of a Son Jesus would be. The kind we are not because of sin, but the kind we have been made by faith in Him.
The three things Jesus was tempted with are no strangers to us, are they? To save yourself, to use God's power to serve your own desires, and to worship another god. They all tempt us to doubt God's good will for us. We can go only a few hours without food before we're so famished that we must eat something. This is why we join with Jesus in praying, "give us this day our daily bread." "In fact God gives daily bread without our prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving."
Don't we want God to bless us in the ways we choose? The Devil left out an important part of his quote of Psalm 91, "in all your way." That "all your ways" does not refer to the things you and I desire in our hearts, they refer to the ways of God, the things He desires which are our life and our salvation. Have you needlessly put yourself in danger only for the thrill of it? Gambled or did something that if you got caught would have caused you shame? "And lead us not into temptation." What does this mean? "It is true that God tempts no one, but we ask in this prayer that God would preserve and keep us, so that the devil, the world, and our flesh may no deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice, and that, although we may be attacked by them, we may finally prevail and gain the victory."
What god do you worship? Are you seduced by fortune and glory? Satan twisted Scripture to serve his own purpose to deceive and to invite doubt in God. Blessed Dr. Luther said, "Such are also the heretics who start sects and factions in matters of faith among Christians, that they may make a great parade before the world and soar aloft in their own honor." (Church Postils 1.2 145:23) When we abuse the Word of God by neglect or malicious intent, we are guilty of despising God. Because we doubt His good will for us we don't "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest" Holy Scripture, but we worship our own thoughts and words. Not everyone who quotes Scripture is from God. The thief, the deceiver Satan wants to steal the righteousness of your baptism from you as he tried to do to Jesus. He attacks you at your weakest points in doubt, and in the pride of your strengths, but Christ's righteousness is stronger.
The words spoken by Pastor this past Ash Wednesday are still ringing in my ears, "Thou art dust O man, and unto dust thou shall return." I can still feel the grittiness of the ashes as he traced the sign of the cross on my forehead. That pronouncement is ominous for us who try to live this life so abundantly for as long as we possibly can. There is only one thing which will keep us from returning to the dust of the earth and that is the return of Christ on the Last Day.
How is your testing going? Don't answer. It's going terribly, just like it is with all of us. That's why Jesus passed the test for us, and in him, as you and I actually, really and truly have been declared victorious by God. Are you ready to quit? Give up and pack it all in? Do not doubt that the Father is faithful to reward the obedience of His children, and He provides in their time of need. Come now obediently to the throne of grace, that you may receive mercy in the body and blood of Christ freely given for you in this, your time of need.
Amen.
