“The Temptation of Christ”
Matthew 4:1-11
2/10/08
How many of you who have children remember when at
one time or another they took on some project or assignment that
didn’t quite turn out the way it should have and you stepped in
to do it over for them? How many of us adults wish that we could
have had a “do-over” on things we we’ve messed up bad
either at work or at home? Well, today’s Gospel text helps
us to see that Jesus did the ultimate “do-over” for
us. Here in His temptation by the devil Jesus stood in the place
of His people Israel doing over what they should have done as
God’s children but failed at. And He did this
“do-over” not just for them, but for you and me, too, who
have failed just as miserably as Israel did at living as God’s
children. Jesus was Israel reduced to one man, God’s
beloved Son, doing over both Israel’s failure as well as our
failure to live as God’s beloved sons, so that through faith in
Him, His “do-over” might be credited to us.
The text begins by saying that Jesus was led up by
the Spirit into the wilderness, and that He was there for forty days
and forty nights fasting and hungry. Now if a Jewish person read
this, he might be reminded of the exodus of Israel. Back then
God’s people were led by Him out of the land of Egypt into the
wilderness, where they too were tempted, hungry, and thirsty; only
their wanderings lasted for forty years. We are also experiencing
our own wanderings in the wilderness of this world, as we await the
time when our Lord will bring us into the promised land of
heaven. And during this time, the devil tempts us just as he
tempted the Israelites. In fact, the temptations they faced are
the same kinds of temptations we face, the same temptations that Jesus
faced in His wilderness experience. So, we’re going to look
at each of these temptations and see how we’ve fallen to them,
but how for our sake Jesus has not and how He has fulfilled this
“do-over” for our salvation.
The first temptation is the temptation not to trust
in God or accept His will, but to live for ourselves, living as our own
gods, living as if it is our will that should be done, not His.
The devil came to Jesus saying, “If you are the Son of God,
command these stones to become loaves of bread.” In
other words, “You’d better help yourself, Jesus, because
God doesn’t seem to care about you. He’s abandoned
you. The only one you can count on here is you.” The
devil had tempted the Israelites to believe the same thing, and they
fell to the temptation. The Scriptures tell us that when they
were short on food and water they complained to Moses and murmured
against God, accusing God of wanting to kill them in the
wilderness. It got to the point that they were ready to stone
Moses and head back to Egypt. They didn’t trust in
God’s Word. They didn’t trust that He would take care
of them and provide them their daily bread. But God was not only
concerned that they had physical bread to eat, but also the bread of
His Word. Physical bread only sustains our physical life, but the
bread of God’s Word sustains our spiritual life. It gives
us not only eternal life now, but also promises the resurrection of our
bodies on the Last Day. If we don’t eat the bread of
God’s Word, then we too will murmur against God when He
doesn’t seem to be meeting our physical needs, nor will we give
Him thanks when He does. Instead, we will live our lives as if
God didn’t matter, as if our daily bread did not come from Him,
as if we were our own gods, providing for ourselves apart from
God’s divine goodness and mercy all that we need for our bodies
and lives. In the end, for failing such a test and for falling
for this temptation of the devil, we die both physically and
spiritually.
But Jesus did a “do-over” for us.
He did not give in to this temptation to trust in Himself, as if He
were His own God, but He trusted in His Father and submitted Himself to
His Father’s will, which in this case was to undergo temptation
in order to over come it for you. And that’s why Jesus did
this do-over. It wasn’t for Himself, to show you that He
could do it. Nor was it to show that you too can do it, if you
just try hard enough. Jesus was not primarily showing you how to
overcome temptation and the devil. He was overcoming temptation
and the devil for you, because you’ve failed. Jesus did
this do-over, so that His victory over temptation and the devil might
be yours through faith in Him.
Jesus overcame the devil with the Word of God.
This is the weapon we should have used all along against the
devil. It’s the weapon Adam and Eve should have used
against him. It’s the weapon the Israelites should have
used against him in the wilderness. But we’ve all failed to
wield this weapon as we ought too, and the devil has overcome us.
Jesus, on the other hand, used the Word of God successfully against the
devil, and thus defeated the devil for us in our place.
But the devil didn’t stop there. He
moved on to another temptation and that was the temptation to tempt
God. The devil said to Jesus, “If you’re the Son of
God throw yourself down from the temple.” “See if God
will keep His promise.” And here the devil demonstrated
that he knows how to quote Scripture, too. He quoted Psalm 91
verses 11 and 12. He said, “He [God] will command His
angels concerning you,” and “On their hands they will bear
you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” But the
devil left out one key phrase. The quote should read, “He
will command His angels concerning you to keep you in all your
ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your
foot against a stone.” Well, what’s the significance
of this phrase “to keep you in all your ways”? The
“ways” that the Lord keeps you in are the ways He’s
taught you in His Word. The Lord guarded and kept the Israelites
as they walked in His ways, living by faith in His Word. When we
live by faith in God’s Word, we can hold God to His
promises. We can be sure He will give His angels charge
concerning us to protect us when trouble comes our way. But to
bring trouble upon ourselves in order to try to get God to prove to us
that He will keep His Word is not living by faith in God’s
Word. There is no promise in God’s Word to the effect that
if you try to bring harm to yourself God will intervene. God
directs you in the ways you are to walk by His Word. If you
disregard His Word, you have no promise that He will act on your behalf.
And so, we realize that we have failed here too,
just like the Israelites did. Rather than trusting in God’s
Word even in the midst of their trials, they tested God with their
demand that He show He was with them and that He cared for them by
miraculously providing water for them to drink. And we are just
like them. We don’t always trust in God’s Word as we
should. We don’t always walk in the ways of the Lord, and
so we don’t deserve the protection of angels. But here
again Jesus did a do-over for us and overcame this temptation, too,
with the Word of God. He did walk in the ways of the Lord, not
straying either to the right or to the left, trusting in God’s
Word in spite of the temptations He had to endure. And yet, the
protection of the angels was removed from Him, so that the strike which
was due us might fall upon Him on the cross.
But there was one more temptation for Him to undergo
in the wilderness, and this time it was the temptation to worship
another god. The devil showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world
and their glory, and he said, “All these I will give you, if you
will fall down and worship me.” The Scriptures tell us that
the Israelites failed many times to keep the commandment not to have
any other gods. It began with the worship of the golden calf that
they made in the wilderness of Sinai. Later on, once they were in
the promised land, they worshipped the Baals, the Asherim, and many
other idols as well. But we also have our own pet idols.
They may not be statues of gold or stone, but anything you fear, love,
and trust in above all things is your god. You may fear, love,
and trust in your money, your health, your job, or your friends.
But the greatest idol we all have is ourselves. We have made
ourselves our gods, so that like Adam and Eve we determine for
ourselves what is good and what is bad, it’s our will that must
be done, and it’s we who are most important to us.
We’re here to be served, not to serve. And so we’ve
all broken the first commandment, and to break that commandment is to
break them all. It is to be a complete sinner, worthy of eternal
death. Hearing this, some want to try to do the do-over
themselves; they want a second chance at keeping God’s
commandments, and they actually think that they can accomplish
this. But this is just another manifestation of the god-complex
that we all share, thinking that we can save ourselves by our own means
and efforts.
Thanks be to God, Jesus does the do-over here too
and keeps the commandment where we’ve failed. He does not
fall to the temptation to worship the devil, who’s really trying
to offer Jesus another way to win the world without going to the
cross. But again, Jesus answers with the Word of God and worships
God alone, submitting Himself to His will, even though it will mean
going to the cross. Jesus feared, loved, and trusted in God above
all things for us where we failed, so that through faith in Him His
obedience, even His obedience unto death on the cross, might become
ours.
So Jesus has become our substitute. The entire
human race has failed to overcome temptation and the devil. We
have fallen and still do fall all the time to sin. But beginning
with His Baptism and then on to His temptation and finally at His
cross, Jesus stood as the representative of the human race, doing over
what we failed to do, keeping God’s commandments perfectly,
overcoming temptation and the devil, and paying for our sin with His
own blood. All this He has done for you, so that His do-over
might be credited to you through faith in Him. And in Him as you
are by way of your Baptism, God now looks at you as if you had
perfectly kept His commandments, as if you were Christ Himself, holy,
righteous, and blameless. During this Lenten season, then, as you
confess that you have no righteousness of your own and that you are
worthy of God’s temporal and eternal punishment, look to Jesus
your Savior, who is your righteousness, who overcame sin, death, and
the devil for you, that you might become the righteousness of God in
Him and live and reign with Him for all eternity. Amen.