Showing posts with label John 1:14. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John 1:14. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 22, 2023

The Greatest Glory on the Mountaintop

[Below are the live stream videos of this past Sunday's worship services from Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, along with the message prepared for them.]





Matthew 17:1-9

This is the last Sunday of the Epiphany Season. Throughout this season, we’ve looked at incidents and words from Jesus’ earthly ministry that show us the truth that the Man Jesus is also truly God, the Savior of the whole cosmos. This truth is announced to us again today in the Gospel lesson, but maybe not entirely in the way we imagine.

Six days before the incidents recounted in today’s gospel lesson, Jesus foretold it all. Then, Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, told Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16) While Peter didn’t understand all the implications of his confession, he did understand that in calling Jesus the Son of the living God, he wasn’t calling Jesus a descendant of God the Father. When a Jew like Peter used this phrase, he meant what another Jewish believer, the preacher in the New Testament book of Hebrews, meant when he said of Jesus, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word…” (Hebrews 1:3)

Peter said that Jesus was God. But Peter didn’t really understand what that meant. His lack of understanding showed when Peter was shocked as Jesus said that He, God in the flesh, was going to Jerusalem to be rejected by the religious and political leaders and by the people. There He would also suffer, be murdered on a Friday, and be raised by God the Father on a Sunday. Peter rebuked Jesus. Peter couldn’t imagine God suffering or dying. But Jesus called Peter “Satan” for standing in the way of God’s will that God the Son should take the punishment of death for sin that you and I deserve. Jesus said that all who would have life with God need to take up our crosses–that is, confess our sin and our need of God’s forgiveness–and follow Jesus. Then Jesus made this promise: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28)

Matthew tells us this morning that six days after this exchange between Jesus and Peter, Jesus took the same Peter, along with James and John to the top of a nearby mountain. Why did Jesus take these three guys with Him? Well, they were the inner circle of the inner circle of disciples. But another reason might be this: Peter, James, and John, by outward appearances, seemed to have the hardest time with their sin, wanting to be like God rather than following and worshiping God. Peter had tried to tell Jesus how to be the Messiah, as we’ve seen. And James and John, forgetting that the exorcisms and healings they’d done were the results of Jesus’ power working in them and not of their own power, once asked Jesus if He wanted them to call fire from heaven down on a Samaritan village that hadn’t welcomed Jesus. These men needed to be reminded that Jesus was God, not them. They also needed the forgiveness of God which comes only from Jesus.

In that, Peter, James, and John are no different from you and me. Like them, we can fall to the temptation of thinking that we are essentially good people who deserve the blessings of God. Like them, we can become upset when the plans of God don’t conform to the plans we make for ourselves. Like them, we forget that we have no right to enter the kingdom of heaven; that is a gift God gives to those who repent and believe in Jesus Christ. It is only God in Jesus Christ who makes sinners clean, justifying us, counting us innocent by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

You know what happened at the mount of Transfiguration. Matthew says, “There [Jesus] was transfigured [meaning His appearance was in some way altered] before [Peter, James, and John]. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.” (Matthew 17:2) Soon, Moses, dead and buried centuries before, and Elijah, the prophet once transmitted to heaven by a chariot of fire, are there talking with Jesus. If the light that radiated from Jesus hadn’t reminded Peter, James, and John that Jesus really is God, the fact that these two Old Testament figures who talked with God on mountaintops are now talking with Jesus should have convinced them.

James would be martyred not long after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. So, we don’t have any record of what he thought about the Transfiguration. But John would say in the prologue to his gospel, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) And Peter would write: “...we were eyewitnesses of [Jesus’] majesty. He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.” (2 Peter 1:16-18)

But Peter and his companions didn’t mainly see the glory of God in Jesus’ transfiguration that day. On seeing Moses and Elijah, Peter in essence asks Jesus for permission to break the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” He wants to build three shelters to honor Jesus, Moses, and Elijah equally, as though the Light of God that day came from anyone other than Jesus, as though Moses and Elijah needed to be worshiped along with Jesus. The moment this seemingly pious suggestion leaves his mouth, God the Father shuts Peter off. “​​This is my Son, whom I love,” the Father says, “with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” (Matthew 17:5)

Friends, life with God will not be ours if we worship any god other than the One revealed to us in Jesus Christ. To those inclined to say, “My family is the most important thing,” or personal fulfillment, or health, or happiness, or lower taxes, or leading a good life, God says, “This is My Son…Listen to Him.” We human beings are intrinsically religious creatures. Anthropologists tell us that in every culture ever studied, people have had all sorts of gods they’ve worshiped: sex, fertility, money, possessions, the sun, the moon, the stars, animal, vegetable, and mineral. Our sinful human nature makes us want to worship something, anything that we think will give the god we’re born worshiping from birth–ourselves–what we want when we want it. We’ll glorify anyone and anything that will glorify us, explaining why we make the terrible choices we sometimes make in life, from the cars we buy to the political lies we fall for. 


You can imagine how guilty and small Peter (and the others) must have felt at that moment, prostrating in fear in the face of this condemnation of sinful idolatry. But this is the moment when the glory of God was fully revealed to Peter, James, and John. Matthew 17:7 says, “Jesus came and touched them. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’”

That is Jesus’ message for you today too. You and I have been idolaters and sinners. We’ve been prone to go our own way, to ignore god, to glorify the shiny objects this world dangles before us. Our idolatrous natures cause us to metaphorically erect booths to what we deem to be holy things, godly values. But forgiveness of sin, freedom from death, and life with God, the things we most need for this life and the next, come from Jesus Christ alone. It was in seeing Jesus as the forgiving, saving God of all that Peter, James, and John saw the true glory of God at the Transfiguration.

This is the glory of God: Jesus, the way and the truth and the life, through whom we have life with God. He’s the Savior Who overcomes the sin, suffering, and death we all experience in this life to give us everlasting life with God. Along the way, He allows us to be touched by His glory and His glorious love for us. He’s doing it again today in His Word, in the fellowship of the saints, and in the gift of His body and blood. He does it when water is splashed on her head in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By these means, Jesus assures us that beyond the days of our Lents, the horrors of our Good Fridays, and the griefs of our silent, Holy Saturdays, glory, eternal glory, with God awaits all who daily turn to Christ in repentance and faith. Our Savior Jesus comes to forgive our sins and give us life in God’s glorious kingdom. Dear friends in Christ, you can trust in Him!

Sunday, April 19, 2020

My Lord and My God (Sunday Worship, Living Water Lutheran Church)

Here's Sunday worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below the video is the manuscript for today's message. God bless you!



John 20:19-31
One day during seventh-grade English class, our teacher, Mrs. Biggs, told us that we were going to have a say in what book we would read together over the next six weeks. 

She gave us three choices. I can’t remember what the other two were. But I do remember the one I definitely didn’t want to read: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 

I thought I would be bored out of my skull if we read that book. But the vote for the Holmes stories was nearly unanimous. 

Then I read the stories and got hooked. I read all twelve in the collection even before we were actually supposed to be reading them for class. I loved them for the puzzles they presented, the vivid characters, the strange plot twists, and the friendship of the brilliant Holmes and the sometimes clueless Watson. I couldn’t stop talking about the stories. And for Christmas that year, I received the complete Holmes collection: all fifty-six short stories and four novels. I still have that book!

Have you ever noticed how skeptics can become the biggest fans of something they once disdained? And it’s often these people who have what’s called “the zeal of a convert.” It’s often former skeptics who tell us the most about the things they once dismissed but have come to love.

Our gospel lesson for today, John 20:19-31, gives us a portrait of such a person. His name is Thomas. He was called to be an apostle of Jesus, one of the twelve Jesus would send into the world to witness that all who believe in the crucified and risen Savior will have eternal life with God and plant Christ's Church everywhere.

At the beginning of his gospel, John introduces us to Jesus, the Second Person of the Triune God, the one God in three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 


Jesus, John said, is the Word, God the Son, Who spoke the universe into being. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” John says (John 1:1). 

Later in that same chapter, he says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) 

John spends the rest of his gospel recounting signs, sermons, and dialogs pointing out to those who dared to pay attention that Jesus was no ordinary man. They all demonstrated that Jesus was more even than the Messiah, the Christ, who God’s people had long-awaited. Jesus was God the Son in the flesh, the Creator becoming one of His creatures so that in His sinlessness, He could die for sinners and win eternity for all who believed in Him, their sins forgiven, made forever new.

Now, Thomas was with Jesus throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry. He knew that there was something special about Jesus. That’s probably why he kept following Jesus. But he refused to give in to the enthusiasm of faith. (The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek phrase, en Theos, in God.) 


Thomas held back, determined not to get hoodwinked into giving his loyalty to anyone. Not even Jesus. 

Thomas was there to see Jesus bring sight to the blind man who, when Jesus identified Himself as the Son of Man had told Jesus, “Lord, I believe” and proceeded to worship Jesus as God (John 9:38). But while others exhibited faith in and devotion to Jesus, however imperfect, Thomas folded his arms

When Jesus announced His intention to go to Bethany after His friend Lazarus had died there, Thomas was less than enthusiastic. Bethany was in the heart of the territory from which Jesus and the twelve had just run for their lives. At Jesus’ announcement, Lazarus cynically told the others, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” (John 11:16) 

Even at the Last Supper, after Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead and after Thomas had heard Jesus speak repeatedly of how He was going to Jerusalem where God the Father would glorify Him, through His death, resurrection, and ascension, Thomas asks Jesus, Who had told the disciples that they knew the Way He was going, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” (John 14:5) 

When Jesus told Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” Thomas remained immune to Jesus’ Word (John 14:6).

After Jesus’ died and all hope of His being the Messiah seemed gone, the other disciples, grief-stricken and disappointed, nonetheless stayed together, probably drawing comfort from one another. Not Thomas. He was nowhere to be found on Easter Sunday morning. He had moved on. 


Nor was he around on Easter Sunday evening when Jesus entered a locked room to greet the disciples and show them that He had conquered sin, death, and the grave for all who believe in Him. When, a week later, Thomas was told about several encounters Jesus’ other disciples had with Jesus raised from the dead, Thomas refused to believe.

I have a confession to make. 


I can sometimes be a Thomas

I live on the Easter side of Jesus’ time on earth. 

I believe in Him as my Lord and King. 

But sometimes I act and live as though the Word never became flesh and dwelt among us, that He never died to destroy the power of sin and death over me, that He didn’t rise to make me a new creature to whom He wills an eternity of good

I can wake up and go through the next sixteen hours of my day like someone who never heard of Jesus. I can live like Jesus never died and rose for me. Like those who don’t know Jesus, I can stew over how things are going to turn out, forgetting that the Lord Who was raised by God the Father on Easter has believers and our ultimate destination in His strong grip, that Jesus has prepared a place for us with God in eternity and He will be with us every step of the way on this earth. 

How about you? 

Can you be a Thomas? 

Do you sometimes let unbelief, cynicism, skepticism, selfishness, or a kind of thoughtless, default atheism setting cloud your vision of Jesus, of Who He is, and of what He has done for you on the cross and from the empty tomb?

Today brings you (and me) good news! 


Like John, the beloved disciple, who saw the empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday morning and believed, Thomas got his chance to see the risen Jesus on the following Sunday. 

And when that happened, Thomas, the hardened skeptic, became the only person in the Gospel of John to make this ringing confession about Jesus: “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28)

No one had previously dared to say Who Jesus was (and is). 

Thomas confessed Jesus not just our Lord. Not just the Lord Who conquered sin and death and Satan. 

Thomas looked at Jesus and declared Jesus to be God! 

Jesus says of believers like you and me, who have received the Word about Jesus that would be shared by the lives and martyrdom of witnesses like Thomas, Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, and Paul, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

We are blessed. 


Although like Thomas, we can doubt or be disbelieving or forgetful, we are blessed. 

That’s because the truth of our faith in Christ is not measured either in how often we allow our human nature to get in the way of trusting in Jesus. It isn't measured in our imperfections. 

Our faith is truly seen in this: in how, when confronted by Jesus in His Word, in the Sacraments, and in the fellowship of the Church, we realize again that this Jesus, this One raised from the grave on the first Easter, is Lord and God and His Word has transformed us from sinners dead in their trespasses and given us the saving faith to say with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”

Friends, Jesus never tires of coming to us and always remains the Word made flesh, true God and true man, Whose desire above all else is to fellowship with us and make us His forever


May we who, by the power of God's Word about Jesus, give us the zeal of converts, people who sold out to Jesus that we can't keep from telling the world about Jesus and His gospel.

And when Jesus calls us, may we always hear His voice and may we always come to Him, our Lord and our God. Amen


Sunday, December 29, 2019

Who's Blessed?

[This message was shared this morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I found the "pump" for it was primed by a sermon once preached by the late Swedish pastor and novelist, Bo Giertz. The book containing that sermon can be found here.]

Matthew 2:13-23
One of the blessings of the Psalms, the Old Testament songbook, is that God gives us permission to say things to Him that we might think, in our misguided religious piety, we couldn’t possibly say to God. God gives us permission to be honest with Him. That includes the times when we don’t understand what He’s up to.

In Psalm 10, for example, we’re given permission to pray in this way:


Why, Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble? In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises...His ways are always prosperous; your laws are rejected by him; he sneers at all his enemies. He says to himself, ‘Nothing will ever shake me.’ He swears, ‘No one will ever do me harm.’ His mouth is full of lies and threats; trouble and evil are under his tongue.” (Psalm 10:1-3, 5-7)
In our gospel lesson for today, Matthew 2:13-23, Joseph, the man chosen by God to be Jesus’ earthly father, would have had every reason to pray this psalm. 

Why was the baby Savior of the world, Jesus, the subject of a manhunt while Herod shed innocent blood to keep hold of his power and wealth? 

And why was it that Mary and Joseph, who welcomed God in the world on the first Christmas, had to leave their native land for fear of Herod, who sat comfortably in his palaces? 

Later, why did the holy family have to go back to Nazareth rather than to Bethlehem, their ancestral village, for fear of Herod’s son and what He might do to the baby?

It’s possible though that Joseph didn’t ask God any of these questions. 


Or, if he did, maybe he later dismissed them as those of a man who, like you and me, didn’t always see the whole picture. 

You see, I suspect that Joseph had an entirely different understanding of what it means to be blessed by God than most people have.

What do you think that it means to be blessed? 


If you were to ask the average person, including me some days, what it means to be blessed by God, we might say things like: having good health, having a loving family, having enough to eat, being spared bad experiences, getting to do the things we want to do. 

Now, all of these things are pleasant

And, as James says in the New Testament, all good and perfect gifts come from God. 

And only a sick person would want ill-health, a rancorous family, hunger, and so on. 

But, as Psalm 10 indicates, there are people who have all of these things and more and never think of themselves as blessed (or at least, never blessed enough) and never think of God. 

Herod, the king when Jesus was born, just as an example, had everything. But he always wanted more. And he lived in constant suspicious fear that someone was going to take away what he had. Despite all his supposed “blessings,” Herod was paranoid for fear of losing everything. 

Was Herod blessed? 

Was Joseph? 

Are you?

Our gospel lesson recounts three incidents that happened after wise men from the East visited the baby Jesus at Bethlehem. 


Incident #1

The first happened immediately after the visitors left. Joseph is visited by an angel of the Lord in a dream. “‘Get up,’ he said, ‘take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.’” (Matthew 2:13) Just as God once led His people out of slavery in Egypt, so now the Savior would come out of Egypt so that He could lead all who follow Him out of slavery to sin and death. But the time wasn’t right yet for God’s plan to unfold. That’s why the family had to flee.


Incident #2

In verse 16, we’re told that Herod realized that he had been “outwitted” by the wise men who had been told by God that Herod wanted to kill this new king. Actually, outwitted doesn’t accurately convey what the word Matthew used when he composed his gospel. My study of Scripture and of history convince me that the most dangerous people to wield earthly power are those who are both shrewd and stupid. Herod fell into this category. The word Matthew uses to describe Herod’s reaction, enepaichthe, means that Herod felt mocked and humiliated. Thug kings don’t like being embarrassed. That’s why Herod murdered the baby boys in Bethlehem. We may rightly wonder why God allowed the death of those babies. But we need to also remember that in allowing Jesus to live and offer His sinless life on the cross, God made it possible for the whole world--including this fallen world’s innocent victims--to have life that never ends with God, a blessing this world can never give.


Incident #3
In verse 19, after learning from an angel of the Lord that Herod is dead, Joseph takes the Child and His mother back to Bethlehem. But while on the way, He learns--again from God--that Herod’s son is king over that portion of Herod’s old territory and that it’s best to go to the place where he and Mary had been living before Jesus’ birth, back to Nazareth.

Joseph’s life, not to mention Mary’s life had been disrupted by God’s plans and the schemes of an evil ruler. Hearing the Word of God, Joseph was called to leave his means of making a livelihood behind. He was chased and terrorized, forced to settle in a foreign country that offered him and his family refuge and asylum. 


But each time the Word of God came to Joseph, God created the faith within him enabling him to respond faithfully. He didn’t abandon the baby and His mother in Nazareth, Bethlehem, or Egypt. 

You see, faith comes from hearing God’s Word (Romans 10:17)

The Holy Spirit authors God’s Word and then the Holy Spirit creates faith through that Word in those who are good soil, that is, in those who are receptive to the planting of God’s Word within them. 

Joseph heard the Word of God and Joseph trusted in God

Joseph heard God’s Word of promise and by the power of that Word, Joseph believed.

That’s what God’s Word does in us. The believers in God hears the promise of Isaiah 30:21: “Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, ‘This is the way; walk in it.’” And they learn that Jesus is that Way. “This is my Son...” the voice of God would cry out to the apostles Peter, James, and John, at the Mount of Transfiguration, “...Listen to him!" (Matthew 17:5) Jesus is the Word. The Word Who gives us the faith in Him Who is our peace.

That’s why even in the midst of being torn from all that was familiar to him, in the midst of being chased and terrorized, Joseph was blessed. 


And that’s why even in the midst of all that bedevils, tempts, and tests us in this life, all who hear the Word of God about Jesus and trust in Him as Lord are blessed. 

You are blessed as you hear God tell you, “This is the way; walk in it.”

I mentioned earlier that the Psalms encourage us to say things to God we might not otherwise say. They also remind us of God’s promises to those who follow Christ rather than the world. 


Psalm 73 contains such a reminder:
You guide me with your counsel [that is, with Your Word], and afterward you will take me into glory. (Psalm 73:24). 
Friends: Jesus, the Word made flesh, guides those who turn to Him through His Word in this life. He guides us to trust that God so loved the world--and so loves us--that He gave His one and only Son so that all who believe in Him have life with God forever.

God blesses us in life by being with us even when the evil people of the world seem to have it all. 

And those who trust in Christ will, after all the dead and dying rewards of this world have disappeared forever, live with God in glory. 

Be like Joseph: Hear God’s Word. In the hearing of God’s Word, He will create faith in Christ within you. And, by God's grace through faith in Christ, you will live eternally in the glory of God. This is the blessed life. Amen 


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Victory in the Wilderness

[This message was shared this morning during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 4:1-13
Today’s gospel lesson, for this First Sunday in Lent, is Luke 4:1-13. This is Luke’s account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by the devil. 

The most important thing to remember from this incident is that Jesus, the Son of God, succeeds where Adam in the garden of Eden and ancient Israel in the wilderness failed. And He did this for us, despite the unneeded and unwanted suffering and death it brought to Him.

So, let’s look at what happens, starting at verse 1: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.”

Jesus has just come from being baptized in the Jordan River by his relative, John the Baptizer. There, Jesus heard God the Father tell Him, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:22) 

We know from the rest of Scripture that when Jesus is described as “the Son of God,” it means more than I mean when I speak of our son and our daughter. Colossians 1:15-17 says of Jesus that He is “...the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Jesus is both God and human, “the Word [made] flesh” (John 1:1, 14).

Others in Scripture have been portrayed as God’s sons, but in different ways. 

For example, in Hosea 11:1, God recalls, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.” 

And, in the passage just before his account of Jesus’ temptations, Luke traces Jesus’ genealogy back to “Adam, the son of God (Luke 3:38).” The meaning here is that Adam was generated from God’s creativity. God looked on Adam and Eve in much the same way parents look on their children, with love. 

But in the garden, lush with everything he could possibly need, Adam, the son of God, fell prey to the temptations of the serpent, feeling the impulse to stuff his face with the very fruit God had told him not to touch. 

Similarly, about 1500 years before the birth of Jesus, God led His people Israel out of slavery in Egypt and, taking them to the promised land, oversaw the testing of their faith in the wilderness. Israel, even its leader Moses, didn’t pass with flying colors. A whole generation of Israelites, save for two--Joshua and Caleb--died on a forty year journey that should have taken eleven days because it fell prey to temptation, worshiping other gods, rebelling against God.

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus, the Son of God, is led by the Spirit into the wilderness. Jesus spends forty days there and is, like Adam and Israel, tempted to sin and to rebellion against God the Father. Jesus goes there to begin the process of erasing the sin and death that had enslaved humanity since Adam and Eve fell into sin and to fulfill the mission of Israel to bring light and life to all nations.

Verse 3: “The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’”

The word devil translates the word in Luke’s original Greek text, diabolos. We get the word diabolical from this. The word itself means one who slanders, defames, accuses falsely. The devil likes to slander, defame, and falsely accuse human beings, especially those who seek to follow Jesus, because of his deep resentment toward the human race. 

The devil is a fallen angel. And angels, aren’t as important in God’s creation as human beings. Only humans are created in God’s image. This is why the devil set out to lure the human race away from God. 


The devil, the liar and slanderer, calls Jesus’ place as the second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, into question. He’s challenging Jesus to prove Himself. He tells Jesus to take care of His hunger by turning stones to bread rather than fulfill His mission of enduring temptations sinlessly so that He can offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for human sin.

Verse 4: “Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”

Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, in which Moses recalls when the people of Israel went hungry in the wilderness, wanting bread to eat, and when God, by the power of His Word, created something called manna for them to eat. God gave the people of Israel exactly what they needed from day to day, their “daily bread.” Moses said that we can’t live just for the bread we plant, harvest, mix, and bake. We must rely totally on God. Jesus did. And, unlike Adam in the garden, who ate fruit he didn’t need and so dishonored his relationship with God, Jesus refused to create food He could have used for Himself. Jesus lives for God and for us. Who do we live for?

Verse 5: “The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, ‘I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will all be yours.’”

In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve wanted to “be like God.” In the wilderness, ancient Israel erected a golden calf to worship and manipulate for its own purposes. Jesus could have taken the kingdoms of this world without saving us. But He refused to do this. He knew that only His death and resurrection could allow us to become part of His kingdom. Our eternal life with God was more important to Jesus than His temporary comfort. That’s a measure of the depths of His love for each of us. Without relying on the God we meet in Jesus, it's impossible for us to dismiss taking the easy path and opt for doing the will of God as Jesus did.

Verse 8: “Jesus answered, ‘It is written [again citing words from Moses’ words in Deuteronomy about Israel’s wilderness experience]: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’” Jesus is ready for temptation not just because He’s the Son of God, but also because He knows God’s Word and through God’s Word, He knows Christ. If Jesus needed to know God and His Word to get through the wilderness, how much more do we need God and His Word?

Verse 9: “The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully;  they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”’”

The devil is a cunning jerk. 1 Peter 5:8 tells us, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” The devil would have liked nothing better than to have devoured Jesus, gobbling up our chance for life through faith in Jesus in the bargain.
He cunningly uses God’s Word from Psalm 91, twisting the promise God gives to help His people into a magna carta for human stupidity, a blank check for believers to do any lame-brained thing that comes into our heads in order to prove that God is good for His word. That’s why in verse 12, Jesus cites another passage from Deuteronomy: “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Jesus turns each of the devil’s temptations away. Ambrose, an ancient church father, said that in the three temptations with which the devil tried to trap Jesus, the temptation to turn stones to bread, to worship the devil, and to take the kingdoms of this world rather than institute the kingdom of God for all who trust in Jesus, there was “every human transgression...for the courses of our own [forbidden] desires are the delight of the flesh [taking care of ourselves without regard to others], the pomp of vainglory [our love of being number one], and the greed for power.” The temptations with which Jesus contended in the wilderness are the same ones that confront you and me every day. One contemporary New Testament scholar calls them “the normative seductions of our...culture.”

And they always have been. But unlike Adam and Eve and ancient Israel, who were defeated by the seductions--the temptations--to sin, Jesus succeeded in resisting them and so, has was able later to win everlasting life with God for all who turn away from sin, as He did in the wilderness, and follow Him. 

But if it’s our intention to follow Jesus to life, we need to watch out. The devil is still looking, in the words of verse 13 of our lesson, for “opportune times” to trip us up. Referring to the gospel--the good news of forgiven sin and new life for all who trust in the crucified and risen Jesus, the preacher in Hebrews tells a people flirting with defection from faith in Christ, “We must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.” (Hebrews 2:1-3)

Jesus won a victory in the wilderness because His eyes were turned always to God the Father and His purposes. Isaiah 45:22 tells us, “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.” 

In Lent and in all of life, our call is to keep turning to Jesus so that He can give us life with God. That’s what Jesus died and rose to make possible, so that we can, day after day and into eternity, turn to Him and live. Amen