Dear Friends in Christ,
Headlines are meant to grab our attention whether in print we can hold in our hands, or online. How about this for an attention grabber? “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” The God-Man, Christ Jesus, would go one on one with the rebellious angel he had cast from heaven. Our forgiveness of sin, and eternal salvation in heaven weighed in the balance.
Jesus had traveled from the region of the Jordan where John recently had baptized him. This was more than a journey across miles of desert landscape. It was a journey from equality with God to the very nature of a servant. Jesus was taking the first steps in his mission the apostle John wrote about in his first epistle, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”
It was a battle Jesus willingly waged. Jesus Took the Battlefield against Satan on Our Behalf. We soberly recognize our weaknesses and helplessness. Jesus’ victory over Satan is our victory through faith.
Our weaknesses and helplessness against Satan’s temptations to sin are not without precedent. The fallen angel tempted our first parents to doubt and disobedience. They followed as Moses related in our first lesson. The devil tempted King David to pride, then murder and adultery. David followed. Satan tempted Jesus’ disciples to fear arrest and perhaps death. Everyone deserted Jesus when the mob arrested him. The one whose name is the root of our English word diabolic leads us into temptation to break God’s commandments in our thoughts, words, and actions.
We follow Satan because our human nature inherited Adam’s sin. One common sin infects us all. It is more than mere weakness and helplessness against temptation to sin. My sinful nature is totally depraved.
There is nothing good in us, that is, in our sinful nature. There is no power to resist Satan’s temptations to put our stomachs before God’s Word. There is no desire to trust God’s love and protection and not put it to the test. I have no natural ability to serve God rather than bow down and serve evil. Jesus knows how powerful those temptations are we face because Jesus took the battlefield against Satan on our behalf. The writer to the Hebrews tells us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are-yet he did not sin.” [4:8]
As we recognize and confess our covetousness, anger, pride, lust, false belief, despair and other great and shameful sins, and our helplessness to overcome them, we see Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness for what it is. There Jesus took the battlefield against Satan on our behalf. There, Jesus as our Substitute and perfect Priest stood toe to toe with Satan. Jesus experienced the same twisted truths and appealing misrepresentations of what is good and right that Satan puts before us.
Jesus faced and overcame our temptations to commit evil and omit love. Jesus’ victory over Satan is our victory through faith.
Jesus’ temptation was part of our Savior’s active obedience to earn perfect righteousness under the law. Jesus crushed the power and condemnation of Satan’s temptations to sin. The Holy Spirit reveals and offers Jesus’ righteousness in the gospel and imputes it to us as he creates and sustains saving faith in our hearts.
Throughout the month and ten-day temptation, the devil urged our Lord repeatedly to forsake his heavenly Father’s will. He tried to get Jesus to doubt his Father’s love for him. After all, look what humiliation the Father had asked his Son already to suffer just by becoming a man. The devil like a roaring lion prowled around Jesus, circled Jesus in his hunger and aloneness.
Then, in a final assault, Satan tempted Jesus to the sins of self-doubt, self-pity, and to be self-serving. However, Jesus was ready for those temptations as he had been the previous days. Remember that these three temptations are only the last three and typical of the others Jesus had faced.
They were temptations to self-doubt, “If you are the Son of God;” self-pity, “Turn these stones into bread, and stop being hungry;” and be self-serving, “Throw yourself down so God can prove his love by saving you, and then enjoy all the riches of the world by worshiping me.”
Jesus resisted the devil’s lies and used the power of God’s Word to overcome them. Jesus took the battlefield against Satan on our behalf. Jesus teaches us that we must use the truth and power of God’s Word to overcome Satan’s urgings to do what God commands us not to do. At the same time, Jesus never stopped loving his God and trusting that Word. God’s Word is the truth that we use so we also do not fail to do what God commands us to do.
Jesus’ victory over Satan is our victory through faith. His weapon in the fight is the weapon we use in our fight as the devil like a roaring lion seeks to destroy us. Although Satan has no power over us in the power of Christ, we dare never underestimate his deceit and trickery. We dare never rely on a strength we do not have of ourselves but only our strength in Christ, and as we wield the Sword of the Spirit, the Word of God.
When I foolishly listen to Satan and doubt my relationship with God; or, I begin to believe he is not giving me my daily bread, or will save me even if I step in front of a moving train; or, I exchange wealth for worship of God, I know my Father forgives me because Jesus overcame those temptations and offered up that holiness on his cross.
When Satan attacks, with Jesus, I use God’s Word and Satan will have to flee from me as he did from Jesus. Jesus’ willingness to take the battlefield against Satan on our behalf is a startling headline in the Scripture. However, it is the headline that declares my victory in Christ. <Amen>