Sermon Audio

“Lead us not into temptation,” we pray, and God tempts no one. Yet every one of us has been tempted, even the God-man, Jesus Christ. When we pray the petition, we’re not praying that temptations be done away with, but that they would not lead us astray, into “false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.” Many a theologian has also suggested that temptations are beneficial, that God allows them for our benefit; after all, “[A]ll things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Temptations are part of humanity. They happen deep within, asking those “what ifs” and weighing the consequences. What is it worth to do this thing? Do the ends justify the means? Do the positives outweigh the negatives? Is the punishment for transgression worth the joy that transgressing will bring? Temptation is testing the boundaries, pushing them out, nudging against the line, sticking a toe across it.

I have heard temptation compared to the tasty worm dangled in front of the fish. If the fish takes the bait, it’s hooked and dead. If you give in to temptation, you’re going to be like the fish: hooked and dead. Such was the case with Adam and Eve—they ate that tasty looking fruit, and as God warned them, they would surely die. They walked the earth for a while, but haven’t been seen in millennia.

Being fully man, Jesus also faced temptation. The Gospels tell us of one time in specific, where, as we heard today, “Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him.” Immediately after His divine nature is confirmed in the voice that thundered from heaven, His human nature is put to the test as He is driven to the wilderness—“cast out into the wilderness” it can be more accurately translated—where He fasts, spends time among the wild beasts, and is tempted by Satan.

What the devil did with Eve, he gets to try on the Son of God and Son of Man. “Did God really say? What boundaries to you have, ‘Jeee-sus’?” It’s the same things we face every day, tempted right to the heart. James would have us know that God cannot be tempted by evil (cf. James 1:13), but here, in humility, He hides His divine nature to be tempted in His humanity. That should give one pause: this was God as Man being tempted by the devil.

Jesus was tempted as we are, but He gets it full blast. While we are all tempted, and, from time to time, are tempted at a weak point to the point of succumbing, that was not the case with the Son of Man. He gets it all from the devil, full force, stronger and stronger, more than we have ever known, and all the while, responds, “No.” Mark alludes to Christ’s victory over temptation in the short two verses He devotes to the temptation of our Lord and following, for after being ministered to by angels, Jesus shows up in Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Forty days is significant, too. For forty years, Israel wandered in the wilderness before crossing the Jordan into the promised land. Here, Jesus reverses that exodus. Israel failed in their exodus temptations, giving in time and time again to one whim or another. Jesus, Israel reduced to One, returns to the exodus wilderness to correct the errors, to do it right this time, for 40 days.

So Jesus does the Israel thing all over again, but He’s not in the wilderness simply for Israel, to fix what went wrong with the troupe that followed Moses out of Egypt. Jesus is called the second Adam; He is what humanity was supposed to be. He is cast out in the wilderness by the Spirit for all humanity, to do correctly what went wrong the first time humanity met with the great Deceiver.

And so, the battle prophesied in Genesis 3 takes place as the first act of Jesus’ post-baptismal ministry. Here is the heal bruiser trying to do to the Head Crusher what He did to Adam and Eve, and he fails miserably. Jesus is victorious in the wilderness, just as He would be some three years later as He hung on a cross. There, He faced temptation, too, and overcame, “If You are the Son of God, come down from the cross." (Matthew 27:40b) Funny, these temptations, three years apart, are both designed to do the same thing: remove Jesus from the cross. Yet, in the post-baptismal wilderness, Jesus stayed the course and kept His eyes fixed on Jerusalem and the cross, where, three years later, He remained on the cross, though He surely, as the Son of God, could have easily removed Himself. Both times, our Lord overcomes temptation for you, to be the perfect man for you.

You know how temptations go. The scene in Genesis is familiar to us, for the very things that happen to Adam and Eve happen to us. We may not hear the voice of the serpent asking, “Did God really say?” but the wheels of doubt are always turning. Something looks appealing, others do it without the fear of danger and, as it appears, without the effect of any danger, too, and it looks and feels right (so it can’t be wrong, right?). So the question is raised, “There is so much going for this thing, did God really say, ‘Thou shalt not...’?”

The serpent dangled the lure in front of Eve, and she bit. She picked some fruit, ate, and gave some to Adam who was silently standing by her. There’s a saying: “Misery loves company;” actually, it should go, “Sin wants a partner,” because, “Might makes right.” Adam, without protest, ate just as Eve did. Rev. Bill Cwirla ponders,

I sometimes wonder if Adam waited a split second; did he wait to see if Eve actually would die from eating? And when she didn’t, he must have thought that God didn’t meant what He said. Adam bit too. A partnership was forged against God. It just takes one, and many follow.

“Might makes right,” indeed... Eve did die, the curse was pronounced and enforced. Adam did, too. So has everyone born of Adam and Eve since. The earth is littered with the dust of many-a man who was born, succumbed in their Old Adams to the temptations faced, and like father Adam and mother Eve before, died.

We each have our Adam and Eve moments. We see that forbidden fruit, and we take some and eat. We succumb to the lie, we’re hooked, and we die—“Dust you are,” we heard Wednesday night, “and to dust you will return.” It’s so easy to miss it happening, too; all too often, the temptation is hardly recognized as a temptation, yet we still eat and die as did father Adam and mother Eve.

Therefore Jesus is cast out into the wilderness, still “wet behind the ears.” He goes to do what we cannot and will not do; He goes to resist temptation from the very source. He goes to do what we cannot and will not do simply because we cannot and will not do it. And, He gives you the victory over temptation, the temptation here in the post-baptismal wilderness and also as He hangs and dies on the cross.

He’s the new head of humanity, the second Adam. Where Adam failed, He will triumph. Where Adam fell, He will conquer. (Rev. Bill Cwirla)

It was heard on Wednesday and bears repeating today, for the connection between Adam and Jesus was again made in today’s sermon, a connection which St. Paul also notes:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned...But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many...For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ...For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12, 15, 17, 19)

We each struggle with Old Adam, the old man St. Paul refers to (cf. Romans 6:6, Ephesians 4:22, Colossians 3:19), that sinful nature inherited for being a descendant of Adam. For this, death spreads to all men. But there is a second Adam, the God-man Jesus Christ, through whom all are justified. Whoever believes in Him will not perish, but being justified, will live eternally. (cf. John 3:16)

Furthermore, if we inherit an imperfect humanity from father Adam, then through Christ, we are given a restored and perfected humanity. By the fall of Adam the image of God in which he was created was lost; we do not have it. But, for one in Christ, that image is restored, for Christ is the very image of the invisible God. (Colossians 1:15) This image is restored as one is brought to the water and the Word, sharing in the event that preceded Christ’s temptation, in which Christ identified with sinful humanity and was proclaimed the Son of God; for it is in Baptism that the Old Man is cast off, and through Baptism that he daily drowns, and by Baptism that God calls you His son, adopted and made a co-heir with his only-begotten Son. Now, He sees Christ, into whom you are Baptized, when He sees you.

And so, the proclamation is the same today as it was when Jesus appeared in Galilee following His victorious battle with Satan. “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Temptations always come alluring, and drag us through the mire and muck of sin. They leave us no way to save ourselves, but thanks be to God that He has provided the way out, proclaimed in the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for you and for all. When He proclaims, “Repent, and believe in the gospel,” He gives the faith to do so. And so, by the grace of those baptismal waters, we repent—our old man is continually drowned and put to death—and we again rise to newness of life, a newness that is found in the restored, re-perfected humanity that is Jesus Christ.

And so it is that we always pray, “Lead us not into temptation.” “Dear God, guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. We are always attacked by these things; therefore, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.” And God responds by telling you that you are always held by Him who gives you life, new life, through temptation, through your sin, through life and death, because you are in Christ. He conquered temptation, sin and death for you—He is victorious for you—and into Him you are baptized!

“Jesus lives, the victory’s won...” we sing during Easter, a truth in which we live every day in this post-Resurrection world. Thanks be to God that He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:57), a reality proclaimed to you in these words: you are forgiven for all of your sins.