Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord
Jesus Christ! Amen. Today Jesus resists the devil by the power of the Word,
repeatedly insisting, "It is written; it is written; it is written."
Dear Christian friends,
On the day you were baptized, God gave you:
1. the forgiveness of all your sins (Acts 2:38, 22:16) by washing all
your sins away in Jesus' perfect blood. This forgiveness of all your sins
never diminishes and never fades, but it remains whole and constant and
complete for you until the day you die and go to heaven, where you will no
longer need forgiveness.
2. the gift of eternal life (John 3:5, Titus 3:7) by joining you to
Christ's own death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5). This eternal life is
fully and completely yours, and it may be said of you that you will never
die (John 11:26).
3. salvation (Mark 16:16, Titus 3:5, 1 Peter 3:21), which means that no
enemy, no temptation, no struggle, no sorrow, no persecution, and no disease
can destroy you. St. Paul is talking about to God's miracle of Baptism when
he says to you, "I am sure that [nothing]. in all creation, will be able to
separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans
8:38-39).
In addition to these powerful, death-defying gifts of Christ that your God
gave to you when you were baptized, the devil was also there at your
Baptism. The devil gave you something as well, but unlike those things your
God gave you at your Baptism, what the devil gave is NO GIFT. Luther put it
this way: "Every Christian. from his baptism onward is saddled with the
devil who harasses [that Christian] as long as he lives" (Klug, vol. 1, p.
313).
The devil has a very good reason for wanting to put a saddle on you at your
Baptism, so that he can ride you around for the rest of your earthly days.
The devil saddled you in this way because he wants to do everything he can
to separate you from your Lord Jesus Christ and the great gifts that were
given to you in Baptism. From this good position in his saddle, your
bitterest enemy can relentlessly attack you and seek to destroy you.
First the devil tugs at your reins, so to speak, trying to divert your
attention away from your Christ and your Baptism, and hoping to get you
interested in other things. The devil will throw his whole weight into
pulling on your reins, trying to turn your gaze toward money problems or
family worries or bodily temptations. This bitter enemy of yours does not
really care where you focus your attention, so long as it is not on your
Christ and your Baptism.
Where this fails, the devil digs his heels into you, trying to create in you
a sense of hardship or panic that seems like it is more than you bear. In
this way, he hopes to make you bolt, so that you lose your head and run
pell-mell away from the forgiveness and life your Christ has given to you.
But the devil is not given to using only brute force or terrors of
conscience to turn you away from your Christ. The devil also likes to lean
way over in his saddle and whisper to you. He has lots of things to whisper:
1. You don't need to be regular in your worship life. Lots of Christians
completely avoid preaching and the sacraments, and they do so for years on
end! They still call themselves Christian, don't they?
2. You don't need to vote against abortion. Lots of Christians advocate
abortion, and they are none worse for it.
3. For that matter, you don't need to concern yourself with any of the
Ten Commandments, much less the creeds or the Lord's Prayer. Hasn't Jesus
given His life to set you free from such laws as these?
4. Go ahead! Why shouldn't you indulge the temptations of your
flesh-your drunkenness or your bodily lusts or your self-infatuation? Hasn't
God already forgiven you of all these things?
5. You are a child of God! Hoard your money as if you were royalty!
Covet more, as if all should belong to you! Why should you worry about
serving others? Let others serve you!
With such goading and whispering, the devil can make the most poisonous
grasses look good to eat, and he can make deadly serpents seem as harmless
as a piece of rope laying on the ground.
As soon as Jesus was baptized, He "was led up by the Spirit into
the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." If today's Gospel shows us that
not even our dear Lord Jesus can avoid getting saddled by the devil in His
Baptism, it also shows us a very good way of dealing with our malicious and
deadly rider.
A. Think about those ponies the little children like to ride at the
State Fair. Those horses have become so accustomed to walking the same path
every day that it does not matter how hard the child may kick or pull or
call: that horse will not leave his path. The horse just keeps walking along
as if there were no little terror on his back throwing a tantrum.
In the same way, Jesus teaches us to keep walking in the path
(Psalm 17:5, 35:4) He Himself laid out for us in our Baptism, no matter how
the devil may pull at our reins. Jesus will not focus on the seriousness and
the poverty of His physical condition, Instead, when the devil yanks the
reins, Jesus yanks back: "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
B. When I was a young boy, I had a Shetland Pony named Blue. One day,
after I had trotted Blue a short distance out of the barn. After I got her
out a certain distance, Blue wheeled on me, dashed back to the barn, and
stuck her nose in the grain bin. There was nothing I could do about it.
In the same way, dear friends, you and I have no business at all going out
and grazing on the world's deadly ideas concerning abortion or sexuality or
worship or anything else. Get back into the barn and keep your snout in the
grain bin of God's living and powerful Word. There and only there is where
your nose belongs! There is nothing the devil can do about it. "Again it is
written, 'You shall not put the Lord Your God to the test.'"
C. My family also had a Pinto named Willie. Each and every time my
father climbed into Willie' saddle, that horse would immediately find the
nearest wall or fencepost or tree, rub up against it with all his strength,
and wipe my dad right out of the saddle again.
In the same way, Jesus crushed up against the devil and rubbed him
out of the saddle in today's Gospel by using the powerful Word of God, which
the devil finds too painful to enjoy: "Be gone, Satan! For it is written,
'You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.'"
The point is this, dear Christians: the devil may have put a
saddle on when you were baptized, and he may indeed plan on sitting there in
the saddle for the rest of your days, continually tempting and assailing
you. He does not need to enjoy the ride.
God's living Word does more than exert its power within you (1 Thessalonians
2:13), giving you faith, hope and love of Christ. God's living Word also
exerts its power for you (Ephesians 6:11). God's Word guards you and it
protects you and it preserves you against all things harmful to
you-including your most bitter and hateful enemy the devil.
We can learn from Christ's encounter with Satan how to deal with and
overcome this adversary [the devil], so that he is forced to let us go.
However, this happens only through true faith in God and his Word (Ibid.)
May our almighty and most merciful God grant to you and to me
alike the on-going true faith He implanted within us at our Baptism; the
continuously nourishing and green grass of His preaching and His Holy
Communion; and finally, when our last hour comes, freedom from the saddle.
This He shall do and more, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts
and minds through Christ Jesus. Amen.
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