Our Lord’s forty days in the wilderness weren’t a
vacation. It’s not like He went to Cancun to relax and enjoy a
little down-time. The Judean wilderness was exactly that –
wilderness: arid, hot, desolate, populated only by serpents,
spiders, scorpions and other wild animals. The wilderness was a
place of deprivation. It was a place of testing. There was
absolutely nothing in the wilderness to shelter you from the
harsher elements of nature and make your life easy.
Today’s Gospel reading says that after our Lord’s
Baptism, the Spirit immediately sent Him out into the wilderness,
that is, the desert. That word “sent” in the translation in your
bulletin is all wrong. It sounds like a mother sending her ten
year-old to the local convenience store for a gallon of milk. The
word “sent” is too polite, too everyday, too domesticated. It
doesn’t convey the starkly serious nature of what was about to
happen. A better translation would be to say that the Spirit
“drove” Jesus out into the wilderness. That captures the flavor
of the Greek verb ekballw,
which is what our Lord did whenever He confronted a demon – He
“ekballo-ed” the demon; He cast the demon out and said, in effect,
“Get lost!”
So with that in mind, look what happens right after
Jesus is baptized. After the heavens split apart, and the Spirit
descended on Him in the form of a dove, and a voice came from
heaven declaring, You are My beloved Son; with You I am
well-pleased – that’s when Jesus, you might say, reports
to work as the Son of God and the Savior of the world. It’s
ironic, when you think about it. Just minutes before, the Holy
Spirit had come to Jesus in the gentle guise of a dove to anoint
Him for His calling as the Messiah. But now the same Holy Spirit
turns fierce, drives Jesus out into the wilderness, slams the door
behind Him, and says in effect, I’ll see You at the end of
forty days.
And off Jesus goes into the desolate wilderness,
miles from food, water and all creature comforts. He goes there
as the Son of God who came to undo all that the Serpent did when
he tempted Adam and Eve to despise and disobey God’s commandment.
Our Lord goes there as the Son of God to face temptation as Adam
did, as Israel did in the wilderness, but with one big
difference. Where Adam failed, and where Israel failed, Jesus
would succeed. And He would succeed under the most adverse
circumstances imaginable. All the odds were stacked against Him.
But He beat the odds, and He did it for you and me.
By way of contrast, Adam in paradise had everything
he could have possibly wanted – sweet, succulent fruit, a
beautiful home, and a perfect climate. And yet despite all these
advantages, Adam still yielded to temptation. He said “yes” to
the devil and “no” to God, and by his disobedience brought sin and
death and condemnation screaming down upon all his descendants.
And after the Exodus, the people of Israel seemed
to have all the advantages on their side too. They had seen God’s
mighty hand at work freeing them from Pharaoh’s tyranny. They’d
seen how the Lord God had parted the Red Sea and brought them
across on dry land. They’d heard the Lord’s voice shake the
ground at Mt. Sinai when He gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.
And yet despite all these proofs of God’s power, they too failed
miserably. They grumbled against God. They worshipped an idol.
They despised God’s commandments and indulged in sexual immorality
with pagan women.
And now, here comes Jesus into the wilderness, to
face temptation just as Adam did, just as Israel did. Everything
is riding on Jesus. If He says “no” to God and “yes” to
temptation, the last, best hope of our fallen human race goes down
the drain. To be our Savior, Jesus had to obey His heavenly
Father. He had to obey from the heart, not grudgingly, not just
going through the motions as we so often do, not giving mere
lip-service to God while He really wants to be doing something
else. All the eyes of heaven, and all the eyes of hell, are fixed
on Jesus during His forty days of temptation. Our eyes need to be
upon Him too, for as the Scripture says, He was tempted in
all points as we are, yet without sin. . . . Because He Himself
suffered when He was tempted, He is able to help those who are
being tempted. So, come, let us fix our eyes on
Jesus, the Author and Perfector of our faith. That’s why
you’re here today, I hope. To fix your eyes on Jesus, your
Savior, present for your salvation in Word and Sacrament, as the
One who makes your forgiveness and salvation a reality.
Just the facts, ma’am. That’s Mark’s way of telling
the Gospel. No embellishments, just the simple, straightforward
facts. Jesus was in the wilderness forty days, enduring
temptation from Satan – that’s what Mark wants us to know. You
have to look at Matthew and Luke to find out what that temptation
involved. Turn these stones into bread, Jesus, the devil
suggests. Forget this fasting nonsense
and satisfy your hunger. After all, if You’re really the Son of
God, you can do it with just a word.
But Jesus says “no” to Satan. He says that living
by God’s every Word is more important than satisfying His hunger.
God’s Word and will is that He, God’s Son, resist temptation -- so
Jesus won’t give an inch to the devil.
So the devil tries something else:
If You really are God’s Son, then let’s see how
well He’ll take care of you. Throw yourself down from the temple
roof, and see if He sends His angels to catch You before You splat
onto the pavement below.
Again Jesus says “no” to Satan. Jesus isn’t in the
wilderness to put God to the test. He’s in the wilderness to be
tested, to be proven as the Christ, the Savior, the Son of God.
He’s there, the book of Hebrews says, to be perfected as our
Savior by the things He suffered. Before Jesus could go
to the Cross to die for the sins of the world, He had to endure
and resist temptation. He had to stop His ears to sin’s siren
call. He had to resist the devil with every fiber of His being.
How could He possibly be our Savior if He once said “yes” to sin?
If He once said “no” to God? Our Lord obeys God as part of His
work of saving us.
The devil had one last ace up his sleeve.
Okay, Jesus, so You’re the Savior of the world?
Well, you don’t have to go to the Cross to gain dominion over this
world. I’ll give it to you now. It’s been handed over to me and
I can give it to anyone I want. All You’ve got to do is bow down
and worship me, and it’ll all be Yours. No Cross. No pain. No
sweat.
One more time Jesus says “no” to Satan. It’s a
resounding, cosmic “no” that He speaks. It shakes the foundations
of our fallen universe and alerts the hosts of hell that the Lord
of creation has come to take back what’s properly His. It’s the
“no” that Adam and Eve should have spit in the serpent’s scaly
face back in Eden. They didn’t do it though, so Jesus had to do
it. Jesus’ “no” to Satan is His perfect “yes” to God. As God
become Man Jesus lets the devil know that He will worship
the Lord God and serve Him only.
Jesus’ whole life is a life of worship. When He
resisted the devil, He was worshipping His Father in heaven. When
He preached the Gospel, He was worshipping His heavenly Father.
When He cast out demons, and healed the sick, and raised the dead,
He was worshipping. When He submitted to His Father’s will in
Gethsemane and consented to drink the cup of suffering and wrath,
He was worshipping God. When He was stricken and smitten by the
tortures that sinful men afflicted upon Him, He was worshipping
God. When He willingly went to the Cross to bleed and suffer and
die as the one sacrifice that pays for all your sins, and all my
sins, He was worshipping His Father in heaven.
You might say that our Lord’s ‘yes” to the Cross
began in the wilderness when He said “no” to Satan. You who have
been baptized into His sufferings and death, are to rejoice in
Jesus’ “yes” to God and His “yes” to the Cross. By His “yes”
you’re saved. By His “yes” you’re forgiven. By His “yes” you’re
reconciled to your Father in heaven and made a member of His
family forever. Jesus’ “yes” gives you shelter and refuge as you
face temptation, as you struggle against the devil, the world and
your own sinful nature. Jesus’ “yes” to the Cross and to His
Father in heaven means that your sins are forgiven indeed. It
means that Baptism is the water of newness of life with God for
you, that you can eat the bread of heaven through the gift of our
Lord’s Body and Blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. What more
can we say to all these things but “amen,” which as the Catechism
reminds us means yes, yes, it shall be so. It shall be so
because of Jesus.
If God is for us, who can be against us?
today’s epistle asks rhetorically. The answer is “no one.” Because
of Jesus’ “yes” to God, you and I are now more than
conquerors through Him who loved us. God promises us –
and the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord make this
an absolute certainty – that neither
death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor
the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of
God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That’s the promise that sustains you and me during
our sojourn in the wilderness of this fallen world. That, quite
simply and plainly and bluntly, is why we’re to come to Bible
Study, the Divine Service, and the Lord’s Supper. After all, we
Christians don’t live by bread alone, but by every Word
proceeding from the mouth of God. We Christians live by
our Father’s Word of peace and life and forgiveness in Jesus our
Savior. When we come to hear and gladly learn our Father’s Word
we’re saying “yes” to God. When we come to eat and drink our
Lord’s Body and Blood we’re saying “yes” to God. It’s the “yes”
of submission and faith and trust. It’s the “yes” of those who
are forgiven and reconciled through the shed blood of Jesus. It’s
the “yes” of those who know that in the wilderness of this mad,
fallen, tottering world, all we have to lean upon at last is God’s
love for us in Christ Jesus.
That’s why we’re here. Not to be entertained, but
to be sheltered, protected, forgiven and restored. When God calls
us out of this world at the end of our lives we won’t be in the
wilderness any longer. But for now we are. So in humble faith,
we stick with Jesus. He survived His wilderness experience. He
will bring us through our wilderness too.
In Nomine Patris. . .
