Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ” Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’ ” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. Matthew 4:1-11

 

            By now we all are fully aware of what happened in the Superbowl a week ago.  All of us Patriot fans congratulate you Giant fans;  you truly were the best team out there last week and you deserve to be champions.  A historic ending to a historic season will have to wait for another year as the Giants certainly pulled an upset for the ages.  But in a way, they did not do anything unplanned.  No trick plays won the game for them; no unexpected calls gave them the victory.  In fact, the Giants did exactly what everyone knew they had to do to win and that was to keep Tom Brady flat on his back the entire game and never let the Patriot’s offense get going.   The reality is that everybody two weeks ago knew exactly what the Giants had to do to win the game.  The reality is that the Patriots had two weeks to prepare for what everyone  knew the Giants had to do to win the game.  And then we all watched for sixty minutes as the Giants did exactly what they had to do to win the game.

            Knowing what your opponent is up to is certainly one of the lessons that comes out of Matthew 4: 1-11.  The Devil tends to use the same game plan again and again in the way he deals with us.  His arsenal of weapons that fall under the theme “temptation” are so well known that today St. Matthew even uses the title, “The Tempter” for Satan.  So when St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 2:11 says to us regarding the devil: “We are not unaware of his schemes” he is telling us to be on alert for those times and those opportunities that Satan seeks to bring you and me down.  I call them the Four “D”s. 

            The First “D” which Satan loves to use against us as Christians is “Discouragement”.  Because of my involvement with our New England District of our Church Body I have the honor of knowing a lot of the congregations in our six states of New England and her pastors.  I know that a lot of them are discouraged, both Pastor and people.  Many of them struggle financially to make it;  many of them have conflicts in their midst.   Many Pastors deal with declining statistics;  membership rolls shrink, worship attendance drops, and we live in an environment which increasingly makes or tries to make Christianity irrelevant and meaningless to the way people live their lives.  I have heard the phrase, “What’s the point?” said many times to me by brothers in ministry or by laypeople sitting in the pews.  

That phrase must delight Satan in a perverted kind of way.  He thrives on discouragement.  He loves to hit Christians when they are in the wilderness just like he did Jesus in our text.  Because he is not all knowing and all powerful like God is Satan has to pick his opportunities to attack the Lord and the Lord’s people.  So he looks for times when we are down and walking in the loneliness of a wilderness.  Happy, contented Christians are rotten targets for his weapons.  Discouraged Christians who are overwhelmed by stress, exhaustion, and circumstances that bring them down are those he seeks out.  For when sickness or death become overwhelming he can ask us if God is really God and if God is really a loving God to us.  He can ask just like He did Jesus, “If you are the Son of God” or in your case, “If you are a child of God….then why?”  And he tries to turn life into a meaningless hopeless existence – and without the Lord that is exactly what it is.  I was listening to the radio the other night on the way home from Church.  The speaker was quoting the American philosopher H.L. Mencken.  And Mencken who had no strong belief in God was quoted as saying, “The problem of human life is not that it is a tragedy.  The biggest problem of living as a human being is that it is a bore.”  Satan loves to convince us that life is boring, meaningness, and without hope- and he uses discouragement as the launching pad for further attacks.

For the second “D” in his arsenal against us is “Desire”.  He knows that the human heart is always longing for something outside itself.  That is the way the human heart was designed.  When our Creator made us He put within us a desire to know God and to love God and to seek God out.  The human heart is never ultimately satisfied in itself.  Like the heart of God above it continually looks for something outside itself to focus upon.  Satan knows that and Satan knows that sin has clouded and destroyed man’s longing for fellowship with God.  So he tries to replace that desire with other things.  In our text it was food and it was kingdoms that the Lord Jesus was offered.  Satan even offered some spectacular special effects like a good Hollywood movie where Jesus could jump off a building and angels would appear and fireworks would go off and crowds would cheer – and there would not have to be any cross at all.  He takes very good things God has made such as food and trust in the Lord and honor and since he has no ability at all to create a single thing takes those things God has made for a good purpose and he perverts them. And he does it by tempting you and me to with desire to use the things that should have been devoted to the Lord and to our fellow man or to the care of Creation and to use it instead to satisfy our self-centered desires.  The end result of war and pollution, the destruction of the environment, the destruction of relationships and families, unwanted pregnancies, alcohol and drug addictions, AIDS, world hunger to name a few things have all been the result of unchecked desire.  And Jesus says, “No, only God can ultimately satisfy the longing of the human heart.”

The Third “D” among Satan’s weapons is “Deception”.  This is an old one that worked once in the Garden of Eden.  The Devil deceives.  He tries to convince us of things that aren’t true.  Because we sometimes find ourselves in the wilderness; and we will this side of heaven—Satan immediately draws the conclusion that we therefore must not be sons and daughters of God.  And he is not above even using the Word of God to deceive us.  For example, in today’s text Satan actually quoted Psalm 91 when he was trying to get Jesus to leap from the Temple and reveal Himself as the Messiah for all to plainly see.  It is true that Psalm 91 does say that God will command his angels concerning us and that on their hands they will bear us up let we strike our foot against a stone.  But Satan did not read the entire Psalm to Jesus.  If he did he would have had to also quote the words, “Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place… no evil shall be allowed to befall you…. Because he holds fast to me in love I will deliver him.”  All of those verses apply to the man or woman who puts his or her trust in God alone and clings to God in the midst of the storms of life.  Satan was asking Jesus to abandon God and force God’s hand which was exactly the opposite of what Psalm 91 really said.  But that’s the kind of deceiver he is.  How many people in this world hurt others and kill others and war on others and they think they are serving God above when they do it?  This world’s history is full of episodes where in the name of God the most horrible atrocities were committed.  That’s deception! The basic creed of Mormonism is that one day every man may actually become a God;  as they put it, “As man is, God once was.  What God is man may one day become.”  Where did I hear that line before? I think it went something like, “Your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  That’s deception.

The Fourth “D” is “Division”.   When I was reading Caesar’s Gallic Wars, that ancient Latin text written by Julius Caesar one of his military tactics was the famous “Divide and Conquer” idea.  Eighteen Centuries later Abraham Lincoln warned that a house divided cannot stand.  Satan knows that.  But the division he seeks is not just the one that pits man against man, although he no doubt loves watching that as he sits on the sidelines.  He ultimately seeks to divide us from God and God’s will.  That was the ultimate temptation Satan gave Jesus.  He knew where Jesus was heading.  Jesus had already spoken it to His disciples.  He was going to Jerusalem where He would be betrayed, arrested, handed over to the Gentile rulers, beaten and then crucified.  I cannot imagine waking up every day knowing not only that death was soon to be upon you but how horrible a death it was going to be.  Yet Jesus went on.  And Satan would do anything to stop that.  He had to somehow divide Father and Son on this one.  Otherwise his kingdom would surely fall and there could never be anything but eternal defeat for Satan and his allies.  Somehow, in any way, He had to get Jesus off that road that led to Mt. Calvary . 

So he offered him the provision of food in the wilderness that God the Father had denied Jesus; and remember it was in fact the Spirit of the Lord that had led Jesus into the wilderness in the first place according to St. Matthew.  Satan offered a spectactular light show at the Temple where cheering crowds could see him escorted from the pinnacle of the Temple itself on the wings of angels.  “You can still be the Messiah if that’s what you want Jesus.  But you don’t have to do it via a cross.  Do it my easy and far more glorious way – and at the same time we’ll together tell the Father above who’s boss here.”  He offered Jesus the world.  “Why save the world through a cross when you can own the entire world as my gift to you? Give up this stupid crucifixion idea!”

But here is where we come to the fifth “D”.  It is the “D” that Satan hates.  Because this last and final “D” stands for the word “Defeated.”  Jesus Christ defeated Satan for all time.  Every one of the temptations of the Devil which I assure you were real and were powerful, Jesus met head on.  He did it for you. To save you Jesus went hungry in the wilderness.  To save you Jesus avoided the glory that could have been his and the adoration of the crowds and the recognition of His Messiahship and He got to wear a crown of thorns instead.  To save you Jesus gave up all the kingdoms of the world.  He loved His Father to the end but St. John in the thirteenth chapter of His Gospel also says, “Having loved his own who were in the world He loved them to the end.”

Can you imagine the discussion in heaven between Father and Son?  “I need you to do something for me?” “What is it, Father?”  “I need you to give up heaven and to go away from me for a while.”  “How long?”  “Thirty three of their years.”  “Why?”  “I love them.  They are all headed toward hell.  It is the only way to save them.”  “But you’ll be with me, right, Father”.  “Yes, until the end at least.”  “Why?  What happens at the end?”  “They will reject you.  You will be whipped and beaten with pain you cannot imagine.  They will put a cross of wood on your torn and beaten shoulders.  They will spit in your face. They will laugh at you.  They will drive hard iron nails through your hands and feet.  You will gasp for breath.”  “But you will be with me, Father, right?” “No, I will put all of their sin upon you and I will utterly and eternally reject you.  I will absolutely forsake you.  But it is the only way I can be a just and holy God and save them.”  And Jesus said, “(gasp) All right.  I will do it.”

And Jesus did all that for you.  And now Satan sits in hell as the defeated one he is and always will be. And even though he roams the earth trying to devour and destroy as many as he can he knows that he has lost the battle forever and has lost the ability to tempt and overcome God forevermore.  And something else wonderful occurred.  On the third day, after all this suffering Jesus rose from the grave.

That is the hope for all of us who are in our wildernesses today.  We may have our smaller crosses to bear in life out here in the wilderness.  But the Lord is with us now.  And He points you and me to a brighter day that is coming for all of us and for all who died trusting in Jesus.  For Jesus Christ is the alternative to the wilderness.  There is no more exciting adventure on earth than living life as a Christian.  We have meaning and purpose and the goal of reaching heaven and taking as many of our loved ones with us as we can.  Every day when you wake up you do it with the Lord at your side and even if as the years go by our bodies fail the Bible says that we are one day closer to the day of our salvation. 

Don’t forget what Jesus once said.  He said, “The Gates of Hell shall not prevail.”  We forget that gates in Jesus’ day were defensive things.  Gates were designed to try and keep out the invader.  We often think that Satan is on the offensive.  But he is holed up in hell trying his best to keep Jesus from entering and destroying what little he has.  Well I’ll tell you this.  On Easter Sunday Jesus descended to Hell and He kicked the door in on that pig.  He knocked the gate right off it’s hinges.  And right now in this world the Church of Jesus Christ is on the move and Satan knows we’re coming for him.  His days are numbered and he knows it.  Be encouraged saints of God.  It’s almost over and the party is almost ready to begin.  Until then, the Lord is with you, don’t be discouraged by the wilderness and know that He who did not spare His own Son for you but gave Him up for us all, how will He not give us all things in Christ Jesus our Lord.   For we are more than conquerors through Him Who loved us. Amen.