THE CHURCH IS THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE TEMPTED
Prayer: O blessed Redeemer, we thank You that You submitted to be tempted even as we are, yet without sin. We thank You for Your deep humiliation in prayer. We humbly ask You, in the hour of temptation, be with us, and teach us to pray, that we may overcome the Tempter and obtain the victory in Your power, for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. (Collect on Hebrews 4:14-16, The Lutheran Liturgy, companion to TLH)
The Sermon Text, St. Matthew 4:1-11 (v. 1). Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Lord, this is Your Word, and these are Your words. Sanctify us by the truth. Your Word is truth. By the word of the cross, bring us to heaven. Amen.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ, who was tempted for you:
It feels like the devil is trapping Jesus with these temptations. But actually, it’s the other way around. The Bible says, “The Son of God was manifested to destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8). He went to the wilderness purposely “to be tempted by the devil.” It was part of the plan for salvation: it says He “was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness” to be tempted by Satan.
Jesus didn’t “fall into” His time of temptation. He went there, straight from His baptism, in order to be tempted to sin, so He could defeat it. He went to meet the devil’s temptations. He did it for you. To help you.
This really defines what the church is, Jesus’ church, the Christian Church. It’s a fellowship. What kind of fellowship? Well, first it’s the fellowship of the baptized, all who are baptized. But just as Jesus’ baptism led right into His time of being tempted, what is the life of the baptized, the baptismal life? What happens when anyone is baptized is that now you have a target on your back from the devil, who wants to take you away from Christ. So the ”fellowship of the baptized,” the Christian Church, is the “fellowship of the tempted” – those who are always being tempted.
So we are the fellowship of the tempted. It’s what we all have in common. This really is the essence of the church on earth. The Church is what Christ has created, through His Holy Spirit, so that we all have somewhere to be together, and to come together, so that we who have fallen in our temptations can be helped, to be helped by Him.
The only way He can help us though, is not by being above us all so that His holiness and perfection taunts us with our failures by contrast with Him. Instead He came to be one of us. He came to “suffer, being tempted,” as it says in Hebrews 2:18, so that “He is able to help those who are tempted.”
That’s what this Bible account is showing us. When the devil came to Him, Matthew tells us, Jesus “was hungry.” This speaks of His needs as a true man. Jesus was suffering. The three temptations we read about weren’t the only temptations. Luke tells us Satan had been tempting Jesus throughout the 40 days. Jesus was also tempted to sin throughout His childhood and as a young adult. And He would be tempted constantly after this.
These three temptations came when Jesus was at His weakest physically. This emphasizes that He faced the devil in His humanity, without the aid of His power as God. These were real temptations. Without doing it this way, Jesus wouldn’t be able to help us who are tempted.
These temptations summarize our entire experience.
- The first one, “command that these stones become bread,”was the temptation to take care of His extreme hunger, so under this fall all the ways the devil tempts us with physical and material needs – self-serving wants and desires.
- The second one, to “throw Yourself down” from “the pinnacle of the temple,” is a temptation to demonstrate His power, so under this comes our desire to be praised, what pride and selfish ambition lead us to do.
- The third one, that if Jesus fulfilled a condition he would be given “all the kingdoms of the world and their [worldly] glory,”speaks to our preoccupation with success, or to how depressed we can be if we feel that it’s passed us by or we aren’t achieving what we hoped.
If we focus on the what of these temptations we have a long list. They aren’t limited to the three temptations Satan did to Jesus. Go through the Ten Commandments; you’ll come up with quite a list of temptations to sin. If you go by age group, from toddler to childhood to pre-teen to teen-ager to young adult and on up through the decades, there are different temptations for each stage of life. Doesn’t it wear you out, like Jesus was worn out?
You could say this is the devil’s goal. The tempting is only the first stage of his attack. After he gets you to yield to the temptation, he accuses you. The Bible calls him, “the accuser who accuses them day and night” (Rev 12:10). His goal is for you to listen to his accusations, even if they’re lies, so you’ll despair. If you read this gospel lesson carefully, you see that while the devil’s goal is to get Jesus to sin, at the same time he is trying to work Jesus toward despair.
Jesus had come here straight from His baptism, when He heard God say: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” We heard that last Sunday. The very next words after Jesus’ baptism are today’s verse 1: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” He had the baptism words, the name-of-God words, ringing in His ears: “This is My beloved Son.” Then the devil put something else into His ears: three times he said, “If You are the Son of God …”
The devil was attacking a certain part of Jesus’ flesh. As the Athanasian Creed says, Jesus has “a rational soul and human flesh.” The devil attacked Jesus’ human reason, His ability to reason things out. The devil reasoned with Jesus – not to believe the spoken Word. What spoken Word? Why, the Word the Father spoke at Jesus’ baptism.
It happened to Jesus, but reveals what happens to you. In baptism you were named by God as His child whom He loves. He put His name on you. You go into the world, after baptism, bearing the name of Christ. Having His name signed with the cross on your forehead and heart. “This is the sign which Satan’s legions fear and angels bow their faces to revere” (ELH 194 v. 3). But you don’t intimidate the devil. Temptations come to you and you end up doing the evil you don’t want to do, not doing the good you want to do as God’s child. You may become unsure if you are God’s child. You’re wounded by this.
But this is why Jesus went to the wilderness to be tempted; as we sing in Luther’s hymn today: “For us the one true Man doth fight.” Hebrews 4 says: “He was tempted in all points as we are, yet[was] without sin.” He was able to do what we can’t, because He didn’t have a sinful nature. His will could resist all the devil’s temptations. He met every temptation perfectly with the Word of God, each time picking out the perfect “It is written.” But He did this for you.
One thing Jesus was doing, even at this point, was establishing His Church. None of His disciples were there. He was alone. But He’s already establishing His Church as the fellowship of the tempted. It begins with Him. He was tempted. He remained without sin. He resisted every temptation, conquered the devil, and replaced the devil’s work with His holiness. This holiness and righteousness of His is now the gift that He has to give. Where does He give it? In His Church. How does He give it? By His Spirit and His Word –which Jesus used in the wilderness.
So now we’re here together, wounded people, scarred by the temptations and hurt by the sins that we fall into. We live in a wilderness that’s filled with temptations. You see the wounds of our being tempted, not just in the record of sins, but especially in the aftermath: the effect of the devil’s accusations. His goal is for you to walk around wounded; to be in constant turmoil in your conscience; to lose confidence; to want to distract from yourself by focusing on the sins of others, to be self-righteous and accusing, having a false confidence and sinful pride; but also the flip side of pride, which is despair – to see everything without hope.
But here in the wilderness Jesus has placed His Church. He gives His Church on earth – the fellowship of the tempted – His special authority to forgive the sins of all who repent, chiefly by calling pastors to do this. This is His Word, the Gospel, the word of pardon and forgiveness. If you doubt He forgives you, He says: “It is written” – written in His blood!
The Spirit, through the Gospel, gives you faith through this word, so you trust His word of forgiveness that it is true! – your sins are all forgiven. There goes everything the devil accuses you of, all evidence against you, there goes the despair. In His Church Jesus takes it all away, clears it all away.
That’s not all. In His Church as He pours into you the Holy Spirit and the Gospel, He is strengthening you against temptations and against despair. In fact, that’s what our Lutheran fathers said worship is: “faith fighting despair.” That’s what happens here. He’s arming you with His Word so that with His help you actively use the weapons of the Lord which do repel the devil – the shield, which is faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s Word.
You’re not in a 1-on-1 struggle with the devil and temptations. First, Christ who wins the victory is with you; as we sing: “still is He with us in the fight.” Not only that, but He places you with others who are tempted. He assembles us together here, around His Word, to be strengthened together. You should never feel ashamed to come to church. Everyone here is “the tempted” and has sins. Everyone comes to be forgiven. We confess together that we’ve sinned and need forgiveness. We receive it together. This is why we want to have the Lord’s Supper every time we are here: at His Table we are gathered together as the fellowship of the tempted, being forgiven. At His Supper we receive the forgiveness together, to be made one, we receive allies in the fight.
We’re the fellowship of the tempted – but also the fellowship of the forgiven. One day we’ll join those who are enjoying to the full the victory over temptation in heaven – who were tempted but have gained the victory. Amen!