Sermon 3-23-25

Pastor Ray Lorthioir

Trinity Lutheran Church

W. Hempstead, NY

The Third Sunday in Lent

The Fight For The Nations

For this Lenten series of sermons we’re looking at the key thing Jesus had to do in order to win salvation and deliver us from sin, death and the power of the devil. As we know, atonement for human sin was a great part of Messiah’s work. However, there was one even more important thing Jesus had to do to make Messiah’s atonement for human sin effective. And that one more important thing was not to do something. It was not to do what Satan and Adam had done — namely grasp at equality with God.

Scripture does not give us a lot of detail concerning Satan’s fall into sin — where, when and how. However, if we examine how Satan successfully tempted Adam and Eve into sin, and how he attempted to tempt Jesus into sin, we can reverse engineer — so to speak — how it happened for Satan. We can also see what Jesus had to avoid doing in order to successfully fulfill His role as Messiah.

In our previous looks at Yahweh’s action in creation, we have seen from Genesis chapter one that when Yahweh finished His initial creation on earth He not only considered it good, but very good. In other words, it was just the way He wanted it. We have to remember that the present version of the creation that we live in has fallen under His judgments because of human sin and it’s not the way He originally intended it. But that’s another discussion.

We’ve also seen that in the act of creating, Yahweh made specific choices out of the unlimited number of possibilities open to Him. We live in a universe of atomic particles that comprise atoms, that comprise elements, that can combine into compounds, that can combine into molecules, that can combine into DNA and that can bring forth life. Yahweh could have done it some other way. But He chose this way. And this is what He wanted. All the other ways He rejected. They are what He didn’t want.

Now does Yahweh know about all the things He didn’t want? Of course. However, because Yahweh has a righteousness and integrity unimaginable to us sinners, there is no way that what He didn’t want is ever going to enter into His character or His actions. It’s unimaginable for us because we sinners wind up doing things we really didn’t want to do all the time. On the other hand, Yahweh stays true to Himself in ways that we can only dream about. There is no darkness in Him at all.

Now, when Yahweh created human beings, He scripted an existence for us. For example, male and female, sexuality, marriage and family are part of that script. We see this in the first two chapters of Genesis — the chapters before Adam and Eve fell into sin. We know from Jesus’ teaching in Matthew chapter nineteen and Mark chapter ten that divorce was not part of Yahweh’s original script for us. Yet, it’s a reality of human life. And in more recent years it’s been fashionable to confuse male and female. How did all this happen? Jesus said it’s because of our “hardness of heart.” Well, how did that happen? It happened when Adam and Eve went off Creator Yahweh’s script for human beings. They were deceived into doing so by Satan, who Himself went off Yahweh’s script for whatever type of spiritual being he is.

From Genesis chapter three we know how Adam and Eve went off script. By eating of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they took hold of a right that only righteous Yahweh has in His creation. And that’s the right to define what is good and what is evil. In other words, they made the choice to play God. In doing so, they parted company with righteous Yahweh and His righteousness. They became free to determine a “righteousness” for themselves. There was only one problem. They themselves were no longer righteous as Yahweh is righteous. Therefore, they easily mixed what Yahweh calls evil into their definitions of “righteousness.” These days we see some of the most bizarre aspects of this in the defense of the right of criminals to engage in criminality. However, we all mix evil into our thinking and behavior. The degree to which we do it doesn’t matter. In Yahweh’s script for us, we’re not meant to mix evil with good at all.

So, how do we know Yahweh’s definitions of good and evil? Yahweh’s definitions are found in every commandment and judgment found in both the Old and New testaments. When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment, he answered in Matthew 22:37-40, “37 . . . ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’” This is a summary of all of Yahweh’s laws and judgments found in both the Old and New testaments.

Being our own unrighteous gods, it’s impossible for us to love either Yahweh or each other as we’re meant to do. As Saint Paul complained in Romans 7:14-17, “14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” This is how we all go off script. And it all began when Adam and Eve were tricked into becoming their own gods by a created being who had tricked himself into being his own god.

Now, we know from the strange circumstances of His birth that Jesus was and remains the only human being ever born on earth without this Original Sin. Jesus was not a slave to sin. He was not forced by Original Sin to play God — which, of course, is ironic in that He also is God, Yahweh, the Son. Again we come back to the verse of that ancient hymn that lauds Jesus this way: Philippians 2:6-7, “6 [Jesus,] though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant. . . .”

He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped. That was the key to regaining Yahweh’s righteousness for humanity. For grasping after equality with God was the thing that plunged us all into the darkness of sin. As long as Jesus did nothing to grasp at equality with God, His mission as Messiah would be successful. Satan knew this. Therefore, Satan’s attacks against Jesus were precisely at this point. Get Jesus to grasp equality with God and it would be game over. Satan would be lord over humanity forever. Therefore, in order to not grasp equality with God, Jesus had to remain Yahweh’s servant in this life. We’ll see today how Jesus successfully did this a second time by resisting the angel who wants to be God.

This week, we’re still in the wilderness with Jesus. Last week we saw Satan come up to Jesus with what looked like a very innocent proposal. After that gargantuan forty day fast, it was time to eat. You’re the Son of God, right? If so, you have the power to turn a stone into a loaf of bread. Right? Why not do it and satisfy your hunger? In response, we saw Jesus quote Deuteronomy 8:3 in Matthew 4:4 “But he [Jesus] answered, ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’”

In other words, there is nothing in Moses and the Prophets predicting that Messiah will turn stones into bread. As we saw last week, Moses and the Prophets prophesied that Messiah would do miracles with bread, but not with stones.

So, today we move on to the second wilderness temptation of Jesus as found in Luke 4:5-7, “5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ 8 And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.”’”

This temptation was more sophisticated than it looks. We begin with these verses from the English Standard translation. Deuteronomy 32:7-9, “7 Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you. 8 When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. 9 But the LORD’S portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.”

Genesis 11:1-9 tells us that Yahweh divided humanity into nations and peoples at the Tower of Babel where He confused human language and dispersed people all over the earth. This is the event that the verses in Deuteronomy refer to. But Deuteronomy 32:8 adds this important point. When Yahweh scattered the nations, He put them under the authority of spiritual beings that Scripture calls the Sons of God.

Now, a technical note here. In translating Deuteronomy 32:8, the English Standard Version follows the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy found in the Dead Sea Scrolls — dated at approximately 100B.C. — and the 300B.C. translation of the Hebrew text into Greek known as the Septuagint. On the other hand, most English bibles translate this verse from the Hebrew text known as the Masoretic text. The oldest known copy of this text dates to 1,009 A.D. And, there’s a difference in the Masoretic text. In verse 8, instead of the “Sons of God,” it reads the “sons of Israel.” Therefore, the scholars who translated the English Standard Version decided to go with the older version of the text found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And this decision makes good sense for a variety of reasons that we don’t need to get into here. Suffice it to say that the reading, “the Sons of God,” helps us make much more sense of the interaction between Jesus and Satan in this temptation about the nations.

The late theologian, Dr. Michael S. Heiser, did significant work on the role of the Sons of God in ruling the nations. Using Psalm 82 and other passages of Scripture, he pointed out that the Sons of God appointed over the nations rebelled against Yahweh. They led the nations away from the worship of Yahweh and into the worship of themselves as gods. This is how the entire ancient world became lost in idolatry and polytheism.

By the time of Jesus, Israel was the only nation on earth that worshipped Yahweh for who He is, the sole Creator of the universe and everything in it; the one and only God. All the other nations worshipped false gods. And in case you’ve missed it, all these recent strange cultural happenings in the West are part of an attempt by the gods to undo millennia-old Christian devotion to the true God and get us back into Neo-idolatry. Some of these cultural trends are very difficult to explain in any other way.

In any event, it’s established history that all the nations of the world worshipped idols in antiquity. All the nations had abandoned the worship of Yahweh. And Yahweh had abandoned them. He only held fast to Israel. And even Israel had a thousand year struggle vacillating between the worship of Yahweh and the worship of the false gods of the peoples around them. So by the time of Jesus, Satan had control of all the nations, except Israel, through idolatry and polytheism.

But now we come to a prophecy found in Isaiah 49:1-6. This prophecy is a bit difficult to follow. For, it talks about a servant of Yahweh who is called Israel, but is also called the savior of Israel. Since Israel cannot save itself, the only proper way to interpret these verses is that they are speaking of Messiah. And in these verses Messiah is called by the name, Israel, the name that Yahweh gave to Jacob, the son of Isaac.

So, we read in Isaiah 49:5-6, “5 “And now the LORD says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him; and that Israel might be gathered to him — for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD, and my God has become my strength — 6 he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”’”

This is Messiah telling us the role Yahweh appointed for Him. He will not only save the people of Israel from their sins, He will bring back all the gentile nations to Yahweh. Indeed, St. Paul, the apostle to the gentiles, quoted this verse against his critics in Acts 13:47.

The important point here is that one task of Messiah is to win all the nations back to the worship of Yahweh. That’s the important point. And that’s the reason we’re all here today in this sanctuary, both Jew and Gentile. All of us Gentiles here today have ancestors who were pagans, going all the way back to the Tower of Babel.

Now, it’s apparent that Satan knew about the prophecy in Isaiah 49. Otherwise, why would Satan have brought Jesus up to a high mountain and shown Him all the kingdoms of the world, and offered to give them to Jesus, if only Jesus would worship Satan as god? Satan knew that Jesus was Messiah. He knew the prophecy that Messiah would bring the nations of the world back to Yahweh. From other passages in Moses and the Prophets, Satan knew it was Yahweh’s plan that Messiah Jesus would rule the nations of the world.

Now, Moses and the Prophets are quite clear that Messiah would not rule the nations until He had suffered and made atonement for all. However, to this day, the clarity of Scripture on this matter is entirely hidden from all those without the Holy Spirit. We can assume, therefore, that Satan was not entirely aware of the path to the cross that Jesus needed to follow as Messiah. Nevertheless, in this second temptation, Satan made Jesus an offer based on Isaiah 49. 

In effect Satan said to Jesus, “I know you are the Messiah destined to rule the nations. However, there are two ways to reach your destiny. The road Yahweh has planned for you is quite difficult. You will have to wrest control of the nations from me and the Sons of God under my control. But there’s a much easier way. I offer it to you now. Become my Messiah. Honor me as your God and worship me. In return I will put the nations under your authority. As their true Messiah, you shall lead the nations in devotion to me, their true God. Join me in reaching for equality with Yahweh. Join me in dispossessing Yahweh. Join me in dismissing Him as God. It’s a much easier road.

It was a brilliant offer. If Jesus had taken it, all would have been lost. Hell and evil would have been our eternal destiny. However, as we read, Jesus replied, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’” Here Jesus quoted from two places. One is Deuteronomy 6:13-14, “13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. 14 You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you. . . .” The other is 1Samuel 7:3, “And Samuel said to all the house of Israel, ‘If you are returning to the LORD with all your heart, then put away the foreign gods and the Ashtaroth from among you and direct your heart to the LORD and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.’”

Notice in both cases Israel was not only directed to worship Yahweh, they were directed to forsake devotion to all the gods of the other nations and ignore those gods. By speaking these two verses, Jesus threw down the gauntlet to Satan. He would follow Isaiah 49 to the letter and not fall for any deceptive shortcut. Jesus would redeem even the nations and bring them back to Yahweh. Jesus, the man, would serve and do the bidding of Creator Yahweh alone.

The apocryphal book of 1 Enoch tells us that Yahweh punished a group of the Sons of God who came down to earth before the flood of Noah. These Sons of God are spoken of in Genesis 6 as disobedient ones who were somehow able to impregnate human females and have giant children by them. 1 Enoch tells us that Yahweh finally imprisoned this group for their disobedience. Interestingly, both Peter and Jude reference this event. We read in 2Peter 2:4, “. . . God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment. . . .” And we read in Jude 1:6, “And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. . . .”

But most important, we read in 1Peter 3:18-20, “18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah. . . .” Based on these verses we say in the Apostles Creed that the first thing Jesus did upon successfully dying on the cross was to descend into Hell. It was there and to these imprisoned angels that Jesus first showed Himself as the victorious Messiah — the one who had conquered them and their mastery over humans. Their mastery over us had been in the form of idolatry and polytheism.

So, the first thing Jesus did as a resurrected, immortal human was to mock Satan for this second temptation in the wilderness. Rather than taking the easy path and writing His own script for being Messiah, Jesus followed the script written for Him in Moses and the Prophets. He went to the cross. Thus, He fulfilled Isaiah 49 becoming Messiah of the nations. And to this day that prophecy continues to be fulfilled as Messiah’s Kingdom continues to advance, even into nations once lost in idolatry and polytheism.

As for us, our salvation was made certain by Jesus’ resistance to this temptation. For, once again, Jesus did the most important thing He had to do. He refused to write His own script as Messiah. Instead, He humbled Himself and became Yahweh’s servant. 

One last thing. The passage we’ve been quoting from in Philippians begins this way: Philippians 2:5, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. . . .” Paul means that in the Christian life, we’re to have the very same mind as Jesus — not to write our own scripts but to be the Lord’s servants. Such a thing is possible for us sinners because Jesus won the battle for us and has poured out on us His Holy Spirit. He calls us to follow Him. Amen.

All Bible quotes are from the ESV.