Sermon 2-22-26

Pastor Ray Lorthioir

Trinity Lutheran Church

W. Hempstead, NY

Based on the Lessons for The First Sunday in Lent, Genesis 3:1-21; Romans 5:12-19, and Matthew 4:1-11.

No Equality With God

There are several categories of what Jesus did in His earthly ministry. First, there are His miracles, signs and wonders. All of these were designed to show one thing, He is Yahweh, the Son, incarnate in mortal flesh.

Second, there were Jesus’ teachings. These fall into several sub-categories. Prior to Peter’s confession Jesus’ message was repent for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand. On the repentance side, Jesus delved into a proper understanding of God’s Law and how we are unable to keep it because of Original Sin. In proclaiming the arrival of the Kingdom of heaven, Jesus subtly pointed to Himself as the King of heaven.

After Peter’s confession, Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah who would have to suffer and die for the sins of the world in order to emerge as the victorious, resurrected Messiah. But the apostles did not understand His teaching until Easter evening when Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit upon them.

Lastly, as Jesus ministry approached its climactic ending, Jesus prophetically taught the fate of Jerusalem and the Jewish nation. Finally, Jesus taught His apostles how to be His Church and how to grow His Church — the Kingdom of heaven on earth in the present age.

Third, and most important, there was the suffering and death Jesus endured on the cross to retake fallen humanity for Yahweh, so that we might be restored to the Image of God. Jesus’ sacrifice was Yahweh’s antidote for the triple catastrophes that befell humanity: first in the Garden of Eden, then when the Watchers — also known as the sons of God — came down and corrupted humanity, and finally for the event at the Tower of Babel.

By His suffering and death upon the cross, Jesus gained atonement for us before Yahweh. The blood of the Son of God satisfied Yahweh’s outrage and wrath against us by atoning for all the “damages” our Creator has suffered to His righteousness on account of our sin. This is known as propitiation — satisfying God. 

The blood of the Son of God also paid the penalty for sin that all of us deserve on account of sin. Therefore, because Yahweh’s Justice has been satisfied through the blood of Messiah, Yahweh is justified in forgiving the sin of all who call upon His Name for salvation. This is also known as expiation — the expulsion of sin out of our lives. For where there is forgiveness of sin, only righteousness remains before our Creator.

Now, in His suffering, death and resurrection, Jesus didn’t just restore the Image of God to humanity, by conquering sin, death and the devil. He restored the entire cosmos to righteousness by defeating all the rebels among the various species of spiritual beings Yahweh has created. This includes Satan and all his horde.

If you recall from Lent last year, we compared all this work of Jesus to a contest on a vast playing field. On one side we have this Galileean Carpenter who calls Himself the Son of Man. On the other side we have a horde of demons, fallen angels and their human stooges led by a spiritual creature who thinks he’s God. At the end of the contest we find out who the champion is — who is God and who is leader of the human race.

Like any other professional sport, we have to know what the rules of the game are. The playing field is the entire universe. However, all the action centers down on this little planet called earth. Initially the game was played on a small section of earth that was called the Garden of Eden.

Team humanity lost in a big way in the Garden of Eden. It was a devastating loss that to this day plagues everything, not only on this earth, but in the entire universe. Then, as now, the championship was at stake. Who would be God? Who would be the leader of the human race? Then as now, victory was measured in love, commitment, faithfulness, loyalty and freedom. At stake was the Image of God that Yahweh had bestowed not only on humans but on the spiritual creatures with which He has populated His creation.

In Genesis 3 we read of the Serpent’s interaction with Eve concerning the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Serpent made it clear to Eve that Yahweh was holding something back from Adam and Eve. And Yahweh was. It was the knowledge of evil. Being in the Image of God, Adam and Eve automatically ignored evil because they were made in Yahweh’s complete righteousness. Why did either of them need to know anything about evil?

Therefore, the Serpent had to deceive Eve into thinking that knowledge about evil was worth knowing because it would make her more like God. Also, since God does not die, the Serpent insinuated that because she would be more like God, Eve wouldn’t die. That was a flat out lie.

What the Serpent didn’t tell Eve was that by eating the fruit she would be expressing her hatred, disdain, unfaithfulness and disloyalty toward Yahweh, and the covenant between them of love and faithfulness would be broken. He also didn’t tell Eve that in eating of the fruit, she would not be able to resist evil, but would become a slave to it.

Genesis 3 tells us that Eve ate of the fruit of the forbidden tree. In some way she convinced Adam to also eat. We know this from what Yahweh said to Adam in pronouncing judgment upon him in Genesis 3:17, “. . . ‘you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, “you shall not eat of it . . .”’” When confronted by Yahweh with what she had done, Eve complained in Genesis 3:13, “. . . ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’” In other words, she had listened to the voice of a deceiving liar. And Yahweh agreed with her complaint.

This brings us to an important point about the contest. It’s all about words. Words. It’s about who is telling the truth. And it’s about whose word the contestants will believe. It’s about whose word you’ll believe. So, a large part of the contest is about Yahweh’s Word versus all other words.

The contest is also about Yahweh’s Love, Commitment, Faithfulness and Loyalty to us, and our need to return the same to Him. It’s about true freedom. It’s about the Image of God. It’s about true righteousness. It’s about Yahweh’s righteous will prevailing against everything in opposition to Him. It’s about Life and Death. Whoever wins the contest will live in eternal righteous Life with Yahweh. Whoever loses will die. And death won’t be just physical death. It will be what the Bible calls the Second Death.

The book of Revelation describes the Second Death as a lake of burning sulfur. But aside from the lousy climate, there is something far more significant about the place. Every being tossed into that lake will be separated from Yahweh and His righteousness forever. There will be no turning back. There will be no goodness of any kind in anyone or anything in that lake. Every being there will be condemned to play God and be their own god forever. And that’s why the place will be a 24/7 vicious marital fight/bar fight/gang war/holocaust/world war. If you think things get out of hand here on earth, you haven’t seen anything. For here on earth evil is restrained by Yahweh. He only allows the Hitlers, Stalins and Mao Ze Dungs of this earth to go so far. On the other hand, there will be no limit to evil in the Lake of Fire. For, Yahweh won’t go there to stop it. The Lake of Fire is to be truly feared, unless being your own god is what you truly desire. Then it will be “heaven.” It will be what you always wanted.

Now, there’s one more very important part of the contest: who will be God? Of course there’s only one answer to that. The actual Creator of this universe is the only one who can truly be God. However, human beings and whatever other spiritual creatures Yahweh created in His Image have a choice. We can either have Yahweh, our Creator, as our God, or some other god. Of course, thinking we can have some other god is a wild deception. And the problem with having some other god is that it ultimately results in having ourselves as our own gods. For, when Adam and Eve sinned, they shattered the Image of God in themselves. No longer were they wholly and completely tied to Yahweh’s righteousness. Sin forced them to be their own gods. Sin forced them into defining good and evil for themselves — something that only Yahweh has the right to do. Sin then forced them to act on their own definitions. By making them their own gods, Sin forced Adam and Eve to grasp at equality with God. And so, the choice Adam made has come to all of us. Original Sin forces all of us to be our own gods. It forces us to grasp at equality with God. And this is precisely what leads to the Second Death. Who will deliver us from these bodies of death?

This is precisely where Jesus comes into the picture. As Yahweh, the Son — conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary by the power of Lord Holy Spirit and born of a virgin woman — Jesus is the only human being without Original Sin who has ever walked this earth since Adam and Eve were created. In fact, as St. Paul explains in Romans chapter 5, Jesus came as the second Adam. Jesus came to undo what Adam had done. And in order to succeed where Adam had failed, there was one thing Jesus absolutely could not do — He could not grasp at equality with God.

This is weird because Jesus is God. He didn’t have to grasp at equality with God. However, when Jesus came incarnate in the flesh, He was and still is a true human being. As the real human being taking Adam’s place, Jesus absolutely had to resist grasping at equality with God. In order to undo Adam’s sin and save the human race, Jesus could not grasp at equality with God.

And Jesus’ adversary, Satan, knew this. If Satan could get Jesus to grasp at equality with God just once, even in the smallest way, then Jesus would lose the contest. And in that loss, Satan would gain control of the human race forever. We would all have to follow Satan into the Second Death to be slaves of sin forever.

So, what was Satan’s tactic with Jesus? As we discovered last year, within Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms a complete life-script for Messiah is written out that Jesus had to follow in order to effect salvation. Of course, this life -script came from God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, in a weird way, Jesus was the author of His own Messianic life-script. The script was chopped up into little pieces with parts of it given to Moses and a number of the prophets to be scattered in their writings.

Did Satan know what all these pieces prophesied? Based on the temptations Satan lured Jesus with, Satan knew some of them. So, we see this in this morning’s Gospel lesson. Matthew 4:2-3, “2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he [Jesus] was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’”

There’s all kinds of things having to do with Jesus and bread in the New Testament. All these things fulfilled the life-script of Messiah. However, nowhere on the list do we find that Messiah will turn a stone into a loaf of bread to satisfy His own hunger. This is why Jesus absolutely refused this rather innocent sounding temptation. Therefore, He responded with these words from Deuteronomy 8:3, as written in Matthew 4:4, “. . . ‘It is written, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’” In other words, nowhere in the Word of God did Yahweh say that I’m going to turn a stone into a loaf of bread to satisfy myself. Ain’t gonna listen to you about this, Satan! Begone!

Well, we subsequently find out that Satan also knows Scripture and can quote it. We read in Matthew 4:5-6, “5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple 6 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.”’” Here, Satan quoted from Psalm 91 which is not only a Messianic psalm but a psalm of deliverance.

Somehow Satan knew that in order for Jesus to save us, we have to have faith in Jesus. So, Satan proposed a way for Jesus to engender faith in peoples’ hearts. Publicly jump from the temple parapet in front of all the people. The angels will be forced to reveal themselves and catch you. That will engender faith in many hearts.

Jesus’ ministry proved that miracles don’t necessarily engender saving faith in peoples’ hearts. Jesus publicly performed all kinds of miracles, even resuscitating a man four days dead. But Jesus’ miracles only stiffened the hearts of Jesus’ opponents against Him. Miracles by themselves cannot create saving faith in hearts. For, creating such faith is the job of Yahweh, the Holy Spirit, alone. And He creates faith by the Word alone. Miracles are incidental. Therefore, Jesus refused the devil’s scheme by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16 in Matthew 4:7, “. . . ‘Again it is written, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”’”

Apparently Satan knew what is prophesied of Messiah in Isaiah 49 — that Messiah would not only turn Israel to Yahweh, but would turn all the gentile nations that had strayed into idolatry. For, Satan came up with this proposal in Matthew 4:8-9, “8 Again, the devil took him [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’”

Of course, Satan does not have full authority over the nations of the earth. But he does have some authority. That’s why the nations of Jesus’ time had fallen into idolatry. And there’s still plenty of idolatry among the nations in our present time. To a certain extent Satan has the power to command the nations to recognize Jesus as Messiah. Therefore, Satan offered Jesus a deal. Forget Yahweh. Become my Messiah. Get people to worship me and I’ll fulfill what is written of you in Isaiah 49. You won’t have to struggle at all. It will be easy.

Now, there was no way Yahweh, the Son, was going to fall for that one. Even in His humanity, Jesus, the Second Adam, wasn’t going to entertain the idea. Therefore, Jesus shot back by quoting Deuteronomy 6:13 in Matthew 4:10, “. . . ‘Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”’”

Once Satan was finished with these temptations, he no longer appeared personally to Jesus. Instead he sent agents. As we saw last year, the first agent was Jesus’ best friend and chief disciple, Peter. As we saw last week, after Peter confessed Jesus to be Messiah at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus immediately began teaching His disciples that He would be rejected by the Jewish leadership, suffer, die by crucifixion at the hands of gentiles and be raised from the dead. Peter went out of his mind about this. So we read in Matthew 16:22-23, “22 And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.’ 23 But he [Jesus] turned and said to Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.’” Satan used Jesus’ best friend to tug at His heart strings and get Jesus to abort the most important part of the Messianic life-script. Jesus didn’t fall for it.

Satan also used Jesus’ brothers, the members of His own family, who encouraged Jesus to show Himself publicly in Jerusalem as the victorious Messiah during the Feast of Tabernacles. As we discovered last year, Jewish tradition has long had it that the victorious Messiah will come during Tabernacles. However, Jesus refused. Instead, He publicly revealed Himself as the suffering Messiah by coming into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday and then suffering crucifixion on the Feast of Passover.

Last year we discovered that in the Garden of Gethsemane on Holy Thursday, Jesus could have abandoned the Messianic plan to surrender Himself to His enemies. Jesus also could have ordered His disciples to resist His arrest that night and start a rebellion. But again, Jesus refused to do so. In His trials before the Sanhedrin, Herod and Pontius Pilate, Jesus could have capitulated to avoid the cross, but did not. Finally, in torment on the cross, Jesus successfully resisted Satan’s final agents, the mockers who jeered at Jesus to come down from the cross and show them that He really is the Son of God.

Jesus will show all His enemies and mockers that He really is the Son of God. At His trial before the Sanhedrin Jesus told His enemies that they would be the ones on trial when they see “the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matthew 27:64) But on Good Friday, Jesus faithfully gave Himself up into their power as He obediently walked the life-script of the suffering Messiah.

Therefore, at every point of temptation Jesus resisted the temptation to grasp equality with God. And so Jesus’ victory in this matter was acclaimed by the Church in an early hymn quoted by Saint Paul in Philippians 2:5-11, “5. . . Christ Jesus, 6 who, 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, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Yes. Jesus succeeded where Adam failed. Therefore, all who put their faith in Jesus can have forgiveness of sins, life and salvation in His Name. All who put their faith in Jesus are on the path to restoration of the Image of God and eternal righteous life with their Creator in resurrected, immortal human bodies. This is the good news of Gospel. Repent and believe the Good News. Amen.

All Bible quotes are from the ESV.