Second Sunday of Advent
Into the Wilderness
Today is the second Sunday of Lent. It marks the second week of our march toward Resurrection Sunday. Resurrection Sunday – some call it Easter – is the most important day in the calendar – even more important, I think, than Christmas when God became flesh, because without the sacrificial death and resurrection of that Baby in the manger who grew into the Man on the cross, we would all be eternally lost in our sins.
It was on Resurrection Sunday that God killed death. That’s one reason I like the text in the Book of Wisdom, written about 100 years before Jesus was placed in that manger: “For God did not make death, nor does he delight in the death of the living.” (1:13) and then in the next chapter: “For God created us for incorruption and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it.” (2:23-24).
Those who belong to Satan – ALL who belong to Satan because they reject the sacrificial atonement Christ made for them on the cross – all of them will experience eternal death. “The wages of sin is death,” the apostle Paul tells us, “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:23)
My text for today’s message on this second Sunday of Lent is from Matthew 4. It’s the passage describing the Lord’s temptation in the wilderness: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” (Matthew 4:1)
It’s a short text. But don’t let its brevity fool you. A
lot happened in that wilderness. Most of you will well remember the entire
scenario of Satan’s attempts to trip up the Lord, to get Him to sin. All his
tactics failed, of course, but the battle
for YOUR soul and mine did not end with the Lord‘s victory in that wilderness. In
Luke’s report of the story, he tells us that Satan left Jesus until an
opportune time. (Luke 4:13)
The battle for the souls of men and women continued right up to and onto
the cross where Jesus – in the FINAL battle of the war – ransomed from that
same devil your soul and mine. I say it was the FINAL battle because when Jesus
cried out, “It is Finished!” He meant it. The warfare for the souls of men and
women was forever decided. Jesus is Lord of heaven and earth. He has the keys
of life and of death. And all who follow Jesus as THEIR Lord are saved from
Satan’s power and eternal death in the lake of Fire.
Let’s go back to that wilderness for a moment. Matthew 4:1 “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”
The wilderness, as spoken of in Scripture, usually referred to rocky and dry wastelands. Jews in both the Old and New Testament eras feared the desert as a place of wild beasts, serpents, scorpions, and even demons. Moses described it as a ”great and terrible wilderness, with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water.” (Deuteronomy 8:15.) Jeremiah described it as “A land of deserts and of pits . . . a land of drought and of deep darkness . . . a land that no one crossed and where no man dwelt.” (Jeremiah 2:6)
The wilderness was the place to which the High Priest sent the ‘Scapegoat” on the Day of Atonement. What was the ‘scapegoat?
Moses explains it in Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest laid his hands on the sacrificial animal – called by Moses the ‘Scapegoat,’ and transferred all of Israel’s sins onto it. The High Priest then sent it out to the wilderness, symbolizing that God had then removed Israel’s guilt, sending it far from the camp.
And so, when Jesus went out into the wilderness after His baptism, it might be said Jesus entered Satan’s home territory, He met the devil on his own turf, and soundly beat Him there. It was that victory to which Jesus seems to refer when He told the crowd of religious teachers and the laity:
“If I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armor on which he had relied and distributes his plunder.” (Luke 11:20-22)
Jesus’ mission, set from the foundation of the universe, was to destroy the works of the devil and rescue humanity from his talons. That is why St. Paul told Christians at Galatia that Jesus: “[G]ave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forevermore. Amen.” (Galatians 1:3)
But the cross was very, very costly. Sometimes that horrific and bloody truth becomes diluted after hearing of it so often. Not only did Jesus, God's Son suffer the physical horror of the whip and the nails, but He suffered the emotional and spiritual agony of separation from His Father.
St. Matthew reports for us in the 27th chapter of his gospel: “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:45-46)
Separation from God. How could that be? Why would God turn His back on Jesus? I think St. Paul tells us why in His epistles. For example, he writes in Galatians: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). Paul is thinking here of what Moses said in Deuteronomy 21:23, “He who is hanged on a tree is cursed by God.”
That means that while the most holy Lord Jesus hung between heaven and earth, He did not simply take your sins and my sins on Himself, but Jesus actually became Sin. He became Sin. He BECAME accursed by His Father.
Here is how the Holy Spirit tells it through Paul’s pen “[The Father] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21
Oh! Think of it! You and I who trust Jesus as our redeemer, our reconciler, our savior, our sacrificial atonement could become in God's eyes the very righteousness of God. Meanwhile, Jesus, who knew the incomprehensible intimacy of the Triune Godhead – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – for the first time in eternity was separated from His Father. For that one moment – oh, but for the eternal God that moment must have seemed forever – for that one moment the Father turned away from Him who had become Sin.
No wonder He cried out, My God, My God. Why have You forsaken Me! In some mysterious and inexplicable way known only to the Holy Trinity, Jesus was suddenly separated from His Father. Suddenly alone.
That is the fathomless horror our sin caused Him. And that is also the divinely designed evidence of the matchless love the Son has for the sinner –you and me – so we would not have to live forever separated from God.
When I read of Messiah’s sacrifice of Himself to secure our safety, I sometimes think of Moses and St Paul, both of whom, in an infinitely small way, foreshadowed God's self-sacrifice on Calvary.
Here is Exodus 32:31-32: “Then Moses returned to the Lord, and said, “Alas, this people has committed a great sin, and they have made a god of gold for themselves. 32 But now, if You will, forgive their sin—and if not, please blot me out from Your book which You have written!”
And here is what St. Paul said of his Jewish brethren: “I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience testifies with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” (Romans 9:1-3)
Self-sacrifice. On this second Sunday of Lent, I encourage all of us to consider what we are willing to sacrifice for the Lord to bring others to Christ. Our tongue – to hold it when we really want to lay into someone? Our time – when we really want to spend our time on ourselves? Our money – when we would rather use it for something we want when we know there is a financial need elsewhere?
The sacrifice Jesus performed on that cross not only had far-reaching results, extending even to 2022. But His love-driven sacrifice had an immediate result with one of the thieves on crosses to either side of the Lord.
He is the one of the two who watched the Man in the middle suffer. He heard His groans. He listened to the jeers at the foot of His cross. He studied how the Man in the middle bore it all – even how He forgave them all.
It was all too much for him to ignore. So, turning his away from other thief, the one who had joined the mob in jeering the Man in the middle, the man pleaded, “Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
And we all know the Lord’s merciful response to him.
As we follow in the steps of Christ, suffering with him and for him, in a real sense we also become an instrument in God's hands to lead others to a saving faith in Jesus. The good thief had a change of heart when He watch how Jesus responded to His suffering and to the jeers. Will others have a change of heart toward Christ when they observe how WE endure our own cross? Do we lash out at the offenders? Do we complain how unfair ‘life’ is – or even how unfair God is that we should suffer so?
As I prepared this message, I was reminded of what St. Peter wrote to his readers in the first century and how applicable his words are to us today: “For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; (1 Peter 2:20-23)
Jesus uttered no threats. He simply kept entrusting Himself to His Father whom He knew – as WE should also know by now – the Father who judges and acts righteously. THAT is why, even in the throes of His physical and spiritual agony – even knowing the Father had turned His back on Him, Jesus cried out: “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.”
As Moses and St Paul, in an infinitely small way foreshadowed the willingness of Jesus to substitute Himself for His children, so the prophets Job and Habakkuk foreshadow the trust of Jesus in His Father. Here is Habakkuk on the eve of the horrible and cruel invasion of the Babylonian army into Jerusalem: “I heard and my inward parts trembled, at the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, and in my place I tremble. Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress, for the people to arise who will invade us. Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, Though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.” (Habakkuk 3:16-18)
And Job, in the midst of his own personal devastation: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” (Job 13:15)
Listen, please. Scripture is very clear – All those who live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Our role IN persecution is to imitate the Master who entrusted Himself to the One who does all things in righteousness.
That is NOT anything you and I will be able to accomplish in our own strength and abilities. Get it out of your head, if it is even resting in the corners of your mind that you are able to trust God in all things and at all times.
No, you can’t. Not without His help and strengthening. That’s why Paul himself wrote: “I know how to get along with humble means, and I also know how to live in prosperity; in any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of being filled and going hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:12-13)
And the warrior-king, David wrote: For You light my lamp; The Lord my God illumines my darkness. For by You I can run upon a troop; And by my God I can leap over a wall.” (Psalm 18:28-29)
Get it out of your head if you think you can wage this battle and even walk toward Resurrection Sunday in your own strength. If we were able to do it ourselves, Jesus would not have promised to send the Paraclete – a Greek word meaning “One who comes along side.”
Next week, on the 17th, many people will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. The wise Saint knew a few things about spiritual warfare and St. Paul’s admonition to wear spiritual armor for that warfare. We are on a journey – not just this Lenten journey toward Resurrection Sunday, but a life-journey that takes us through many dark and dangerous wildernesses. Some of them are of our own making. Some are of Satan’s.
But whatever is the reason for our wilderness, we all need God's divine protection and intervention. We must never enter the journey on our own.
And so I close this message with part of St Patrick’s prayer – a relatively easy prayer to remember as we also seek the Holy Spirit’s supernatural aid on our supernatural journey:
Christ be with me, Christ be before me, Christ behind me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise.
Amen
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