Lent 1–Jesus Defeated the Devil for Us

The Son of God goes forth to war and defeats the devil for us. The Prayer of the Day sets the tone for the Sunday: The ancient foe warred on mankind in the garden, but God promised to send a champion to battle on our behalf. The Second Adam came to do what the first could not, and in the desert, the battle was joined. But for us fights the valiant one whom God himself elected…he holds the field forever (Hymn of the Day).

PRAYER OF THE DAY

Lord our strength, the battle of good and evil rages within and around us, and our ancient foe tempts us with his deceits and empty promises. Keep us steadfast in your Word, and when we fall, raise us up again and restore us through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen!

VERSE OF THE DAY

It is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” (Matthew 4:10b)

THE GOSPEL: MATTHEW 4:1-11

The Second Adam goes to war to regain all that the first Adam had lost. Empowered by his baptism and led by the Spirit, Jesus defeats the devil for us. Let the preacher note that this pericope is not a “how-to” guide for Christians to fight temptation. The point, rather, is that Jesus fought as the champion of mankind by walking to the cross in obedience to his Father’s plan.

Satan tempted Christ to use the greatest weapons at his disposal—miracle, mystery, and authority—to shortcut this mission (Dostoyevsky). He tempted the Son to have a distrustful Sonship, a presumptive Sonship, a disloyal Sonship (F. Lindemann). Satan would have had his way with us, but not with our champion! Jesus won this and every battle with the devil, and now one little word can fell him.

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About the Artist and His Work

Towards the end of his career, Ary Scheffer achieved great success with paintings based on Christian themes. Many of these works were life-size, and he also made a number of smaller painted copies, of which The Temptation of Christ is an example. Strangely, Scheffer stopped work on the life-size The Temptation of Christ, in order to make a number of the reduced versions.

Scheffer is a difficult artist to categorize, as his style varied greatly during his career. Soon after moving from his native Holland to Paris, around 1811, he worked in a neo-classical manner, then abandoned that style when briefly influenced by the Romantic Movement. His later works are more Symbolist in nature. At this time, he was inspired by the clarity of composition and the direct approach to the narrative of Italian painting before 1500. Consequently, the characters he paints impart emotion purely through easily recognizable expressions or gestures. Scheffer’s work has been criticized as being overly sentimental, but his emotionally charged images struck a chord with the public, and he was one of the most popular artists of his day.

HT: National Gallery of Victoria

Take a look and listen to the interesting commentary by Daniella Zsupan-Jerome about Kramskoy’s Christ in the Wilderness.

Check out this insightful take on the temptation of Jesus from the Bible Miniseries and then read a devotion I wrote about this scene a couple of years ago.

FIRST LESSON: GENESIS 2:7-9, 15-17; 3:1-7

God had placed Adam into a perfect world and called on him to worship the Lord his God and serve him only. But Adam did not. He worshipped himself and ate the forbidden fruit, and so plunged the world into an age of darkness and death. Before that day, man’s destiny had been life eternal with God in glory, but death came rushing in the vacuum left behind when holiness and peace vanished.

Everything changed that day that Adam fell. But God looked down at these children that he created, and like the parent of a wayward child, he loved them in spite of themselves. God loved them and us and wanted us to live again—to live the way he had intended—with life and light and peace. So God made a promise: What you could not do, I will do in your place. Because man could not live perfectly and serve God faithfully, God promised to one day become a man to do it in our place.

Thousands of years later God made good on his promise in the womb of the Virgin. He became man with one mission: to right what was wrong, to do what we had left undone. God became man to do what man could not.

SECOND LESSON: ROMANS 5:12-19

Paul provides a New Testament commentary on the First Lesson and shows the universal effects of the First Adam’s failure and the Second Adam’s victory. Adam was a son of God in human flesh (Luke 3:38), but Adam failed the tests of his sonship. Through his flesh he passed his failure on to all of his children, condemning us to sin and death. So God sent another Son in human flesh to be the Son that Adam had not been. He obeyed where Adam did not. The obedience of the second Adam had as wide an effect as the disobedience of the first: He gives his victory to us and declares us righteous and brings life for all.

SUPPLEMENTAL FIRST LESSON: GENESIS 3:1-15

The supplemental reading omits the context of Creation before the Fall but provides an expanded treatment of the results of sin. Most importantly, for this Sunday, it includes the protoevangelium where God promises to send the Seed of Woman as the champion of mankind in the battle against Satan. Inherent in the promise was the cost: though the victory was certain, so was the sacrifice!

The Genesis 3 Gospel Goodness Doesn’t End with Verse 15

Although it is not a part of the assigned supplemental reading, when preaching or teaching on Genesis 3, I rarely ever stop with verse 15. There is more gospel yet to come in Genesis 3:21, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” That’s grace, pure grace.

The Creation Museum in Kentucky has a very striking diorama of this first sacrifice–one that God made–to clothe his beloved with the coverings of another.

Hymn of the Week

A Mighty Fortress by Martin Luther

It’s not just a reformation hymn. It fits in so well with the themes of the week.

Additional Music Ideas

The Son of God Goes Forth to War by Reginald Huber

Many churches within the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod will be worshiping during the season of Lent 2020 under the theme The Son of God Goes Forth to War based on the title of this striking anthem. Take a listen to the recording, but be sure to read the singer’s commentary below.

Artist Commentary by Joe Stout

Jesus, the Son of God, is the conquering King of Kings. He is no hippy, pansy, or pacifist. He came to seek and save the lost and to patiently bear his cross for sinners. To him belongs all the world because he did not take Satan’s false promise but laid his life down for us to the point of a humiliating death on the cross all while we were still sinners and hating him and his grace. He crushed the devil under his feet and will one day come again to judge the quick and the dead. To him belongs all authority on heaven and on earth, and it is our duty to follow in his train and in the example set by the saints who have gone before us.

Note: My recording is a poor example of how this song ought to be sung. It needs to be sung in all four parts by a noble army of men, boys, matrons, and maids. To really understand the beauty of this song, one must sing it with God’s people who know how to give him glory while singing their parts robustly, with courage, and with skill. The lyrics were written by Reginald Heber in 1812.

HT: Joe Stout