Dear Christian friends:

In the days of the Civil War it was illegal to trade in cotton with the North; but many unscrupulous speculators tried to buy cotton in the South, run it through the Union lines, and sell it at a great profit in the North.

One of these speculators approached a Mississippi steamboat captain and offered him $100.00 if he would run his cotton up the river for him. The captain declined, reminding him that it was illegal to do so.
"I will give you $500," said the man.
"No," answered the captain.
"I will give you $1,000."
"No," the captain said again.
"I will give you $3,000."
At that the captain drew his pistol, and pointing it at the man and said, "Get off this boat. You are coming too near my price."

Someone has said, "Everyman has his price." I'm afraid there is more truth to that than we'd like to admit. Ogden Nash quote: "I can resist anything except temptation." By ourselves alone we do not have the will power and strength to resist. If we are to overcome we need Christ's strength, presence and power.

In our text which is the Gospel lesson for this Sunday we see how Jesus dealt effectively and victoriously with temptation. Temptation threatens all Christians. If the devil did not spare Christ, but attacked Him so persistently, he will much less spare us, whom he knows to be weaker and less prepared. It is extremely important that we recognize both the strength of our temptations and our limited strength in dealing with them.

We should therefore prepare ourselves to meet this danger when it comes, and learn from Christ how to repel the enemy. There are three basic temptations which are dealt with in our text:


The devil tempts Jesus to doubt and despair of God's love and care for Him. This first temptation takes place when the devil sees that Jesus is in terrible hunger, pain and misery after He had fasted for forty days. Satan says to Him, "If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread." (verse 3) At first look this would seem to be no severe temptation. How could it have been wrong for Christ to make bread out of stones? He often later on in His ministry would perform greater miracles.

However, Christ did not comply with the devil's will because He knew well what evil he was implying. He knew that the devil did not care to have a miracle performed, nor did he care that His hunger and pain be relieved. But, as he clearly indicates in His reply to Satan, Jesus knew the devil wanted to make Him despair of God's love and care, and implant into His heart the thought that God had forgotten Him and had forsaken Him.

However, Jesus is not deceived by Satan's cleverness. He knows that the Holy Spirit has led Him here for this very purpose: to be tried and tested and be prepared for His ministry as we read in verse one of our text. So He replies to Satan: "It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." (verse 4) Jesus' faith and trust in God is not based on His physical circumstances, but on God's Word and promises.

The devil also tempts us to base our faith and trust in God on our physical circumstances and material resources rather than on the Word and promises of God in the Bible.

Satan would love us to be so focused on physical circumstances and material resources that we do not value God's Word and spiritual life and neglect the Word and Sacraments. He puts into our heads the idea that since we are God's children we must expect always to be healthy, wealthy and happy, and that if we are sickly, poor and unhappy that perhaps God has forgotten us and is punishing us for some sins we have committed. This temptation is the most common and most successful.

We must therefore be ready to withstand this temptation as Jesus did and say to Satan, "It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God." (verse 3 and Matthew 4:4) I know this may seem severe and drastic to you, but it is nevertheless true: we should rather lose our daily bread, and die of hunger than to lose the Word of God. For it is better that the body, which is nourished by daily bread, should parish, than that my soul should be lost eternally in hell. And in essence that is what Jesus is here saying to Satan.

We should learn from this first temptation to highly treasure the Word of God, to believe in it, and to rely on it at all times, good or bad. Eventually bad times do come and then we can find no consolation except in the Word of God which tells of Jesus our Savior who gives eternal life.

The second temptation, Luke 4:5-7, "And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine."

The devil ask Jesus to worship him and promises Him earthly glory if He does. At first glance this may not seem a real temptation for Jesus. It almost seems unbelievable that Satan would presume to tempt Jesus in such a gross and blatant way. And yet it was a real temptation for Him. We need to remember that Jesus had taken on Himself our true human nature. In His state of humiliation He did not always and fully use the divine power to His human nature.

Also, we must remember that for Jesus to continue worshiping and serving God, His Father, He had to suffer and die on the cross, suffer God's wrath in the place of all mankind, in order to win the salvation of the world from sin and eternal death. In essence Satan is here offering Jesus a way to glory and power without the suffering and humiliation of the cross.

But thank and praise Jesus' great love for us and all mankind! He does not succumb to Satan's will. He remembers who He is and why He is here. He stoutly and forcefully replies to Satan: "Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." (verse 8)

The devil also tempts us to worship him rather than the Triune God, the Father, The Son and the Holy Spirit, offering us pleasure, wealth and fame, which he may or may not really give.

Jesus referred to the devil as the "prince of this world." (John 12:31, 14:30) So he does indeed have a great deal of authority and splendor as he claims here in the text, and he does at times reward those who serve him with luxury, ease and power, at least for a time as we learn from history and experience. At best, what Satan gives lasts only a short time and in the end turns to ashes.

"Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. (1 John 15-17)

Also we worship Satan when we fail to speak up for our God in the face of false teaching and sinful living. It is tempting to remain silent when we ought to speak. It is not politically correct to criticize another person's religion or lifestyle. You are labeled an intolerant or homophobic. If you witness to a Jewish person, you are very likely to be called antisemitic. If you witness to a Muslim, you could be called discriminatory. If you witness to an atheist you might be labeled a fanatic. You could lose friends and a promotion. If you witness to a heterodox-Christian concerning a point of doctrine where he is in error, he might label you a nit-picker. And so we are tempted to say nothing and in saying nothing in the face of error, either wrong doctrine or wrong living we fail to worship and serve the true God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And if we fail to serve and worship the true God we are in fact worshipping and serving Satan.

We ought always to meet the devil's temptations as Christ did, with the ready firm response: "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only'" (verse 8)

"And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." (Luke 4:9-11)

Since Jesus had been using God's Word in this battle with Satan, Satan himself now decides to use God's Word to lead Jesus to tempt God.

The devil quotes a portion of Psalm 91:11-12. But he does not quote it correctly. He says to Jesus, "He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully." But Psalm 91:11 says, "He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways." The devil thought he could with this false quotation, deceive Jesus and induce Him to do what God had not commanded Him to do.

However, Jesus knows that this is His time to suffer and be tested, not to do miracles. And since He is in a tower of the temple, there are stairs and steps for Him to descend. There is no need for a reckless jump and an angel's rescue. And so he thwarts the devil with another accurate quote from the Old Testament Scriptures: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test. (verse 12)

We must pay attention to an important lesson here: He who departs from the ordinary way of his calling and attempts to do something new and reckless, without God's command to do so, tempts God, and serves Satan.

What are some activities that are careless (reckless), activities which God has not promised to protect us if we do these things? How about mountain climbing? Auto racing? We have no promise from God that His angels will go with us and protect us when we do careless and reckless undertakings. Perhaps we shouldn't even be watching them since that lends credence to it!

However, if parents do their duties; if employers and employees do their jobs, God will defend them all from threatening dangers through His holy angels. I must caution that this is generally true. However, there are times when God allows evil to happen to those who are doing their duty and serving Him, as we saw this past week when the two C.H.P. officers were killed when in the dark of night when they drove their patrol car into the washed out section of a highway. God has good reasons for allowing bad things to happen to good people. I don't have time to go into this now, but we will deal with that in the Bible Class which follows this service. I will be teaching Psalm 91, which deals with our "Angel Guards." Hope you can come.

Since these three temptations of our text are basic common weapons used by Satan against us, we must continue to learn from Jesus how to defend ourselves against them.

We must see to it that the care for our daily bread and this temporal life does not rob us of our faith and the eternal life.

We must always be on our guard so that neither money nor fame seduce us from the true worship and service of God.

And we must not become indifferent to our safety by going on dangerous ways that God has not ordered. In the face of Satan let us remain firm in the faith through diligent use of the Word.

You know and I know that we sometimes listen to Satan and fall into sin. However, we must not despair when Satan leads us to sin. Thank God Jesus never listened to Satan. Jesus always resisted Satan. Jesus never fell into sin. By faith in Jesus God forgives our sins and declares us His dear children. His mercy and forgiveness gives us power to resist Satan in the future.

May God give us His Holy Spirit to help us love and serve Him and not Satan.

Amen.