First Sunday in Lent, Year B

Lent 1B

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

You may remember a while ago, I mentioned to you that there was some controversy about how the pope was talking about changing the words of the Lord’s Prayer. In English, the 6th petition of the prayer says “and lead us not into temptation.” The controversy around these words, according to Pope Francis, was that this seems to imply that it is God who is tempting us, or leading us into temptation, and God does not do that. So, the pope proposed changing the wording of that petition to “abandon us not into temptation.” One of my Spanish-speaking friends tells me that this is the meaning that is conveyed in that language. Somehow, apparently, that meaning was lost or at least obscured in the English translation.

I have to admit, I’ve had to think about that. If God does not tempt us, how do we explain God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac? What was that? And did God - the Holy Spirit - drive Jesus out in the wilderness to be tempted? Ok, so it may have been the devil doing the tempting in Mark’s Gospel, but the Holy Spirit certainly had a hand in it, right? And these are just stories we encounter in today’s lessons from the lectionary. There are lots of other stories about God testing different people. So how can the pope make the claim that God does not tempt us?

Well the easy answer is that there’s a difference between “testing” and “tempting”. Those are undoubtedly two different words. And they’re probably much more different than you might think. The lesson from James is very helpful here. First and foremost, James explains that “…God cannot be tempted with evil,” - this seems self-evident, but it’s important to remember that because of God’s nature, and the fact that He is the ultimate good in all creation, evil cannot “tempt” Him. It cannot lure Him or draw Him away from His own nature. And James continues: “...and he himself tempts no one.” Again, God is good; that is His nature. And because He is good, He will never tempt people toward evil. Put another way: God will never tempt anyone to sin.

James’ explanation in the next verse is very interesting: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.” Can’t you just see the scene in the garden with Eve and the serpent? She gave in to her own desire…her desire to be like God. And Adam did the same thing. They both did. Now look at the next verse in James: “The desire, when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings for death.” It certainly did for Adam and Eve, didn’t it? And therefore, all the rest of us.

Temptation. One scholar defines temptation as “seduction to do evil; solicitation to do wrong.” Put in those terms, that’s clearly not something God would do.

So how do we explain what God did to Abraham in this morning’s lesson? God told Abraham to take Isaac, the son he and Sarah never thought they would have, and when they did, he was an answer to prayer, and an absolute miracle. God told him to take Isaac to a mountain, and kill him, and offer him as a sacrifice to God.

We don’t like to talk about this story because it makes us uncomfortable. This is not a pleasant story to read. I remember looking at this story in my son’s Lego Bible and thinking that even with Lego figures, this is a gruesome scene. A father raising a knife to kill his own son. And whether it’s seemingly harmless Lego figures, or a more realistic-looking image, it’s a disturbing idea of a father ready to take his own son’s life.

Knowing what we know about Abraham, it seems pretty clear that he would have to be very disturbed himself about doing this. He would have to be very torn. He would have to be quite upset about having to do this. And although it doesn’t say it, Abraham must have at least thought something like “God gave me this child, and if God is asking me to give him back, then I must do that.” And it’s pretty clear that Abraham is ready to do that. So, in God asking this of Abraham, is God’s end result evil? Is it sinful?

God is not tempting Abraham to sin. God does not do that, so no, He’s not. But God *is* testing Abraham. However, there’s another way to look at this scene between Abraham and Isaac that I want to share with you, this one from one of my favorite scholars:

“This is a story that makes us all very uncomfortable...and it should. When God tests him, it's not to see if He can trip Abraham up. It's to give a very graphic demonstration of what's to happen to God's Own Son in the future… The way God speaks to Abraham - ‘Your son, your only son, whom you love’ - sounds a lot like how God speaks of His Son at the baptism scene… notice how in verse 6, Abraham lays the wood on his son? This wood is like the cross that was laid on God’s Son… and in verse 7, when Isaac asks ‘where is the lamb?’ - and Abraham answers ‘God will provide the lamb’. John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. When Abraham says this to Isaac, it is a prefiguring of God the Father describing His Son as the lamb for sacrificing.”

“God never intended for Abraham to kill his son. Human sacrifice was never part of God's view of things at all. But as the tension grows, and Abraham raises the knife, all of us want to stop him...which God does. But we remember that when it was God's own Son on the cross, God did not withhold his hand. But God, in fact, turned away from His Son, and allowed his Son to be killed with the sins of the whole world upon him. This is exactly what's happening in our Gospel reading today, where Jesus is placing himself in the position of all mankind, giving his perfect and complete righteousness, his perfect fulfilling of the law, to us. While Jesus is tempted & tested, it's really completely for us, on our behalf. In the same way, as we see Abraham asked to sacrifice his son, we remember that God did exactly that...did sacrifice His Son in our place. When God has told Abraham not to go through with the sacrifice, there's a ram, caught in the thicket. As a result, Isaac is delivered. That's a wonderful picturing of the resurrection of Christ, that will come after this Lenten season is over, where Jesus *is* raised, Jesus is returned to life...the Father & the Son rejoice, and the result is eternal salvation for all of us. “

“It was not God's intention to see what was in the heart of Abraham. It was very much God's intention for all of us to get to see what Christ would do for us through Abraham's faithfulness.”

God doesn’t need to test Abraham to see into his heart. God knows that already. So the “test” here was to show His Plan - that He would ultimately provide the sacrifice that would atone for the sins of the whole world, and He would do so by offering His own Son.

However, God *does* test His Son, doesn’t He? He does send him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And actually, it’s more forceful than just a “sending”. In Mark’s version of this event, the Spirit immediately *drove* him out into the wilderness. That word - “drove” - is more like “impelled” or “driven out”. It’s forceful. Why is that? Because it is absolutely necessary for Jesus to go there to be tempted by Satan.

Remember that Jesus came to “fulfill the law and the prophets” (Matt 5:17), right? Part of that is he must do what humanity, what we, could not and cannot. Firstly, He went into the wilderness “with the wild animals” - just as Adam was with all the animals in paradise before the fall. God brought all the animals to Adam, and he named them all. Adam was in harmony with all the living creatures…with all of creation. Then, when sin entered, there’s suddenly an innate conflict between humanity and many wild animals. Isaiah 11 tells us that when Messiah comes, that harmony will be restored - “calf and lion, cow and bear, child and cobra” - there’s no killing or hunting. Isaiah describes the harmony of the future when all things are restored by the Messiah.

This is why it was so important for Jesus to face temptation by the devil. He had to everything that was necessary to restore creation before Adam & Eve fell into sin. He had to be actively, not passively obedient. Passive obedience is where Christ lets himself be arrested and killed. All he had to do there was not resist, which he obviously could have. Here, however, he has to be actively obedient. He has to go into the wilderness. He has to confront Satan, face the temptation, and still keep God’s Law. He had to do the things we had failed to do and keep the law perfectly. He’s tempted by the devil to go the way that the rest of us have all gone, but he instead stayed on God’s course. It was necessary for Jesus to do this - to fulfill the law first, and then to go to the cross to pay for our sins.

I want to make sure we understand the difference between “test” and “tempt”. If we can remember that God never tempts, I think we’re in good shape. The devil is the source of temptation. He tempts us to lead us astray, to lure us away from God and the path we are called to walk. That is temptation. That is what the devil does. In the Small Catechism under the Lord’s Prayer, Luther says this: “God tempts no one to sin, but we pray in this petition that God may so guard and preserve us that the devil, the world, and our flesh may not deceive us or mislead us into unbelief, despair, and other great and shameful sins, but that, although we may be so tempted, we may finally prevail and gain the victory.”

[Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 347–348.]

The Large Catechism adds that “Temptation … is of three kinds: of the flesh, the world, and the devil.” The flesh is our sinful nature, which Luther often calls the “Old Adam” in us. This Old Adam “lures us daily into unchastity, laziness, gluttony and drunkenness, greed and deceit, into acts of fraud and deception against our neighbor—in short, into all kinds of evil lusts which by nature cling to us and to which we are incited by the association and example of other people and by things we hear and see.”

“Next comes the world, which assails us by word and deed and drives us to anger and impatience. In short, there is in it nothing but hatred and envy, enmity, violence and injustice, perfidy, vengeance, cursing, reviling, slander, arrogance, and pride, along with fondness for luxury, honor, fame, and power. No one is willing to be the least, but everyone wants to sit in the chief seat and be seen by all.”

“Then comes the devil, who baits and badgers us on all sides, but especially exerts himself where the conscience and spiritual matters are at stake. His purpose is to make us scorn and despise both the Word and the works of God, to tear us away from faith, hope, and love, to draw us into unbelief, false security, and stubbornness, or, on the contrary, to drive us into despair, atheism, blasphemy, and countless other abominable sins.”

“This, then, is ‘leading us not into temptation’ when God gives us power and strength to resist, even though the tribulation is not removed or ended. For no one can escape temptations and allurements as long as we live in the flesh and have the devil prowling about us. We cannot help but suffer tribulations, and even be entangled in them, but we pray here that we may not fall into them and be overwhelmed by them.”

[Theodore G. Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. (Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959), 433.]

Now that we have an understanding of “tempt”, let’s get a better definition of “test”. Looking again at the letter from James, verse 12: “…for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.” God does sometimes test us. He does allow us to go through trials because He knows that this can be a way to strengthen our faith. Now look at the last 2 verses - “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” God never tries to tempt us to sin, to trick us, to get us to falter. That’s not God. Every good thing is from God.

So when we go through troubling times, when we endure suffering, when life gets tough, we might start to think that God is tempting us, or that God is abandoning us, or trying to get us to stumble and fall. But THAT’S NOT WHO GOD IS. He is the Father of lights, and with Him there is no variation or shadow due to change. Only good things and perfect gifts come from above. God brings us through these trying times for a wonderful and gracious purpose. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth...” there’s no deception with God. “…so that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

That same scholar said this: “God knows that sometimes allowing testings of our faith, trials, difficulties which certainly Abraham experienced in a huge way, and which we experience often in life, is for the strengthening of our faith, for our good, that we would come through it as firstfruits, as those who will be examples of His Blessing and enjoy the blessings of His Kingdom for eternity. That's God, not one who is fickle, not one who we can't trust, not one we fear might be abandoning us or trying to trip us up into sinful temptation...but One Who is always standing by us.” (Rev. Dr. Carl Fickenscher, podcast Issues, Etc., Feb 15, 2021)

When we are tested and facing trials, we can rest assured that God is with us. He does not abandon us, and never will. That is the assurance of His promises. And while He made sure that Abraham spared his son Isaac, by stopping Abraham’s hand before the knife could kill, God did not spare His Own Son. And that sacrifice was out of love for us. That is the depth of God’s love for us. That is the conviction that God has for His plan to ensure our eternal salvation - paid for with the death of His Son, His “beloved Son.” That He stayed true to that plan and that promise should bring us great comfort, knowing that God will not abandon us, even at the cost of the life of His Son.

His Son went into the wilderness for us. He faced and overcame the devil for us. And ultimately he went to the cross for us. And because he did all of that, he eventually will bring us to the Promised Land of the resurrection. I hope you find that as comforting as I do. The devil is very real, and he is very active, and very good at tempting us. But he has already been defeated. And we will see that final defeat in a few short weeks at the end of Lent. Let us use this season as a time to reflect on how we are faced with temptation, and how when God allows us to be tested, how will that help us strengthen our faith. Let us hold each other in prayer as we seek to grow stronger in faith and closer to God.

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.