Luke 4:1-12 : Lent 1 2022

It’s important that we face the facts. Christians are a peculiar people. We are an oddity in modern American culture. A few months ago, I was speaking with a group of pastors while we were planning how to bless the city school system. We had decided to split up and go to each of the schools in this cluster and be present with the faculty, encourage them, bring them food, and for pray for those who are wanted it. And as we were planning this, one of the pastors kept reminded the rest of us that, as religious institutions, we were fortunate to be invited into these schools, so we should try our hardest to not be “weird.” Don’t be “weird.”

Now, I know what he meant - he wanted us to be winsome, which I wholeheartedly agreed with him. But at the end of the day, Christianity is weird. So much of what we believe to be true refuses to fit into the broad cultural consensus for what is normal. The worldview that Jesus teaches us to adopt, stretches the boundary for what the average American would deem normal. And perhaps at the top of the list for what makes us so weird is found right here in this text. One of the strangest parts of our faith is the concept that there exists in this world unseen spiritual beings that matter for our daily lives, because they are actively opposing our faith in Jesus.

Now, I know that when someone like me starts talking about unseen spiritual beings, some of us start getting uncomfortable. We start thinking, “Oh, this is one of those churches.” And listen: I get that sentiment. I understand where you are coming from; but I don’t know how to read the Bible without coming away with a worldview that includes spiritual beings that are set against the redemptive purposes of God in my life. I don’t know how to read the gospels, where Jesus again and again encounters spiritual beings, and demonstrates his power over them. I don’t know how to read the Lord’s Prayer, when Jesus teaches us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” - an alternate but equally valid translation of the Greek text, which all of your Bibles will note with a footnote. So here in the central prayer of the Christian faith we have this prayer: Deliver us from the clutches of the evil one.

Or take, for example, the apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 2. He’s addressing a church in crisis. This church is going through all kinds of division and dysfunction. There’s so much bitterness and pain that is festering in this community, and so Paul urges them to take the path towards healing by following the way of Jesus and showing forgiveness to one another. And he says in 2 Corinthians 2:11, that we need to show forgiveness to one another “so that we would not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs.” Evidently, Paul believes that underneath the dysfunction that’s ripping apart this church community is an adversary who is looking to use these divisions to undermine the Kingdom work that is happening in Corinth.

So it is really difficult to get around the fact that the Bible teaches that there are spiritual beings that strive to turn our hearts away from God, that want to undermine our trust in his goodness, and entice us to chose our own path of life.

And so today I want to turn our attention to this reality, as Paul said - so that we are not ignorant of our enemy’s intentions. Especially as we step into Lent together. This is a season that we are setting aside to be intentional about our discipleship. We are leaning into Jesus, taking up practices and rhythms in order to draw closer to Jesus- and as we set out, we need to be mindful that there are beings that do not want us to draw closer to Jesus. They do not want us to trust his promises or experience his love and grace. We have an enemy that is actively working to turn our hearts away from God and to create distance between us and Him.

This Lenten season, you will come up against this enemy. And what I want you to hear today is this: in the fight against this enemy, Jesus is our only hope. In our fight against evil, Jesus is our only hope. And he is our only hope, because of what he does in our text in Luke 4.

In Luke 4, Jesus is led up by the Spirit of God into the wilderness, where he is tempted by the devil. Notice that Jesus does not accidentally stumble into the devil, nor does the devil ambush him. God is in charge of this whole scene. He is orchestrating this battle between Jesus and this being that has many different titles. In Matthew’s account of this story, we find three titles for this creature: the devil, the tempter, and the Satan. All of these are titles, none are proper names.

Now, this creature has shown up before in the story of the Bible, and its presence points to the broader reality of unseen spiritual beings that influence human behavior. And the very first place we meet this thing is on page three of our Bible in the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, God has established his Kingdom, he has created human beings and they are all set to flourish under God’s reign. But everything goes off the rails when humanity rejects and rebels against God. But that rejection does not happen in a vacuum. Humanity turns away from God through the influence of another player - this serpent in the Garden, who entices Adam and Eve to distrust the goodness of God and to instead forge their own path towards life.

And so from the very beginning of the biblical story, we meet a spiritual being who’s primary mission is to turn people’s hearts against the reign of God. And throughout the whole narrative of the Bible, we encounter story after story of people in similar scenarios, where they are given a choice between trusting the wisdom of God, trusting his promises, trusting his goodness, or forging their own path. And over and over and over again, the result is always the same: they turn away from God. It becomes a depressing and predictive pattern.

But it’s a familiar pattern for us, isn’t it? Time and time again, you and I are given an opportunity to trust the wisdom of God, trust the timing of God, trust the goodness of God, trust his provision and trust his promises; but instead, we turn away from all of that and go our own way. We instead trust our instincts. We do what we think is good.

Saint Peter knew this depressing and predictive pattern well, which is why, when writing to friends and fellow followers of Jesus, he encouraged them to cast all their anxieties on the Lord. Following Jesus is not easy. Being human is not easy. We have doubts, we have questions, we have insecurities, we have anxieties - and Peter says in 1 Peter 5:7, “cast all your anxieties on the Lord, because he cares for you.” He cares for you. Next verse: “8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. (Pay attention. Don’t get caught driving at the wheel. Be attentive. Why?) Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Sometimes it can feel as if our faith was being devoured. Have you ever felt like your hope was being devoured? Have you ever felt your soul being devoured by shame? Peter says, that isn’t an accident. Our struggle isn’t just against our sinful nature. We have an enemy who wants to see our faith destroyed.

When Paul writes to the Ephesians, he’s writing to a church community that is dealing with ethnic tensions, where people groups are looking at each other as if they were their enemy. But Paul urges them to recognize that Jesus has done away with those ethnic division by creating a new people from out of all the nations and ethnicities of the world. And so now, none of these people are our enemy. As the gospel moves forward into the world, no people group are our enemy. He writes in Ephesians 5:12, “12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

Who is our enemy? Who is our fight really against? It’s against these spiritual forces of evil that oppress us and influence us and turn our hearts away from our loving Father in heaven. These forces that hold us in captivity and keep us locked in a predictive pattern of sin. That is our enemy. That is our adversary.

And yet it seems like every time someone tries to stand against these spiritual forces, they fail. Adam failed. Abraham failed. Noah failed. Moses failed. David failed. I fail. You fail. None of us is able to stand our ground against these cosmic powers of darkness, and so much of our lives is evidence of that fact. The truth is that all of us have taken the bait. All of us have failed our test in the wilderness. We’ve wandered away. We’ve done things that we feel shame about, things that we feel broken about.

And that is why in this fight against evil, Jesus is our only hope. Because the very place where you and I and every other person has failed, Jesus stands triumphant. In this encounter with Satan, and the cosmic powers of darkness and the spiritual forces of evil, Jesus demonstrates that they bend to his will, not the other way around. Jesus demonstrates that he has power over them. And if he has power over them, than he has the power to free us from their grasp. In the gospel story, Jesus will continue to meet other spiritual beings and demons - but there is a remarkable change in their attitude toward him. They are no longer bold and brazen like in this story. Instead, they are terrified of Jesus. They recoil at his sight. They are broken, and defeated, and pathetic. It is as if he empties them of their power by his mere presence.

This is the good news. This is the gospel: that Jesus has come to rescue us from the power and influence of these unseen spiritual beings that have long held us in dark captivity. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of God’s love, where we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins.

In a moment we will have an extended time of prayer, when we will together ask the Lord again and again to deliver us. Deliver us from sin, from spiritual oppression, from hardness of heart, from pride and greed, and on and on. Our refrain will be: Good Lord, deliver us. It is our refrain because we know that the King who loves us has forgiven us of all our failures has the power to free us from our Enemy. All of them.

Martin Luther is quoted as saying, “When the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell,; Tell him this: I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? For I know one who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where he is, there I shall be also.”

Let’s pray.