In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the things that I think we’re very good at doing in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is communicating to people the fact that we’re all sinners. From our confession of sin on Sunday mornings, to Catechism class with our youth, to the kinds of sermons that we usually hear preached from our pulpits, it’s more or less impossible to be a member of one of our congregations and not know that you’re a sinner. And that, of course, isn’t a bad thing at all. In fact, it’s a very good thing. The reality that we remain sinners until the day we die is a fundamental truth of the Scriptures that if rejected or denied, makes someone no true Christian at all. As Saint John says in his epistle, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

The problem, though, and there is a potential problem here, is that if this is the only description of sin that we ever hear about, we aren’t getting the full picture from God’s Word. Let me explain. When all that people hear over and over again is that we remain sinners until the day we die, sometimes this can confuse them into not taking their sin seriously. Sometimes it can make them think that there’s no difference between repentant sin and unrepentant sin and that true believers, who have the Holy Spirit, continue to live in sin, without remorse, just like they did before. In the worst cases, it can even make people think that they are able to commit certain sins on purpose, and that this will have no effect on their faith, because after all, aren’t we all just sinners.

I want you to compare that, though, to what Saint Paul tells us about certain sins in our epistle lesson today from Ephesians chapter 5. He writes, “But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” Now that is fuller depiction of sin and much more than the mere statement, “we’re all sinners.”

First off, these words clearly show us that some sins do have the ability to put us outside of a state of grace, and cause us to forfeit our salvation. That’s what Paul literally says in verse 5 of our text, “Everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” This is very similar to what the Bible also says in 1 Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5. And to prove that point, and demonstrate that this is not an isolated teaching of the Scriptures, I’m going to read both of those passages too. Here’s the one from 1 Corinthians, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” And this is the one from Galatians 5, “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” 

But what do these verses mean? Certainly, they do not mean that if a person has committed one of the sins from these lists in the past, that it’s impossible for them to go to heaven no matter what they do. Saint Paul himself, at one time, was guilty of the sin of murder and persecuting the Church. We can also think of the example of king David who committed the sin of adultery with the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and then tried to cover it up by orchestrating his death. Those were terrible sins. They grieved the Holy Spirit, and put both men in a state of grave spiritual danger. In fact, if either of them would have died in that condition, there is no doubt that, according to the Bible, they would have been lost forever. But what happened was they repented. After Paul was confronted by Christ on the road to Damascus, he turned away from his former life, and stopped killing Christians. And after David was approached by the prophet Nathan, he confessed his sin too, and accepted the temporal consequences for what he’d done. That’s why their sins did not condemn them. That’s what made their sins different from other kinds of sins, even though they were on this same list. It’s because they turned away from them, instead of embracing them. They put those sins away, and looked to God for forgiveness.

The Bible doesn’t just teach us that true Christians shouldn’t be ruled by their sin, it tells us that they can’t be. As soon as someone accepts his sin, and doesn’t even want to be rid of it, he ceases to be a Christian at all. That’s what God’s Word means when it says in Romans 6, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions… for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” To let your sin have dominion over you means that you to do it on purpose, without any intention of trying to stop. But those who have the Holy Spirit, however weak their faith might be, want to stop sinning. Even if they fall into sin sometimes, they are upset with themselves over it, and don’t excuse their bad behavior by simply saying, “we’re all sinners.” On the contrary, when they fall, they confess. When they sin, they repent.

To give an easy illustration of what this looks like so we can better understand it, think about a person whose traveling through some dangerous part of a big city. If that person gets attacked by a mugger, what are they going to do at the first opportunity to get away? They’re going to take it. We Christians are traveling through a dangerous world on our way to heaven. Sometimes we get attacked by the devil and succumb to his temptations. But that’s not because we want to. It’s because we’re weak. And when it happens, we quickly confess our sins to God, and He forgives us for Jesus’ sake. However, when a person doesn’t do that, and takes sides with his or her captor, then they prove that they are not on God’s side at all, and not a genuine Christian no matter how pious they might pretend to be.

Let’s apply this directly to some of the sins that Saint Paul mentions in our reading. He talks about sexual immorality, impurity, and idolatry. Obviously, there are very few of us, if any, who can honestly say that we’ve have never had an impure thought enter into our minds. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 5, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” In that sense, then, we are indeed guilty of breaking the 6th commandment. No one should deny it. But the question is, what is your attitude toward that sin? Do you like it? Do you think that it’s an okay thing to do, and do you look for opportunities to keep on doing it more and more? Are you proud of the fact that you can’t always keep your mind clean and that sometimes you haven’t? I hope not! But there are some people who are. There is literally an entire month of the year in this country called, “Pride Month,” where individuals celebrate their sexual sins. That is not the same thing as the Christian who struggles against his sin and wants to be free of it. And that’s what Saint Paul is talking about in our text.

This, by the way, is the reason why in the Lutheran Church we have always treated things like moving in with your boyfriend or girlfriend, and sleeping together before marriage, differently. On several occasions when I have counseled couples to stop doing this, and even refused to give them Communion until they quit, I’ve been met with a similar excuse. “Pastor, don’t we all sin, so how is this sin any different? Why can’t I have Communion when there are other people in the Church who sin too, and you give them Communion anyway?” I always respond the same way, “The issue is not with your sin, per se, but with your unrepentance. Yes, we all sin. But that doesn’t mean that we’re all unrepentant. And you need to be repentant before you can take Communion. You need to want to be forgiven of your sin, and be willing to bear fruit in keeping with repentance over that sin, before you can receive the gift that’s intended to take it away. Because if I gave you Communion now, you would not learn to repent. You would become even more secure in the sinful thing that you’re doing, and have an even harder time giving it up.”

And again, this doesn’t just apply to willful sins against the 6th Commandment, it applies to willful sins against every other Commandment too. Paul mentions idolatry, which he says is a form of coveting. It’s bad to want things that don’t belong to you and to not be content with what you have. That shows a lack of trust in the Lord, and that you are worshiping a different god than Jesus. But is the Christian who mourns this reality, and recognizes their weakness, fighting against it daily with the strength of the Spirit and the aid of God’s Word, in the same category as those who literally worship at a Buddhist temple, or call Allah “god,” instead of Christ. Of course, not! They would be if they refused to admit the sin and plead with Jesus for forgiveness, but that’s exactly what we do, isn’t it? Every time that we sin, we come to church and ask God to have mercy on us. Even for the sins we are unaware of, we pray that for the sake of His only Begotten Son, He would not count any of them against us, and help us to resist them in the future. 

The danger in conflating repentant sin with unrepentant sin is that it deceives people. As Saint Paul says in our reading, “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” When we give the impression in the Church that you can live in your sin on purpose, without even trying to stop, and that all sins are the same regardless if a person is even sorry for it, we lead people astray. We cause true Christians to not take their sins seriously, and risk falling away from the faith, and we embolden false Christians to think that they are going to be saved even though they’re not. But they will soon find out when they die that they were lied to, and despite what they were led to believe, they cannot go into God’s Kingdom.

I hope you see by now just how important this distinction from God’s Word is, and why it’s insufficient to simply say, “we’re all sinners,” without any further explanation. The difference between repentant sin and unrepentant sin is all throughout the Bible. The Holy Spirit teaches us about it, first, so that those who are living in unrepentant sin would quickly turn away from it, and second, so that those who are sorry for their sins, and want to do better, would not despair of their salvation. In either case, the goal is always the same: that we would have the forgiveness of sins that comes from Jesus.

Are you doing something that God’s Word forbids? Have you committed one of those sins that the apostle Paul names in our reading, or are you committing one of them now? Then listen to what he says, and put it away. Don’t lie to yourself, and pretend that sin is no big deal. That won’t do you any good. It will harden your conscience, and may even lead to you going to hell. Rather, as often as sin should rear its ugly head in your life, no matter what that sin is, don’t coddle it, or feed it, but put it to death through contrition and repentance. Turn to Christ in heartfelt sorrow, and ask for His forgiveness. Remember your Baptism, which still has the power to give you cleansing, and come to the Lord’s table where God promises you His grace. “Walk as a child of light,” as Saint Paul says, and let Jesus, who is the Light of the world, not only expose the darkness of your heart, but cover it with His perfect righteousness. That’s the entire reason why He came into the world. He came to save sinners. And when you are repenting of your sins and looking to Him for salvation, you have nothing to fear, and don’t have to be in doubt at all about your place in God’s Kingdom. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In order to understand what was going in our Old Testament lesson where Jacob wrestled with God, and what it means for us as Christians today, we need to know the rest of Jacob’s story. If you remember, a few chapters earlier in Genesis, Jacob ran away from home because his brother Esau vowed to kill him after he found out how Jacob had tricked their father and stolen his blessing. While Jacob was running way, though, God appeared to him in a dream at night and made him a special promise. He said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

After that, God blessed Jacob and made him rich. He gave him eleven sons and a daughter, and a great number of flocks and herds. Then God appeared to Jacob again and this time told him to “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.” So, Jacob did what God said and took his family, and his livestock, and all that he had, and traveled back to the land that God had promised. On the way, Jacob was met once more by angels of the Lord who encouraged him yet another time that God would be with him and carry out what He had said. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

But then all of a sudden, we learn that Jacob’s attitude changed. A report was brought to him that his brother Esau was on his way to meet him with a large host of four hundred men, more than enough to wipe out Jacob and his entire family. When Jacob received this news, he became afraid, and he sent massive gifts ahead of him in the hopes that it would appease his brother’s anger and maybe save the lives of himself and his children. Jacob even divided up his household into two different groups thinking that if of them got attacked the other might still be able to get away. 

But what was Jacob so afraid of? What had made Jacob doubt that God would keep His Word to him? Had God appeared to Jacob again and told him that He had changed His mind and that it was no longer His plan to multiply his family and give him the land of Canaan as a possession? Had God made it known to Jacob in another dream that it wasn’t His intention anymore to bless all nations of the earth through his offspring, or that He had now departed from Jacob’s side? No. The only thing that had changed was that Esau was on his way with an army, and God’s promise had become harder to believe. Jacob’s spirit was willing, but his flesh was weak.

And yet, in the midst of his doubt and weakness, Jacob did what every child of God should do. He turned to Lord in prayer. He said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children. But you said, ‘I will surely do you good, and make your offspring as the sand of the sea, which cannot be numbered for multitude.’”

Here we see an example of a true Christian prayer. Jacob did not ask God for something on the basis of his own righteousness. He did not demand that the Lord help him and do what he wanted because he deserved it. On the contrary, Jacob admitted that he was a sinner, and that he wasn’t worthy of any of the things that he asked for. But still, Jacob clung to God’s promises. Jacob put everything back on what God had told him, and pleaded with the Lord to keep His own Word. For that’s what true Christian prayer is all about. It’s about faith in God’s promises. The Bible tells us that God only hears the prayers that we ask in faith. As Jesus says elsewhere, “Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” This doesn’t mean that we can make God do whatever we want if we want it bad enough, like the prosperity preachers say, but rather that when we ask for the things which God has already promised, the Lord will surely give them. Jacob had a promise. And so, Jacob prayed to God on the basis of that promise alone. He petitioned to Lord to do what He said.

And yet, even after Jacob prayed that wonderful prayer, God did not immediately answer it. In fact, God made things harder on Jacob and appeared to Him in the form of Man and wrestled with him all throughout the night instead. After Jacob poured his heart out in prayer, and after he had physically drained himself by moving his entire household across a small river in the middle of the night, God pressed him even harder. God even knocked Jacob’s hip out of its socket so that the wrestling match would be that much more difficult for him. But again, what did Jacob do? He insisted that God keep His promises. When Jacob realized who it was that he was wrestling with, He said the Man those wonderful words that every Christian should learn by heart, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” That is to say, “I will not stop trusting in You, Lord, until you do as you have promised.” And God did. He answered Jacob’s prayer and did exactly what He said He would. The next morning, when Jacob arose and Esau came to meet him, the two of them embraced one another, and cried. Esau forgive Jacob for stealing his birthright, and Jacob’s family was no longer in danger.  God kept His promises, and Jacob’s faith was strengthened in the process. For just as Jacob had clung to the body of the Man he wrestled with, even as his hip was put out of joint, so his heart had clung to the words His Savior, even though it felt like it was going to break. Jacob may have been limping at the end of the match, but his faith in the Lord had never been stronger.

What we, of course, learn from this text is not only that God always keeps His promises to us, but also that even in the midst of our greatest trials and deepest suffering, even when it appears as if God Himself is the One who is attacking us, He does so only for the purpose of strengthening our faith in His Word. God knows that we are saved through faith alone. He knows that we’re not saved by our works, but solely through the redeeming work of Christ. God knows that we receive the benefits of that work, only through believing the promise of the Gospel, that for Christ’s sake our sins are truly forgiven.  And because, God knows that, and because He wants all people to be saved, sometimes God puts our faith to the test so that it does not grow weak and die, but stays alive and clings even more tightly to His Word.

That’s how it was for Jacob, who’s name got changed to Israel, and that’s how it is for us too, who the Bible says is the true Israel of God, all believers. At times our lives can be very difficult. At times it can feel not only like the world is out to get us, but that God is out to get us too. Sometimes it seems as if the Lord has left us completely, or that He is pushing us away from Him entirely. We suffer from sickness, the death of loved ones, and the certainty of our own death too. We deal with regret, temptation, and our own lack of faith. Day after day, month after month, year after year, one trial is replaced with another, and life never seems to get easier. But just like Jacob, God has made us very special promises.

Are you afraid like Jacob was that God has abandoned you and that you are all alone in this world. Then listen to the promise of Jesus from Matthew chapter 28, “And behold I am with you always even to the end of the age.” Are you confused like Jacob was about the things that are going in your life and nervous about what the future will hold. Then hear what God’s Word says in Romans chapter 8, “All things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.” Are you worried like Jacob was about the needs of your body and the safety of yourself and your family? Then listen to what Jesus tells us about the lilies of the valley in Matthew chapter 6, “They neither toil nor spin,” He says, “and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God clothes the grass which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you.” Are you afraid of your enemies and what others who don’t like you or your faith might do to you like Jacob was? Then consider the words of Saint Paul in Romans 8 again, “If God is for us who can be against us. He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” And do you have a guilty conscience like Jacob did? Have you done things that you are ashamed and wish that you could take them back? Then hear what God’s Word says to you in 1 John chapter 1, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 

God’s Word is filled with promise after promise that assures you of the love the He has for you in Christ. God does not wrestle with you, and allow difficulty to befall you in order to be cruel to you or to punish you. If the Lord wanted to destroy you, and get revenge, He could do it at any moment, just like He could have pulverized Jacob whenever it pleased Him. But that’s not what God did. God wrestled with Jacob to help him. God struggled with Jacob so that Jacob would cling to Him all the more. God put Jacob to the test so that Jacob would learn to walk by faith and not by sight, and to believe even more firmly that His promises are true and cannot fail even if it seems it is impossible for them not to. That’s why God wrestled with Jacob. And that’s why He wrestles with you too. He does it because He loves you and He wants you to trust in Him. He wants you to hold Him to His Word, which He always promises to keep. He wants you to learn that man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God. He wants you to know Him not by what you see with your eyes, or experience in the world around you, but by what He declares to you in the Scriptures. 

The Bible tells us elsewhere that every one of God’s promises are fulfilled in Christ. As Saint Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 2, “For all of God’s promises find their ‘yes’ in Jesus.” The assurance of God’s love and mercy towards is forever bound up in the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son. Nothing can undo what Jesus did for you when He suffered and died for your sins. And when you are clinging to Jesus as your Savior, when you are holding on to what He promises you in His Word, you can be certain of where those promises will lead you. Even if holding on to them results in you limping your way through life because of many great and difficult challenges, you are limping your way into the land that God has promised you, your heavenly home. So, may the Lord teach us to pray along with Jacob, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness shows us two main things about temptation. First, it shows us the way that we’re supposed to fight against it. And second, it shows us where we find the real victory over it.

The way that you fight against temptation is always with the written Word of God. That’s how Jesus fought against the Devil in our reading today and that’s how we’re called to fight against him too. As Saint Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 6, “take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” We wield God’s Word, and the truth of the Scriptures in the face of every temptation to sin, because all temptation, in some way other another, is an attack on God’s Word.

Think about the temptations that Jesus faced. The first one had to do with hunger and whether or not God could be trusted to provide for Him. Satan said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” Notice how the Devil tried to get Jesus to doubt His identity as God’s Son by pointing to the difficulty of His circumstances. He wanted Christ to look at His suffering, instead of God’s promises, to know whether or not God loved Him.

But that’s not how we know whether or not God loves us. We don’t come to that conclusion by adding up all the stuff that we have or don’t have. We do so by listening to what God’s Word tells us and trusting it.

Remember what happened right before Jesus went into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. He was Baptized in the Jordan River and voice from heaven declared Him to be God’s beloved Son. Well, that’s what happens in our Baptism too. God puts His Name on us and makes us part of His family. He promises to wash away our sins and give us exactly what is most beneficial for our eternal salvation. So, even if we are faced with hunger and adversity, like Jesus was in the wilderness, we can rest assured that God is not out to get us, but is still at work to save us. We know that not because of what we see, but because that’s what He promised. And God always keeps His promises.

How did Jesus respond to that first attack from Satan? He quoted the Bible. He said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.” That’s how we live our lives as Christians too. Our true food is not what we eat and drink off of our tables, but the promises of God’s Word, which assure us of His mercy and love in the face of every trial.

The next temptation that Jesus faced was the temptation to add to God’s Word. The first time the Devil came to Him, he tried to get Him to ignore the Scriptures, but this time, he tried to get Him to go above and beyond them. Satan took Christ to the pinnacle of the Temple and said, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angles concerning you,’ and ‘on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’” 

If the Devil cannot get us to sin by making our lives miserable so that we’ll ignore God’s promises, the next step is to use our faith against us by trying to get us to add to God’s promises. He preys upon our belief that the Lord will provide by pushing us to demand that He give us even more than what we have. But that’s not what it means to have faith. Having faith is about trusting in what He has given, not demanding that He give other things too.

This kind of temptation is especially challenging because often times it’s cloaked in religious sounding language. The Devil even quoted the Bible to Jesus, and appealed to the written text of God’s Word too. But when you look at the verse he used more closely, you quickly realize that he left out something very important. The passage that Satan appealed to in his temptation to Jesus was Psalm 91. But the Psalmist doesn’t just say that “God will command his angels concerning you lest you strike your foot against a stone.” He says, “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.” Satan left out the part where God specifies that He only promises His blessing and protection when we are doing the things He’s called us to do. Well, has God called us to throw ourselves off buildings to see if He will catch us? No, He hasn’t. So, once again Jesus responded with what God has said and quoted another text from the Bible accurately. He said, “Again, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Adding to God’s Word is just as bad as taking away from it. In either instance, eventually, we will be led away from the Lord in the process. Whether that is by making up teachings that aren’t found in the Bible, or challenging the ones that are already exist there, neither case ever ends well. Both of them will eventually leave you lying dead on the ground outside the Temple. 

And the last temptation that Jesus faced was the temptation of wealth and worldly pleasure. First, the Devil tried to get Christ to forsake God’s Word, then he tried to get Him to add to it, and when that didn’t work, he tried to distract Him from it entirely. Satan showed Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and said, “All these things I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” This was a very overt temptation, but many times it’s much more subtle. Perhaps the Devil was getting frustrated with his lack of success, and made the mistake of showing all of his cards at once. Either way, we should not expect him to be so straightforward when it comes to us.

More often than not, the temptation of wealth, riches, and earthly pleasure does not replace the worship of Christ immediately, but gradually overtime. It starts with something small like choosing a college or job based off which one will get you the most money, even if leads to you going to Church less, and before you know it you aren’t going to Church to all. At the beginning it’s something not that drastic, like dating someone because of their looks, despite the fact that they don’t believe the same things as you, and all of a sudden, you’re in agreement with them instead of the Bible. Without you even realizing it, your bowed down in front of the Devil chasing after the world. Idolatry, as Luther reminds us in the Catechism, always begins in the heart. First, there’s the craving for something that you don’t have, then there’s the decisions that you make to get those things at any cost, until eventually it comes at the cost of your faith.

But again, what did Jesus do in response to Satan’s attack? Once more, He brought things back to the Bible. “Be gone, Satan!” He said, “For it written, ‘You shall worship the Lord Your God and Him only shall you serve.” God didn’t make us to serve ourselves or our possessions. He made us to serve Him. Living your life only in the pursuit of pleasure won’t make you any happier. In the end, it will leave you empty and hollow, trapped in the lies of the Devil.

So, instead, we should surround ourselves with the teachings of God’s Word, and let the Scriptures lead and guide us. We should look to the Bible for how we’re supposed to live and what sort of things we should believe. God’s Word won’t ever steer us wrong. It will protect us from every enemy, and send even our worst enemy, the old evil foe, running away from us. That’s one thing we learn from the temptation of Jesus. We learn how to fight against temptation by using God’s Word.

But that isn’t the only thing that we learn from this text. In fact, that isn’t even the most important thing. We don’t just learn how to do battle against the Tempter by wielding the sword of the Spirit and holding fast to God’s Word, we learn where the true victory over him is found. It isn’t found in us. It’s found in Christ.

Yes, Jesus is our example in all things. He gives us a perfect picture of what it looks like to live and act like a true child of God. When He did battle against the Devil and applied the Scriptures flawlessly to every temptation, He showed us what kind of things we’re supposed to do too. The problem, though, is that we don’t always do it. Sometimes we fail. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, it seems like for every time that we have succeeded in overcoming one temptation, there are countless other times that we haven’t. And if the only purpose of this text is to show us what we should be doing, but so often fail to do, then we’re missing out on the real benefit of it.

This is where our other readings for today help give us a fuller picture. There are two different Old Testament lessons that you can use on the first Sunday of Lent. One of them is the account of the fall into sin from Genesis 3, and the other one is the story of David and Goliath. Both of these passages remind us how the Devil is really defeated, and where our true confidence comes from as Christians.

On the one hand, there’s the clear prophecy about our salvation from Genesis chapter 3. Adam and Eve succumb to the Devil’s temptation by disobeying God’s command and eating from the tree that He told them not to. They laid aside the clear Word of God for their own ideas only to bring upon themselves great shame and sorrow. That’s what we’ve done too. As the hymn we sang earlier said, “All mankind fell in Adam’s fall.” We have the same sinful nature as they did and we’ve committed the same kind of sinful acts as they did. But what did God say to our first parents after they fell into sin? How did He tell them that they would be delivered from the Tempter’s power? Would it be through their own work, or the work of another? God promised that it would be through the Offspring of the woman. He said to the Devil, “You will bruise his heel, but He will crush your head.” That’s what Jesus began to fulfill when He resisted temptation in the wilderness, and that’s what He fulfilled for good when He died for us on the cross. Our Lord crushed the head of the Serpent. By doing the things that we failed to do, and then trading His life as a ransom for ours, Jesus silenced our accuser. He purchased for us the forgiveness of all of our sins and made up for every time that we’ve ever fallen into temptation.

And what about the story of David and Goliath? People always want to make themselves into the hero of that story, but that’s not what it’s supposed to be about. They turn it into some kind of self-help analogy for overcoming your own personal fears, when really, it’s meant to be yet another reminder of the Atonement. Who are we really in the story? We’re more like the Israelites who stood cowering on the sidelines too afraid to face the enemy. Day after day Satan mocked us with our sins and made us lower our heads in guilt and shame. Not even the best of us had the courage to face him alone. But then along came our Champion. Despite His humble appearance and lowly estate, a Good Shepherd, born in the town of Bethlehem, volunteered to fight in our place. And just like Goliath stood on the edge of the battlefield and taunted the Israelites for forty days, Jesus fasted for forty days before coming face to face with the Devil.  With a piece of wood in one hand, and five smooth stones in the other, David approached the giant in front of him with all the strength of the Lord. And with a cross upon His shoulders, and five wounds from the nails and the spear on his hands, and feet, and side, Christ approach the fiercest Giant of all and silenced Him forever. 

What did the soldiers of Israel do after they saw that Goliath was dead? They let out a mighty shout, and they rushed into battle to finish off the rest of the enemy. That’s how we get to live our lives now, because of the life that Jesus Christ already lived for us. We can face temptation and resist it with the confidence that our salvation is secure. Even if we should stumble and fall, there is one among us who stood His ground. As Luther writes in the hymn, “But for us fights the valiant one, whom God Himself elected.” Jesus is on our side. He overcame every one the Devil’s assaults and gives us the credit for His victory through faith. And with the promise of God forgiveness ringing in our ears, and the sword of His Word strapped to our side, there’s no enemy that stands a chance against us. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.