The devil’s lies vs. Jesus’ truth

Luke 4:1-13 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, ² where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry. ³ The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread." ⁴ Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'" ⁵ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷ So if you worship me, it will all be yours." ⁸ Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" ⁹ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. "If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down from here. ¹⁰ For it is written: "'He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; ¹¹ they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.'" ¹² Jesus answered, "It says: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" ¹³ When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.

January was a big month for liars. After years of defending himself against accusations of using performance enhancing drugs, Lance Armstrong admitted that he had used PED’s to win the Tour de France a record 7 times. Manti Te’o, a Notre Dame football player, had to explain a non-existent girlfriend who he said had died last fall. Beyonce’ lip-synced the national anthem at President Obama’s inauguration.

In our permissive culture, we might try to explain away the lies. Beyonce’ was concerned about the weather affecting her voice and thus affecting the president’s inauguration. Te’o was unsure how the public would perceive an online relationship in which he had been the victim of a cruel hoax. Armstrong had raised millions of dollars for cancer research through his LiveStrong foundation.

Whether you accept the explanations or not, they were lies.

They were lies that came from the father of lies – the devil. Jesus entered our world to defeat the devil. The fallen angel of Satan may have caused the whole world to fall into sin, but he is no match for the Word through whom this world was called into existence. The Liar is conquered by the Truth.

After His baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the desert. Jesus does not expose Himself to Satan’s attacks recklessly or accidentally. This was God’s divine purpose. It was God’s will that this battle should take place.

Jesus is tempted and tested by the devil for forty days. The devil knew that if he could get the Son of God to sin – even once – he would win the victory. These were no sham or pretend temptations. Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are” (Hebrews 4:15), yet He remained without sin.

The temptation of Jesus was continuous over the entire period of forty days. Luke records only three examples of the many ways in which Satan attacked Christ. The common thread in each of the temptations – turning stones into bread, worshiping Satan, and throwing Himself down from the highest point of the temple – was Satan twisting the words of God. He tried to get Jesus to look to somewhere else than God and His Holy Word.

This is the same thing that the devil has been doing ever since the Garden of Eden. The devil means “liar,” “slanderer,” “accuser.” He is the Ancient Serpent who twisted God’s good command about the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil into something that seemed burdensome and threatening to Adam and Eve. He convinced them that the real source of goodness was not in God’s Word. It was in themselves. They should trust in their own abilities to discern good from evil, to make up their own rules and live by them. Our Lutheran Confessions write about this: “The old devil … led them away from God’s outward Word to spiritualizing and self-pride. And yet, he did this through other outward words” (Smalcald Articles, Article VIII, Confession, paragraph 5). The devil’s primary goal is to make Christians forget about the outward Word of God and focus inwardly on our own works and words.

The old serpent is up to his same old tactic. He’s a talented pony, but he only has the one trick. But it is a very good trick. It has worked for several millennia and it continues to work today. He substitutes something, anything for the truth of God’s Word. The devil keeps telling the age-old lie that “God wants you to find Him somewhere other than in His Word.”

The devil knows that we are human, which means that we are forgetful, distracted, and more than a little lazy. With a sleight of hand, he fans into flame a fire in your heart that he tells you is “for Jesus,” but he slips into your fire fuel for something else – anything else. He doesn’t mind you having a cross of Jesus on your wall, as long as you don’t actually apply the meaning of that cross to yourself. He could care less that you wear a nail pin to work, as long as you don’t change your lifestyle one bit, but just appear with the veneer of Christianity on your clothing. He isn’t bothered a bit by you coming to church, as long as you feel like it is some kind of contractual obligation. He is not concerned that you are involved in Bible study or are learning God’s Word in Bible classes in the school, as long as you waver on your convictions the first time someone challenges you or belittles your faith or questions your church’s teachings.

The devil gets us to believe, “I may not be coming to church to worship, but I’m active in the school.” “I may not do devotions at home with my children, but I teach them how to be moral and good.” “I may not share a Bible passage and a prayer with someone who is hurting, but I tell them that my heart goes out to them.” “I may not spend time with God in worship, Bible study, hymns and prayers, but I see God in nature all around me.”

Did you notice the common thread in all of those statements? God and His Word are absent. The devil gets us thinking about anything other than God. He gets us active apart from being active in God’s Word. He gets us to teach morality apart from God’s Law and Gospel. He gets us to focus on something, anything other than the cross of Christ.

One of the darkest secrets of Christianity in America is that we are losing our kids. Our church and school are growing numerically, but often losing ground spiritually. Christianity is also losing college students. And young parents. And senior citizens. It isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s been happening throughout the ages. Why is this happening? The devil is teaching a counterfeit Christianity. Children are not growing up with the truth of God’s Word consistently and constantly in their lives, so when they get older and are confronted with more and more of the devil’s lies, they fall away.

The devil is hard at work. Not only out there in the world, but here in our church, our school, our homes.

The devil is a one trick pony, but he is very good at the one trick.

There is only one attack the devil uses to destroy the Church of Jesus Christ – remove Jesus. He does this by removing the way Jesus reigns: by removing Jesus’ words. This is nothing new. It has happened before, and it will happen again. The brightly colored serpent has been a liar from the beginning. But he always tells the same lies. We can learn from them. We can discern them. We don’t have to believe them.

The way to combat the devil is simple – Jesus. As our communion liturgy states, “He is the one who brought the gift of salvation to all people by his death on the tree of the cross, so that the devil, who overcame us by a tree would in turn by a tree be overcome.” It is that proper preface from our communion liturgy which was the motivation for our new Lenten paintings. The first Adam fell because of a lie. The second Adam, Jesus Christ was lifted up because He is the truth. Because of what happened at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the whole world was plunged into sin. Because of what happened at the tree of the cross, the whole world was expunged of their sin. (If you look closely, the cross was painted to look like it was cut from a tree and is the reverse mirror image of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.) The Ancient Serpent was colorful and lively in Eden, but He is withered and crushed under Jesus’ heel at Calvary.

It should have been an idyllic day for three-year-old Liam McCall, as he rode his bike in Frazier Park, Charlotte, North Carolina. It should have been, but it wasn’t. As McCall was riding, a man walked past the child, turned around, and snatched him around the waist. The boy’s mother, who was nearby, immediately grabbed hold of her boy and began a tug-of-war for the child. The man was heavier and bigger. The mother was strengthened by adrenalin and a mother’s love. She said to herself, “I’ve got to hold on to him as tightly as I can.”

She did. She won and the man, who had been arrested more than 103 times in the past, was captured and put behind bars. 

I like that story for a number of reasons. First, because, motivated by love, the good guys won, and a terrible tragedy was averted. The second reason I like that story is because, in many ways, it is our story. You see, a demonic character, a fellow with a proven track record of wrongdoing, stole us away from our Heavenly Father. We, the kidnapped, didn’t have the power to escape. On our own we were lost ... dead.

But our kidnapper had not counted on God’s love. It was a love that caused the Son of God to be born as the Son of Man in Bethlehem. His entire life was spent in a tug-of-war with Satan. It lasted the forty days in the desert, but then continued for another three years complete with devilish attacks against Jesus with doubts, denials, desertions and demon-possessions. It ended with Jesus dying on a tree outside of Jerusalem so that He could reverse what happened inside of Eden.

Well, it almost ended with Jesus dying on a cross. Three days after He had been murdered, a living Christ appeared to the world and showed to all that the kidnapper’s hold on kidnapped humanity had been broken.

Our Rescuer has freed us. He holds us close. He comforts and consoles us. He speaks to us. He comes to us in His Word and Sacrament, in our classrooms, computers, Bibles, hymnals, liturgies and sermons. Why would we ever want to go back and listen to the haunting voice of our kidnapper? He’s just a liar and a deceiver, anyhow.

The devil’s first and only rule is to get us to forget all the things that Jesus actually said. The best way to do that is not to take down all the pictures of the long-haired, bearded guy walking through fields with some sheep, but to start replacing His words with other words. Our words. Other spiritualities. Other activities. By slowing leaching away the real Jesus’ words and replacing them, one by one, with his own, the devil can actually lead us into worshiping a guy named “Jesus’ who is not actually there.

So, how do you shut up the devil? By using the real words of Jesus against him. How do you make the devil flee and get behind you? With the constant and consistent use of Jesus’ words. How can one little word fell him? (Christian Worship: #200) When that one words is … “Jesus.”

Jesus does not want you to discover Him through activity or busyness, through meditation or morality, through feelings or logic. He wants you to know that He has already found you. He has found you and rescued you. He has found you and died for you. He has found you and speaks to you. Real words. Words written in black and white on the pages of your Bible. Words spoken in absolution in worship. Words memorized in Bible passages. Words set into poetry in our hymns. Words poured out at the font and words fed to you in the Lord’s Supper. Words to convict. Words to comfort. Words to forgive. Words of truth to defeat the devil and his lies.

Real words spoken by a real Jesus, who came down to earth with divinely inspired and inerrant words. Holy Spirit-filled words. Words from the Word through whom all creation came into existence. Words from the incarnation of the almighty God. Words from the One who defeated the devil’s repeated attempts at twisting His Father’s words.

The plain words of Jesus are the only antidote to the poisoned dish warmed up and served countless times by the devil. The devil’s lies have always been and will always be defeated by the truth of Jesus’ words. Amen.