Sunday, March 9, 2025, First Sunday in Lent
“Grace In the Wilderness”
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8-13; Luke 4:1-13
Divine Service III, no Communion
Hymns: #435 “Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain”; #424 “O Christ, You Walked the Road”
#532 “The Head That Once Was Crowned with Thorns”; #585 “Lord Jesus Christ, with Us Abide”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.
A heard this story about a three-year-old boy named Casey Hathaway, who went missing for two days in the woods of western North Carolina a few years ago. When the boy was found at last by a search and rescue team, entangled in thorny shrubs and bushed about a half a mile from home, he told his family he’d been “hanging out with a bear” in the woods. His Aunt Breanna told reporters that Casey was “smiling and talking” after he was found. She added, “He said he hung out with a bear for two days. Looks like God must have sent Him a friend to keep him safe. God is good. Miracles do happen.”
In our Gospel reading in Luke this morning, we’re told that Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit “into the desert.” “Desert” isn’t the best of English translations, there in our NIV. The Greek word there literally means “wilderness.” If we hear the word “desert,” we immediately think of cactus and sand dunes and such; but a wilderness can be anywhere that’s barren and uninhabited and deserted. A wilderness can be a sandy desert, or rugged mountains, or a jungle, or a thick wooded forest, or a jungle. None of those places are good places to be lost and all by yourself - especially without food or water or shelter, or if you’re only three.
The children of Israel, in the Book of Deuteronomy, wandered in the wilderness for forty years. (It should have been forty days, but their sin, if you’ll recall the story, caused them to take the really long way around). The wilderness Jesus walked into in our Gospel was a very real and desolate kind of place, to the west of Jerusalem in the direction of Jericho, so they say.
And a wilderness, in God’s Word, is also a very powerful spiritual metaphor for walking through this harsh and inhospitable wilderness of a world, without help and without hope and apart from the grace of God. A wilderness can just as well be a nursing home, or a hospital bed, or some ailment that leaves you in chronic pain. A wilderness can be grief, or loneliness, or the hurt of a broken relationship. What I’d like you to know today is that whatever wilderness you may find yourself lost in - whether it’s a real one, like a desert or a woods or a jungle, or a metaphorical one made up of your life and your troubles, or a spiritual wilderness that exists in your own heart and soul - in every wilderness, there is also hope and life and the grace of God, if only you know where to find it.
In the Book of Deuteronomy, the children of Israel, in spite of their sin, were never far apart from the love and care of God. He punished them for their sins, yes, but He never left them. He fed them with manna and sometimes with quail. He led them to water, even if it was water from what looked moments before to be nothing but barren rock. He defended them from danger, and protected them from their enemies. God never gave up hope for them, and He gave them always hope to hang on to. He never said, “If you should enter the land the Lord God is giving you;” He always said “when.” In spite of their sin and the punishment they had to endure for it, there was always mercy for them, always grace, and always the hope of a Promised Land to come. God always heard them when they cried out to Him in their misery, and He remembered them and forgave them and looked upon them with mercy. And even if it took forty long years, the second generation of them finally made it to that “land of milk and honey” that God had promised.
Just before the reading we heard from St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus had been baptized by John in the Jordan River. The Father Himself had spoken from heaven and said, “This is My beloved Son; listen to Him.” And the Holy Spirit came down from heaven and alighted on Him in the form of a dove. And now that that glorious scene was over, that same good Spirit led Him off into the wilderness, “Where for forty days He was tempted – harassed, accused, and questioned – by the devil.” The story doesn’t say the devil only came once at the end of the forty days; it says the devil tempted and attacked Him day after day after day.
And in all that time, says our Gospel, Jesus had nothing to eat. From a scientific standpoint, the average human being can survive for two or three weeks without food, just 15 or 20 days or so. But then again, Jesus was no average human being. He was fully human, but He was also God’s Son. But after forty days (in one of the biggest understatements you can find in Scripture) He was hungry. That’s when the devil, Satan, the diabolos, the diabolical one, moved in for his final wilderness attack against Jesus. At Jesus’ physically weakest point, at His lowest ebb, the devil came after him. (As he will do with us, so be careful!)
And to attack Jesus, the devil uses one of his favorite little words; “If You are the Son of God,” he said. Look out for the devil’s ifs: If God really loved you, why is He letting you go through all this? If God really cares about you, why doesn’t He show Himself? If God really loves you, why are you still sick or in pain? Look out for the ifs… be careful.
“If you are the Son of God,” the devil says to Jesus, “tell these stones to become bread.” What a temptation to put before a hungry man in an empty wilderness, especially since Jesus truly was (and is) the Son of God, and He could have had that whole wilderness bloom into a bakery any time He so chose. (He showed that later, when He fed a huge crowd with a few little barley rolls and few small fish).
So why didn’t He? Why didn’t He pick up a rock and conjure up a loaf of bread and eat, hungry as He was? I said there was grace in every wilderness, and here it is for us to see. Jesus was there in that place when He didn’t have to be, fighting the devil and all the sin that was all our fault - because in spite of our sin, God never gives up on us. He came here to earth to carry out His Father’s will, which was to save us from this wilderness we find ourselves in. If the devil could have convinced Him to turn away, to disobey His Father, to go His own way even for a moment, the devil would have had us, and all of us would be lost. But there’s grace in the wilderness. Jesus answered the devil, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.”
The devil, rotten and evil and stuck on stupid as he is, kept on trying. Evil he certainly is, but he’s persistent, he’s no quitter, and he keeps on coming; so we need to be persistent as well, and keep on praying and crying out to God for grace in this wilderness every single day. First the devil tried to tempt Jesus with hunger and want, and now he goes after Him with human ambition. The devil “showed Him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world” - all the power, all the glory, all the best things on earth that wealth can bring to a human being. But the thing is – and the trap in the devil’s offer – is that apart from the love and the grace of God, all the money and success and glory in the world can turn into a wilderness, too – one as empty and desolate and lonesome a wilderness as any you can find.
When the devil says, “It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to,” that much is true. The devil does rule in this wasteland of a world; just look around you. And he will give you everything your sinful heart desires, if you’re willing to follow his way. “If you worship me, it will all be yours,” Satan says. “Taste the fruit,” the serpent said to Eve in the garden, “and every good thing in the world will be yours.” But the question is, what are you trading for it? “What good will it be for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” Jesus says. The temptation is to trade the kingdom of heaven for the kingdom of the world, even though we all know perfectly well that the kingdoms of this world will always turn to sand.
Jesus’ answer is the good one and the right one and the only correct one, and the only answer that will help us or save us from ourselves. He says to the devil, "It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.'" “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,” Jesus says, “and all these things will be given to you as well.”
So first the devil tempts Jesus with hunger and want and need, and then he tempts Him with human ambition and greed; and the last thing the devil tries, there in that wilderness, is to appeal to His human ego. We all have one of those, Lord knows; and Jesus, being fully human, had one, too. The devil brings Jesus, says our Gospel, to the highest point of the Jerusalem temple. The pinnacle of the temple was some fifteen modern stories high. It was the place where the High Priest would stand at sunrise, to announce the beginning of a new day, and to call the people to worship.
From there, the devil brings out one his “ifs” again: If you’re the Son of God, You have the power to do whatever You want; so ahead and jump! If You’re the God you claim to be, You can fly, can’t You? And even if You can’t, doesn’t Your Father love You, and won’t He send His angels to catch You? And all that may have been true enough. Jesus could absolutely have flown like a bird or like an angel. (He walked on water, after all). And His Father certainly did love Him enough to send angels to catch Him and keep Him from harm; but that’s not the point. The point is that Jesus came to do His Father’s will concerning us, and that is that we be found and rescued and saved from this broken wilderness of a world. When Jesus was crucified, the onlookers laughed at Him, and said, “Now let’s see if His Father comes to save Him.” And the angels could only stand afar off with tears in their eyes and watched it happen. Because it had to be.
Jesus answered, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (The flip side of the coin there is “Trust in God, no matter what happens.”) And the devil left Him “until an opportune time.” It’s not that the devil quit trying. He failed with Jesus, and couldn’t turn His heart away from obeying His Father in all things and loving us to death. But he did turn the heart of Judas, who sold his Savior out for money. And he managed to turn the hearts of the other disciples for a little while, as they abandoned their Master out of cowardice and fear. And he always has the hearts of the Pilates and Herod’s and Pharisees and Sadducees of this world, those who are willing to do his bidding for the sake of their own gain. (That’s why this world is still the wilderness it is).
When they nailed Jesus to that cross, the devil though he had the game won – that God was dead and hope was lost and we were his forever. But death couldn’t hold the Son of God. For all the devil’s “ifs,” the Son of God was who He was, and He is who He is. The Resurrection of Jesus, above all other things, is our grace in this wilderness. Through everything we have to go through; through every bad time, through every dark place; through anything that might tempt us to lay down or give in or give up - still there is and always will be grace, and always hope to be found.
“The Word is very near you,” St. Paul says, “in your mouth and in your heart.” Jesus in near you, His promises are near you, and they’ll never to be gone back on or rescinded or taken away. “If”, Paul says, (and God has ifs too, only much better and happier ones) - if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Not could be or might be, but will be. That’s the grace we’re living on and living for today, no matter how dark or frightening whatever wilderness we’re in may get. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved,” Paul says.
And so we call on Him: Father in Heaven, we cry out to You from this wilderness, in need of Your mercy and hungry for grace. Our needs are pressing and real, our weaknesses are all too obvious, and the devil presses us hard, day after day, to give up and give in and go his way instead. Help us, Father, to be trusting and obedient and always faithful, and to follow our Savior Jesus through the land of the shadows, until heaven is ours at last. We pray in Jesus’ name; Amen.