Our awareness of, and attention to, the devil and the angels illustrate the adage that Satan is especially active with those trying hardest to worship God. The angels and Devil don't have to waste their time on non-believers. We would do well to bear in mind the warning by C. S. Lewis that the Devil's greatest victory comes when we deny he exists.
Now to an illustration: thirty-eight years ago I was a first-year student at Nashotah House. At one November Evensong the verse of Psalm 51 - "that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice" - was being recited just when the car I was driving down Mission Road flipped over. As it rolled down the embankment, I exited by way of the locked sun roof. In the ambulance on the way to hospital, the attendant told the driver he could shut off the siren: I was dead.
Well, they jump-started me at the hospital; in response to the query as to whether I'd live, the doctor replied that it would be just as well I not live, as I'd never be able to think again, so severe was the injury to my brain. (That perhaps explains my dogged conservatism - I haven't had an original thought since!) In fact, the bones in my hip, back, jaw, and skull that were broken did rejoice, to the point that no breaks were apparent in follow-up X-rays ten days later. As the thinking process, memory, and awareness returned to me, you can be sure I had a much more profound sensitivity to what seminary was all about.
Let us come forward to forty-some days ago, when I had just finished a trek up the road to Mandalay from Rangoon in Burma. Sewers in the far East are in fact open trenches two feet wide and three feet deep, normally covered with concrete slabs. So enthralled was I with the sights of Mandalay that I didn't look where I was going and plunged into an uncovered sewer.
On the way down, I was careful to save my cameras by extending my arm; the thought crossed my mind that the fall would be a colorful illustration of today's sermon. Unfortunately, when I hit bottom my sole landed on a broken bottle, bringing agonizing pain.
After I was extricated from the pit, a passerby pulled a flask of brandy out of his pocket and bathed my wounded sole; a little girl wrapped her shawl around my bleeding foot, and four young men carried me to a clinic, where the doctor took out the glass and gave me a tetanus booster; his wife sewed up the wound.
As there was no electricity in Mandalay that day, an X-ray was not possible; the doctor was pretty sure there were no broken bones. Each day thereafter throughout my sojourn in Burma, the would was re-dressed. I perhaps would have perceived the overwhelming kindness of all the Burmese people without the injured foot; it's more likely that I would have been rushing about too busily to notice their gentleness.
Were the people who tended me angels? No, but their kindnesses pointed me, directed me to glorify the Creator in his creation. Then, when I got back to Boston, an X-ray revealed that there were indeed two broken bones in my foot.
Now, my car wreck didn't follow forty days in the desert; I hadn't been without food for the month preceding my arrival in Mandalay. Let us try to imagine what it was like for our Lord, who had indeed been fasting in the desert for forty days before Satan hurled his temptations at him. How would you or I have reacted, had we, weak and tired, been presented with these beguiling temptations?
In the wilderness of temptation, Christ was without food forty days. Satan had succeeded so well in deceiving the angels of God that he thought he would be successful in overcoming Christ in his humiliation. He had worked the ruin of our first parents, and brought sin and death into the world.
By his power, he had controlled cities and nations, until their sin provoked the wrath of God to destroy them by fire, water, earthquakes, sword, famine, and pestilence. Satan had, through his seductive power, led men to vain philosophy, to question, and finally disbelieve, the divine revelation, and the existence of God.
Because in our human weakness we could not resist the power of Satan's temptations, Jesus volunteered to undertake the work, to bear the burden for us, and overcome the power of sinful appetite on our behalf.
In his Second Temptation, Satan demanded of Christ that if he was indeed the Son of God he would prove it by casting himself from the dizzy height upon which the Devil had placed him. He urged Christ to show his confidence in the preserving care of his Father by casting himself down from the temple.
He tried to take advantage of the faith and perfect trust Christ had shown in his Heavenly Father, to urge him to presumption. The sin of presumption lies close beside the virtue of perfect faith and confidence in God. Satan flattered himself that he could take advantage of the humanity of Christ to urge him over the line of trust to presumption. Satan tried to deceive Christ through flattery. He then urged Christ to give him one more proof of his entire dependence upon God, one more evidence of his faith that he was the Son of God, by casting himself from the temple.
He told Christ that if he was indeed the Son of God he had nothing to fear, for angels were at hand to uphold him. Satan gave evidence that he understood the Scriptures by the use he made of them.
After Satan had ended his temptations, he departed from Jesus for a little season. The foe was conquered, but the conflict had been long and exceedingly trying, and Christ was exhausted and fainting. He fell upon the ground as though dying. Heavenly angels now came and ministered unto him. They prepared him food and strengthened him, for he lay as one dead.
Solitary and alone he had been pursued by the rebel chief, who had been expelled from Heaven. He had endured a more severe test than we would ever have to bear. The angels brought messages of love and comfort from the Father and the assurance that all Heaven triumphed in the full and entire victory he had gained on our behalf.
We have a lesson from the story of Christ's temptations: there is a ferocious war going on around us every day, a great battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan, a battle that makes all the wars that mankind has ever waged pale in comparison.
This is a war that started when Lucifer, created by God to guard His throne room, stood up in pride and said, Satan saw the beautiful relationship between Creator and created, between God and man and - in deceitful cunning - set a trap in the Garden of Eden that, he thought, would destroy God's Plan. Satan cares nothing for us, but he will manipulate us if he can to upset God's will in our lives.
We should note the we have no power within ourselves to defeat Satan. Many have tried, and lost. Though the saved in Heaven will be numbered as the sands of the sea, many others, an overwhelming number, will be in Hell, lost for all eternity, because they accepted or tolerated the unholy one.
The guileful Satan slides into our life when we are at our weakest. He doesn't come into our life to deceive us when we're on top of the world. He always comes in when he perceives a weakness that he can flaunt.
The word translated as "hungered" literally means "to be famished". Jesus wasn't just a little hungry. This wasn't some simple craving like we sometimes get when we crave a little ice cream, or a chocolate bar. Jesus was famished, He had an overwhelming urge to eat. No wonder: after forty full days and nights without food our Savior was literally starving. And, right in the midst of this physical weakness, here comes the tempter.
In our world today there are innumerable cults that worship anything but the true God. There is the cult who believe that "As God was, we can become". There is the cult that says, "Believe what you want, God loves you anyway. There is no Hell, only Heaven", and there are those who tell us that Jesus was no more than a good teacher. Thousands of cults, one purpose: to drive us away from the Saving Grace we can only find in Jesus Christ. These thousands of cults have one master: Satan.
Today we have heard the Word of God. We have heard, It is written. We have seen two pathways, the highway of Jesus Christ heavenward, and Satan's low road into Hell. Each of us, especially throughout this Lenten season, should tell the Father, Just as Jesus Christ, in the temptation by Satan, refused to tempt his Father, refused to become the servant of Satan, refused to disobey the Word of God, so we must be careful in examining what God is telling us by His actions in our lives. That is, I would be crazy, presumptive, proud, and foolish were I to claim the wonderful healing of my broken bones thirty-eight years ago at seminary was in any way due to my merit or deserving. Similarly, it would be lunacy, presumption, pride, and foolishness for me to pretend that my fall into the Mandalay sewer had anything of the magnitude of Christ's temptation at the height of the temple
Rather, noting Rabbi Aquiba's reported statement, "All is foreseen; liberty is permitted," I do not say that God caused my car accident, or caused me to fall into the sewer. Instead, I affirm that God gave me the insight in my car accident to see how personal the Psalmist David was when he wrote, Each one of us will have countless incidents in our lives; it is up to us how we are going to read them, how they are going to affect us. During the rest of these forty Lenten days, I pray that each of us will be so fortunate as to perceive God speaking to us in our daily events and circumstances. I pray that, as we pass through the myriad challenges and temptations of our lives with our family, with our work, and with our colleagues, each of us will hear the word of the Lord, will remember that, "It is written...," will echo Jesus Christ, Let us pray to our Father, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan; let us beg Him to come quickly to help us who are assaulted by countless temptations. Let us take our heavenly Medicine at the Altar of God this morning, fortifying us for a fruitful Lent, that the bones which he has broken may indeed dance with joy, as we endure the rage of the prince of darkness and give endless praise to the Holiest in the height.
In the name of the
This Ash Wednesday, the Miserere (Psalm 51) was intoned as we received our ashes with the admonition, "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return." It is also the psalm appointed to be read today, between the Old Testament lesson and the Epistle,. I refer especially to verse 8 of the psalm:
Jesus promptly answered,
"It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God."
"I will be like God!"
When Lucifer, Satan the Deceiver, stood forward and declared war on God, he started a conflict that continues to this day
"Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt."
"That the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice."
I rejoice that, in my fall into the sewer in Mandalay, our Father gave me the insight to perceive something of the pain, struggle, conflict, and grief Jesus Christ endured when the Devil took him to the summit of the temple.
"Lord, not as I will, but as thou wilt."