Laying in Wait

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday February 21, 2010, the 1st Sunday in Lent.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Romans 8b-13
Luke 4:1-13

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

“When the devil had finished every test, he departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time.” Such foreboding has been seen in scripture before, but there is something subtle about this sentence that gets it lost in the midst of Jesus’ glorious revelation. Jesus has just fought the devil and won using the most powerful tool in his arsenal, the Word of God. Yet in light of this great and lopsided victory, lest we think that the devil is vanquished, we receive one final warning in this little sentence. “When the devil had finished every test, he departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time.”

My favorite scripture on the existence of the devil[1] (and yes, I have a favorite “devil” reference) is from the book of Job. In Job 1:6-7 and later in 2:2 we hear this conversation. “The LORD said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the LORD, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’”

Scripture doesn’t deny the existence of Satan, on the contrary. This passage from Job shows that the Lord and Satan are long time acquaintances. Job tells us the Lord is in the highest heaven as the heavenly beings present themselves. As a king receives his vassals, the King of Kings receives the sons of God.[2] Is Satan one of these sons? Well, I don’t know if their relationship is that close. What I am certain of is that Satan did not have to storm the gates of heaven to present himself before the Lord. We can safely say they were familiar with one another.

This familiarity is continued as Jesus recognizes the devil in the wilderness. Luke writes that for forty days Jesus was tempted by the devil. Throughout his entire time in the countryside Jesus was tempted by the one who slanders[3] creator and creation. The greatest temptations a man can be offered were laid before him, but Jesus is not just a man. The fully human and fully divine Lord Jesus knows that his life is for more than earthly temptation and earthly reward.
There is an old saying that the devil’s greatest trick is to get people to believe he doesn’t exist. Well, the Lord our God and his Son Jesus didn’t fall for that trick.

Our notion of the devil comes from many places that are not biblical. One of the oldest of these sources is Dante Alighieri’s “Divine Comedy.” In 1321 Dante introduced readers to the “emperor of all the realms of woe.”[4] He describes this being as having two great wings more like those of a bat than a bird. He likens their size to “Sails so immense [they] were never known at sea.”

So it comes as no wonder that when we think of the devil we think of the goat legged, spade tailed, winged and horned creature so popular on the Halloween costume sales rack. Beginning with Dante’s wings, Wormwood from C. S. Lewis’ “The Screwtape Letters,” and more recently Anne Rice’s Memnoch, literature presents us with many images of the devil.

In cinema, horror movies have given us such memorable twists on the devil as “Rosemary’s Baby” and Damien in “The Omen.” Film comedies have given us more unorthodox devils including “Little Nicki” featuring Harvey Keitel as Satan and Adam Sandler as the most inept of his three sons; and “Bedazzled” featuring Elizabeth Hurley as the “devil in a blue dress” version of the prince of darkness.

In what is in my opinion one of the strangest examples of Satan in American culture comes from the realm of jurisprudence. In 1971 Gerald Mayo filed suit against Satan and his servants in United States District Court. The suit claimed Satan placed deliberate obstacles in Mayo’s path and caused his downfall. In what is neither a landmark civil, criminal or theological decision, the court did not deny the existence of Satan; rather, the court asserted that it was unlikely that Satan was ever present in the geographic area included in the Western District of Pennsylvania.[5]

Something people try to do everyday is look for Satan around the corner, looking for the devil in the details. Everyday people are telling us who the great Satan is and that he’s just laying in wait to get us. We have been told that foreign world leaders are evil personified. Leaders of the Axis of Evil have been vetted as the head of the underworld. We have also been told that our domestic leaders are the root of all that is wrong in this world. And maybe it’s just me, but that rhetoric seems to have been ramped up over the past five years.

Twenty years ago, a friend in Colorado was sharing a tape someone recorded from the radio that claimed Prince Charles of Wales was the antichrist. I never bothered to listen to the tape, but she was convinced.

Everyday people look for the devil in our midst so that we can point to someone and say, “That’s him, that’s the source of evil.” Here’s a question, why do we bother to look for the devils we don’t know when we can identify the devils we do?

There are devils all around us that we don’t bother to identify because these devils don’t fit the mold we expect to see from books and movies. We need to look for the devils that break the mold. Then when we find these devils, we can find how they can be conquered. In a sense, our reading from Luke presents us with a devil we know all too well, temptation.

The devil tempts Jesus using the kind of stuff that tempts us everyday. Jesus is first tempted with his physical needs, particularly hunger. Jesus’ response turns this temptation on its ear. While the devil may have hoped Jesus would fall for bread alone, invoking the words of Deuteronomy 8:3, Jesus reminds us “One does not live by bread alone.” Jesus hungers for spiritual food.

The devil offers the most human of needs, nourishment. But Jesus turns away from earthly satisfaction in favor of something more substantial. Recorded in the Gospel, Luke is teaching the readers that the need for bread is secondary to the fact that it is God alone who gives bread.[6] Jesus teaches that the one who gives the gift is more important than the gift itself.

The second temptation is one of power and authority. The second temptation is offered, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.”

With this offer, we are reminded that the devil has power in the world, power that can be delegated and allocated as he sees fit. The devil offers this power to Jesus; and for Jesus there is a lot of good that can be done with that kind of power.

But there is a nasty condition. This power is given with a catch, “If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” A catch doesn’t get catchier than this. Fly paper wishes it was this sticky.

But Jesus does not get trapped by earthly power. He denies the devil his worship using the words of Deuteronomy 6:13, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” The devil offers power over this world, a world that is temporary, a world that is limited. Jesus knows that there is a greater power than the earthly power of the devil and the price of this power is too high.
Jesus rejects the devil’s demand of worship insisting that the only real power comes from God.[7] Jesus shows us the source of power is more important than power itself.

Finally, the devil tempts Jesus to prove God’s faithfulness. The devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem. And from there, the devil goads Jesus. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”

This time, it is the devil’s turn to invoke scripture, Psalm 91:11-12. Now this is a good temptation, using the Word of God to suit his own bad intentions.

Jesus responds in kind to temptation shrouded in scripture. Quoting Deuteronomy 6:16, Jesus denies the devil reminding him “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” The Old Testament reminds us that Israel tested the Lord time and time again, and in every case the Lord is faithful. It is said that scripture is best interpreted by scripture, and this is a shining example.
Jesus is invited to test God’s fidelity; Jesus reminds us the Lord is not to be tested.

These are the temptations, physical satisfaction, power and authority, and testing God’s faithfulness. These are the things the devil puts on the table. But there is more at stake than this.

The devil prefaces the first and last temptations with this phrase, “If you are the Son of God…” So while it is easy to say that the temptations are about earthly matters, there is something more sinister happening. The greater, more subtle temptation the devil tries to place in Jesus’ mind is the doubt that he is the Son of God. Yes, on one level the devil asks if God will do what God has promised the Son. But it is far more devastating if Jesus doubts whether he is the Son or not. If the devil can plant this seed of doubt, then everything else is lost.

But this seed has no purchase. Jesus will not allow the devil to define what being the Son of God means. The devil will not define what kind of Messiah Jesus will be, that is between Father and Son. Jesus reminds us that being the children of God is more important than anything else.

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “Despair is the fate of the realists who know something about sin, but nothing about redemption.”[8] We know the sins that Satan presents us, and when these sins are couched in the best things in life we tend to look at them differently. It is Jesus who reminds us that all Satan offers is a barrier between us and God. Satan offers sin, Jesus offers redemption.

It is these barriers that we need to break, the devil is in these details; and when we overcome these temptations, the power of Satan is broken. No, on this side of glory that victory is not permanent. After Jesus faced the devil, he faced scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees who brought their own barriers to place between God and God’s people. So too will there be people who will erect barriers around us.

So know this, this is what we know and share with the world. First is that the devil is in the world. Just as surely as the Lord saw Satan and just as surely as Jesus was tempted by the devil; the devil is still in the world today. We must also remember that we don’t have to look for the Lord of the Flies because the temptations that surround us are as devilish as any personification of Satan.

The second thing to take into the world is that in Christ there is victory. Throughout this season of Lent we will see the princes of this world working to defeat God incarnate, the living Lord Jesus Christ. They will try, and for a moment it will look like they will succeed, but ultimately they will fail. Are the princes of this world the minions of the Prince of Darkness? Surly not, these were the holiest men in Judea. What they wielded, poor imitations of relationship with the almighty bound by laws and customs, these were devils finding their opportune time.

Finally, even in our post-resurrection world, Satan is laying in wait bringing lies and temptations as attractive now as they were then. And again, only in God is there victory. Yes, what Satan offers us are lies, but in the words of the Irish rock band U2, “The truth is not the same without the lies he made up.”[9]

Temptations surround us, and we must revel in the truth and reveal through our lives that victory is assured in Christ Jesus.

[1] If this were a seminary paper, it might be considered a bit of a stretch to use “the devil” and “Satan” interchangeably, but some of the greatest writers of the New Testament did the same thing, so I beg you allow me to follow their precident. (P. L. Hammer , “Devil,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible.”)
[2] Text note, NRSV.
[3] Ibid., Hammer
[4] Alighieri, Dante, “The Divine Comedy.” Trans. Lawrence Grant White. New York: Pantheon Books, 1948, Canto XXXIV, line 28.
[5] United States ex rel. Gerald Mayo v. Satan and His Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971), http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_ex_rel._Gerald_Mayo_v._Satan_and_His_Staff, retrieved February 19, 2010.
[6] Cousar, Charles B., Gaventa, Beverly R., McCann, Jr., J. Clinton, Newsome, James D., Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV, Year C. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, page 197.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Coffin, William Sloane, “The Collected Sermons of William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years, Volume 2.”Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, page 66.
[9] God, Part II, from “Rattle and Hum.” Words by Bono, Music by U2.