The Kingdom of God is at hand in Christ Jesus, and His Baptism has become your Holy Baptism. Thus, you are a beloved son of God the Father, and you are well-pleasing to Him, because Christ has bound Himself to you, and you to Him, by and with His own Name. The Father has opened heaven to you in the Body of the incarnate Son, and He has poured out His Holy Spirit upon you.
Consequently, in this mortal life on earth you now find yourself in the arena between God and the devil, and you are driven into personal conflict with the devil, the world, and your own sinful flesh. Day after day, you are tempted by these enemies of God to doubt, deny, and disobey His Word.
At the same time, your dear God and Father in heaven would test you, as He tested Abraham. He does not tempt you to sin, nor to any evil, but He does try your heart and mind in order to test, instruct, and strengthen your faith in His Word and in the promises of your Holy Baptism. So it is that you are daily being put to death, and daily being raised to newness of life in Christ Jesus.
Life is a battlefield when the Kingdom of God invades the devil’s stomping grounds. Which is why — because the Lord Jesus has been baptized to be your Champion and your Savior — He is immediately driven by the Spirit of God from the waters of His Baptism into the wilderness, there to be tempted by Satan, in order to engage that wicked foe in a strange and dreadful contest. Thus, the Son of David goes out to meet a bigger, badder Goliath than this world has ever dreamed of.
The wilderness is where Christ contends with Satan, because the wilderness is where you also are tested and trained. The wilderness is where the fallen children of Adam & Eve learn how to live in Paradise again, that is, by faith in the Word and works of God, to rest in His gracious promises. The wilderness is that long stretch of desert between Egypt and Canaan, wherein the children of God are catechized to enter the Good Land that He will give them according to His tender mercy. And it is where you are taught to live in the Kingdom of God by faith, and so also to work in love for God and for your neighbor, instead of trusting and loving only yourself. To that end, it is in the wilderness that you are called to repent and believe the Gospel. But, of course, it is especially at those points of repentance, faith, and love that you are under attack and assaulted by the devil.
The Lord your God tests you and tries you, in order to clarify and strengthen your faith and your confession. The devil tempts you into all kinds of evil, in order to rob you of life and bring you to death and condemnation. So it is that Satan wickedly entices you to disobey God’s Word; and then, in craftiness and spite, he is also the first in line to accuse you and bring charges against you.
At every point in your life on earth, this battle is waged: In your successes, and in your suffering and failures. In what you have, and in what you lack or lose. In what God has promised, and in what you covet for yourself that God has not given you. Always the devil is tempting you to question and contradict, to ignore and despise what God has spoken, both the Law and the Gospel.
But now, let God and His Word be true, and know that everything else is a lie and a deception.
Trust the Lord, your God and Father in Christ Jesus. Cling to His Word, come hell or high water against you. Do not despair of His goodness, nor despise His good gifts of body and soul.
Do not be deceived or misled into evil, which has merely the appearance of “good,” yet leads only to death. Beware the assaults and temptations of the enemy: the lies, the flattery, the questions, and the accusations of the devil; the enticements and attacks of the world; and the lusts and desires of your own mortal flesh, which are the rotting cesspool out of which all sin and death proceed.
Sometimes crass, sometimes subtle, the devil is always crafty, and every sin to which he tempts you is dangerous and deadly. Do not kid yourself. It is not true that “all sins are equal,” but all sin, by definition, is contrary to the Word of the Lord, and that is always to your detriment. Every denial, and every disobedience of what God the Lord has spoken, is a refusal and rejection of the Life that is found only in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is why the soul that sins shall die.
Where, then, shall you live? In the Kingdom of God by His grace? Or with the devil in his prison house of death and despair? That is what it comes down to, finally. You cannot have it both ways.
Repent of your sins and sacrifice your idols. Worship the Lord your God by faith in His Gospel. Not that He needs anything from you, but that you need Him for everything. Rest your hopes in Him and call upon His Name. Rejoice in His forgiveness, and know that He well provides for you. He saves you from every evil of body and soul. He raises you up, even from death and the grave.
Remember that you are baptized, and remember what God has said to you and done for you by that washing of water with His Word. As father Abraham clung to the Covenant of Circumcision and persevered in the promises of God — even when he was tried and tested so poignantly in the case of his beloved Isaac — so cling to the Word and promises of God in Christ Jesus, in whose Name you are baptized, whose Cross you bear, and whose Resurrection from the dead you also share.
Renounce the devil, all his works and all his ways. That’s not a one-time deal, it’s a lifelong battle and a deadly serious business. But your life and your allegiance belong to the Holy Triune God.
See here, you will not starve. The Lord your God will feed you according to His mercy. And you shall not go naked, for God the Lord will clothe and shelter you in peace. Nor shall you die alone. The Lord is with you, in death as in life, and in the Resurrection. He is your sure and certain hope.
There is no temptation with which you are tempted that He has not also endured and resisted on your behalf — in flesh and blood like your own — even in the wilderness of your sin and death. And there is no suffering that you suffer which He has not also suffered in your place, so that by His Cross and Passion He should overcome them. He has defeated your enemies. He has atoned for your sins. He has conquered your death. His Resurrection from the dead is God’s own pledge and promise to you, which stands fast and forever, as Christ Himself lives and reigns to all eternity.
He has set Himself to be your Champion. He’s by your side upon the plain! He has taken His stand against the roaring lion that threatens to devour you; He has smashed his teeth and broken his jaw. He has crushed the serpent’s shifting, hissing head beneath His own bruised and bloodied heel. He is faithful, and He does what He has promised. There is no shifting or turning with Him.
The devil is always shifting and turning. When one strategy fails, he simply switches to another. He’ll tell you one thing in the morning and another thing at night. From one day to the next, from one week to the next, the devil is full of nothing but constant lies and deceptions. He cares nothing for the truth, but only for your death and your damnation by whatever means he might employ.
Your own sinful heart is likewise full of guile, and the world is also deceitful and dishonest. But not so with your Father in heaven. He speaks from His heart in Christ Jesus, His beloved Son, and His Word is always the Truth. He will not change His mind concerning you. What God the Father says to you in Christ is and always shall be so. You are sheltered under the shadow of His wings.
Christ be praised, the Kingdom of God does not rest upon your faithfulness. It does not even rest upon your repentance or your faith. It does not depend on you at all. But the Kingdom of God is at hand for you in the Body of Christ Jesus. It is as sure and certain as His Nativity, His Baptism, His Life, His Death, and His bodily Resurrection from the dead. So it is that your repentance and your faith, your life and your salvation, rest firmly upon Him. And He shall not be moved.
Consider the example of your Lord Jesus Christ, therefore — though it is always much more than just an example — because everything He does, He does it all for you, that you might live in Him.
Amid the wild beasts and the wicked assaults of the devil, the Lord Jesus, in humility and faith, relies upon His Father and receives the ministry of His Father’s holy angels. So, too, He sends His ministering spirits to care for you, both His holy angels and His mortal preachers of the Gospel, in order to preserve your faith and life in both body and soul, unto the Life everlasting.
He provides the sustenance that you need in the midst of the wilderness. Not miraculous bread from desert stones, but the Living and Life-giving Bread of His own Body, which is given for you. And as He thus serves you with Himself, will He not also freely give you every good thing?
It is most certainly true. You are beloved of the Lord. You are a son or daughter of God the Father in Christ Jesus, and He is well pleased with you. That is the truth. Your sins are all forgiven, and God holds none of them against you. From the waters of your Holy Baptism He has clothed you in the righteousness and holiness, the innocence and blessedness of Jesus, the incarnate Son. He cleanses and restores you with His holy and precious Blood, which is poured out for you to drink.
By Himself He has sworn, He has bound Himself to you. He is yours, and you are His forever. The heavens stand open, and the Kingdom of God is here for you. Amen, Amen, it shall be so!
In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
