Lent 1
Gen
3:1-21
3/10/19
In the 1976 Oscar winning movie
Rocky, the down and out fighter Rocky Balboa receives the break of a lifetime
as he is selected to fight heavyweight world champion Apollo Creed. Near the
end of the movie prior to the fight, Rocky confides to his girlfriend Adrian
that he can’t beat Creed. However, no
one has ever gone the distance with Creed, and Rocky says that if he can just do
that he will have proven himself.
Rocky takes a terrible beating in
the fight, but surprisingly, he is also able to hurt Creed. The fight does go the distance – all fifteen
rounds – at the end of which Rocky loses on a split decision. When the fight is over, the two exhausted
fighters meet in the ring as Creed mumbles, “Ain’t gonna be no rematch,” and
Rocky responds, “Don’t want one.” Of
course the surprising success of the movie Rocky meant that there was a rematch.
Rocky II tells of how later Creed feels compelled to have a rematch and seeks
to goad Rocky into it, while Rocky’s circumstances eventually prompt him to
accept.
Our Old Testament lesson for the
First Sunday in Lent – Invocabit – tells of how Adam and Eve are deceived by
the devil into committing the first sin. They are tempted and sin, and in doing
so the Fall occurs. But unlike the movie
Rocky, right from the start, Genesis tells us that there will be a rematch between man and the devil.
The first two chapters of Genesis
tell us about how God created the world and the crown of his creation,
man. By the power of his word alone God
calls into being a material world and all that lives in it. He creates man in his own image, as male and
female. We get a “close up” of this action in chapter two when we learn that
God created Eve from Adam as the helper who corresponded to him. They were perfect complement for one another
– their differences provided what the other needed.
This complementary character is seen
in the fact that they were created for the one flesh union that produces
children. Neither could do this on their
own. It required a man and a woman. This
truth continues today, even if our world deludes itself into thinking otherwise. Only in the union of man and woman is this
possible. Producing children was the God
intended outcome of the one flesh union.
God commanded, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the
birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And incidentally that truth continues today
as well.
God planted the Garden of Eden as
the place where Adam and Eve lived. He
gave Adam the vocation of caring for the garden. The Garden of Eden was an abundant source of
food. God told Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of
the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
Adam and
Eve had the use of every tree … except for one. They were not to eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This one tree located in their midst became the means by which they
demonstrated that they feared, loved and trusted in God above all things. God
had held one thing back from them, and by honoring this fact they confessed
that God was God, and they were not.
In our text we learn that the devil
approached Eve. His first sentence tells
us everything we need to know about who he is and how he works. He is a liar.
He says things that are not true in ways that are intended to raise
doubt in God. He says things that have
the goal of disobedience. The devil
said, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”
Eve corrected the devil and said
that no, in fact they could eat of every tree in the garden … except for one.
They had been warned that if they ate of it they would die. Yet the devil
responded to Eve, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of
it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
The devil said that God was holding
out on them. They could be more, if they would just ignore what God had said.
And the devil has been using this on us ever since. He uses the world to tell us that we don’t
need to be limited by God’s Word. We are
free to decide whether he is God or whether any god exists. In fact, the coolest approach is agnosticism
- to say that you know so much that you know you don’t know whether God exists
at all.
The devil says that God is holding
out on us if we believe his line that the one flesh union of sexual intercourse
is meant only for husband and wife. He
says that God is holding out on us if we believe money and possessions can’t
provide the abundant life for which we were created. He says that God is holding out on us if we
believe that we shouldn’t seek the satisfaction of getting revenge on another
person.
Eve believed the devil instead of
trusting God. She ate of the tree when
she saw that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired
to make one wise. She gave it to Adam, and he ate too. In that moment they did
learn something. Their eyes were opened,
but all they learned was that now things were very wrong. They were no
longer very good.
Things have not been very good ever
since. In the first sin the image of God was lost and so all conceived and born
since the Fall have been sinful enemies of God.
Sin brought pain in childbirth and disordered relationships. It brought work that is hard. And it brought
death, for as God says in our text, “By
the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for
out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
In the
midst of all this bad news there is one single note of hope. The devil had defeated Adam and Eve. He had caused them to disobey God. He had brought the things he loves: sin, pain, and death. But God cursed the devil and said, “I will
put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her
offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” God
announced that there would be a rematch.
The seed of the woman would battle the devil. This would be no easy win. Eve’s offspring would bruise or crush the
devil’s head. Yet the devil would bruise
or crush his heal – the offspring would be harmed.
In the
Gospel lesson for today we hear about Jesus’ temptation by the devil.
Immediately after his baptism, Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness
and is tempted. Anointed by the Spirit,
at his baptism Jesus took on the role of being the Suffering Servant. Conceived
by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, he is the offspring of
Eve. He is true man. He is true man – the truest man – because he is man as we were meant to be. He is man without sin. He is true man and yet he is also true
God. He is the Son of God.
In the
temptation, Jesus defeats the devil. He
remains obedient to the Father. He won’t
use his power to serve himself. But the victory in the temptation is just round
one. Luke tells us, “And
when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an
opportune time.” The devil wasn’t done.
In our Gospel lesson the devil says, “If
you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” We find that he attacked Jesus as
he hung on the cross, for we hear him in the words of those mocking Christ: “If you are the Son of God, come down
from the cross.”
Jesus
Christ did not. Instead he suffered and
died in your place. As the seed of Eve
his heel was crushed. But by his sinless
death he crushed the devil’s head. He redeemed you – he freed you from sin and
the devil’s power. He was the second
Adam who was victorious. St. Paul told
the Romans, “For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that
one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free
gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”
Adam
failed. But in the rematch, Jesus Christ
did not. He won the victory for you. And
the victory that he won allows for no
more rematches. Paul went on to say
in the next chapter of Romans, “We know that Christ, being raised from the
dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the
death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to
God.”
By his
death for us Jesus Christ has removed your sin forever. And by his resurrection he has defeated death
forever. Because of Jesus, the devil is beaten. Paul told the Corinthians, “For
as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Because of
Christ, forgiveness and resurrection is yours.
The devil
can’t win, and he knows it. He is like the
Japanese military in the latter years of World War II. Their objective was no
longer to win. In defending islands like
Iwo Jima, Kwajalein, and Okinawa their goals was not to repulse the Americans. Instead their only goal was to take as many
Americans as possible with them as they were killed. They hoped to make the battles so costly for
the Americans that they would settle for a negotiated peace – even though this
meant that each Japanese garrison was annihilated to the last man.
The devil
can’t win. He has already lost in the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And so his goal is to take as many people with him as he can. That is why he continues to whisper through
our world, “Did God really say...?” He wants to lead us into false belief,
despair, and other great shame, and vice.
As
Christians, we must therefore listen to
God’s Word. That means we need to be
here to hear it. We need to be here to
learn about it. We need to be reading
Scripture in our devotions. We need to
follow the Spirit’s guiding by walking in the ways of the Lord – ways that are
true to his Word and will.
And we need
to return to our baptism in faith every day. Paul told the Romans, “Do you not
know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into
his death?
We
were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk
in newness of life.”
Through baptism we have shared in
the saving death of the Lord. The Holy Spirit has worked regeneration and is
now at work in us. By daily contrition
and repentance we drown the old Adam. We
turn in faith to the means by which we have died with Christ and received the
Spirit, for that baptismal connection continues to provide the means by which
the Holy Spirit strengthens us to arise and live before God in righteousness
and purity each day.
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