Written and Said Psalm 91:1-13 Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Romans 10:8b-13 Luke 4:1-13 Lent 1 Written and Said in Romans: The Word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart everyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame, and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Bridge I m struck by how many times God s Words of command strew across the page of, just, our Old Testament reading (2 paragraphs). 7 times God said You shall, and once the priest shall, following those with what He expects in preciseness (not vague), but straight-forward with, even, the exact words of human response (or creed) that must said back to the Lord. A whole narrative of Gospel was to flow from the lips of the redeemed bringing, also, the exactly-right thank offering: A wandering Aramean (Abraham) was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our afflicton, our toil, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And He brought us into this place and gave us
this land, a land flowing with milk and honey (that s salvation but they ain t seen nothing yet). And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which you, O Lord, have given me. What if we still used this creed as we brought forth our offerings? Well, we do. The New Testament version of salvation includes the Exodus of the Passion of Christ: God s saving of us from slavery and despair by the sending of His Son, with the death and resurrection and, now, reign of Him after ascending back into Heaven. We say before bringing our offerings forward: we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from Heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father. History is spoken-of by us by the command that we heard in Deuteronomy that we must do-so, responding to the Gospel by speaking-it, the Word of faith that Romans says we HAVE to proclaim Words God s put into our mouths and hearts to do-such-things-with-it. The Lord obviously takes very seriously His Word / His commands / the speaking-of His Gospel for our proclamation of it / it in and from our mouths said out-loud and it in our hearts to, then, express outward reactions-to-it in faithfulness and duty. It (those Divine Words) is our security / our fortress (to use the language of the Psalms), our
refuge and a noticeably-effective weapon powerful over Satan which is what we see even Jesus use for His fight against him. How telling it is that the battle s always been about Words, the devil tempting Eve by asking her Did God really say what you heard and, then, Jesus answering His temptations of Him by saying what God did really say. How different things would have been if our first mother or father had, just, responded to the Lier / Satan by, just, using the Divine Words they were given-to (what God actually DID say His Words). THE LORD TAKES VERY SERIOUSLY HIS WORDS THAT HE S MADE TO BE WRITTEN AND SAID. AND THAT S BECAUSE IT S THOSE THAT HE ALSO PUTS INTO THE MOUTHS AND HEARTS OF PEOPLE WHO ARE HIS. IT S THOSE, ACTUALLY, THAT ARE THE DEFINING THINGS THAT HE GIVES US ALSO TO HAVE AND USE. THEY ARE HIS WORDS. THEY ARE HIS PROMISE, AND THEY GIVE SALVATION AND REFUGE. Text Last week, we saw God s Word (even all of it that got documented, called Holy Scripture) in bodily form on a mountain. The revelation (by His glowing body), was Jesus not reflecting light but being-it all by Himself to, also, make aglow everybody that was around Him. Only to reinforce Who He was in that full Word of Scripture, Moses and Elijah (the icons for the entire Old Testament that was called the Law and the Prophets) stood with Him, and they were there to point Him out as the Subject of the Words the Father had caused them to write and speak-of. The Old and New Testaments of God s
Words showed physically as the 3-men-of-it were and had it in themselves. They were there to show that it would never be feelings that followers would have to cling-to, or some idea that they d conjure on our own or some moral example only we d have or some hero or friend we d have to emulate, but a Word embedded into us, Promise given us, not earned or asked-for or seized of our own efforts or developed in our own intellect, but written and spoken / said by God, so not and never just words. They are what casts demons out, shoos away Satan, and makes alive (eternally so). They change everything and always do. They re what makes hope instead a guarantee and wishfulness a petition that s placed, rightly, into the hands of God where outcomes are always Good, promised-to-be-so for those with His Words embedded into them. Now, don t get me wrong, even Jesus was made tempted to ignore the same Divine Words in us that He, also, had in His mouth and heart. It s one thing to have them emplanted within us and another to let them speak and direct or ignore them even though they re there. Jesus got tempted to ignore. Formally, 3 times Satan offered options that would bypass the will of His Father that Jesus knew were identified in the Words of the Gospel. Satan first tempted toward material things, and legitimately starving, Jesus was hungry for it and got laid before Him a pleasurable amount of quality morsels He could have as His sole sustenance. In other words, He could have eaten and drank and been (no doubt) quite merry with happiness, entertained for as many days as He could concern Himself with if He d decided to give-in. Jesus got offered a kids-view of Disneyland with all the snacks He could shove into His tummy between rides and shows,
except (He remembered) entertainment s not all there is to life and Man does not live by bread alone as is written in Deuteronomy 8:3. If the responsibility of God s will were skipped to pick, instead, things of high entertainment value, then consumers (rather than people of God) would soon be constantly chasing their tails for the next moment of fun. But the authority of God s Word, Jesus (and we) have as refuge. Scripture makes promises of salvation by God s authoritative Word, but Satan tempted Jesus to want authority without those authoritative Words: to You, I will give authority, earthly authority and its glory and this earth spends a lot of time romanticizing earthly authorities. Lusts we call loves and give authority to that feeling under the wrong name; scrappings and scramblings we call conquests; wishful dreams we call goals, and alloften are the subjects of songs and movies, stories and, even, the heroes many want to be. Jesus came with what s far-beyond-any-of-those already and, yet, became us by choice to tempted with this other-directional stuff Satan offered Him. And the last temptation wasn t much unlike that: to be impatient in how or why God s way and timing don t, always, match ours not, really, trusting Him to obviously know best. But in defense from all of that, we have the same Divine Words Jesus used. He said, It is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test from Deuteronomy 6:16, and (with that) the devil ended his temptations of the moment and departed from Him until another opportune time. Application
The opening weekend in Lent reminds us of the soldiers task that we (following Jesus) have in this life, and that may be another of Satan s temptations, having modern humanity to, largely, forget this duty. A Mighty Fortress is a hymn passed to us from ancestors who never wanted us to forget this (from a section in the hymnal called The Church Militant ) because it s a duty to fight, and we Christians are to be engaged-in-it well-prepared for it. And Jesus entered that fight, but not un-armed (nor has He left us to be un-armed). This wouldn t be the first time He fought Satan, and it wasn t to be His last, so He knows what we ll succeed with (the way He did). Jesus used every time (including for the times He got ever-nearer to the battlefield of Golgatha and a cross) the same weaponry that His Father s given us: THE LORD TAKES VERY SERIOUSLY HIS WORDS THAT HE S MADE TO BE WRITTEN AND SAID. AND THAT S BECAUSE IT S THOSE THAT HE ALSO PUTS INTO THE MOUTHS AND HEARTS OF PEOPLE WHO ARE HIS. IT S THOSE, ACTUALLY, THAT ARE THE DEFINING THINGS THAT HE GIVES US ALSO TO HAVE AND USE. THEY ARE HIS WORDS. THEY ARE HIS PROMISE, AND THEY GIVE SALVATION AND REFUGE. May we, for our battle (tempted), be conscious of them (and use them). May we be thankful that they re within us as promised. In +Jesus name. Amen.