Another Son of God Tested
Sermon Text || Year C: First Sunday in Lent
Jesus entered into our darkness, our delusion, our troubles, our pain, our trials—all to show us who God actually is. God is love, God is patient, God is kind. God is with us, and God is for us. Where was God in the storm? Where was God in the wildfire? Where was God in the cancer wing? He felt the wind, he smelled of smoke, and the marks from the IVs can be seen in his arms.
Another Son of God Tested
Son of Adam, Son of God
“…son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.” Luke 3:38
This is the last line of the genealogy of Jesus given in Luke 3. Adam is called the son of God. Do you know what the next word is? the word that starts chapter 4?
Jesus.
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tested by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days, and when they were over he was famished. Luke 4:1–2
Adam, the “first” son of God, was led into the center of the garden to be tested by the devil. He too was famished, but he wasn’t famished because of a lack of food or because he didn’t have other necessities. He had access to everything he needed.
He was famished because he reached out for more. His hunger was his own delusion. He was hungry for what was not his and what was not possible.
Now Jesus, the “second” Adam, the “second’ son of God on the earth but the first Son of God in eternity, is led by the Spirit into the wilderness where he meets the serpent.
But Jesus was not famished simply because he was without food. He was famished because he was part of a people who were all hungry, a hunger he had witnessed for thirty years. They were hungry for the goodness of God. They were hungry for peace. They were hungry for life and light.
Jesus’s time in the wilderness following his baptism was a way of identifying with the people.
Isaiah 58 describes the real kind of fast Jesus was after:
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Isaiah 58:6–8
You might say then that Jesus didn’t go into the wilderness just to be tempted by the devil, but he went into the wilderness to test the devil.
It’s as if Jesus says, “Here I am! I am a son of God as well. Do your worst.”
Did the devil tempt Jesus with the opportunity to be like God? No.
We know from Philippians 2 that the eternal Christ was not worried with things like that.
Instead, the devil tempted Jesus by appealing to his compassion.
Jesus’s Compassion Tested
Jesus was tempted in three ways: (1) to turn stones into bread, (2) to bow down to the devil and receive the kingdoms of the world, and (3) to throw himself off the temple to prove his Sonship.
These temptations work on two levels: personal and communal.
Since I’ve written about this before, I’ll keep this part brief. Here’s two examples:
Basically, Jesus was obviously hungry, desired to find another way besides suffering to sit on the throne, and wanted people to believe in him. But I think this reading sells Jesus a little short.
Instead, I think the temptations are more communal: Jesus wanted to feed hungry people, Jesus wanted to save the people from the empire, and Jesus wanted the people to believe in him so they might live.
This turns Jesus’s temptation into an event that involves all Israel and beyond.
It’s a demonstration of what the kingdom of God can be while also being a warning of what it can turn into .
It’s also a reminder that Jesus did not take shortcuts to identify with us. He was tempted just as we are, so he can relate to all of our suffering and struggles.
“If You Are the Son of God”
During the third temptation, which is the second in Matthew’s account, the devil challenges Jesus to throw himself off the temple “if he is the Son of God.”
This is why Luke said what he did about Adam in the passage right before this. He wants us to get the message that he is doing a lot of crafty stuff with Jesus and the Scriptures. He wants us to keep in mind that Jesus is the new Adam, just as we saw that Jesus was the new Moses in the last sermon.
That’s not all that Luke does here of course. You probably noticed that Jesus was tested for forty days, which corresponds to several other periods of forty in the Bible, one of which is the testing of Israel in the wilderness for forty years.
Luke is trying to show us how Jesus fulfills the Scriptures. Jesus’s life isn’t random.
But there is a different way to think about it.
Instead of seeing Jesus’s life as something that comes after the events of the Scriptures, see it as something that comes before in the mind of God.
That is, everything that happens in the Scriptures doesn’t set the pattern for what Jesus would do later; instead, Jesus is pulling history towards himself. As the preexistent Logos, history is modeled after him. Israel grows up into the image of Christ over a long period of time.
As the writer of Colossians said, Jesus is the body or the substance the casts a shadow across history.
Jesus wasn’t modeled after Adam; Adam was modeled after Jesus.
Jesus wasn’t tempted because Israel was in the wilderness for forty years; Israel was tempted because Jesus was in the wildness for forty days.
Jesus wasn’t called a lamb because the Passover meal was a lamb; the Passover meal was a lamb because Jesus is the lamb of God.
We think of history as flowing from beginning to end, but God sees the end from the beginning.
Jesus was inevitable. His victory was inevitable. And the Eternal Love that is God is inevitable.
Lectionary Reading: March 9, 2025 - First Sunday of Lent
Old Testament: Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Psalm: Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
New Testament: Romans 10:8-13
Gospel: Luke 4:1-13