RIGHTLY HANDLING THE WORD
Genesis 3:1-24; Matthew 4:1-11
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Matthew 4:10 Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.’”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… I am often struck by the number of religious groups that distribute Bibles. Every year there are groups on college campuses and other places that just stand around handing out Bibles to people. The idea, of course, is that if you can get God’s Word into someone’s hands, there is a chance for faith. And there probably have been times when people have come to faith simply through diligent and careful reading of the Bible.
But normally, just handing someone a Bible is not enough. One must not only have the Bible, but one must also know how to read and interpret it. Yes, the Word has power, but it is also easily misinterpreted and twisted so that it appears to say something other than what God intends it to say.
In today’s readings we see several people handling God’s Word, but the chief speakers are really God and the devil. In the lesson from Genesis, Eve is caught in the middle. The serpent spoke and God spoke. The speakers use the same words, but come to completely different conclusions. They both speak the Word of God – one as the source of that Word and the other as an interpreter of it. The devil, who is the interpreter, gets it wrong of course. And the direction he leads Eve with the Word of God is actually away from God, using God’s own words to plant the seeds of doubt rather than faith and trust in God’s Word.
Not all interpretations or teachings based on God’s word are correct. There is only one correct interpretation of Scripture: God’s interpretation. One of the main “rules” of studying Scripture is that God’s Word interprets itself – Scripture interprets Scripture. And so we learn today that it is not enough to have and use the Scriptures; we must also know how to handle God’s Word properly. We must handle it as God has directed.
Eve had God’s Word, but she didn’t handle it properly. First, she added to it, claiming that she was not even allowed to touch the forbidden fruit. Then she accepted a wrong interpretation of it, believing the devil’s claim that God was actually robbing her of a great blessing.
We see the two speakers at work again in Matthew 4. Jesus, after being baptized by John, is led out into the desert where he is tempted by the devil. Matthew tells us that first the devil laid a simple temptation before our Lord, asking for a miraculous proof of his divinity. But in so doing he was actually asking Jesus to use his divine power to serve Himself. Jesus had been fasting for forty days and nights. The temptation to create bread for Himself appealed to one of the basest human needs.
Eve had food all around her that she could consume, and yet the devil had tempted her with fruit that looked good to eat. Jesus had no food; surely He would succumb to this temptation. Our Lord Jesus does not fail; instead He answers from the book of Deuteronomy: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Deut 8:3)
Now we see just how well the devil knows the Scriptures, for he quotes from Psalm 91:11-12: “If you are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it written: ‘He shall give His angels charge concerning you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
“All right, Jesus,” says the devil, “Let’s look at the scriptures. They say that the angels serve You, if you are the Son of God. So, prove it.” What the devil did not remember was the context of what he was quoting, for the very next line reads: “You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, the young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.” And so Jesus replies, treading the tempter underfoot, as it were: “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God’”.
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Finally, the devil takes Jesus up to the pinnacle of the temple and offers to give him the whole world if Jesus will only worship him. Now we see the devil’s real intent, which was to take God’s place over Jesus just as he had over Adam and Eve in the Garden. But Jesus clings steadfastly to the Word of God and replies: “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.” Eve and Adam are cast out of paradise into the wilderness on account of their sin. Jesus goes out into the wilderness in order to gain the victory over sin and open paradise.
Now what does this whole exchange teach us? It teaches us that the devil knows the Word of God, and he probably knows it better than you do. It also teaches us that the devil will use that Word against you in order to entice you away from God. The issue, then, is not whether or not one has the Scriptures, but how one uses those Scriptures. Eve had the Scriptures, but she did not trust what God was saying through them.
The devil has the Scriptures, but tries to interpret and twist them so that they work against God’s intention and purpose. Jesus has the Scriptures and keeps them faithfully, trusting God’s good will and message, and using them according to God’s intention and purpose.
And just as Jesus is at the center of the delivery of the Scriptures, He is also at the center of the meaning and purpose of the Scriptures. He says to the Jews in John’s Gospel: “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” (Jn 5:39) The Scriptures are about Jesus, plain and simple.
The devil is still at work today trying to obscure the message and work of Jesus. He continues to use God’s Word to turn people away from Christ. There are, of course, cults that make use of the Scriptures and mix them with other religious texts and traditions. This practice is clearly in opposition to the whole point of the Scriptures which is to testify about Christ and bring about faith in Him alone. These tactics, though, are relatively easy for most people to see through. What is more dangerous is when the Church uses the Scriptures to separate people from Christ and teach something that is contrary to God’s intent.
Many Christian denominations today try to pit God’s Word against itself, claiming that the Bible is not necessarily true, that it contains a good deal of myth, that it contradicts itself, and that it is, at best, inconsistent and not relevant to our current times. These groups pit scripture against scripture and say that it is finally up to the individual, or the collective body of Christians, to sort it all out. I refer to that approach as the “Hunchbacked Bible class”: you have a hunch, and you have a hunch, and you have a hunch, but nobody really understands what God is saying, and they refuse to see things God’s way.
One of the most dangerous forms of this is called Gospel reductionism, where nothing really matters in the end except love – both the love of God and love for one another. This rule of love, of course, obscures God’s explicit statements of command, trumps all divine restrictions, and can even deny Christ in the name of loving those who do not believe in Him. And again, in the background we can hear the devil saying: “Did God really say?…”
If we really want to be spiritual people – if we really want to have fellowship with God – then we must take God at His Word. The Augsburg Confession says that one of the marks of the Church is that the Gospel is preached in its truth and purity. The mark of faith is that the Gospel is believed in its purity. There can be no picking or choosing which Words of God we want to believe; there can be no pitting one Word of God against another. God’s Word is not like a smorgasbord where we can pick and choose what we like and leave the rest behind. If we want to have any of it, we must take it all. The Word of God is Christ’s Word; He is at the center. If we take only part of it, then we have created a false God and false Christ, and placed ourselves in authority over God’s Word. And when that happens, well then we are left wide open and completely vulnerable to the devil’s attacks and accusations.
But by keeping the whole of the Scriptures, by trusting in them and taking them according to God’s intention, the devil is silenced. We sang in the hymn “A Mighty Fortress” that one little Word can fell him. That Word is the Gospel; Christ. For when we have Christ by faith, then we have forgiveness for all our sins. The devil can no longer accuse us. He may appeal to our base nature, but we have something far superior – life in Christ. He may tempt us with this all the things of this world, but God has given us a far greater kingdom through His Son.
To be sure, the devil is crafty, sly, and deadly; but ultimately he has nothing good to offer, for Christ has already won all for us. And each and every time we gather in this place, we have Christ sharing His victory over the devil with us as He comes to us in all the ways He wants us to have Him. On the cross Christ suffered and died for all of our sins. On the cross Christ paid for every sin of every person for all time, yours and mine included. And in the Divine Service, Christ delivers His forgiveness to you in the Absolution, in the preached Gospel, and in His true and real body and blood under the bread and wine in the Sacrament of the Altar. Jesus comes and gives you Himself, His very life, His forgiveness, His salvation, His strength.
By God’s gift of faith, we have everything we need to fend off the devil.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
