Lent 1—Invocavit
Beloved. This past Wednesday the Church began the holy and penitential season of Lent. The first day of Lent was Ash Wednesday—the ashes being a sign of penitence and a reminder to us of our mortality recalling the Lord’s pronouncement to Adam: For dust you are and to dust you shall return [Gn. 3.19]. The wonderful thing about Lent is that it is the yearly corrective/ reminder of our spiritual state/ condition: we are sinners in need of a Savior. Especially among us, living in a prosperous nation, when things are seemingly going relatively well; or when our lives are filled with such busyness that it is difficult to catch a breath; or even when we are in the midst of great trial or suffering, it is very easy to lose sight of the simple fact that we are sinners in need of a Savior, that what fills our lives is not our main problem—that what fills our lives is really pushing the “main thing”—our sin and our need for a Savior from that sin and the resulting death and damnation—into the background. The good times and prosperity cause us not to think about it; the busyness and trial make other things seem so much more important. But then there’s Ash Wednesday and Lent proclaiming to us the Lord’s word [Joel 2.12,13]: For dust you are and to dust you shall return and Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. So rend your heart…Return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness. Lent is that glorious wake-up call to our true reality—we are sinners who need a Savior from sin. May we heed its vital proclamation!
Today’s Gospel shows us part of Jesus’ work for us and our salvation: Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. What did Jesus do? Not only did He suffer and die on the cross for the sins of the world, as He took on Himself the sins of all, was made the world’s sinner, but also all during His life He was perfectly keeping/ obeying God’s holy Law for us, as our Substitute. That way, the very Law that God in His absolute holiness demands we keep is kept—by Jesus for us. And this is not merely incidental, but Jesus goes out into the wilderness precisely to be tempted by the Devil. This is nothing less than Jesus going out into the desert to wage war against the devil. As the very God Himself, Jesus was unable to sin but as true man, this was a real battle and true temptation. It is interesting: Psalm 91, the very psalm that the devil misquotes in order to try to get Jesus to sin, He will command his angels concerning you. And they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone—the devil leaves out that vital phrase: to keep you in all your ways— He will command his angels concerning you to keep you in all your ways--that very psalm also has the verse at the end: He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him…I will deliver him and honor him. That verse we use in today’s Introit and its first word in Latin gives this Sunday its name: Invocavit: He called.
What’s the point of all this? Simply this: what Jesus had to suffer, every Christian must expect; since the devil tempted and attacked Jesus, so too are we in danger. And that means what? –Our lives as Christians are not a day at the beach. They are lives of battle in the desert against the devil and his allies, all working together to bring us into sin, shame, disgrace, rejection of God’s grace to us in Jesus. That’s why, in the midst of this battle against sin, temptation and even complacency in the faith, we need to hear St. Paul’s words in today’s epistle: As fellow workers we also urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. Dear Christian, this is a very joyous thought: we have received God’s grace! But it is also a very sobering thought: we can receive it in vain; we can reject God’s grace. We have very powerful forces working toward that end; we have the devil, the world around us and our old sinful self within us all working toward that goal. It will not always be that a one- time Christian has a dramatic moment of rejection of God’s grace. Very often, it will be a gradual extinguishing of the faith that receives and clings to God’s grace. That’s why we need Lent with its call to self-examination and to hear St. Paul in today’s epistle: As fellow workers we also urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. 2For he says: At a favorable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. Look, now is the favorable time! See, now is the day of salvation! It will be a difficult thing to remain in the Christian faith; we dare never take our faith for granted for we have powerful enemies aligned against us: devil, world and our own sinful selves. It will be a difficult battle. It began at our baptism when we were rescued out of the devil’s kingdom and brought into Christ’s kingdom and will continue until our dying breath. But no pain, no gain.
But the simple fact of the matter is, dear Christian, is that we have received the grace of God. We have been rescued from the devil’s kingdom; the Lord has given us the forgiveness of sin and every heavenly and spiritual blessing; He is working all things for our spiritual good; we are His dear children and heirs of heaven. All this He gives us in Jesus; all this our Spirit-worked faith receives. So when we hear the apostle tell us not to receive God’s grace in vain, let us thank the Lord that we are the recipients of His grace. And as we daily examine heart, life and conscience, and recognize all our sin and how much wrath and damnation we earn/ deserve, but that God gives us His grace in Jesus, how joyful and thankful we are! And this thanksgiving to God for His grace to us in Jesus is a powerful antidote to receiving His grace in vain. To receive God’s grace in vain means to treat it lightly, to think it is no big deal; it means to continue on in a life of sin without caring that you sin, thinking/ acting “It’s no big deal; God will take forgive that one too!” We dare not indulge ourselves in wickedness, to sin contrary to conscience. Instead: As fellow workers we also urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. God wills that we struggle against our sin, especially our sins of weakness. Lent gives us that marvelous opportunity/ occasion to zero in on our sins of weakness—sins we find ourselves committing over and over, sins that we seemingly commit before we realize it—and by the power of the Holy Spirit, by prayer and vigilance, by being strengthened by our Lord in the absolution and bodily in the Holy Supper to root them out. Yes, that is a struggle but no pain, no gain.
And now we move on to that quote St. Paul uses in our text from the OT: At a favorable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. It is a quote from the prophet Isaiah. But what makes it significant is that it is part of a section in which St. Isaiah is quoting the words of God the Father to the Son. As we hear these words, At a favorable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you, don’t we hear that reflected in today’s Gospel, with Jesus being tempted in the wilderness? Don’t we hear that as Jesus prayed in Gethsemane in greatest anguish, even sweating blood, before His arrest, trial and crucifixion? We hear the apostle write about Jesus [Hb. 5.7]: In the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, [He] was heard because of His godly fear. The Father would not leave Jesus to fail in His mission, in His saving work. That’s how serious God is about His grace and how serious He is as He offers it to us. He saw to it that in Jesus all the work for our salvation is 100% done. And He offers it to us in His word and Sacraments.
Look, now is the favorable time! See, now is the day of salvation! God offers us that salvation in Jesus, which Jesus has won for us. Whenever we hear the Gospel; whenever the absolution is pronounced; whenever we receive Jesus’ body and blood in the Sacrament, there is that salvation and blessedness. When we receive this grace of God in Spirit-worked faith, what happens? We are united with Jesus! In fact, that’s one of the things baptism does—it unites us with Jesus! And apply that to today’s Gospel. There we saw Jesus go out into the wilderness in battle against the devil. And guess what? Not only did Jesus win that battle, never there or any other time giving in to temptation and sin, but as we are united to Jesus by faith and baptism, what did not conquer Him did not conquer us! This means what? –Jesus’ holiness and sinlessness, His victory over the devil is also credited to us who are bound so closely to Him by faith and baptism. Jesus’ victory and its fruits and blessing are given to us. For Jesus in His saving work, there was great pain but also great gain—all for us and our salvation. That’s God’s grace! As fellow workers we also urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. For he says: At a favorable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you. Look, now is the favorable time! See, now is the day of salvation!
But now, for us, don’t overlook St. Paul’s beginning words of our text: As fellow workers… He is not addressing fellow apostles or even pastors or others “officially” involved with telling the Good News about Jesus. Instead, he is addressing a Christian congregation—and one that was going through great problems. But he calls them fellow workers. That is every Christian—after conversion, we are all fellow workers with the Holy Spirit; that is after conversion, we—the new self/ the Christian in us, works together with the Holy Spirit in us who is leading us into a life of faith and good works, a life of repentance—that is recognizing and mourning over our sin and striving to root them out of our heart and life. That’s the life of a Christian now; that’s your life now—a life of faith, repentance and good works as we work together with the Holy Spirit.
In this life there will be pain—examining heart and life in the Law of God is painful; working with the Holy Spirit to root sin out of life is difficult/ painful. But what’s the alternative? No pain, no gain. To be sure, the devil wants to make it look like you can “have it all” without the pain. Look at what He did in today’s Gospel. He tried to get Jesus to do “an end run” around the cross to avoid it; he promised Jesus a kingdom and glory but without the cross: Again the Devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. He said to him, “I will give you all of these things, if you will bow down and worship me.”
Don’t fall for the devil’s temptation to avoid the hard and dirty work of examining conscience and repentance; avoid his temptation to overlook your sin or to make you look better by comparing yourself to “great sinners”, in other words, the sin of self-righteousness. Don’t fall for the devil’s temptation to take the easy road by not fighting against sin and striving to root it out of your heart and life. Because, now is the day of salvation—God is offering us His grace in Jesus—now is the time for us daily grab ahold of it and to repent of our sin; now is the time for us to endure the struggle and trial of resisting sin and striving to live that life of good works. The day of God’s reward of grace/ the day of consolation that is coming on the Last Day. Now is the time in which we struggle and strive, but in grace are blessed in our doing. Now is the time of the pain, but the gain will come!
The wonderful thing is that, as St. Paul goes on in our text, he shows that God’s strength works in our human weakness. When we are weak, when we are in pain doing the hard work of repentance and living out our Christian faith, there the Lord is with us and we rely on Him, His strength, His power. Now, the day of salvation, as the Holy Spirit is working in us and on us, He fills us with gladness and power. Do not receive God’s grace in vain—no pain no gain but grace throughout! INJ