Sunday, February 22, 2026, First Sunday in Lent
“Conversations with Jesus: Jesus and the Devil”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 32:1-11; Genesis 3:1-15; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11
Service Order: Responsive Prayer 2, page 285, Lutheran Service Book
Hymns: “Drawn to the Cross” #560; “On My Heart Imprint Your Image” #422; “The Tree of Life, with Every Good” #561; “Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness” #563
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
I like to talk, you may have noticed; I love a good conversation, don’t you? Not an argument or a fight, of course; but a good, friendly, two-way conversation is a wonderful thing. If one of us did all the talking, that would be a lecture, not a conversation, and what fun would that be? But when we talk to each other, we can learn from one another, and maybe come to understand each other better. That’s one of my favorite things about Bible study, when we open God’s Word together and sit around and talk about it – all while God is talking to us. What a beautiful thing!
If you’ve been reading through the Gospels, you may have noticed that our Lord Jesus also loved a good conversation. He loved to talk, but He also loved to listen. And He talked with people, not just to them. Whether He was with the twelve disciples, or with the gathered crowds, or just with an individual person He’d met along the way, Jesus loved a good sit-down talk – because He loved the people He was talking to!
In our Gospel readings during Lent this year, what we have is a series of conversations Jesus had with different people, and we’ll be looking at each of them as the weeks of Lent go on. Jesus’ conversation today, if we can properly call it that, is with the devil himself. Then we’ll hear His conversation with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who came to Him at night; and then with the woman at the well, with all the life problems she had; and then with the man born blind, who Jesus made to see again; and then finally there’s a conversation with Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus came to comfort and talk to at the very worst time of their lives. Today in our Gospel, Jesus goes one-on-one, word-against-word, in a dialog with the “old evil foe.” The devil will find out that trying to out-talk or out-argue Jesus is never a good idea.
There are actually two conversations in our Scripture readings today, and we need to hear about the first one, in order to understand the second. The first conversation took place in the Garden of Eden. Eve, and her husband Adam, were innocent before the fall into sin. They had no concept of what evil was; they’d never had to experience it. Eve had no reason to fear the serpent when he came creeping up to her; there had never been anything in that beautiful garden for her to be afraid of.
The devil, the fallen angel, the dirty old snake, started the conversation with the world’s first and oldest lie: “Did God really say?” He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" No, that’s not what God said; the devil was only twisting God’s Word. And Eve, to her credit, corrects him. "God said we may eat fruit from any of the trees in the garden, but He did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" Although I’m not sure that Adam and Eve, still in their innocence, had any idea yet what “dying” was.
The devil responds with another lie. He says to the woman, “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." Do you see what he’s doing? He’s trying to get Eve to commit the original sin, the sin that’s at the root of all sin -- that is, to doubt and disbelieve what God Himself has said. The devil’s implication is, “Eve, God isn’t telling you the truth. He’s holding out on you; He wants to keep you down. If God really loved you, He’d give you everything you want, and He’d want you to have everything He has. So eat the fruit, Eve, eat the fruit, and then you’ll see that God is wrong, and what I’m telling you is true.”
Eve eyed that forbidden fruit, more beautiful and tastier looking than any fruit in the garden; and besides, the serpent had promised that there was special wisdom and knowledge to be had in eating it -- so that’s what she did. And what stands out for me here is that Adam was with her. He wasn’t off on the other side of the garden or anything; he was standing right there. If anyone wants to blame Eve for the fall into sin, what Adam did was worse. His place as her husband was to protect and defend her, and to tell her, “Eve, no! Don’t do it!” Instead, since God had warned them, “On the day you eat of it, you will surely die,” he waited for Eve to take the first bite; and when she didn’t instantly drop dead, he took a bite himself. (The jerk!)
Then, while they were standing there shivering in their fig leaves, God came to the garden to call them out for their sin, and then the eternal blame game began. Adam pointed a finger at Eve, and Eve pointed to the devil – but what did it matter? The damage had been done. They brought upon themselves, and upon us, lives full of heartache and pain outside the beautiful garden, and the awful prospect of death, instead of the everlasting peace they could have known.
But in Genesis 3:14, and especially verse 15, is what we call the first Gospel promise. God hates sin, and He has consequences for it, as the story of the fall tells us clearly enough. But God is also good, and He still loved Adam and Eve, as He still loves us. So first He cursed the serpent, limited his power, and put him in chains, as it were. Then He promised that there would be enmity, conflict, and spiritual war, between God’s children and the devil’s sorry offspring, and that has been true ever since. But one day, God promised, one of Eve’s children, one of her offspring (that’s Jesus!) would come to crush the serpent’s head. “The devil will strike His heel,” God said (which is what happened at the cross), but in the end, God’s love and resurrected life would win the day. All those wonderful Old Testament Bible stories, those great old Sunday School stories we all grew up on, all point ahead to the day when that time would come.
Which brings us to our second conversation, which is really the main one we have to talk about today. Jesus came to this world to undo the unhappy results of that first conversation, and to undo what our first parents had done. This second conversation is between Jesus and the devil. The circumstances are different this time, though. That first conversation took place in paradise. Adam and Eve were innocent, and they were brand-new, and the free will God had given them had made them vulnerable, and gave the devil something to use against them. God knew what would happen when He gave them free will, by the way, but God created us to have children to love who would love Him back; He wanted a family He could have those loving around-the-table conversations with. And love, to be any kind of love worth having, has to be freely given and freely received, or it isn’t love at all. God wanted children, not slaves; the God of love couldn’t have it any other way.
So – flash forward - when the time was right, the Father sent Jesus, His Beloved, His one and only Son, not to paradise, but to a desert wilderness; not to a garden full of fruit, but to a desolate and empty place; and not to be well-fed, but to be desperately, terribly hungry. The Father handed Jesus to the devil at the point of His greatest weakness; but as we’ll see, Jesus at His weakest is stronger than the devil on his very best day.
You’ll notice right off, the devil uses the same old temptations he’d once used on Eve in the garden. The devil doesn’t have a big repertoire, or anything original; he still uses those same old temptations on us. Jesus wasn’t Eve, though; He was a much stronger adversary, as the devil would see. Our Gospel here calls Satan the tempter, literally “the tester” – the one who puts our faith to the test. And the devil starts the conversation with that little word “if.” That’s a doubting word; it’s the same temptation as, “Did God really say?” Jesus, if You are the Son of God, like You claim to be, why would Your Father want You to be hungry? You’ve got all the power in the world in those fingertips of Yours, don’t you? Why not turn some of these stones into bread and have Yourself something to eat? Taste the fruit, Eve, taste the fruit.
Jesus knew, though, what His Father had sent Him to earth to do. He wasn’t here to feed Himself, but to feed us. Eve looked at the fruit and saw that it was good. Jesus, hungry as He was, looked at those stones that could have been bread, and chose a greater good, which was to save you and me. He answered the devil from Deuteronomy 8: "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"
Then the devil, who’s at least persistent if nothing else, tries again. He takes Jesus to Jerusalem, the Holy City, to the highest point of the temple. The pinnacle of the temple is where the priest appointed for the duty each day would climb the long staircase, just before sunrise, to blow the shofar to announce the beginning of a new day, and to call the people to prayer. “If You are the Son of God,” the devil says to Jesus, “why do You need a staircase to climb up or climb down from this place? If You’re the Son of God, why can’t You fly?” And then the devil – and we’ll do well to remember he can do this - quotes Scripture. He takes the passage out of context, which is what all twisters of Scripture do; but he knows the Bible well enough to use it against us, especially if we have only a casual or shallow acquaintance with God’s Word. Context matters, folks!
The devil’s quote is from Psalm 91:11-12, but he conveniently leaves out verses nine and ten, which reads: “If you make the Most High your dwelling - even the Lord , who is my refuge -then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent.” And then comes, “He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” The Psalm isn’t about being arrogant, reckless, or foolish, or about trusting in your own goodness to save yourself; it’s about trusting God in all things for refuge, protection, and grace.
It’s the same old “did God really say?” temptation. Jesus, if You’re truly the Son of God, why do You have to humble Yourself and walk around on the ground? And why would You let them hang You on a cross? The Jews mocked Him as He hung on the cross: “If You are the Son of God, come down from that cross, and then we’ll believe in You.” But again, Jesus didn’t come down here to earth to exalt Himself; He came here lift us up and to carry us to heaven, which is something we never could have done on our own.
The devil’s whole purpose, in this conversation with Jesus, was to somehow keep Him away from the cross. Jesus answers the devil with a Scripture quote of His own, from Deuteronomy 6: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Again, it’s about trusting God, not testing Him. If God points to that tree in the Garden and says, “Don’t eat,” then you don’t eat, and for no other reason than “God has said no,” believing with child-like faith that the Father knows what’s best for His children.
Now the devil, stubborn fool that he is, tries one more time to get our Savior to turn His holy heart to His own self-interest, and away from us. “Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give You,’ he said, ‘if You will bow down and worship me.’” It’s the same old garden temptation again. “Eve, you can have it all, you can have the whole world, if you’ll listen to me instead of to God.”
“What would you give in exchange for your soul?” Jesus once asked. All the game shows on TV work this way; will you give up the prize you’re holding in your hand, for a shot at what might be behind the curtain, or in the big box? (Satan’s offer always ends in a zonk, by the way; he’ll always leave you holding nothing in the end). Yet we pursue our little kingdoms, our worldly successes, our possessions, our toys, our portfolios, and all the things in this world that pass for security. The devil says, “What’s your price? What can I tempt you with? How can I get you to compromise yourself? How can I get you to trade your salvation for ‘idols of gold and silver and wood and stone?’”
The devil must have known that this wasn’t going to work with Jesus, in the way he’d succeeded with Adam and Eve. He wasn’t offering Jesus anything He didn’t already have. All those kingdoms were already His. He raised them up and created them. He had the power both to lift them up, and to bring them down again.
But again, for your sake and mine, “Although He was rich, for our sakes He became poor, so that we through His poverty might become rich.” Jesus ends the conversation, sends the devil packing, with another quote from Deuteronomy 6:13: “Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” That is also our one defense when the devil comes, with his same tired old lies, to tempt us.
Martin Luther wrote somewhere that if the devil came to distract him from his studies or his prayers, he’d learned to say, “Away from me, devil! I’m a baptized child of the living God! Jesus died to save me, I am my Father’s child, so what have you do with me? So kiss my foot, you old liar, and be gone.” He said it works every time! “Resist the devil and he will flee from you,” the book of James says.
Jesus had this conversation with the devil so that you and I would never have to. St. Paul calls us in 1st Thessalonians to “pray continually.” If all we were talking about was formal, written, on-your-knees prayers, that would be hard to do. But if, as our Catechism defines it, true prayer is “speaking to God in words and thoughts,” then that holy conversation with Jesus can go on all day long, and the devil won’t be able to get a word in edgewise. If you catch me talking to myself, it wasn’t me I was talking to.
The angels came and attended Jesus, and I pray they’ll attend to you too, as you go about the work of serving your Lord. May God bless all our conversations and make them holy. In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com