When The Devil Whispers
February 22, 2026 • The 1st Sunday in Lent, Year A
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 • Romans 5:12-19 • Matthew 4:1-11
What are your favorite family stories that have been passed down through the generations—tales of humor, struggle, triumph, mischief, and joy? What stories did your parents or grandparents tell you about their childhood? What stories have you passed down? I want you to think of one important story—one moment from the past that you know is worth telling again and again. What makes that story special? Does it humanize some of the mythical giants that you revered as a young child? Does it encourage you to work hard and persevere in the face of adversity? Does it make you smile because it reminds you that you are an important part of your family’s much bigger story?
Today, in the reading from Matthew’s gospel account, we hear a foundational story from our spiritual family—the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. We know that it is a story worth passing down not only because it has been preserved in the gospel tradition but also because Jesus must have told it to his disciples. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know what happened to him out there, all alone, for forty days in the desert. Only the devil, the angels, and the wild beasts were with him. Yet all three synoptic gospel accounts—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—record this encounter with remarkable similarity, which suggests to us that Jesus told this story to his followers and that they knew that getting it right when telling it to future generations really mattered.
I think Jesus told the story of his temptation in the wilderness not only because it’s a compelling narrative but also because he wanted to teach us something—to help us remember that temptation is always strongest when we are trying to be faithful. It is in those moments, when we feel the satisfaction of a heart that belongs fully to God, that the tempter comes and whispers in our ears, beckoning us to turn astray. As the actor Denzel Washington one said in an interview, “When the devil ignores you, then you know you’re doing something wrong…When the devil comes at you, maybe it’s because you’re trying to do something right (see https://www.youtube.com/shorts/OO08-qXac-c).
Jesus knew what it meant to hear the devil’s voice at precisely that moment when he was closest to God. At the end of Matthew 3, in the last verse before today’s gospel lesson, as Jesus came up from the waters of baptism, a voice from heaven proclaims, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In the very next verse, with those words still ringing in his ears, we read, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” In each synoptic gospel account, when the story of Jesus’ baptism is told, it is always followed immediately by his temptation in the wilderness. There is a connection between Jesus hearing the Father’s voice of approval and Jesus hearing the devil’s attempt to get him to throw it all away. There is no temptation greater for us than the one we feel when we are closest to God.
Of course, Jesus wasn’t the first of God’s people to be led through the waters of baptism and into the wilderness of temptation. The family of God had long told the story of their liberation from bondage in Egypt—how God had delivered them from their oppressors by leading them through the Red Sea on dry land and how the forty years that followed were a time when God tested them through hardship and temptation. It’s not an accident that Jesus’ story about his own post-baptismal temptation is, in effect, a creative retelling of the story of Israel’s journey from the shores of the Red Sea into the wilderness before they could enter the land of promise. His story of temptation after a divine encounter, therefore, is one that spans the generations and that gets reenacted in the lives of God’s people.
If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down and let the angels catch you. All the kingdoms of the world and their splendor I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me. Three times the devil tempts Jesus by appealing to what he knows to be true about himself. He is God’s beloved. He is God’s Son. He is the one God has chosen to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. But the devil isn’t inviting Jesus to live out that identity faithfully. He’s tempting Jesus to accept a twisted and perverted understanding of divine sonship—one that sounds good and right but could not be further from the truth.
Are you hungry? After forty days of eating nothing, you must be famished. The Son of God isn’t supposed to be hungry. God wouldn’t want God’s anointed one to starve to death. Don’t you have the power to do something about it? God didn’t give you the ability to feed thousands of hungry people and ask you to keep that power tucked away in your pocket. Shouldn’t you eat, too? Doesn’t God want you to be happy—to have your basic needs met?
There’s nothing wrong with hungry people having enough to eat. It is God’s will that all people should have enough. But Jesus’ forty days of fasting are not an example of food insecurity. They are a spiritual experience of depravation and self-denial designed to teach him how to depend upon God for all things. To snap his fingers and turn stones into loaves of bread would satisfy his physical hunger, but it would leave his soul malnourished.
We, too, have the power to snap our fingers and satisfy our hunger for food, clothing, and gadgets, all of which Amazon is happy to deliver right to our front door in a matter of hours. But what sort of hunger are we seeking to satisfy with our appetite for consumption? God doesn’t want anyone to be hungry, but that’s not the same thing as God wanting you to have whatever you want whenever you want it. That’s the voice of the devil whispering into your ear. In an economy built on instant gratification, no one remembers how to be sustained by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
In the same way, the devil has tricked us into expecting certitude on matters of faith. Throw yourself down from here, he says. If you are the Son of God, the angels will catch you. Only, when he tempts us, it sounds more like, If you really believe in God, you won’t worry about your husband’s health. A real Christian like you always knows how to pray. Your faith is too strong to have a son that’s gay or a daughter that needs rehab or a marriage that’s hanging on by a thread. But that sort of thinking is totally and completely of the devil. We know that in the abstract, but, when it’s our faith that’s being tested, it’s easy to forget that that sort of black-and-white, all-or-nothing approach is not faith. It’s just a way of putting God to the test.
I know of no temptation more prevalent among today’s Christians than the temptation to conform the way of Jesus to the image of our political and economic agenda—to confuse the kingdoms of this world with the kingdom of God. Ever since Emperor Constantine ordered that the sign of the cross be painted on the shields of his soldiers in 312 AD, Christians have confused the power of Christ crucified with the power of military might. The Doctrine of Discovery was the devil whispering into the ears of the religious and political leaders of the fifteenth century, who in turn sanctioned the colonial genocide, dispossession of indigenous lands, forced assimilation of native peoples, and enslavement and forced labor of generations of human beings all in order to achieve a desired return on investment—a return from which most of us in this room have benefitted.
If you think we no longer use our identity as a Christian nation —as God's gift to the world—to justify violence, what would you say about the new Swarm Aero facility that has been opened at Drake Field? Swarm Aero is a company that specializes in creating autonomous aircraft (i.e. unmanned drones) that the military uses to kill people. Our university benefits from the research opportunities that come with it. Our city benefits from the tax revenue and employment it will generate. Our church will likely benefit from at least one employee or investor who, as a member of St. Paul's, shares a part of their income from Swarm Aero with our church. But at what cost? Can we separate the freedom and prosperity we enjoy as gifts of God from the kingdom of death we rely upon to preserve those gifts? All the kingdoms of the earth and their splendor I will give you if you will only fall down and worship me. Well, they were going to be ours anyway, we convince ourselves. What harm can it do?
There is no moment—there is no posture—in which we are more vulnerable to temptation than when we feel like our hearts belong unequivocally to God. Just when we hear God tell us that we are God’s beloved children, the devil comes and whispers in our ear that to be a child of God means wealth, confidence, and power—and at any cost. In fact, Jesus shows us that to be God’s beloved children means poverty, humility, and weakness. That’s why he tells us the story of his time in the wilderness. He knows that we are not strong enough to withstand temptation on our own. He knows that our only hope is in his victory over temptation and that his victory can only become our victory when we take up our cross and follow him, even to death. That isn’t a truth that’s easy for any of us to understand, which is why we tell this story to our children and our children’s children.
© 2026 Evan D. Garner
