Advent Midweek III:
Three Things That Make a Theologian: Tentatio[1]
December 14, 2022
Text: Psalm 119:153-168
Perhaps
I should have warned you in the first midweek sermon: Prayer and meditation on
God’s Word is a dangerous undertaking.
It will, necessarily, lead to suffering, trial, affliction. Luther says that there are three things that
make a theologian: Oratio, Meditatio, and Tentatio, and now you must
know that the three always come together as a package in the school of the Holy
Spirit. For when you pray according to
God’s will, and when you meditate upon His Word, drinking it deeply into your
mind and heart and soul, you are launching an assault against our three main
enemies: the devil, the world, and your own sinful nature. And that, beloved, makes you a target. When you pray, and when you hear and learn
God’s Word, you become the focus of your enemies’ hatred and rage.
Perhaps
it will be physical. Perhaps the devil
will orchestrate an accident or an assault to cause you bodily injury. Or maybe he will unleash an illness in your
cells. Perhaps the world will restrain
you for your Christian confession… loss of freedom, loss of earthly goods, loss
of safety, loss of life. And your own
sinful nature may rebel against the spirit within you. You may need to discipline your body by
refusing to indulge the fleshly appetites, fighting against lust and covetousness,
gluttony and sloth.
Then
again, it will certainly be spiritual, this affliction, this tentatio. The devil will whisper his temptations
in your ears, and introduce doubts about God’s Word. He will then shout his accusations
when you fall, leading you into despair.
And the world will mock, and reject, and cancel you for being such a
closed-minded and hate-filled religious zealot.
And your own flesh will betray you, ever willing and ready to listen to
the devil’s lies, and forever craving the passions of the flesh and the
approval of the world.
So
oratio and meditatio always lead to tentatio. Which, then, must drive us back to ever more oratio
and meditatio! It is as our
Psalmist, King David, sings in Psalm 119: “Look on my affliction and deliver
me, for I do not forget your law” (v. 153; ESV), Your Torah, Your Word. Why is King David afflicted? Because He clings to God’s Word. He does not forget Torah. He meditates upon it. He hears it, reads, marks, learns, and
inwardly digests it. And on that basis,
he prays. Which makes him a target for
all his enemies. They afflict him. But, now, watch this: He doesn’t then abandon
God’s Word and prayer so his enemies will leave him alone. That is not what a Christian does. No, the affliction drives him deeper into
God’s Word, and on that basis, he prays, he cries out, “Look on me, O LORD, and
deliver me!” See, the whole thing
backfires on the enemies. When they
unleash affliction on a Christian so as to cause unbelief and despair, God uses
that very affliction to bring His Christian closer to Him. He gives His Spirit, leading you to become
even more firmly entrenched in oratio and meditatio.
This
is just the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer in action. “Thy will be done,” we pray. “What does this mean? The good and gracious will of God is done
even without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be done among
us also. How is God’s will done? God’s will is done when He breaks and hinders
every evil plan and purpose of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature,
which do not want us to hallow God’s name or let his kingdom come; and when He
strengthens and keeps us firm in His Word and faith until we die. This is His good and gracious will.”[2] When we pray the Third Petition (which itself
is also a meditation on God’s Word, since the Lord Jesus gave us these very
words to pray), we are asking… not that God would never let us suffer anything…
we know that’s simply not how it works in a world full of sin, and sinners, and
our own sin... but that He would deliver us through it. That He would turn the affliction on the
heads of the afflicters… that the affliction would backfire.
You
know, our Lord Jesus also prayed the Third Petition, under great spiritual and
physical affliction, in a garden, while His disciples slept. “My Father, if it be possible, let this
cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will… if this cannot
pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matt. 26:39, 42). He didn’t want to suffer. Of course He didn’t. But there was something He wanted even more
than He wanted to avoid suffering. To
accomplish the will of the Father in saving the world from sin. Saving you and me. And He knew there was only one way to do
that. Surrender. Give Himself into the hands of the enemies. The devil.
The world. Sinful human
nature. The suffering and death of the
cross. So he didn’t shrink from it. He drank the cup to the bitter dregs. Knowing all the while that these afflictions
would result in the utter defeat of all that held us captive. He came for this very purpose. He took on a body to do just this: To suffer,
to die, to rise again, for our forgiveness, justification, and redemption. We’re about to mark once again the Feast of
the Baby born of Mary, wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger. And that Feast is all about the cross, and
the death of the Son of God in our flesh, and the resurrection of the body born
of Mary for the salvation of the world.
That is the Father’s good and gracious will. Jesus.
So,
if He accomplished that, the greatest good, the salvation of sinners, through
the greatest evil, the crucifixion of the Son of God, what can He accomplish
through the afflictions you suffer? You
know what He’s doing through these afflictions, in spite of every evil plan and
purpose of your enemies? He is doing
what we call in theology, His alien work (the work that is foreign to
His nature), breaking you down and stripping you of your idols, all that you
fear, love, and trust the most, all that you’ve made into a god or a
savior. So that He can do His proper
work (the work that is essential to His nature), re-creation and
resurrection in Christ, by His Spirit, in the preaching and sacramental gifts
of the Gospel. Your afflictions, your
crosses, are a participation in Christ’s cross. He won your salvation on His cross. But in the crosses He lays upon you, He
accomplishes your own death and resurrection.
He scrapes you up out of the mud in which your afflictions have laid
you. And He breathes His Spirit into
you. So that you breathe His Spirit in
meditation on God’s Word (inhale) and prayer (exhale). The best way to deal with afflictions when
they come, is not to avoid them, but to commend them to the Lord in earnest
prayer, and dive ever more deeply into God’s promises in His Word. Knowing that God will do as he always does:
Work all things, even evil things, together for the good of those who love Him
and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). “Look on my affliction and deliver me, for
I do not forget Your Word.” Tentatio
leads to meditatio and oratio.
These
three things make a theologian, which is to say, they make you a Christian… prepared
(Advent) to receive the Lord Jesus who came as a Baby for your redemption;
who comes to you in His Word, Baptism, and Supper; and who is coming again to
raise you fully and finally, bodily, to live eternally in His
Kingdom. Blessed Advent. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and many of the ideas in
this sermon come from John T. Pless, “Midweek Advent Series: Oratio,
Meditatio, Tentatio," in Pastor Craft (Irvine, CA: New
Reformation, 2020) pp. 139-147.
[2] Catechism quotes from Luther’s
Small Catechism (St. Louis: Concordia, 1986).
No comments:
Post a Comment