Psalm 32 Romans 5:12-19    Matthew 4:1-11

Click here to listen to this sermon on Soundcloud.com. This sermon was Preached on Sunday, March 1, 2020.

The texts before us this first Sunday in Lent are very revealing:

First, in Romans 5, St. Paul makes us consider the bare fact of sin and death.  He says that sin entered the world through the one man, Adam, and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all people sin.

Second, in Matthew 4, St. Matthew makes us consider the bare fact of Satan. Some people do not believe in the devil, and say that people who do must be pretty simple. The great Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis would beg to disagree.  He said that to believe in the devil is to believe that Evil is greater than the sum total of its parts. Likewise, the great 20th Century Neo-Orthodox theologian Emil Bruner would disagree. Brunner said, “To believe in the devil is to believe that the possibilities for evil are not exhausted by purely human evil.” The devil is an influence and a force to be reckoned with, and I use the words “influence” and “force” advisedly.