Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our texts are the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading which have already been read.

Dear friends in Christ, it's the story of my life. Every day I resolve to give up procrastinating, but I wind up putting it off until tomorrow. I'm hoping that the Procrastinators Anonymous group I've signed up for can help, but so far their meetings keep getting postponed.

Of my many weaknesses, the tendency to procrastinate is one of the most odious. Those other tasks that are more interesting and more fun beckon seductively, "Come on, you can always finish that boring stuff later!" They are usually right, but with the result that my stress level goes up and the quality of my work goes down, with no one but myself to blame.

When we use the phrase "the story of my life," we usually are making an exaggeration about something negative in our lives, something that we would rather do without but can't get rid of because it is such a persistent problem. But the other way of speaking of the story of your life is to actually recount the facts-good and bad-and put it together in a narrative. This morning we'll look at the story of your life in both senses.

In the Garden of Eden, before the plunge into sin happened, procrastination wasn't a problem. Everything was "very good" (Gen 1:31), perfect. Then "the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). So far, so good; any work there would have been a joy in that pristine, fertile paradise, without thorns, thistles, and procrastination. And one task in particular took front and center-to worship the Lord God and serve Him only, according to His Word. And here was that Word: "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die" (Genesis 2:16-17). This was the worship that God expected from Adam and Eve: to stand in front of the Tree, they would show their faith in God by living under the Word He had given them (Luther).

But if you're living in this world, then what happens in the Garden is the story of your life: the devil shows up with temptations; he says, "God didn't mean it when he threatened death; oh, and come on, it will make you better off; God is holding out on you!" If you're like Adam and Eve, then the forbidden fruit looks sweeter, the grass looks greener. And so they gave in to temptation, and in doing this they traded the freedom they had as God's children, living under His loving care, for bondage to the devil's schemes. By acting according to their own will-which felt to them like freedom-they placed all humanity in bondage to sin and its consequences.

And that is the story of our life-or more accurately, the story of our death. As St. Paul put it, "sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). No one is exempt, no one is left out, all are inheritors of sin, and so heirs of death and children of wrath rather than children of God.

But right away after Adam and Eve rebelled, God showed mercy. Instead of immediately destroying them, instead of sending them straight to hell, He promised to adopt them again by grace on account of His only begotten Son, who would become incarnate of the woman and crush the ancient serpent's head. He would conquer Satan to liberate us captives and declare us ungodly sinners righteous, redeemed, and holy.

So Jesus came to the river Jordan to be baptized by John "to fulfill all righteousness," to make things right between us and God the Father. There in His Baptism the Man Jesus was identified as the Incarnate Son, when God the Father said, "This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased" (Matthew 3:17). The "Son" is identified in Psalm 2 as the One who would break the Lord's enemies "with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (Psalm 2:9); this is what He would go on and do to the devil, to release you from his bondage. And the Father calls the Son "beloved" (cf. Isaiah 42), which identifies Jesus as Isaiah's Suffering Servant, who would be afflicted for the sins of all people and make many to be accounted righteous; that is what He does to take away your sin, to release you from the ultimate bondage of eternal death.

But before He could go up to Calvary and do these things, He had to make up for our sinful disobedience and unfaithfulness to the Lord. A debt of obedience and faithfulness was owed to God, and the devil, "the tempter" (Matthew 4:3) was the one whom God permitted to put His Son to the test. God's first human son Adam had failed the test; God's chosen son Israel in the Old Testament had failed the test; would God's only-begotten Son remain faithful, or rebel as the others had?

At the beginning of the story, things look bleak. Satan came to Jesus in a time of great vulnerability. Immediately after Christ's Baptism, the Holy Spirit led Him out into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. According to Ss. Luke and Mark, the temptation was continuous over those forty days. St. Matthew only highlights the three great temptations of Jesus at the point when He was weakest: hungering after forty days and nights.

The first temptation: "And the tempter came and said to [Jesus], 'If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.'" The first temptation of Jesus was to get Him to despair, to lose confidence in God's care for Him, to get Him to rely on Himself rather than on His Father. Jesus had not considered equality with God a thing to be grasped, so He humbled Himself and renounced His rights as the Son of God to take on the form of a servant, just like us-completely dependent on God the Father for daily bread (cf. Phil 2:5-11). Now would He turn away from His humiliation and instead exalt Himself?

At this point, think about how you would have fared under this temptation: starving, tired, frustrated, ready to go home-would you have taken the easy way out and satisfied your hunger, or would you have persevered? Isn't this sort of temptation the story of your life? Be honest! And repent!

As sinners we would have failed miserably-and we often do fail under temptation-but Jesus was like us in every way but without sin (Hebrews 4). So Jesus is our Hero, our Champion, and He defeats the devil with a Word of God: Jesus answered, "It is written, " 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.' " The life we have that is supported by daily bread isn't worth living unless we also have the eternal life that only comes from God's Word. Jesus knew that His Father would provide, so He never desperately sought to serve Himself but rather kept in mind at all times the will of His Father and the Word of His Father: "You are My beloved Son." That was all Jesus needed to live on, along with all the other gracious Words of God-and that Word has been spoken also to you in your Baptism. So you need not ever be desperate or fearful about the Lord's providing for your daily bread, because all of your eternal needs have been met in His Words of forgiveness, life, and salvation in the Gospel.

The second temptation: "Then the devil took [Jesus] to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, " 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and " 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.' " In this temptation the devil tries to use the confidence that Jesus has in His Father against him. Jesus has said that He lives on God's Word, and there is no question that God's Word contains those words the devil quotes to Jesus, Psalm 91:11-12. So the devil is saying, "Look, if you are God's Son, and if you have so much confidence in God's Word, then try these verses out; surely they mean that if you throw yourself off the temple, God will send the angels to rescue you-if you are God's Son, if you really trust in Him!"

This temptation is the opposite of the first one: instead of trying to get Jesus to despair, the devil tries to get Jesus to become proud of His status as God's Son and presume that He can do whatever He wants, and God will still save Him. So how would you have fared under this temptation? Do you ever take unnecessary risks with your life or money because you think, "God would never let me fail?" Do you ever presumptuously commit intentional sins because you think, "Of course God will forgive me?" Isn't this temptation the story of your life? Again, be honest! And repent!

Jesus is faithful, unlike us. He knows that Satan's favorite tactic is to misquote and misinterpret Scripture for His purposes-just like he did to Adam and Eve in the Garden-and Jesus keeps God's Word straight. He knows that Scripture must interpret Scripture, and that true faith in God is never reckless or careless. He responds, "Again it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.' " To be reckless or careless is faithless because it is selfish, not considering God's will for your life, but trying to do your own thing and take risks that God has not told you to take. Psalm 91 was directed to the one who trusts in the Lord, not in the one who tests the Lord, so Jesus would have been putting Himself outside the care of the holy angels if He had faithlessly jumped from the temple.

The third temptation: "Again, the devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, "All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." This temptation is like the lie in the Garden, when the devil assured Adam and Eve that eating the fruit would make them "like God," in charge, masters of their own destiny. Here the devil tries to get Jesus to consolidate power with him-"Together, we can't fail," the devil says. "Sure, I failed in my rebellion against your Father, but if the two of us team up, we can take Him down and run the whole show."

Again, examine your heart. Have you ever let money, pleasure, or power get in between you and the Lord? Has money-making or recreation ever kept you away from church and kept you from doing your daily prayers? Do you ever serve the creation rather than the Creator? Isn't this temptation the story of your life? Again, be honest! And repent!

Jesus, our Savior, is not loyal to Himself or to the devil, but only to His Father. "Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, " 'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.' " This temptation was toward idolatry, but Jesus knows the First Commandment: "You shall have no other gods." What does this mean? "We should fear, love, and trust in God above all things." Jesus will not let anything get in between Himself and His Father.

And so Jesus does what Adam and Eve could not do, what Israel could not do, what we cannot not do: He defeats Satan, and "the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him." Jesus fears, loves, and trusts in God above all things, in your place. And in this is the story of your life, your eternal life and salvation, because your failures to resist temptation have merited for you eternal death, but Jesus Christ remained faithful to the Father in order to merit eternal life for you, by perfectly obeying God's Law in your place.

Yet Satan didn't even give up after that day, but continued to try to derail Jesus from his role as Son of God and Suffering Servant. St. Luke tells us that "when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time" (Luke 4:13). Certainly there were many times the devil used His disciples to try to get Jesus to give up His path to the cross and take the easy way out, such as when Peter rebuked Jesus and did Satan's work of tempting Jesus to turn away from the cross. And then when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to His Father to remove the cup of suffering from Him, surely the devil was there trying to get Jesus to abandon His march up to Calvary. Jesus went to the sleepy disciples and said, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation" (Matthew 26:41). And while the weak flesh of those disciples caused them to fall back to sleep, the Holy Spirit given to Jesus at His Baptism empowered Him to watch and pray and resist the devil's temptation to flee.

But the greatest temptation of all came when Jesus was suffering on the cross under God's wrath against the world's sin. The nails pierced His hands, the crown of thorns dug deeply into His sacred head, the blood dripped from the lashes on His back, the sweat stung and the pain was agonizing. But the greatest pain of all was what Isaiah had prophesied that the Suffering Servant would experience, the punishment for the sin of the world. Even though Jesus was God's Son, and He knew that He was God's Son, yet Isaiah says, "it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief…his soul makes an offering for guilt" (Isaiah 53:10). And so there on the cross, Jesus suffered the forsakenness, the abandonment that our sins have deserved. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?" He would cry out in His death.

And in the minutes leading up to that death, the devil intensified His attacks on Jesus. Through the crowd at the cross, the tempter offered the last temptation of the Christ. St. Matthew records that "those who passed by derided [Jesus], wagging their heads and saying, "You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross." So also the chief priests, with the scribes and elders, mocked him, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself. He is the King of Israel; let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he desires him. For he said, 'I am the Son of God.'" (Matthew 27:39-43)

But here is the story of your life: Jesus did not give up on His Father; He knew that the prophecy of Isaiah said that when the Suffering Servant made His soul an offering for guilt, His days would be prolonged in the Resurrection, and the will of the Lord would prosper in His hand as He shared His forgiveness, life, and salvation with you (cf. Isaiah 53:10). Through all of that, Jesus never put His own self-interests in mind but always had you in His mind, on His sacred heart. He resisted the devil in the wilderness for you, and He did not come down from the cross so that He could finish making that once-and-for-all sacrifice for sins that redeems you from eternal death and bondage to the devil. "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for the masses" (Mark 10:45).

And He did not remain in the tomb, but early on the third day He was revivified and descended into hell to proclaim defeat over Satan, then later on that Easter Sunday Jesus burst forth from the grave, with all authority in heaven and earth given into His nail-scarred hands, all power that Jesus exercises on behalf of His little brothers and sisters in God's family. And this is the story of your life: in your Baptism, you have been adopted as a son of God, free from sin, death, and the devil. As St. Paul says to those baptized, the Father "has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:13-14). Now the saying has come to pass that we can trod the devil underfoot and taunt Him, for the Seed of the woman has conquered and given us the victory.

This is the story of your life, my friends: it is true that Adam's sin has cast us all onto the path down to the grave, it has made us guilty before God's thrown, it frustrates us every day and we must live in continual repentance; but the story of Jesus' life has reversed everything for you and in exchange for your death and sin, He has given you everlasting righteousness and salvation through His resisting of the devil's temptations and His precious blood and innocent sufferings and death. So when you are now tempted, because you are baptized into Christ, you need never despair, or become presumptuous, or worry about looking out for number one, because Christ has defeated the devil for you. So earnestly pray the Lord's Prayer day in and day out, "Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the Evil One." And also take up these words from St. James as armor against the devil: "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you" (James 4:7-8). Today we again draw near to the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ, and in Him you have forgiveness of sins and protection from the onslaught of the devil. And that's the story of your life, your life in Christ Jesus. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.