I preached this message on February 22, 2026, the First Sunday in Lent, Year A.
When you think about it, Satanism, the worship of Satan, is an oxymoron. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. “That’s a weird way to start a sermon, preacher!” Yep, guilty as charged. But seriously, why would anyone want to put their “faith” in Satan when all the evidence points his core nature? He’s pure evil. He’s deceptive. He hates those who worship God. I would dare say he’s more interested in getting you to not worship and serve God than he is having people worship him. But he can ignore those people, because they’re already solidly in his camp.
John says this about the devil when he confronts the Pharisees in the Temple in John 8:
44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? [1]*
Adam and Eve had a first-hand encounter with Satan in the very beginning. He lied about what eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could do for them. Yes, after eating the apple, they did experience the shame of their nakedness, so at least that much of what Satan said was true, but it was a half-truth at best. The lie that Satan told Eve was “You will be like God.” That was a lie in so many ways, and here’s why:
God is not just omniscient, knowing all that can be known, but he is omnipotent and omnipresent as well. Adam and Eve, relatively speaking, only got a fraction of the knowledge that God had about such things and NONE of the power or presence that God had. Their shame at disobeying caused them to fear the presence of God when God had designed Eden and the world for them to live in his presence. They lost power, because at that point, death became a necessity for survival. An animal would have to die to clothe them. Blood sacrifices became necessary for temporary atonement. And God’s son would have to die to redeem them forever from the curse.
Satan won that first round with God’s precious new creation, but out of that came the first prophecy of Satan’s defeat at the hands and feet of God’s son. It’s no wonder, then, that he thought he could try and pull that off when God’s one and only son came on the scene. If he could get Jesus to stumble, the world would be his, or so he thought.
In the garden, Eve had become convinced somehow that the forbidden fruit “was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.” It shouldn’t surprise us that Satan used those same three categories to tempt Jesus in the desert as in our Gospel passage this morning. “I know you’re hungry for some food, Jesus. Go ahead and turn these stones into bread.” But Jesus knew, unlike Adam and Eve, that there was more to God than producing a little supernatural “manna” to satisfy what must have been an intense human experience of hunger. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Satan tried to trick him by twisting a promise of God into a perversion of wisdom. “Come on Jesus. You know God will catch you if you jump off the top of the Temple here! Imagine the scene when the crowd watches the angels swoop you up at the last second! You’ll be a superhero!” But Jesus knows it is foolish to put God to the test like that, and rebuked Satan with that fact in no uncertain terms.
Satan had one more chance. He took Jesus to a high mountain where he had a “pleasing sight” awaiting him—”all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” But once again, Jesus knew the price was too high to go along with Satan’s schemes, and he knew none of them would bring about what God had promised him when he fulfilled his mission. “You know the commandment, Satan. I will have no other gods before me. He was there to “worship the Lord God and serve him only.” The liar failed at trying to fool the one in whom there was no lie and only truth.
And that was the beginning of the end for Satan. Jesus won that battle, but Satan didn’t give up that easily. He had to switch his focus to others, and most of you know who that would be: someone from his inner circle. The signs would be there early on that something wasn’t quite right with Judas. Even Peter gets some of the blame, but that, it seems, may have been more to his impetuous nature at times, and Jesus had other plans for him anyway.
The power of death was defeated at the cross. I’m sure that was something that Satan actually felt. Jesus had even told Peter that the gates of hell could not withstand the coming of God’s kingdom, and I think for a while anyway, as the church began to coalesce after Pentecost, God and Jesus kept Satan at bay to give the fledgling believers a head start at getting the gospel out.
I want to turn now to Romans 5:12–19, the other New Testament passage in the Lectionary readings today, to look at the results, if you will, of Jesus’s victory over death and how he, as the New Adam, broke the curse brought on by the First Adam, who through passivity allowed his wife to give in to the serpent and joined her in her disobedience. Romans 5 has a powerful message about how you and I can be strengthened in our own faith walk because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and in his resurrection from the dead.
Hear what Paul has to say:
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.[2]
Even though Paul says plainly in 1 Timothy 2:14 that it was Eve who was deceived and sinned first (sorry, ladies, I’m just the messenger here), Paul considers the blame for “original sin” to be squarely on Adam’s shoulders. Adam had one command, and he (and Eve) blew it. But because it was a single command and the Law had not come yet, God could not permanently charge Adam with a violation of his law. Instead, they were expelled from the garden because they could not be trusted. That doesn’t mean they weren’t loved, though. God would declare even as he announced their punishment that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.
Paul demonstrates that Jesus fulfilled the role that Adam never could. Adam’s disobedience or lack of faithfulness brought sin into the world, but Jesus’s one act of faithful obedience, submitting to crucifixion, is the only act that could defeat the power of sin once for all and bring righteousness to all who would follow him. It took one sin by Adam to mess up things for everybody, but one faithfully obedient savior to restore us to God in his righteousness.
Romans says that Jesus Christ is our righteousness. He earned that designation by fulfilling the whole Law of God. But God still needed that once-for-all blood sacrifice that would make the animal and grain sacrifices of the Old Testament completely obsolete. Jesus was the only one who could be that spotless lamb. But it wasn’t just because of his 100% obedience to the law. The crucifixion had one more element that made it absolutely effective and impossible for the devil to challenge or destroy: It was love, pure and simple.
“For God so loved the world.” Only a perfect man with a fully divine nature who showed us beyond a shadow of doubt how he and his Father loved us in person and face to face could make that sacrifice. The bulls and goats and birds that were sacrificed under the Old Covenant could not ever love us the way Jesus did and does, which is why his sacrifice stands not only above the old sacrificial system, but above every other religion as well. Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was a real person, but he never loved anything about the world that should have mattered to him. He just tried to obtain a state of nothingness, a very selfish goal that no one else, by definition, could help him achieve. There’s no personal connection there and no promise of any help from the supernatural realm. Jesus’s sacrifice was by far the most superior of any that could have happened on this world God created with love, and the only one that can guarantee us eternal life in God’s glorious new kingdom.
As believers, then, know that you are “in Christ” in every sense of the concept. We are baptized “into Christ,” which means we are baptized into his death. So we share in his death so we can be free of the requirements of the law, beneficiaries of grace, and servants of righteousness. As you go forth in the world from here, declare God’s word unashamedly to those who need to hear the hope of his good news. Amen.
[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. *I didn’t say it in my message, but I sure thought about adding: “The Pharisees must have had Jesus Derangement Syndrome.”
[2] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
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