“Opportune Time for Temptation” Sunday Sermon / Mount Olive Lutheran Church / August 30th 2026 Season of Pentecost / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Matthew 16:21-28

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Rev. Ted A. Giese / Sunday, August 30th 2026, “Opportune Time for Temptation” Season of Pentecost. Matthew 16:21-28,       

From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.”

 Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends there are temptations that come to us directly, ones that are oblivious and rather blunt and then there are temptations that come to us that are rather indirect and subtle maybe even delivered by a friend or someone you genuinely love. The one might be somewhat easier to resist while the other may even sound like reasonable advice. Today’s Gospel reading provides opportunity to consider these things.

Last week Pastor Christi looked at what Saint Peter’s confession of faith in the Gospel of Saint Matthew means, that Jesus is God in the flesh, no mere creation but the only begotten Son of God, not a liar selling something He knows to be false and not a lunatic who believes something to be true which isn’t true like a man who claims to be a soft-boiled egg. And so, it was given by God the Father for Saint Peter to confess that Jesus was, is and ever shall be “the Christ, the Son of the living God.”[1] A confession that Jesus says, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” a rock-solid confession of faith upon which Jesus says, “I will build My church.”[2] Hot on the heels of that profound confession of faith we find another little conversation today between Peter and Jesus and by comparison this one’s upside-down a real 180°. To get a better grasp of what is happening between Peter and Jesus let’s go back to a time at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry before Peter was even called away from his fishing boats, before Peter began to follow Jesus, before Peter witness Jesus’ miracles or learn from Jesus’ teachings: listen to this passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke:

And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan [after being baptised] and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, He was hungry. The devil said to Him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” And the devil took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to Him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If You, then, will worship me, it will all be Yours.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written,

“‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and Him only shall you serve.’”

And [Satan] took [Jesus] to Jerusalem and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to [Jesus], “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here, for it is written,

“‘He will command His angels concerning You,
to guard You,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear You up,
lest You strike Your foot against a stone.’”

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’” And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from [Jesus] until an opportune time.[3]

Until an opportune time – until an opportune time like the moment Jesus was finally getting somewhere with His disciples. Saint Peter’s confession of faith, that Jesus was “the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” was the signal for Jesus to start teaching the disciples, in no-uncertain terms, about the cross of His coming crucifixion and what that means – to tell them about His own impending death and the resurrection which will follow on the third day. Jesus is revealing the plan for salvation and it is just then that the devil pops up once more finding this moment of great momentum to be “an opportune time” for another temptation. The opportune time to tempt Jesus again.

On the one hand, it may be difficult for us to identify with Jesus being tempted in the wilderness like we heard from the Gospel of Saint Luke. Having a visible devil who’s voice you can hear, who can pick you up and take you somewhere while he tempts you to break the commandments of the Triune God. On the other hand, it is easy to identify with Jesus being tempted in the Gospel of Saint Matthew by someone close to Him (Peter); A trusted friend, someone who you can count on, who knows you for who you really are. Who you spend a lot of time with. Here Peter is like the long-suffering Job’s misguided friends in the book of Job, lots of well-meaning but bad advice.

In our lives we are often tempted to break God’s law by those we love, by those we are sure we can trust – but Jesus makes it clear that such temptations are not made different by the loved one or friend who is doing the tempting. Jesus doesn’t turn to Peter and say, ‘get behind me Peter! You are a hindrance to Me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.’ No, Jesus says, “Get behind Me Satan!”

Peter had good intentions in what he said to Jesus, just as those who we love, and those who are our friends often have good intentions when they become the vehicles of Satan’s temptations in our life. They are often misguided in their attempts to help us – they may even be believers, followers of Jesus, like Peter; like Peter they might have prioritized the concerns of the World, the “things of man” over and above the “things of God,” believing them to be one and the same. So, in the case of Saint Peter and Christ Jesus we could easily apply that old cautionary saying, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions,”[4] and you know and Satan wants Jesus to go down that road. Satan wants Jesus to ‘gain the whole world and forfeit His soul’ and in so doing condemn all humanity to damnation. Peter wants Jesus to avoid suffering and death but Jesus’ suffering and death was a necessary part of our salvation. Peter likely thought he was saying the right thing, providing good logical advice, that avoiding the sufferings and death that Jesus was warning of in Jerusalem would allow Jesus to continue preforming miracles and teaching and healing, to wrestle the promised kingdom back from the hands of the Romans.    

One moment Peter is The Rock, the very picture of a solid confession of faith the next moment Peter is Satan and his words are a stumbling block, a hindrance, filled with human desires and thoughts smelling of brimstone. This is a real flip, flop. While Satan can use our friends and loved ones as tools against us, we still need to be very careful. A friend or a loved one could be giving you good advice and if you are set to do wrong in your heart you could convince yourself that their godly good advice is from Satan. You’re called to judge the situation wisely as Jesus did, to be wary of Satan. Remember Satan in the wilderness even twisted God’s Word in his attempt to corrupt Jesus. So, study God’s Word and continue to study it, learn it well, so that if someone tries to twist it or misquote it to you, you can see through their deceptions, see through their earnest yet false beliefs about what the Bible says. The Bible won’t be wrong but it’s possible for someone to be wrong about the Bible. That said, here’s some advice from Saint James, one who came to faith following Jesus crucifixion and death, who was a leader in the early church and a brother of the Lord;[5] Here Saint James reminds us to guard ourselves against the devil for he, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”[6] Which is to say, have your wits about you, don’t just grab hold of something because it agrees with you or because you agree with it, judge it rightly by God’s Word. Remember “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every Word that comes from the mouth of the LORD,”[7] so judging by that Word they may need to change or you may need to change, but God’s Word will not need to change, “the Word of the Lord Endures forever”[8] a phrase from the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah which Saint Peter would later quote following Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension. 

Dear ones, when you fail at dealing with the situation in front of you and fall into temptation, remember that Jesus did not fail when He was tempted —even by those closest to Him— and it is His perfection, to which we turn for solace and peace in the hour of our temptation; it is His perfect blood shed upon the Good Friday cross of His crucifixion at Mount Calvary the dreaded Golgotha to which we turn for comfort in the face of death: And when you find yourself to be the one who has tempted others into sin, even while desiring the best for them, even while having what you think is the best intentions for them, remember that you can also then turn to Jesus in repentance for forgiveness. Ask yourself, ‘was Peter condemned to hell?’ He was certainly rebuked, ‘Did Jesus hold back forgiveness from Peter?’ Peter continued following Jesus. Jesus took the time to correct Peter in love, and Peter took the correction. Are you willing to be corrected in the faith when you have placed the concerns of men before the concerns of God?  

Having looked at Peter and Jesus, let’s look at Satan and at Jesus: This devil is described by Jesus as the ‘ruler of this world’[9] and before Jesus’ death and resurrection this devil, Satan, was the one who had been given power over the authorities and kingdoms of this world and he may well have been able to fulfil the temptation that he laid before Jesus, to actually give Jesus that power and authority for a season, for a short little while. We see such power put in Satan’s hands in the opening two chapters of the book of Job in the Old Testament. But our righteous Jesus, perfectly righteous in every way where righteous Job was not, did not want to have this authority given to Him by Satan, but rather Jesus wanted the one who has the ultimate power to give Him such authority and that was His Heavenly Father not this devil Satan.  

Now I don’t want you to think that God the Father is somehow more powerful than Jesus, or that the Trinity has a hierarchy in it amongst the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But rather remember that when Jesus became incarnate: He was shown to be perfect God and perfect man—just as we confess in the Athanasian Creed—Jesus was “composed of a rational soul and human flesh; equal to the Father with respect to His divinity, [and yet] less than the Father with respect to His humanity. [That] although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ [the very Christ Peter confessed Him to be in last weeks Gospel]: one, however, [the Creed continues] not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God.[10] So as a result of Jesus’ humility and humanity He set aside some of His Divine attributes, His divine power, so that He could both a) face temptations, hardships and suffering like we face them, to feel them as we feel them, and b) to receive the mercy of God as we receive it, as a gift. Here we see that Jesus was called to trust in His heavenly Father just as we are called to trust in Him; that’s why these words of Satan spoken by Saint Peter are a temptation, a short cut to take now what’ll in the future be freely given. What’s worse, Satan’s short cut isn’t even the kind that genuinely gets you where you’re going, rather the kind that gets you lost on purpose leading you to ruin.    

What Satan offers each of us as “gifts” are temporary and flawed, they come with strings attached – when God gives a gift it’s everlasting and perfect and given with grace and love. Remember the last words that Jesus provides His disciples, the last words Peter would have heard from Jesus on the day of Jesus’ ascension: Jesus said to His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.”[11] Jesus resisted this devil’s temptation because He knew that Satan, the very father of lies and darkness, was to be defeated at the cross and that Jesus would truly be given, that very thing which Satan offered and much more, but not by Satan but rather by the Father of lights, the true giver of ‘every good gift and every perfect gift coming down from above.’[12] If Jesus took what Satan offered at that moment back in the wilderness, or at that moment with Saint Peter immediately after Jesus first taught them of His coming cross Jesus would have abandoned the plan of salvation prepared from before the foundations of the World and we would be lost. Jesus was being tempted to abandon the part of the plan that was leading to His Good Friday cross. You see the Devil was testing Jesus’ patience, testing His love for you and for Peter and for everyone, testing His resolve – Satan wanted Jesus to abandon the plan to refuse the promised gift from His heavenly Father and to take it from the hand of Satan, and in so doing to take everything for Himself before it was given avoiding the cross, avoid the beatings, the crown of thorns, the nails, the humiliation, the blood, the spear, the insults, the fight with death, the tomb, the resurrection. Jesus was being tempted to put Himself before His Father, before others, before you. This was an indirect temptation toward pride away from the virtue of humility.  See how Jesus knows the difficulty of temptations, knows the struggle, therefore He invites you turn to Him when you are struggling, when you are tempted to sin, and He will receive you in.        

Dear ones, I leave you with some additional words from Saint James, James writes, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 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. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.[13] In the face of temptation look to Jesus’ example.  Jesus did not take what was directly offered to Him by Satan’s temptations in the wilderness after His baptism in the River Jordan and Jesus did not bite when the lure of that temptation came again to Him indirectly through His well-meaning apostle Saint Peter’s words, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” Rather Jesus perfectly followed the path laid out for Him prepared before the foundations of the World were laid, with all its sufferings, with its death with its three days in the tomb and its resurrection from the grave; yes, your dear Jesus valiantly refused to lose His soul to the temptations of Satan and in so doing He truly gained the World, not only for Himself but for you, for Saint Peter and for all who have their faith in Him. By refusing to lose His soul to sin Jesus saves your soul from damnation. So, when Jesus says, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me,” He says this as one who perfectly denied Himself and all the temptations of the flesh, the World and Satan. He says this as one who personally denied himself and took up His cross and followed the path laid out for Him by His heavenly Father. His extraordinary humility resulted in Him being exalted above all and on The Last Day, in Him, you will likewise share in this promised exaltation over all things. Amen.

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us; Christ have mercy on us; Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.”

[1] Matthew 16:16
[2] Matthew 16:18
[3] Luke 4:1-13
[4] English Proverb, late 16th century, Oxford Treasury of Sayings & Quotations, Oxford Press 2011, page 5.
[5] Whether Jame was a little brother born after Jesus’ birth to Mary or a step brother from Jesus’ guardian Saint Jospeh, The Virgin Mary’s husband, from before Jospeh was married to the Virgin Mary we don’t know.
[6] 1 Peter 5:8
[7] Deuteronomy 8:3
[8] 1 Peter 1:25, Isaiah 40:8
[9] John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11
[10] Athanasian Creed, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, Page 320, verses 30-33
[11] Matthew 28:18
[12] James 1:17
[13] James 4:6-10

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