Matthew
4:1-11
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 He fasted forty days and forty nights,
and afterwards he was famished. 3 The tempter came and said to him, "If
you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." 4
But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone, but by
every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" 5 Then the devil took him
to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, 6 saying 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, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.'" 7 Jesus said to
him, "Again it is written, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the
test.'" 8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him,
"All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me." 10
Jesus said to him, "Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the
Lord your God, and serve only him.'" 11 Then the devil left him, and
suddenly angels came and waited on him.
Then Jesus was led up
by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
§ Temptation come to all those who are living, even to Jesus. This
story, which we know so well, is so packed with images and references that we
could make it a Lent-ful of sermons!
§ First off, Jesus was led by
the Spirit to the wilderness to be tempted. What was going on was
directed by the Spirit of God. The temptation by the devil was not, but the
idea of going into the wilderness following the baptism by John in order to
pray, meditate, and get things cleared up in the mind certainly are.
§ Second, Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness to be tempted. Jesus did not go to his home
to talk things over with Mary and Joseph (if Joseph were still alive; he’s
disappeared from the Gospels by this time.) He went to the wilderness or the desert,
whichever you prefer. In the wilderness, there are no masks and no place to
hide; bears, snakes, or badgers don’t care who you pretend to be. Danger of one
sort or the other is present everywhere and everything is reduced to the
simplest terms – What will I eat? What will I drink? Where is a safe place to
sleep? How will I keep warm? (My father served in North Africa during World War
II and he told me the desert is COLD at night.)
§ Third, Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness to be tempted. Yes, the
wilderness can make a person think about options, directions, and what is
important. The distractions are fewer since there is a lot less to engage a
person’s attention. It’s here in the wilderness that Jesus faces himself and
the one who wishes to tempt him. Those temptations were aimed exactly at Jesus’
values.
§ We need to be clear on the nature of temptation. No one is tempted
to do what is bad for them. People always choose what appears to be good for
them at the time. There is nothing wrong or evil about eating when you are
hungry, with trusting God in a troubling situation, or with doing important
things. These can be good things… until they come up against better things. The
temptation is to avoid the spiritual activity of fasting and the hunger
involved simply to fill the belly. It is to trust God as a rescue squad and ambulance
when we do stupid things and don’t want to face the consequences. It is to take the cheap and easy road of
making ourselves the centre of the universe rather than seeing God as the
Almighty. It is putting what might be called infantile values ahead of
what we and the world around us actually need.
§ Jesus was tempted and actually struggled with those temptations.
This was no false temptation nor was it the final temptation. There were
others, the most serious of which came in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus
prayed “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what
I want but what you want.” (Mt. 26:31) At that point, he was
tempted to do his own will and leave aside the will of the Father and his
purpose of salvation. As he did when tempted by food, by a simplistic
understanding of the Father’s will, or by self-importance in the wilderness,
here he emptied himself to do the will of the Father… and save us all.
§ It is appropriate to the season of Lent that we realize that this
is a graced moment. The graced gift to us today is the knowledge that Jesus was
tempted, truly tempted just as we are and in the ways that we are as well.
§ By the grace and love of God, we can come through those
temptations… and if we stumble, there is this: If our lives were a long piece of fabric with our baptism at one end
and our funeral at the other, and we don’t know the distance between the two,
then Ash Wednesday (and Lent?) is a
time when the fabric is pinched in the middle and the ends are held up so that
our baptism in the past and our funeral in the future meet. And in that meeting we are reminded of
promises: That we are God’s, that there is no sin, no darkness, and yes, no
grave that God will not come to find us in and love us back to life. (Nadia
Bolz-Weber “Accidental Saints”)
§ No temptation will drive God away from us either and we will
always be called back in grace and there is no wilderness too far or too wild
for God not to seek and find. If our temptation in the wilderness, makes us
want to be found… well, that’s just fine! And that’s just grace!
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into
the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
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