Transcription
Recording in progress Thank you all for bearing with these technological difficulties that we’ve had this morning Technology is great when it works Our New Testament lesson comes from Matthew’s gospel Matthew chapter 4 verses 1 through 11 here the word of our Lord Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil he fasted 40 days and 40 nights and Afterwards he was famished The tempter came and said to him if you are the Son of God command these stones to become loaves of bread But he answered it is written one does not live by bread alone But by every word that comes from the mouth of God Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple 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 the stone Jesus said to him Again, it is written. Do not put the Lord your God to the test again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and Their splendor and he said to him All these I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me Jesus said to him away with you Satan for it is written Worship the Lord your God and serve only him then the devil left him and suddenly angels came and waited on him This is the word of the Lord Let us pray Wondrous and gracious God we thank you For your word that lights our path and guides our hearts that shows us the way The way to your be your people To serve your kingdom in this world Be with us Lord and be with the meditations of our minds and our hearts today and every day Open your word to us and guide us In your name we pray Amen Lent has begun Sorry again, I’m a minister so I get to be kind of geeked out by changes in the church calendar but Lent is an interesting time because we have particular ways we celebrate we have fasting or adding a spiritual practice some of us won’t eat meat on Fridays and Today is our first Sunday and as part of that we look at the journey ahead as we go through length and as we begin we notice that it’s Jesus and and That’s going to continue. We’ll see Jesus speak with Nicodemus Jesus and Nicodemus then Jesus and the woman at the well Jesus and the blind man and You get the drift and on and on We’ll see the Son of Man Interacting with other people on a one-to-one basis For the most part these persons are inquirers seekers People who are wondering what it means to be a follower of Christ But here today the interactions a little more adversarial if if we can be kind today Jesus faces off against or verbally Engages with the embodiment of temptation Now as a sports dad and former player I wish I had a dollar for every time I said was told Or said to or about myself That It was a good match now to say that Jesus is a well-matched opponent is kind of a Little underscoring this matchup.
It’s not a close match. It’s not at all Jesus in essence is playing this whole time with one arm behind his back Truth be told you could argue that he is kind of doing the Black Knight from Monty Python with both arms behind his back The reality is Jesus starts out at not his best He’s been in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights Not eating Not eating at all. And so when he starts this little Fencing match with the powers of temptation.
He is in a negative space if you will He’s hungry He wants that bread that is spoken of he wants to eat now I’ve gone on a liquid diet for a week in but I’ve never done 40 days and 40 nights and At the end of that liquid diet the first bite of food or even the smell of food is Everything you want it and wish it to be and so I look at Jesus and I’m like, oh That’s a tough start But as you look there’s this huge difference between us and our own fasts and Jesus He’s the Son of God He is fully human and fully God and its emphasis here is on the fully God part But that is part of this story but not all because we see three big temptations coming and Jesus again is not his strongest. He’s put himself in a place where temptation is going to come his way You could also make the argument that he is possibly mentally Sharper than he could have been he’s been in the wilderness With nobody to talk to except maybe the father He’s in solitude. He’s been meditating.
He’s been thinking and praying So his body is physically hard But his mind is sharp Unless you factor in the fact that after a certain amount of time It’s going to be really hard to concentrate when you can smell a cheeseburger down the road So Jesus is in this space and Then comes the very first temptation and What we always fail to do with temptations in scripture is we look at him and it’s this sinister thing We paint the temptations in this unreasonableness Temptations come in an unreasonable way for us because these are temptations tailored for Jesus It would be ridiculous if the temptations we face day to day where the temptations put before Jesus Jesus would be like Can we bump up the the difficulty level a little bit on this? I Please the fact is This isn’t a nails-on-the-chalkboard moment when temptation comes Temptation comes in the most reasonable soft and Honeyed voice they can when was the last time you all were tempted and the temptation was like somebody scratching along making one of those Microphone too close to the speaker moments. No It’s always sounding so reasonable So I I think as we listen to this here not a screeching voice presenting these to Jesus, but the most reasonable and Reasoned approach. Hey, Jesus Just just sit down be comfortable buddy.
Listen to these options. I’m gonna give you It’s not it’s more insidious So that first sweet voice Comes and says hey Jesus. I know you’re hungry, buddy You have been 40 days with no food Look at all these little rocks You’re the Son of God use your power use your power and turn those rocks into bread Oh nice warm loaf of bread like the ones from Texas Roadhouse that kind of bread Oh, it’s just wonderful.
Like mom used to make Jesus. Just go ahead and do it the second temptation You think the voice is not? Melodious in his ear trying to say hey Jesus just jump the angels have got you. You’ll be fine Your father has you just go show me what you can do and then the third Hey, Jesus, you’ve got this great mission.
Your father’s given you And I’m gonna help you out, buddy I’m Gonna help you out because I’m gonna give all of this to you You just got to kneel down and and worship me that’s all just one time and That’s what we do as a disservice to what Jesus is facing because for him These are not ridiculous and out and left field. These are real and each one calls on him to use the Godhead use the power that is the Son of God the full God of Jesus his full authority and power to serve himself When he goes and feeds the 5,000 he uses that power That he is the Son of God and he makes How many bro loaves of bread by? And a few loaves a few fish and he feeds 5,000 here. It’s just a few rocks But it is a selfish purpose it is serving his own purpose and The second involves his Godhead as well.
He is the Son of God so if he jumps off the top of the temple all of a sudden the angels are going to come and save him because he is fully God and Lastly, I will give all of this to you if you just kneel That doesn’t necessarily involve his God power, but it involves him compromising his mission from the father and when he Combats all of these temptations when he pushes back Does he use the full power of the Son of God? No, he uses scripture and a rebuke He uses things that every human being has access to We all have scripture that he has we all have the power to tell Temptation to go away. He faces temptation with the same exact Tackle box that we do He just uses it so much better He uses it in such a way to deflect and kick aside and He does that for each and every one of us so that we Might use that same tackle box Against temptation we might emulate him We might be able to face down temptation as our Lord did Jesus Jesus makes a decision here He could use the full power of the Son of God to deflect and defend from these temptations, but he doesn’t He uses Words scripture that all of us can use we can open up our Bibles and Defend ourselves against temptation just like he did he chooses to defend in such a way And that’s because he knows our struggle our struggle with sin Because the basic human perspective is that sin is hard to deal with It’s something that we have a teeth. We we break it down.
We’ve tiered it. We’ve had conversations about it, but When you talk about sin people get uncomfortable It just comes with the territory But it’s part of the human condition is sin it exists we struggle against it and often often we fail And we don’t want to talk about it because we don’t like talking about our own failures We don’t like talking about how we haven’t been without sin But the reality is that we come before God and we rely on God So that God can give us the strength against God calls on us to continue the fight and God forgives us When we do fall short The key here is in the fight That we should be inspired by Christ being both tempted But also using tools that we have access to The reality is Christ is tempted full stop But what he doesn’t do is give in he succeeds The question I would ask all of us is do we willingly choose to fight against temptation Or do we find that voice in our ear too too strong and honeyed for us? The very beginning of living as God calls us is to fight the good fight of faith to fight against Temptation to work against it and understand that yes, we are going to fail in our struggle But even when we fail in that struggle, we must continue to try and strive and strive and strive again We must continue to struggle and strain If we must try and win For me this struggle comes down to two images basketball and chess For the longest time when I was first learning to play chess. I got my Behind-handed to me by my dad He would beat me and beat me bad I would sit there with maybe my king on the board and dad’s got everything else or for basketball I’m the older brother and I lost a lot to my younger brother I’m big and I can rebound but I can’t shoot and Rob can and He beat me for years straight But I kept on trying I kept on trying to beat dad in chess I kept on trying to beat Rob in basketball, and you know what happened Eventually, I did beat dad Took way more years than I want to ever admit and beating Rob in basketball I finally beat him when he slowed down and he broke his wrist and he couldn’t handle like he used to I Finally beat him forget the fact that he had to break his wrist and all that to get there The fact is we eventually do triumph in our struggle We do triumph and that is why we continue to try and struggle against temptation and against sin Knowing that God is with us in that struggle knowing that God is supporting us along the way and God has shown us How we can strive against it But more than anything at the end of our struggle we can fail Because of God’s grace we can fall short because of God’s love, but we cannot Forget the fight.
We cannot forget the struggle because the struggle is how we serve God and so brothers and sisters May we continue in our struggle against sin and temptation? may we get back up when we fall and Most of all may we put our trust in him who defended us from sin Amen At this time. Let us respond to God through our gifts and If you’re on zoom and you didn’t come out in the weather, that’s fine Just make sure you mail in that envelope or stop into the church office