Matthew 4:1-11
(Postponed because of snow)
Today is the second Sunday in the church liturgical season of Lent. The gospel reading that is usually read on this first Sunday in Lent is the story of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Because of the snow last week, we are going to take a look at this story in detail again. And then we are going to consider how Jesus’ example of being tempted and tested might help us understand, remain motivated, and persevere through our own times of testing and temptation.
We start with our gospel reading from Matthew. In the reading, we are told by Matthew that the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. Did you catch that? It is not as if Jesus stumbled into temptation or accidentally found himself being tested. No. Matthew the gospel writer says God, through His Spirit, led Jesus into the wilderness to face a time of testing and temptation.
Why would God do that? Why would God purposively send Jesus to face temptation and testing? We could ask the same for ourselves. Why does God send times of testing, trial, and temptation to us?
Before we try to answer that question, there is another important detail to consider. God sends the Lord Jesus into the desert to face a time of trial and temptation against an opponent. In Scripture, the name for this opponent is the devil (diablos in Greek and Spanish), the evil one, and the adversary. It is important to understand this story for us to get the image of the devil as this little red man with a pitch fork whispering naughty things into your ear out of your head. Instead, the evil one is far more crafty, cunning, underhanded, and malicious than that. In Scripture, the evil one is this force that seeks to oppose and undermine God’s good purposes for human beings and creation. That is what Jesus is up against.
So why would God the Father send Jesus his son into the desert to be tested by the evil one? It’s not like Jesus needs to pass a test before God will make him the Lord and Messiah. He already is that. If you go home and read this story again, you’ll notice in your Bible right before this story begins in chapter 4, that at the end of Matthew chapter 3 Jesus is baptized. And as he is baptized, the Holy Spirit comes upon Jesus like a dove and a voice from heaven thunders, “this is my Son, whom I love, and I am very pleased with him.” Jesus doesn’t need to earn God’s favor. He already has it. Likewise, if you keep reading after our reading today, Jesus begins his ministry by inviting disciples to join him. Jesus begins healing the sick and teaching the people the ways of living that God requires. All this to say that Jesus’ time in the desert wasn’t so that he could discover himself and find out what his passion was. Jesus knew what his purpose in life was – to save, heal, forgive, and rescue broken and lost people and to announce the arrival of God’s peaceable kingdom.
If God didn’t need Jesus to earn his approval, and Jesus didn’t need time to discover his passions, then it seems that God sent Jesus into the wilderness to face temptation by the evil one as a kind of preparation for the difficult road ahead that he would face. It is as if God is preparing Jesus to do the things that God has called him to do. If we think of it like a sport or hobby, Jesus already was on the team. He wasn’t doing try-outs in the wilderness. He also wasn’t there to figure out whether he liked playing the sport. No, instead he was there to practice, to train, and to get ready for what was ahead of him – mainly the cross. The wilderness is Jesus’ time of training.
In the wilderness, the devil puts three temptations before Jesus. The first is a test of allegiance.Jesus had been fasting 40 days and 40 nights (40 is an important number in the Bible. The people of Israel spent 40 years wandering around the desert preparing to be God’s people before they could enter the promised land). To put it mildly, Jesus was hungry. The devil offers to solve Jesus’ hunger. “If you are the Son of God, tell these rocks to become bread.”
The second temptation the evil one offers to Jesus is the temptation to take matters into his own hands. Jesus’ is at the highest point of the temple (think the top of the bell tower here). The evil one says, “if you are the Son of God, jump down…”. He then goes on to quote from Psalm 91, essentially saying that God promises to catch him.
The third temptation the evil one offers to Jesus is the temptation to be important. The offer is that if Jesus bows down and worships the devil, Jesus will be important and have everything for himself. Jesus’ response is firm. “Get away from me Satan…You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”
For the people of Jesus’ day, they would probably have heard this as a reminder to not go along with the Roman Empire and its misguided patriotism, greed, warmongering, and cruelty. They would have heard this as a strong reminder that while we Christians are citizens of a particular nation, our ultimate loyalty and allegiance is God. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to God what is God’s”. There is no mixing of the two. You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him. There are no other options and anything else is idolatry.
Now we turn to our own trials and temptations and times of testing. You don’t go through life for long before you are faced with a trial, temptation, or test of your faith, or morals, or ethics, or all of those things. We may not understand why the Lord allows these times to come to us, we may not want them to come, but come they will.
How might Jesus’ testing in the wilderness be an example for us? We might first think about why the Lord is giving us this trial. I am not suggesting that every bad or difficult thing that happens to someone is God trying to test them. But I do think as Christians it is important to pray and consider where God is in our present difficult circumstances. A good question to ask is “is God giving me this present difficult circumstance so that he can train and refine my heart, mind, and soul?”
When we look at the example of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness, we see that times of trial and difficulty will test our allegiance. Each day we face a question: who will we serve? Will we serve God Almighty and live in his ways, or will we serve ourselves or some other person or thing that is not God and follow destructive ways? The question of who we will serve and who has our ultimate allegiance, is the most important question because when we are far from God, our hearts and minds can become disordered. When we are faced with difficult circumstances and a test of our faith or morals, it is very easy to lose ourselves. It is easy to be overcome with fear, anger, anxiety, and despair. It is very easy to go along to get along. And if you’ve ever been in a place where you are far from God, you know that it is a very dark and lonely place. Remembering our commitments to God and even more so, God’s commitment and love for us is vital to the health of our hearts, minds, and souls.
The second thing that is important to remember during times of testing is that we are still called to be faithful to God. Put another way, we are not God. God is God and we are God’s creatures who God loves and wants to be in a relationship of faithfulness and love. While God is compassionate and merciful for sure, God is also a God of holiness and righteousness. This means that even when we are going through difficult times, our responsibility remains to be faithful to God. Even more so, when we are going through times of trial and testing, we are to remain committed to our Christian values and convictions and not take matters into our own hands because it’s easier or more efficient. In our baptism or confirmation, we are each asked to renounce the powers of evil and promise by God’s help, the following, “…to be Christ’s disciple, to follow in the way of our Savior, to resist oppression and evil, to show love and justice, and to witness to the work and word of Jesus Christ as best we are able.”
The third thing that I think Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness teaches us is that it is spiritually dangerous to think we are more important than we are. Instead, something far deeper and richer is at play: we are far more loved by God than we think we are.
The story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness ends with God’s grace. Jesus commands the devil to leave him and God’s angels come to his aid and take care of him. We can take that as a promise that during our times of suffering and temptation and trial, the Lord will come to our aid and care for us. One word of caution: God’s care for us may not always look like we expect it to or want it to. But God is not a spiritual customer service agent whose job it is to fix our problems. Instead, the Lord is more like a good, divine doctor for the heart, mind, and soul who brings healing and growth towards spiritual maturity in Christ.
We’ll close with this. Lent is a time for spiritual exercise. Lent is the church’s season where we examine our lives, renounce sin and evil, and recommit to following in the way of our Savior, Jesus Christ.
One of the ways that Christians have practiced Lent is by giving something up. This can look like fasting or abstaining from something enjoyable. The purpose of that is to deliberately put ourselves in a position where we need to trust and rely on God and not be distracted by the things we normally do.
Another way that Christians have practiced Lent is by taking something on. For this Lent, I am inviting all of us in the church to take on the discipline of memorizing short passages of Scripture. This is also spiritual training. We heard Jesus say that humans “don’t live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” Reading Scripture and memorizing it is like feasting on it. We chew on it, let it fill us, and like bread, it becomes our nourishment. When times of trial, testing, and difficulty come, knowing Scripture by heart can be a great comfort and source of strength.
So, I invite you to do this with me. Each week I will have a new passage printed to try and memorize during the week. One way to try to memorize a passage is to read it every day (in the morning or evening or whenever is good for you) 10 times. And then each day try and say a little bit of it on your own. Slowly, you will start to learn it by heart. If 3 versus feels like too much, the bolded part is the most important part.