Sermon for February 10, 2008

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”

Drew Anderson told this story in an issue of Reader's Digest:
While my wife and I were shopping at a mall kiosk, a shapely young woman in a short, form-fitting dress strolled by. My eyes followed her. Without looking up from the item she was examining, my wife asked, "Was it worth the trouble you're in?"

Temptation!  An allure, an enticement, a promise that this something will somehow make things better, grander, bigger, you more important. 

Where does temptation come from?  We certainly experience it in our own minds and bodies.  But our Old Testament lesson for today and our Gospel lesson for today clearly point to the origin, the source of temptation and that is Satan.

John Piper says that sin (lust for example) "gets its power by persuading me to believe that I will be more happy if I follow it. The power of all temptation is the prospect that it will make me happier."  This is the devils’ constant, unending message—however attractively it is couched—you’re not good enough and doing this or thinking this or saying this will make you and your situation better.

The Television game show, “Deal? Or No Deal?” ….my wife and I have watched.. It’s amazing to see how tempting the money is.  After each round of eliminating cases, the host Howie Mandel looks the competitor in the eye and says, “John Elmshauser, deal? Or no deal?”

In our Gospel lesson for today, Satan is saying the same thing, “Deal? Or no deal?”  But he’s saying it to Jesus and Jesus is not distracted by his offers.  But they are good offers.  Mark Twain said “There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice”.  In the Gospel Jesus confronts the Tempter himself—not one of his powerful lackeys—and says “NO DEAL!”

The first temptation has to do with food.  No THAT’s a temptation!  Satan already knew about Jesus—his miraculous birth, his questions to the teachers of the law, the stories people are saying about this very unusual man.  Satan has heard that this man is the Messiah—he has already tried to destroy him once we know when Herod kills the babies of Bethlehem.  How interesting that his attack on Adam and Eve also involved food!  But what succeed in the case of Adam and Ever who were well-fed failed in the case of Jesus who our text tells us was hungry.

In fact the forty days may have been filled with Satanic oppression and this appearance by the Prince of Darkness himself is the culmination.  One on one, directly eye to eye, Jesus and Satan, deal or no deal?

How very strange that in a few short months Jesus would be creating food for thousands from a few loaves—he could do this, make bread from stones.  And Jesus the man will presumably eat some of the bread he has thus created.  And the crowds will thank him for the food.  But Jesus answers that no amount of food will keep a person alive without a word and an order from GOD’s MOUTH.  It was God’s Word that spoke the world and everything in it into existence and it is only by God’s Word that we are alive at all and that is what he says.  NO DEAL!

Let’s open a new case.  The second attack reverses the first.  Now some have assumed that this only happened in Jesus mind—as he imagines himself on the eave of the roof of the stoa on the end of the Temple platform where the rocks below would have been nearly 600 feet down.  But there is no reference here nor in any of the other Gospels of such an account.  The conclusion is that Satan was permitted to attack; and Jesus, like Job went where the devil desired for the purpose of temptation.

That does not mean we should not chose to avoid temptation when we can.  On the old TV show "Hee Haw," Doc Campbell was confronted by a patient who says he broke his arm in two places. The doc replied, "Well then, stay out of them places!"
He might have something there. We cannot regularly put ourselves in the face of temptation and not be affected. When faced with the problem of temptation, we need to take the good doctor's advice and "stay out of them places."  But God also allow us to be tempted and sometimes there is simply no way of escaping the temptation.  We can only resist.  And this attack on Jesus must happen.

WHY?  I had a conversation recently with a friend who suggested that Jesus resisted the devil and defeated his temptation because he was God.  And he certainly is.  But in Matthew 4 we are describing a messiah without divine powers.  He has set aside his God power in order to face life and the devil like we do.

And now the devil quotes Scripture.  By himself quoting the Bible the devil would block any further attempt by Jesus to use the Scriptures.  Now if we could not use the bible to fight the devil, we would be without our greatest weapon, amen?  He is sort of saying, “If you can do it, then do it”.  Prove who you are, prove who your Father is.  It is foolishness to challenge God to see whether he will do what he has said, or simply demand that he do what he says he will do or what he will give us the power to do.  That would mean of course, that we were in control of God.

Of course we can rely on God’s promises.  And the verse Satan quotes from Psalm 91 is substantially correct excepting of course that he has left out the part about “to guard you in all your ways”.  And throwing himself 600 feet to the earth to prove that God has given him special protection and power is not in all his ways and it is directly in opposition to the Scriptural injunction not to put God to the test (Deuteronomy 6:16) in such a way. 

When we are tempted in such a way that we can find some Bible verse that seems to support the sin, we are reminded to be certain there is not another verse that contradicts our notion and explains the first in some other way.  No deal!

Well one temptation to titillate his own needs, another to suggest he can show off and gain a following for all that.  And now Satan drops hi mask and appears as the prince and the ruler of the world.  Now he is drawn up in all of the power and fury and darkness he possesses.  And somehow, someway he parades before this young Galilean the kings and kingdoms of the world.

Just a dream for Jesus—something he is tempted with mentally?  Don’t think so.  If Satan could “project” ;his thoughts into Jesus’ mind in order to make him think he was where he wasn’t than the mind of Jesus would be helpless under the will of Satan.  Most assume that Satan does not know what we think until he observes what we do!  “Now”, he says, “I know how to tempt them.”  Somehow, someway, Satan proudly displays his kingdom, the kingdom of the world.

And this is so what so many want—they are wanting to rule, to be in control, to be powerful and influential, to have people worship them.  It is strange to me that some entertainers want so badly to be famous and then when they are complain about what their fame has done to their lives.  Hmmmmmm

Satan’s time as the Prince of this world as Jesus called him in John 12, now this Prince for a moment of eternity, this usurper who must return all that he now rules to its real owner, now this terrifying, posturing, king of evil makes an incredible offer.  The Hebrew means to “prostrate”, to indicate submission.  As Satan is “under” God, Jesus would be under Satan, kind of an under lord—but a very powerful under lord—a Messiah king of the world.

How many people do you know that have jumped at the chance to share the stolen, to take part in the unethical, to be a part of evil that another offers all in order to create some “place”, some income, some position, some influence.  It might be a judge bought off by a mobster, a businessman who is cheating, a wife in a marriage without love—all for some reward—all without a future of anymore than the thing they have coveted.
If this man Jesus would just succumb to an offer, an offer more magnificent than he had ever made and would make again until the end, than this could all work and he would still be in control of the rebellious world.  He had dropped the first man Adam and his wife Eve and now he would neutralize the second Adam, the virgin born son of a carpenter who is a fulfillment of all that the prophets have said.

Reports the DENVER POST: "Like many sheep ranchers in the West, Lexy Fowler has tried just about everything to stop crafty coyotes from killing her sheep. She has used odor sprays, electric fences, and 'scare-coyotes.' She has slept with her lambs during the summer and has placed battery-operated radios near them. She has corralled them at night, herded them at day. But the southern Montana rancher has lost scores of lambs--fifty last year alone. "Then she discovered the llama--the aggressive, funny-looking, afraid-of-nothing llama...'Llamas don't appear to be afraid of anything,' she said. 'When they see something, they put their head up and walk straight toward it. That is aggressive behavior as far as the coyote is concerned, and they won't have anything to do with that... Coyotes are opportunists, and llamas take that opportunity away.'"

Apparently llamas know the truth of what James writes: "Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you" (4:7). The moment we sense his attack through temptation is the moment we should face it and deal with it for what it is.

And Jesus indignation is apparent.  NO DEAL!  To do this would be the foulest break of the First Commandment for God is and always must be FIRST!  NO DEAL!  That’s where all temptation really starts isn’t it?  Is God first?  Or is something else first!  If God is not first than temptation will be successful.  And the man Jesus resists Satan’s last and greatest temptation.

Why is this text so important for me?  Some assume it is a myth or at best a story to teach us about right and wrong and Satan is not real—he is simply a fabrication, a “being” to represent all evil in and around us.  NO DEAL!

Margo sat in my office with her mother beside her.  Pastor Schuetz was in my chair and I sat on the other side of Margo, a woman troubled for sometime by spiritual oppression.  Suddenly she began to talk in a strange and raspy voice, totally incredible coming from anyone especially a tiny woman like herself.  She wouldn’t look at me, and she began to say awful things for a Christian—God was not real, God didn’t love people, God was the cause of trouble.  I replied with more Bible passages than I thought I could ever remember and am sure I couldn’t now to refute these awful lies.  Finally I said to her, “In the name of Jesus Christ I order you to come out!”  Suddenly she looked a me, confusion in her eyes and asked what had happened.  Four more times that day we went through the same process, each culminating in my ordering the spirit to leave her.  She was exhausted and so was I and Pastor Schuetz closed with a prayer.

When she and her mother had gone, I asked Pastor what had just happened.  He said, “I think you just cast out five demons”.  Well, I didn’t know I could do that, or even that I should try.  It just seemed to be the right thing.  That was a part of nearly two years of a ministry relationship with this woman and her family and I learned or relearned that the devil is real.

Some folks don’t think so.  He is for many simply a personification and maybe a scapegoat for our own sin.  The idea of some outside, unseen “force” tempting us to evil is more like a myth than reality.  The movies and even the documentaries about exorcisms are fascinating maybe, but not to be believed too much.  In fact, they make most folks very uncomfortable.

When I talked over this woman’s problem with fellow pastors and DCEs I was surprised at the response I got.  Some of THEM said things like “well I know that the devil is real because I b believe the Bible but….”  And then they would proceed to find a way out of the conversation and let me know they would provide no help to me.  Those were some very prayerful weeks for my family and me too.

I found out I could do things I didn’t know I could do.  I found out that there really was a deadly force at work in a place I seldom was knowing about.  And in the process I also discovered that same confrontation was happening daily in me, daily in others—temptation is an attack.

Paul says in our Epistle for today that the greatest statement of God’s power was Christ dying for the ungodly—US—who cannot and have not resisted every evil temptation.  God’s LOVE has been shown to be a fact in this one man’s resistance.  This one said NO DEAL and meant it and lived.  But his Spirit is alive in our spirit and he gives not only the example but the courage and the wisdom to say NO DEAL in our own temptations.

Lent is a time of repentance and repentance also means our promise to do differently.  Let us claim the perfection of Jesus and say to the devil and to temptation, “NO DEAL!”