Sermon "T A G Your Temptations"
Rev. Lonnie Richardson
Sunday, March 1, 1998
Luke 4:1-13
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T A G Your Temptations
And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in 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 shall all be yours." And Jesus answered him, "It is written, `You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'" And he took him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; for it is written, `He will give his angels charge of 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 tempt the Lord your God.'" And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Luke 4:1-13
A little boy named Bobby badly wanted a new bicycle. His plan was to save his nickels, dimes, and quarters until he finally had enough to buy a new 10-speed. Each night he took his concern to the Lord. Kneeling beside his bed, he prayed, "Lord, please help me save for my new bicycle and please Lord, don't let the ice cream man come down our street tomorrow." Bobby's prayer was to help him accomplish the goal of a new bicycle. He prayed that the vehicle of temptation would not go down his street. How do you handle temptation?
Can you remember the last time temptation pinned you up against the wall and dug its claws into your throat? No, I don't mean the Racine Kringle you passed on this morning. Or forsaking Gillies or Kopps in a Lenten discipline. I'm talking real, heart wrenching temptation so serious that to fail the test would lead to a disaster in your life. If that temptation comes at just the right -- or maybe the wrong -- moment, we are all the more vulnerable.
A 20/20 episode a few months ago showed children of about four years old struggling with temptation. They were left alone in a room sitting in front of two or three M & M's, having been told they could have a whole package of M & M's if they would wait for a bell that would ring in five minutes. The struggle of temptation was recorded through a two-way mirror. The result was hilarious as these poor kids twitched, fidgeted, wiggled and twisted their faces up in knots trying not to grab those M & M's. About half made it and half said in effect, "To heck with it, I want what I want when I want it!"
The consequences for these children were mild, at least from an adult perspective. (For a four year old, missing out on a package of M & M's is at least semi-traumatic!) For the rest of us the results of falling to temptation can be devastating. We've all seen it. The judge who goes to prison for taking a bribe. An elected official is forced to leave office, the teacher who does time for molesting children. The pastor who is caught in a massage parlor. The military officer who sells secrets to a foreign government. Temptation is a booby trap in life's journey. It is a kind of "pass go, collect $200, skip the hard stuff and proceed directly to fulfillment and reward!" "You can have it all!" What a lie in consequence.
How did Jesus deal with temptations? There are certain great milestones in the life of Jesus. In the temple when he was twelve there had come the realization that God was his father in a unique way. In the emergence of John, the hour had struck and in his baptism God's approval had come. At this time Jesus was just about to begin his campaign. Before you begin a campaign one must choose their methods. The temptation story shows us Jesus choosing once and for all the method by which he proposed to win people to God. It shows him rejecting the way of power and glory and accepting the nobler way in harmony with God's will.
We should not think that his three temptations came and went like scenes in a play. We must rather think of Jesus deliberately retiring to this lonely place and for forty days wrestling with his future. It was a long battle which never ceased.
The first temptation was to turn stones into bread. This wilderness was not a wilderness of sand. It was covered by little bits of limestone exactly like loaves. The tempter said to Jesus, "If you want people to follow you, use your wonderful powers to give them material things." He was suggesting that Jesus should bribe people into following him. Back came Jesus' answer in a quotation of Deut. 8:3. "No one," he said, "will never find life in material things." ... `Man shall not live by bread alone.'
The task of Christianity is not to produce new conditions, although the weight and voice of the church must be behind all efforts to make life better for everyone. Its real task is to produce new persons; and given the new persons, the new conditions will follow.
In the second temptation Jesus in imagination stood upon a mountain from which the whole civilized world could be seen. The tempter said, "Worship me, and all will be yours." This is the temptation to compromise. The devil said, "I have people in my grip. Don't set your standards so high. Strike a bargain with me. Just compromise a little with evil and men will follow you." Back came Jesus' answer, "God is God, right is right and wrong is wrong. There can be no compromise in the war on evil." Once again Jesus quotes scripture (Deut. 6:13-14). `You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'
In the third temptation Jesus in imagination saw himself on the pinnacle of the temple where Solomon's porch and the royal porch met. There was a sheer drop of 450 feet down into the Kedron Valley below. This was the temptation to give the people sensations. "No," said Jesus, "you must not make senseless experiments with the power of God" (Deut. 6:16). `You shall not tempt the Lord your God.' Jesus saw quite clearly that if he produced sensations he could be a nine days' wonder: but he also saw that sensationalism would never last.
Jesus' weapon for temptation was the very source of the temptation, the scriptures and the application of personal knowledge and conscious to it. One good reason to learn the scriptures.
There is an important brief diversion. The story of the temptations is also a story about evil. The topic of evil offers so many angles of approach that there is a danger of raising too many questions in one message. I would like to mention one or two which I feel to be important as we sharpen the skills and tools of the temptation battle.
One of my professors used to begin his lecture on evil by using a mathematical analogy. "Evil," he said, "is a surd," that is, a number which exists but is totally irrational.
I think many people today realize that there are valuable qualities which can be neither explained or defined. Is love any easier to explain than hate? Wrong than right? This means that we should avoid simplistic explanations, such as, "We need evil in order to experience that which is good," or "Evil has no real existence since God created everything and saw that it was good,"' or "Pain has an ennobling effect." Above all it needs to be evident that we take evil seriously and not just as a flaw in human character which will be eliminated in the course of evolution.
I am convinced on the evidence of the Bible, and increasingly by experience, that evil cannot be dismissed as merely a negative phenomenon - the shadow that reveals the light - but that it operates as an active force in our souls and in our world. If there is such a thing as a "kingdom of God," we can talk also of a "kingdom of evil." We learn of his tempting tactics in the temptation of Jesus.
What is surely most impressive about the teaching of Jesus is that he is not concerned with explaining evil, it is assumed, but with overcoming it. For instance, the immensely powerful words of the Lord's Prayer, "deliver us from evil." This is the gospel we have to deliver - that "in Christ" we have a deliverer who by his crucifixion went through the worst evil any of us can know, and is alive today as the victor. This is what we have to declare and to demonstrate in word and sacrament. The Lord who teaches us to pray: "deliver us from evil" is the one who can do it - both now in our worst agonies, and in the end when the victory will be complete and the kingdom of evil totally and eternally overcome.
How courageous and effective have you been in the temptation battle? Sometime during this next week, you will experience some temptation or another. Perhaps you even know exactly in what area of your life the temptation will come. The instant that temptation comes, let a flag go up in your mind. The flag says, t a g. Tag stands for temptation, action and goal. When the temptation comes, your action is to ask for help from the lord and others. "Lord, you have endured every kind of temptation and survived. Be with me now in this time and give me strength to overcome." The goal is to arrive at the point Christ did in his temptations.
A pastor tells about visiting a little church in southwest Virginia. An elderly man was teaching a Sunday school class to a group of young people. That elderly man put it this way: "if you're driving down the road and you see Satan standing by the road trying to catch a ride, don't you dare stop the car, don't you dare open the door, don't you dare let him in, 'cause it won't be long until he'll want to drive."
Don't surrender leadership for your life. Commit it and the challenges of living the Christian life to the Lord. Tag temptations by taking action. Amen.
