Jesus' Temptation

JESUS’ TEMPTATION

Matthew 4.1-11

When Jesus is tempted in the wilderness he is tempted by at least three of the seven deadly sins: Pride and selfishness (greed), for sure, and maybe even gluttony or sloth. The whole experience tempts him toward a mental mindset that is antistewardship. Proud people don’t dirty their hands for anyone else or stoop to raise up anyone else in the world. If they think of others at all (which is unlikely), they are apt to cut them down, to climb over them, to use them for their own ends.

Selfish people don’t give, they take. They watch out for number one. A sermon on this text may hark back to the 1970s, those bygone days of “me” generation. We heard Frank Sinatra’s song, “I did it my way.” Or we ever saw the unbelievable bumper sticker, “if it feels good do it.” Not least three decades ago, our days are so. We can easily find books published on how to become prosper. What a bunch of crud that all was, the same old Satan with the same old sneaking message: bread for a stone, the world on a platter, even the laws of gravity don’t apply to very special and wonderful “me.”

The tricky part of this text for preaching is understanding the place of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ temptation and in ours. There is no escaping that the Spirit set up Jesus for the temptation experience. Here in Matthew and also in Luke (4.1-2) Jesus is led. Mark puts it even stronger: “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (1.12). The Spirit not only permitted the temptations of Satan, but it seems also that he knew them to be necessary.

In the light of Jesus’ spiritual strength compared to our own, we hope the Spirit will protect us from onslaughts like those he permitted the man Jesus to experience. In any case, we need to temper our grasp of the temptation account with Luther’s reminder in the catechism: “God tempts no one to sin . . .”

Might the Spirit’s awareness and control of temptation be a part of our own experience as well? We know the temptations of Satan to laziness and selfishness and pride, which devour and smother stewardship. But there is a sense in which temptation overcome makes us spiritually stronger, better followers, and for our purposes here, better stewards.

Certainly the experience of Jesus himself suggests this. If he had chosen the selfish ways in the wilderness there would be no limit to the ways he might later choose to stay comfortable. Why not order a king sized Beautyrest spring and mattress for each of those 40 nights, and why not later on in his ministry take a helicopter instead of an open boat? Or better yet, why not just wish himself across the Sea of Galilee? Why not call for an invisible shield over his back when they flogged him? And why not, if he had to be crucified, levitate instead of hang there?

If Jesus had gone Satan’s way in the wilderness there would have been no cross, no sacrifice that he continued to demonstrate for the several years of his public ministry. A life of love and sacrifice is also possible for us and is the end result of Paul’s promise in 1 Corinthians 10.13 that we won’t be tempted beyond our strength.

As we work through these ideas in sermon preparation, we had better not forget those words we have spoken silently many days of our lives and aloud almost every Sunday: “Deliver us from evil.” We may cherish the old form of the Lord’s Prayer and piously wish we didn’t have to deal with so much evil in the world, in our parishioners, in our families, and in our own lives, but life doesn’t go that way.

The new form of the prayer is probably closer to the truth of human experience. “Save us from the time of trial.” Even better would be: “Save us during the time of trial.” That’s how it was for Jesus and that’s how we want to have it when the Spirit permits our trial and temptation.

If this pattern prevails in our lives as it did for Jesus, then we also are promised that passing the smaller tests will help us with the bigger ones. Jesus, after all, faced a much harder temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane than he had earlier in the wilderness. The latter temptation was not to comfort or ease but to the saving of his very life.

Our testings, our trials, many never be as gigantic as those Jesus faced (the Spirit will see to that), but they will grow in intensity as we grow in the faith. The blessings increase, however, as our responses grow. We become better servers, better carers, better followers, better sharers. Every aspect of what we call stewardship is strengthened when we resist and overcome temptation.