Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "TEMPTED"
Date: February 25, 2007
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 4:1-13

No matter which year of the three-year lectionary cycle we are in, the reading for this First Sunday in Lent is always Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  It proves at least three things:

First, Jesus was a faithful Jew.  Israel’s confession of faith is known as the Shema:  “Hear, O Israel:  the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”  Jesus uses this to deflect every attempt by the devil to put God to the test by granting the devil’s demands.  Jesus rejects the temptation to compromise his devotion to God for some worldly power.

Second, Jesus shows his divinity by having enough stamina to wrestle with the devil and whatever is tantalizingly dangled in front of him.

Third, Jesus demonstrates his humanity by being tempted, just as we are.  Many years after this event, the author of Hebrews asserts that Jesus “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” (4:15)  His divinity and humanity are inextricably mixed.

In this episode, we most likely don’t see ourselves in Jesus.  He was made of sterner stuff than we are.  We would probably agree to turn rocks into bread and figure out how to feed ourselves and the folks downtown at Christian Outreach in Action, and the rest of the world as well.  We would be delighted if God would keep us from falling.  And certainly we could trust ourselves to very carefully and reasonably wield power over the world if ultimate power were bestowed upon you or me.

But we don’t get such tempting offers made to us in our lives.  When was the last time the devil took you up to Palos Verdes, showed you the whole panorama across the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, up to the snow-capped mountains, all the way down the Newport coast and said to you, “If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours”?

But we do know, experience and understand the pull of temptation.

While I was a teenager, I used to do a lot of babysitting in our neighborhood.  I remember our next door neighbor had a big ashtray nearly overflowing with the loose change he would throw in there each night.  Now to show you how long ago this was, I was getting 50 cents an hour and 75 cents after midnight!  Surely he would never miss a few quarters and dimes from the ashtray.

A man I’ll call Joey worshipped here some years ago.  One Sunday he introduced me to his fiancée, an attractive blond woman with a good job in the business world.  Sometime later, Joey showed up in my office one weekday.  It seemed he was in Las Vegas on business, and after more than a few drinks, he gave in to temptation.  He felt terrible about it, came home and confessed to his fiancée, telling her “it didn’t mean a thing.”  She threw him out.  He came crying to me, wondering how he could salvage the relationship.  She would not relent.  I would have probably forgotten all about this had I not run into Joey at CPK at lunch one day last December.  He did not introduce me to the woman accompanying him.

Another man who worshipped here when he was in town confessed to me in person and then sent me a lengthy e-mail, explaining how he had met someone else, and while it was only an affair of the heart, he felt this was where his destiny was.  I could see into the future and predicted that affair of the heart would have as much damage on his present marriage as did Joey’s one-night fling in Las Vegas.

Not all temptations are of such dramatic personal consequence, but they usually involve issues that we must ultimately live with and make peace with our behavior.  Do our musicians purchase the original score, or just buy one and make copies of the rest?  When the cashier gives you not enough change, we usually mention it; but what about when you receive too much?

Most of us agree that teens nowadays are faced with an array of temptations that did not exist in our day.  A decade ago, when my daughters were in high school, parties were held in some of their classmates’ homes, whose parents provided the alcohol for the party.  Pretty hard to overcome that temptation when your parent gives tacit approval.  The latest parties, I hear, involve teens taking items from their parents’ medicine cabinet:  Vicodin, Darvocet, Valium, Atavan.  They share it among themselves.  At some parties, they toss them in a big bowl and invite you to scoop them up.  Temptation is difficult enough to overcome when you’re alone, even harder with the crowd encouraging you to dig in, have one for the road, no one will notice.

Temptation… temptation… temptation.  Who’s going to save us?

Fortunately, Jesus gives us a lesson in controlling temptation in today’s passage from Luke.  He shows us how to respond to temptation successfully.  For Jesus, subduing sin is all about relying on Scripture, staying true to your calling and refusing to put God to the test.  To the first temptation, he responds by quoting Deuteronomy:  “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” (8:3)  Jesus relied on the guidance of Scripture, not his stomach.  He refused to draw on his divine power to perform a miracle that would serve only his own selfish interests.

The second temptation was about ambition, something that many struggle with in the cut-throat world of the upwardly-mobile business world.  In order to have every thing under his control, all dominion and power, there was just one catch.  The devil says:  You must worship me.

That’s the problem with ambition.  It requires having to worship someone or something.  It feeds off a willingness to “kill to get the business.”  So Jesus counters with the words from the Shema:  “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”  There is no goal so noble that it is worth abandoning God along the way.  There is no ambition so pure that it can achieve a godly end without having God in the process.  There is no true Christian calling that requires the destruction of others through selfish actions.

On top of this, raw ambition really doesn’t work.  It often succeeds only if other people fail, writes businessman James Autry.  “But in the community of work, if some fail, most fail, and all become victims.”  It is far better, says Autry, to take people along with you, because “the more people you try to take along with you, the faster you’ll get there and the longer you’ll stay there.”  (Autry, James A. Love and Profit: The Art of Caring Leadership. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991, 63.)

When I read that, I thought of one of my brothers-in-law.  Bill has a very good position as a production manager for a high-end printing firm.  They print securities and those glossy colored prospectus’ you receive.  Whenever Bill moves from one company to another, he reaches back and takes the best people who worked for him.  One of them told me, “I follow Bill everywhere.  He takes good care of me.”  Bill knows his success is dependent on the people who work for him.

Take people along with you, instead of stepping on them on the way to the top.  That’s what Jesus did, and it’s what he calls us to do, as we worship the Lord and serve only him.

The final temptation involves putting God to the test.  The devil invites Jesus to take a flying leap off the corner of the temple walls and cites Scripture, saying that God would “command his angels concerning you, to protect you.”  That’s a lovely thought, and one we want desperately to hold onto — the conviction that God will protect us, bear us up, shield us and save us, as we face the many dangers of day-to-day life in our fast-moving world.

There’s just one little hitch.  Jesus certainly believed that God would protect him, but he refused to put God to the test.  For us today, this means we don’t test God’s constant care by driving down the freeway at 110 miles per hour, or showing up for exams without studying, or abusing drink or drugs, or engaging in promiscuous sex.  It’s not a sign of sincere faith to behave in self-destructive ways and then expect God to save our skin.

Do not put the Lord your God to the test.  That’s the technique that Jesus used to overcome the final temptation, and it’s an approach that he recommends to us as well.

Sometimes being tempted makes us feel dirty.  The spontaneous thoughts of hatred or lust or envy or theft shock us.  An important lesson for disciples is this:  Temptation is not sin.  The devil may tempt us by putting evil thoughts into our minds, but we can push them right out again with God’s help.  There’s a saying attributed to Martin Luther: “You can’t help it if a bird flies over your head, but you don’t need to let him make a nest in your hair.”  (Ralph F. Wilson, “Jesus’ Temptation,” JesusWalk Web Site, Jesuswalk.com.)

There’s no sin in being tempted.  It can happen to any of us, in ways both subtle and dramatic.  Maybe we shouldn’t have exposed ourselves to the temptation in the first place.  But the real sin comes when we give in.  May we rely, as Jesus did, on the power of our faith and God’s will for our lives to overcome temptation.