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A Sermon Delivered at First Christian
Church Stockton Michael Malone TEMPTATION Matthew
4:1-11 Then
Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the
devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was
famished. The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of
God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."
But he answered, "It is written, 'One does not live by bread
alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Then the
devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the
temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself
down; for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you,' and
'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot
against a stone.'" Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'Do
not put the Lord your God to the test.'"
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him
all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him,
"All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship
me." Jesus said to him,
"Away with you, Satan! for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.'" Then
the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. Today
is the first Sunday during the season of Lent, and as today's reading
makes clear, Lent is not a time of "Bad News" that comes before
the "Good News" of Easter.
Rather, Lent is a time of grace when the children of God reflect
upon their own sin and mortality, as well as on the redemptive power of
God by which we are all saved. The
original failure of the parents of humanity, Adam and Eve, are contrasted
with the victory of the Second Adam, Jesus, as he overcomes temptation in
the desert. If
I were to casually ask each of you what you thought about temptation, I
would get as many different answers as there are people here. Someone would probably respond with "Oh, I cannot resist
chocolate; it always gets the best of me." Someone else would probably tell of a naughty thing they did
when they were a teenager, hiding behind the bushes and throwing water
balloons at people passing by. This
might come as a shock to some of you, but I am easily tempted to over
indulge in good food, especially fatty foods and sweets. Yes, I am sure you find that quite shocking as svelte as I
am. My best friend and
colleague, Bill Jones, and I use to go to lunch every week, and the
waitress would always bring out the dessert cart to tempt us with.
She would say "We have Snickerdoodle cheesecake, Pecan pie
with a scoop of vanilla, key lime pie...".
"Oh, I probably shouldn't".
"Are you sure?". "Well,
OK, since you tempted me. I'll
have the chocolate fudge brownie with the ice cream and a cherry, and
could you put a little swirl of cool whip on top?"
Yet Bill, my friend, always had the strength and discipline to say,
"Get behind me, Satan." "Oh,
that is nothing", someone would chime in.
I remember once when I worked at the newspaper and my girlfriend
wanted to go to Yosemite for the weekend, so I told my boss my grandmother
died and that I needed three days for bereavement leave. When I came back from the weekend at Yosemite I was telling
my friends when the boss came by and I she asked me, "How was the
funeral?" "What
funeral?" I asked. "Your
grandmother's funeral." "Oh
yeah, it went well." "I
felt increasingly guilty, day by day."
And
the temptation grows, changes. A
friend is sitting on the porch outside with a shot gun next to him, crying
because his life is on the line. He
is a professional man, a psychologist, who has lost his job and career
because of an addiction to drugs. His
wife is fed up with it all, ready to leave him.
"I'll nevr use drugs or alcohol again, I swear."
But he knows, when I leave and his wife isn't looking that he has a
stash of pain pills hidden in the truck of his car.
"What difference will it make, nobody will know, and it isn't
anybodies business but my own."
Temptation can ruin a person's life.
A
colleague of mine in Illinois once told me he called on one of the
shut-ins from his church one day. When
his hostess got up to get him a glass of iced tea, he noticed a dish of
peanuts sitting on the coffee table.
He began eating them, and before she came back into the room, he
had devoured the whole bowl. When
she came in, he confessed that he had been tempted by the peanuts and
apologized for giving in to the temptation.
She quaintly smiled and retorted "Oh, don't worry about it, I
don't eat the peanuts, just the chocolate covering." I
never took the temptation story all that seriously until recently.
This is the son of God we are talking about here, he wouldn't be
tempted to do evil, would he? But he is fully human, you know?
He was tempted as we are tempted, but we aren't talking about fudge
brownies or cheating on your taxes. We
are talking about big time temptation after being in the desert for 40
days and nights with no food. And
the devil says to him, "Are you hungry?
Why not take a rock and turn it into a loaf of bread and feed
yourself?" What would be
wrong with that? It makes
sense, does it not? Who would
blame him. Satan says
"hey, you've never performed a miracle in your life, and you don't
want to go out in public and do your first and flop." "Jesus
humbly replies, "Man does not live by bread alone." Not
willing to give up, Satan ups the ante and says, If you really want to
impress the crowd, why don't you jump off the top of the temple steeple?
God will catch you and you won't have a scratch.
I read it in the Bible, it says it right here.
And the people will be so impressed they'll know you are the son of
God." It must have been
tempting, otherwise it wouldn't be fair to call it a temptation, would it? The devil is right you know, people will be impressed.
But Jesus replies "It is not right to put God to the
test." Finally,
the devil takes his best shot. "I
will give you all the kingdoms of the world to rule over as you wish.
You will have power in the social realm as well as political, more
influential than the president, more popular than a rock star, if you will
just bow down and worship me." Wouldn't
it be great if Jesus was the ruler of the world?
Nothing wrong with that. "Get
away from me, Satan, for it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and
serve only him." Temptation
isn't about choosing right from wrong.
Any fool can do that. And
I don't think the devil is so lame that he would waste his time using
chocolate fudge brownies as a temptation to bring you down. The temptations Jesus was presented with was the same
temptation used on Adam and Eve: The
question is, "Would you like to be as God?", not "Would you
like to live like the devil?" And
what is wrong with wanting to be like God?
Is that not something we are to strive to be like?
Temptation
has nothing to do with lying to your boss, choosing from an assortment of
scrumptious cheesecakes, or even whether to use pain pills.
The question posed to Adam, then presented to Jesus, and finally to
you and I is, "What are you going to do with your life?"
This is the most important question you will ever need to answer,
it is literally the only and final exam of your life.
What are you going to do with your life?
Another way to phrase it is, "What is God's will for me?"
When
it all comes to a close on your life, will you be able to say that you
lived your life with integrity, living your life in the direction that God
called you? This is what the
season of Lent is all about, a time to reflect on the direction of your
life, asking yourself "What is God's will for my life?"
It has nothing to do with chocolate desserts, refraining from this
or that, giving up meat, or any other trifle matter. The questions you need to ask yourself, reflect on, and
answer in one paragraph, are: What
is my life? What am I all
about? You have six Sunday's
to answer the questions. May
you be blessed in your struggles with God and yourself during this season
of Lent.
Michael Malone
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