A Lord's Day Message for March 13, 2011

(©Rev. Larry A. Langer, First Presbyterian Church, Jasper, IN, March 13, 2011)
“Seven Who Encountered Jesus: (1) the Devil”

Matthew 4:1-11 and Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-13

“The Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. (Matthew 4:1)

(Sermon preached by Rev. Larry A. Langer, First Presbyterian Church, Jasper, IN, March 13, 2011)

A couple of weeks ago, a young man stood up for his religious principles. His name was Joel Northrup. He was a wrestler from Linn-Mar High School in the Iowa State Wrestling Tournament. In the first round of the tournament, he was scheduled to wrestler Cassy Herkleman from Cedar Falls High School. He chose, instead, to forfeit the match.

Why? “Cassy” was a 14-year old girl. His explanation? “He didn’t think it appropriate to engage with a girl in a combat sport that could get violent.” (I think one has to add, “It may not be deemed appropriate for young men and young women to be touching each other where wrestlers have to touch each other, either, even though one could say that ‘it’s only a sport’.”)

Cassy, for her part, said she “didn’t feel slighted because Joel refused to wrestle me, but I do hate to win by default.” And, in fact, if we look at the picture of the referee holding up Cassy’s arm in the traditional victory fashion, Cassy’s face doesn’t reflect that she has just won a match and gets to move on in the tournament.

It seems to me that there are two of life’s ultimate principles at work here. The first is, do we have principles and do we stand up for them? The second is, do we want to compete at any cost and are we disappointed when we can’t?

It was mentioned in the sports story (almost in passing) that the young man was “home schooled.” Very often home schooled students are home schooled because of religious convictions against public high schools. However, home schooled students are given a chance to participate in sports through public schools; in fact, there has to be some overlap of certain graduation requirements. This young man’s reticence about wrestling a young woman stems from his religious conviction. He stood by his conviction. Not only this, but he apparently was allowed to by the coaches, etc., without any detrimental effect.

These two things – standing for one’s principles and not being punished for it says a lot more about life the way it is supposed to be, than whether or not one wins or loses a wrestling match.

The second issue involves our desire to be all we can be, no matter what. Now, I’m not criticizing the young woman for wanting to compete in the sport of wrestling. I’m not criticizing her for looking disappointed when she won by default. All I am saying is that she is an example of how we often are disappointed when things don’t go the way we want them to go, and we want to deal with the issue, do the best we can, and hopefully come out on top. God made us this way – to actually enjoy the testing and the trying until we come out on top!

The problem with both of these issues is when we are wrestling with God on God issues. It is usually okay to wrestle with each other – as long as we agree to disagree agreeably. But when we wrestle with God, we better be sure of our moves, our holds, and our escape options. God is not an opponent we want to mess with. Yet, most of our troubles come from wrestling with God issues – and losing.

Take our first reading from the very first book of the Bible, the very first three chapters:

And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree or the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you shall die.”

Or, as Nancy put on our church yard sign the other week, something like, “Eating forbidden fruit leads to many jams.”

Why is it that when we have everything else, we want what we know God doesn’t want us to have? Why is it that we have to gain the knowledge of good and evil on our own? It because we are all just children before a Godly life, experimenting, making excuses, denying God’s Commandments.

We might tell a child, “Honey, don’t touch the stove; it is very hot.” What does the child do? The child approaches the stove, begins to feel its warmth (but continues anyway), until the child can feel its heat, but reaches out to touch it, anyway!

God might have told us, “Honey, don’t kill anybody; life is precious to me.” But what do we do?  On a large scale we approve killing unborn babies by abortion. On a smaller scale, we acquiesce to killing each other with gossip, selfishness, anger, threats, snobbery, snootiness, and shunning. We might never think about firing a bullet or stabbing with a knife or striking someone with a fist, but we might spew words that pierce the heart and if they don’t kill, at least leave bruises and scars as black and blue and long and ugly.

Oh, but because we are human, we will excuse ourselves by saying that we are just “exercising” the gifts God gave us to use. Besides this excuse, we also use the excuse that this is the way things are today – we are told that we shouldn’t hold back, that we should “tell it like it is,” that we should “express ourselves.”

But God still says, “Thou shalt not kill.”

We can apply the same criteria to any and all of the other Commandments of our God. We do have the knowledge of good and evil; we do. The forever question of our faith is what choices are we going to make with the knowledge? How much and how often are we going to blame our own choices of behavior on someone else – or even on the devil? We often defer to the devil and say, “The devil made me so it!”

In actuality, the devil is only the personification of the evil in the world that we know because of our knowledge of good and evil. We love to blame our sinful choices on the snake, but if we will notice, it really was Eve’s and Adam’s choices that caused the fall, not the snake!

I love the words of Martin Luther’s great, great hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.” Luther was divinely inspired when he penned this hymn. It gives a great testimony to our plight in this perfect world God created, a world so perfect that it even includes evil. Listen to verses two and three, only in the order of three, then two:

And though this world with devils filled

Should threaten to undo us.

We will not fear for God hath willed

His truth to triumph through us.

The prince of darkness grim,

We tremble not for him.

His rage we can endure,

For lo, his doom is sure.

One little word shall fell him.

Of course, that “one little word” is really huge: it is Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and our spiritual gifts and God’s truth. So we take this “one little word” and apply it to verse two:

Did we in our own strength confide,

Our striving would be losing.

Were not the right man on our side,

The man of God’s own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is he.

Lord Sabboth His name,

From age to age the same,

And he must win the battle!

“And he must win the battle!” He did win the battle; he does win the battle; he will win the battle, and we have the season of Lent to help us remember this, and hopefully have our lives changed to be more Godly and strengthened to be more Godly in the future.

Friends, Lent is really a time to so much more than remember all the things Jesus went through for us and say again, “Oh, how nice that he did this. No, Lent is really a time for us to intentionally come before the Lord, comparing ourselves to the characters around Jesus and asking ourselves how we are like those characters and their responses.

Now, we would never accuse anyone of being “the devil in disguise.” But how many of us would let evil thoughts and actions get the best of us and cause us to respond and act in ways that simply in no way honor our faith and Jesus Christ our Lord?

In this series of sermons leading up to Resurrection Day, we will also be with Nicodemus, the Woman at the Well, the Man born blind, and Lazarus, Mary and Martha, and their encounters with Jesus Christ, the author and perfector of our faith. Let’s look forward to being like these characters as Jesus encounters them.

Until each of these encounter, let’s give serious consideration to how we respond when the devil tempts us, as the devil surely will, and how the devil tempted Jesus. I even don’t doubt that the devil may be tempting some of us right now as to how we will react to this message. Shucks, Satan loves to be talked about; he even loves to be considered “The Enemy,” because it gives him credence and this gives him power. But Satan hates it when we stand against him with the power of Jesus Christ.  Jesus did it to him the first time in that desert encounter, and believes in every time and place have continues to stand against him with the power of Jesus since.

So, once again this Lent, we find ourselves in the wilderness with a choice: Do we acquiesce to Satan or do we stand with Jesus? Listen to what one of my favorite preachers, The Reverend William H. Willimon, says:

But now, here in the wilderness, we find ourselves face to face with God as Jesus Christ. And it is right here that God gets complicated.

It might be possible to completely describe God with the words “love,” or “power” if we had never met Jesus. But as is so typical with scripture, when we really look at Jesus, things get complicated, not because we want them to get complicated, but because God is that way.

Look at the temptations Jesus refused. They’re all things that we would consider to be good, worthwhile, and desirable. The first temptation is bread.

Bread surely stands for all the material things in life. Jesus has been fasting for 40 days. He is very hungry. Satan says, “If you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread.” What is more basic to life than the need for food? What is that which leads desperate people to desperate acts like war and revolution more than the need for bread? If one wanted to do some real good for humanity, wouldn’t it be wonderful if one could turn stones to bread and feed the earth’s hungry people?

But Jesus refuses. He said that one does not live by bread alone. Whatever he is about, Jesus is about more even than elevating human physical needs.

The second temptation takes us to the Holy City, to Jerusalem. This is the center of national pride and religious meaning. Satan takes Jesus to the temple where all the religious people are gathered. Satan proposes a spectacular spiritual demonstration – jump off the pinnacle of the temple and remain unscathed.

Jesus refuses. What sort of God is this who refuses spectacular spiritual tests? What sort of God is this? Wouldn’t it be wonderful, for us poor, struggling believers, if Jesus had agreed to do such a spectacular feat? It would certainly make believing in Jesus easier because who is God if not complete power to do anything God wants? But Jesus refuses.

Satan proposes a third temptation. Perhaps Jesus is just not into spiritual power. How about some show of political power, if he is really God as we expect God to be? Satan offers Jesus a view of all the kingdoms of the world and says that he will give him complete power over all these kingdoms. There are few powers that we modern people recognize more strongly than political power. We live in a world in which it is wrong to expect your child to die for religion, but it is not wrong to offer your child to die for the government. For most of us our government is the source of meaning, protection, and ultimate security. Wouldn’t this be wonderful power for Jesus to have? Jesus refuses.

Jesus refuses and Jesus isn’t the Savior that many would like. He refuses to be and to do the things that we would expect a deity to do to make things right. Jesus, the one whom we meet out here in the wilderness, the one who we meet in the scriptures, tends to disrupt and make complicated our simple views of God. We expect a God who meets our needs, who is complete power over the things that cause us pain in life, a God who orders the world and sets things right. And yet, here comes God in the flesh, as Jesus, who seems to believe that our sort of God is not really, truly God, but rather a temptation from Satan. (William H. Willimon, Complexity, a sermon quoted in Pulpit Resources, vol. 39, No. 1, Logos Productions Inc., Inver Grove, MN. p. 47)

The question for us as we begin Lent, then, is where do we stand? Do we stand with Jesus against every temptation, or do we expect Jesus to do it for us again while we go our merry way?