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| Wow, That Looks Pretty Good (Luke 4:1-13) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen. Grace, mercy and peace be to you … Jesus is so smooth. We see Him this morning in Luke’s Gospel in the worst possible situation you might imagine. Starving… alone in a desert. No creature comforts. No intellectual stimulation. No human companionship. Worse than being marooned on a desert island … at least there you could relax on a beach, take a swim, get clean … Nothing like that where Jesus is … and then, with His human physical resources at their lowest ebb … throw in Satan with some very particular temptations … going not only to Jesus’ physical needs … but also going to His spiritual need to complete His mission as God in the flesh. But … with very little effort, it appears … Satan is defeated and vanquished until a perhaps more opportune time. Maybe you can join me in this: I wish that resisting temptation were as easy as Jesus makes it appear. I mean … read the text. Jesus doesn’t even hesitate … He doesn’t even stop and consider Satan’s temptations … Turn this stone into bread? How dumb, Satan! Jump off the pinnacle of the temple to prove to people who I am? You know better than that … God’s Word doesn’t actually promise a rescue from such foolishness! Begone! And away he goes. The question that remains for us to ponder is … Is it as easy as it looks? You know what it looks like on the surface? As Jesus was the Son of God, there was nothing in Jesus that wanted to cooperate with Satan’s temptations. That’s important, so we’ll say it again: as the Son of God, was there anything in Jesus that wanted to cooperate with Satan’s temptations? We see as the temptations come …one after the other … Jesus just simply parries them off, dispenses with them, using Satan’s own weapon of choice… God’s Word. Problem that you and I have when we are tempted is there’s that part of us (sometimes a big part of us) that says … “Wow that looks pretty good!” And if we even think twice about it … which may not happen very often… we’re not very quick to come up with some Scripture verses that should keep our hearts in check. And so, off our hearts go on their merry little way, along with the rest of us … only to have Satan remind us later of how rebellious and unlovable we must look to God because of our unfaithfulness in resisting that temptation. Now, in our reading … We don’t seem to see Jesus having that internal struggle within Himself. …Or do we? And maybe in order to see it we have to back up a bit. First of all, whose idea was it anyway to put Jesus into this situation. Satan’s? No. Who led Jesus out into the desert? The Spirit of God Himself, directly following Jesus’ Baptism. So … this is God’s idea. And why at this juncture? Why is this happening at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry? Well, it sets the stage … it establishes the foundation of WHO Jesus is … and what His mission is about. Or… we might say, it goes to show us that Jesus was not simply a human being that God had bestowed special powers upon … like the never-again-to-be-seen Wisdom that He gave Solomon of old. It shows us that God didn’t just simply give a man by the name of Jesus the power to raise the dead, walk on water, and so forth … No, all this goes to show us that Jesus IS God … who has taken on human flesh … to be one of us … to taste temptation like one of us … and resist it … so that His resistance … and His resulting purity … can be yours and mine. And so… God designed what we see transpire in the desert so we would know for certain that Jesus had to face the same internal struggles with sin that we do. If he hadn’t … well, Satan could argue, “NO FAIR, God … Jesus’ Death on the cross didn’t count for mankind … because Jesus was not like them in regards to struggling with sin!” So, how do we know Jesus had to struggle with sin as we do? Well, certain emotions we can’t see … so God gave us one that we could. What does God say through St. Luke …? “He was Hungry!” There’s that part of Jesus that was in sync with Satan’s temptation… There’s that part of Him that said, “Wow, that looks pretty good!” “Turn this stone into bread ….” Was it within Jesus power to do that? Yes. And so this wasn’t some intellectual, academic game being played out between two spiritual adversaries. There was a human, physical part of Jesus that felt that temptation as surely as any of us would under the same circumstances… There was a part of Jesus that very much WANTED to do what Satan was tempting Him to do. In fact, the part of Him that would say NO was being impaired by this very real physical need. But, Jesus did what? … He pushed the temptation aside with a proper application of God’s word. So. Guess what? The fact that Jesus did that every time He was tempted, is now, by His Cross and Grave, accredited to you. Through the power of God in waters of Holy Baptism, Jesus’ perfect resistance to temptation was made yours. As we stand before God now in faith, you and I have received Jesus perfect life. Praise the Lord! But … as you and I still live in this world, we have to face this question … When temptation comes into our lives can we just say, “Wow that looks pretty good…” and then… just go for the sin?? … saying to ourselves … “Well Jesus already said NO to that temptation for me … so what difference does it make if I just go ahead and do it??” But that doesn’t follow, does it? How can we claim to have died to sin in our Baptism … and then just go on and revel in it? How can we look at the forgiveness that Jesus earned for us on the cross as a license to just go out and join the world in its values and its lawlessness?? How can we ask Jesus to give us the strength and power of His Holy Spirit to help us resist temptation … and then just go out do anything we feel like doing anyway? One theologian called acting like that as acting under “Cheap Grace.” The Grace God gives us is Expensive … This picture we have of Jesus in the desert is the front end of how expensive True Grace was for Jesus to obtain for you and me. The fact is, when Jesus speaks of the Cross we each have to carry in this world … He’s not referring to our financial difficulties, nor our physical ailments, nor our chronic diseases. He’s not referring to the difficulties we have living with our mother-in-laws or raising our children or dealing with the politics at church. He’s speaking directly about our cross of resisting the temptations that Satan continues to put in our paths. The cross of following Jesus in that regard … instead of choosing the way of the world. This account we have from Luke, as well as from the other Gospels is here so that we can know for certain that when Jesus was tempted He was tempted just like us … part of Jesus did say, “WOW that looks pretty good!” And so when we are tempted, we can know that we are following a Savior who was not immune to what we have to deal with … but He knows how it feels … and how heavy our particular cross can be. “But, Pastor, I’m a sinner, I’ll always be a sinner. I am always going to sin!” True … but the temptation is to grab for the “Cheap Grace” and make being a sinner my license to do what comes natural … that is, to sin. To that excuse, God speaks to us some words we all should underline in our scriptures at home … I Corinthians chapter 10 … verse 13 … “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide a way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” What that says to me … is that with the indwelling of God’s Spirit … and … God knowing how strong my faith is … He will not allow Satan to tempt me beyond my ability to resist that temptation. In other words … being sinners does not mean that you and I can’t do anything but fail when temptation comes. In fact, God is promising just the opposite. That NO temptation we individually face is bigger than what we can individually resist. But we gotta wanta try! And that’s were we often fail. And still, sometimes as much as we do try … as emotional human beings … the first words out of our mouths are not what would have come out if we’d stopped a second and measured our response. Some temptations take us by surprise. And so... as God has forgiven us before we even ask… as Christians… we tell the person we have offended that we repent of our “outburst” and ask for their forgiveness. And so, then, we live at peace with God and one another by confessing our sins and forgiving one another… You see, we sin, yet we are repentant. It works, because that’s living under “True Grace.” Knowing God’s forgiveness … forgiving one another … and drawing on His strength to avoid sin. It’s a topic that’s obviously bigger than one Sunday Morning message. But, that’s why this account of Jesus’ temptation in the desert comes up every First Sunday in Lent … just as the Christmas account comes up every Christmas, and the Easter account every Easter. Sin and temptation are Big Deals … They are what the cross of Jesus is all about. They are why Jesus gave us His Supper. And they are why we recognize and talk about them during this season of Lent. They are why we look forward to Easter. In Him, Amen. |