Text: Luke 4:1-13 (Revised Standard Version)
The Temptation of Jesus
4 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit 2 for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” 5 And the devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written,
‘You shall worship the Lord your God,
and him only shall you serve.’”
9 And he took him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; 10 for it is written,
‘He will give his angels charge of you, to guard you,’
11 and
‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God.’” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
“I can resist anything but temptation!”
You’ve probably heard that old quote by Oscar Wilde. It’s a joke, of course – but like most jokes, it’s funny because there’s a grain of truth in it.
Because the fact is, we are confronted daily by all kinds of temptations.
John Wilbur Chapman, a Presbyterian evangelist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, described temptation this way:
“Temptation is the tempter looking through the keyhole into the room where you are living; sin is your drawing back the bolt and making it possible for him to enter.”[1]
And that’s the ugly secret about temptation: In order for temptation to have an effect, it requires you to be a willing participant. That’s one big reason why we have the multibillion-dollar advertising industry – its stock in trade is to tempt us with the products their clients produce. According to one website I consulted, the average American is exposed to around 5,000 ads every single day![2] No wonder advertising is a multibillion-dollar industry! And the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue are masters at turning our wants into needs. We can list some of the obvious ones – we’re tempted to buy this or that car, or fashions from this designer rather than that one, we watch ads on TV – strategically shown around dinnertime – that tempt us with the latest offerings from Papa John’s or Red Lobster or Olive Garden. “For a limited time only, you can get two of these things you don’t need for the price of one!”
But these are all really superficial and unimportant temptations. It doesn’t ultimately matter which car you drive or which clothing store you frequent, or whether you eat Papa John’s pizza or Carbone’s or Domino’s.
There are other temptations we face, though, which have a far greater impact on our lives and on the lives of those around us. And the insidiousness of some of these temptations is that they don’t look like temptations at all.
Sometimes temptations are disguised as opportunities – remember that scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” where vile old Henry F. Potter, the banker, tempts George Bailey with a sweetheart of a job offer – not because he likes George, but because he thinks that’s the way he can finally crush George’s building and loan business, the last remaining financial competitor he has in town. Potter – “a scurvy little spider,” to use George’s words – spins a web that almost catches George. “You wouldn’t mind living in the nicest house in town, buying your wife a lot of fine clothes, a couple of business trips to New York a year, maybe once in a while Europe. You wouldn’t mind that, would you, George?” You can almost hear a snakelike hiss in Potter’s voice. But George, after being dazzled for a few minutes, sees through the ploy, indignantly shouts “No!”, and storms out of Potter’s bank. He resists the snare of the tempter.
I am myself no stranger to that kind of temptation. Back in 1989, I succumbed to the temptation of trying to make my hobby – computer programming – my vocation, and left the pastoral ministry. Thus began a two-decades-long sojourn in the wilderness. I went into this new walk of life with the absolute best of intentions. I thought it would provide more job security, it would be better for my family, etc., etc., etc. Although I was able to keep the lights on, a roof over my kids’ heads, and bread on the table, it was by no means an unqualified success for me. The hissing voice of the tempter in my ear led me astray.
What are the things that you find tempting? Whether they’re the same ones others face, or are particular to you, they will all have one thing in common: They will offer, or seem to offer, something you believe you need, something you lack in your life. “If I only had that,” “If I could only do that,” “If I could only be that…” As the old proverb puts it, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” It’s like we each have a big, empty hole in our beings somewhere, and we are constantly on the lookout for something to fill it.
This is the way we usually think of “temptation” – or, to use a few other of the many synonyms for “temptation,” “seduction,” “enticement,” “allurement,” “lure,” or – my favorite – “bait.”
But there’s another word that I think gets even closer to the heart of today’s lesson. That word is “test.”
At the beginning of this lesson, we read that Jesus, just after his baptism, “full of the Holy Spirit…was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil.” The devil isn’t the one who led him out there – it was the Spirit of God. It seems a little strange, doesn’t it? It makes us wonder just what’s going on here. It almost looks like a kind of setup.
But actually, the wilderness was the perfect place for this to happen. As Professor Ruth Anne Reese writes, “Historically, the wilderness was the place where God met the Jewish people at Sinai after rescuing them from Egypt. In the wilderness God shaped them into God’s covenant people cared for and led by God with cloud and fire. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is also led, this time by the Holy Spirit, in the wilderness, and he faces temptation by his adversary, the devil. The location of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness reminds us of the narrative of God’s rescue of Israel.”[3]
In other words, this was a place of encounter between God and His people, and now the place where God’s work in Jesus really begins. Jesus, the God-Man, steps onto the field, and the world as it existed before is gone.
You might say, using a modern turn of phrase, that Jesus “has our back.” So, a major takeaway for us here is this: Even in our wildernesses, where we are daily beset on all sides by conflicting needs, conflicting demands, and temptations and tests of all kinds, God does not abandon us! He has sent us his Champion.
And then the devil, the original Bad Guy, shows up. The original Greek word used in the New Testament for devil is “διάβολος” (“diabolos”) and doesn’t actually mean “devil” in the way we usually think of that word. Rather, “διάβολος” means “slanderer,” “false accuser,” “backbiter,” one who unjustly criticizes, who hurts, maligns, and condemns in order “to sever a relationship.”[4] This creature, by the way, is the very same one we encounter in the Garden of Eden, but there he’s disguised as a snake. (That, additionally, is where we get the old phrase for “bad things happening” – “a snake has entered Paradise.”)
Know anybody like that? You probably do – the world’s full of ’em.
And so, this διάβολος, this backbiter, appears before Jesus with the aim of severing His relationship with God. And if you think about it, isn’t that exactly what often happens when we give in to temptations? I’m not talking about the “pizza variety” of temptations here, but about those temptations we give in to that not only wind up hurting us, but also those we love, that damage, or completely sever, our relationships with them. Desperately trying to fill that big empty hole in our lives by giving in to every temptation, every “Next Big Thing” that comes along, often just makes that hole bigger.
And here’s the kicker – we almost always know the difference between something that’s not good for us and something that is; we can feel in our guts when something’s wrong – but we let that hissing voice of the tempter lead us astray just the same.
How do we fight back? Luckily, we have the example of Jesus to guide us.
There he is, in the middle of the place his people called Jeshimmon, “The Devastation.” (You will not find that name on any travel brochures!) He’s hot, he’s tired, and he’s very, very hungry. The false accuser sees his first opening. “Hungry?” he asks. “Well, that’s certainly no problem for you, is it? Just turn that stone over there into a nice, soft, warm, delicious loaf of bread…and while you’re at it, why not turn that little one over there into a crock of butter, and maybe that one into a jug of milk? Easy peasy! Come on, who’s gonna know? I won’t tell!”
But Jesus resists. Life, he says, is more than bread. It is more than material things. It is more than creature comforts. It’s about relationships. It’s about doing right by others. It’s about living with integrity. It’s about living into the promise of God’s Kingdom, and by so doing helping that Kingdom come to pass.
“Rats!” thinks old διάβολος. Jesus has passed the first test.
So, here comes the second test. Old διάβολος transports Jesus to the top of a mountain where they survey all the countries around them – a metaphor, of course, for the whole world. “Look at all this,” he says. “You can have it all right now, if only you worship me, and not God.” In other words, compromise with the world. Give in to Madison Avenue. Fill your belly, and forget about your soul. What does it matter, really? We’re all gonna die, anyway, so why not die happy (if not fulfilled)?
And Jesus says, “No!” The only life worth living is the life that has its priorities straight. And such a life has God at the center, God in the driver’s seat, not in the passenger’s seat, and certainly not in the trunk.
Test 2 – Passed.
Old Nick is getting pretty frustrated now. He transports Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple in Jerusalem. From there, it’s a sheer 450 foot drop into the Kedron Valley below. “You want to show all those people down there that you really are God’s Chosen One? Go ahead, then, and jump! Nothing will happen to you – God will see to that! He’ll send His angels and you won’t even sprain an ankle or even stub a toe. The people will for sure follow you then!”
And again, Jesus says, “No!” His ministry is not a P.T. Barnum sideshow. Today’s sensation is tomorrow’s history. Sensationalism doesn’t last.
Test 3 – Passed. The Tempter slinks away, to come back “at an opportune time.”
This last test really resonates with the modern mind. It reminds me of the cube art my Dad gave me years ago that says, “Lord, give me patience, but I want it right now.” We live in a society where sound bites pass as discussion, where outward show passes as depth of meaning, and where sheer bombast passes as conviction. So many people want to have it all now, without any of the work. But the life Jesus offers is not something you put on like a Sunday suit. As William Barclay writes, “The hard way of service and suffering leads to the cross, but after the cross to the crown.”[5]
There is no Easter without Golgotha.
What the tempter, old διάβολος, is after is to tempt Jesus to try to take a shortcut, a shortcut which starts by turning away from God – by turning away from the source of life, and embracing something that seems so easy and so fulfilling, but which in the end only leads to bitter disappointment and eternal death.
He is, in short, a spokesman for the world as it exists, where there is fear, and want, and heartache, and injustice, and sadness, and death. That’s the world in which we live, and no matter how we try to dress it up, no matter how wonderful the world can be in so many ways, underneath it all, down in the sub-basement, the world is still the world. It will pass away. Its charms cannot save us. Only God can.
And that’s why Jesus came. He rips the smiling mask off of the face of διάβολος and shows him to be the shallow deceiver that he is. He says “NO!” to his guiles and charms.
Let us, like Jesus, say “No!” Let us remember that we are children of God, and that we have our identity and being in our relationship with God.
God loves us, and will keep loving us, no matter what. And that is enough to fill any hole we might have!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Chapman, John Wilbur, quoted in Link, Mark, SJ, Jesus: A Contemporary Walk with Jesus, Allen, TX, Resources for Christian Living, 1997
[2] http://sjinsights.net/2014/09/29/new-research-sheds-light-on-daily-ad-exposures/
[3] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2769
[4] http://biblehub.com/greek/1228.htm
[5] Barclay, William, The Gospel of Luke, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001. P. 53