The Devil We Know

Sermon based upon Luke 4: 1-13

By Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

First Sunday of Lent, February 17, 2013

After the Revolutionary War, General George Washington was so loved by the American people that there were popular movements to crown him king.  Some people tried to privately seduce him with all the allurements of power.  “You can be both president and general of the army”, they said.  

But even as his popularity continued to rise, Washington made the decision in 1783 to resign his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.  He did so because he believed that military power belonged to the citizenry, not to the generals.  Washington’s hands shook as he read his prepared speech to the Continental Congress, and people wept openly. The speech he made was a decisive moment for the new American republic, a moment which defined what the new nation was going to be.

The Washington Post told this story because the state of Maryland recently unveiled the original manuscript of this very famous speech (See the article by William Wan, "Maryland Unveils the Page That Began a New Chapter,"The Washington Post, February 19, 2007, 1).  It was powerful speech made in a because Washington was a powerful man.  No doubt, before making this speech to relinquish his military powers, Washington must have struggled long and hard with his own personal desires and ambitions.  He probably knew he could fill the role of both general and president better than anyone else.   But his renunciation of all that power shows us something else that was just as mighty about the character of our first president.  We see his power to resist the greatest temptation---the temptation to power.

THE TEMPTATION WE ALL KNOW

The whole idea of ‘temptation’ seems like childish, medieval nonsense to some.  These days, people prefer to speak of ‘inordinate dysfunction’ or ‘inappropriate desires’ rather than use the word ‘temptation’.   If we speak at all about being tempted, the word is used only in a metaphorical, light-hearted manner like saying we are ‘tempted’ to indulge in a rich dessert or to purchase an expensive electronic devise.   As Lisa Kenkeremath has said, “we worry more about expanding our waistlines or expending our pocketbooks than we care about the health of our souls.”  In a market, money oriented culture like ours, where nothing is gained unless people spend what they should be saving, when greed rather than creed makes the world go around, it gets harder and harder to talk about sin and temptation.  

However, it is against the grain of this culture that we, the church of Jesus Christ, must continue to insist that both temptation and sin are real.   These words describe realities that are not going away.  The traditional disciplines of the Lenten season, today being the first Sunday in Lent, are a good counter-message, even offering us in a church a counter-discipline against a culture that consistently lies to us that ‘anything goes’; or that ‘we can live any way we wish want’, or that ‘the sky is the limit’, no matter how deep we fall into debt. 

Several years ago, I became pastor of a fairly affluent church.  One of the very first social events I was invited to was a party to introduce me to a way to make more money.  As the TV commercial says, “Everyone wants more cash, right?”  Ironically, the baby in that commercial speaks with more wisdom that most realize when that ‘babe’ says “no”.  “Out of the mouth of babes”, Scripture says.  Well, in that church it was also ironic that the church that appeared to have so much money, more than any other church I’d ever been a part of, was still captivated by having ‘more cash’.  That’s what the party I was invited to was about.  They were even hoping I would join them in trying to acquire more cash.  It was supposed to happen through one of those ‘pyramid’ schemes, but they were very careful not to call it that, since that was illegal.  People had figured out a way around that.  But what they had not figured out is what happens to people who are always bent on having more, spending more, gaining more, and who seem to have everything except one thing-- they never ever seem to have enough.  Interestingly, it wasn’t too many years later that the deacon who invited me to the part had to filed for bankruptcy.

We don’t like to talk about it, but we are all tempted, and we are all tempted in different ways with different things.  Some things that tempt a few of us will not tempt the rest of us, and some of the things that tempt most of us, will not tempt a few of us.  There is no universal rule about temptation, except that somehow, someway, we will all be tempted and need to resist temptation.

In early January, the Today Show interviewed Ken Linder, a life coach who has written a book on “Conquering Your “Killer Emotions”. (a polite way to speak of human temptation the ‘emotions’ people have when they kill, themselves and others).  Linder said that human ‘emotions’ can be difficult to control.  While he was an undergrad at Harvard, he saw “very intelligent people do some really stupid, self-destructive things.”  “In the process,” he continued, “they destroyed themselves and the very bright future ahead of them.” 

The illustration he used next was what really caught my attention.   He said that there is no way that General David Petraeus would have given into his emotions like he did, had he realized the full consequences of his actions.  While I agree that Petraeus wasn’t thinking clearly, I don’t think we can say he didn’t realize there was a price to pay.  That’s how ‘temptation’ works.  Temptation does not deny that there is a price to be paid, even a high price, but it fools you into thinking that what you get will be worth the price you will have to pay.  That is exactly how you and I can be fooled by the power of temptation.

THE TEMPTATION JESUS KNEW

Whether we want to admit it or not, we all face temptations.  This is a given.  It may be one of the big temptations of money, power or sex, or some other smaller, almost unnoticed form.  What we all need to know is that our character, our faith, and our future, depend on the ability and discipline we need to resist the many lures and traps that can wreak havoc into our lives. 

The three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all tell us that immediately after Jesus’ baptism, right after the heavens were opened and Jesus was declared God’s beloved Son, and even before he had a chance to dry off, we read how the Spirit led him, or as the original language says, “drove him” into the wilderness to be subjected to a series of temptations. 

I have never been that exact wilderness where Jesus was up in the Judean hills, but I’ve been in many wilderness places, both physically, emotionally or spiritually.  Perhaps you’ve been in some of those scary, desolate places too.  It is in those lonely, trying and deathly silent places in life, where God seems distant or hidden, that strange things get whispered into our ears.  Could you dare imagine what the wind might whisper in your ears after days in a desert where you’ve had no food and no company?  Scripture says that Jesus was there forty days and it was at his weakest moment, at the very end when he was most depleted and vulnerable that the tempter came to him with three tests of temptation.

WHAT WILL FEED YOU?  The first temptation to simply to eat something. Why not? He was weak from hunger.  Even a messiah has to eat.  But what seemed like a good enough reason was not good enough for Jesus.  His ‘meat’ or ‘food’ was something few know enough about.  You don’t live to eat, you eat to live.  For Jesus especially, giving in to his physical appetites in this moment, as he starts his ministry, meant using God’s power to meet his own need, rather than to rely on God’s mercy and strength.  The devil attacked Jesus right at the point of his own human needs.   It was not ‘wrong’ for Jesus to need  bread, but this was a ‘test’ about what would be most important in Jesus’ life and ministry: Would Jesus only live by ‘bread alone” or would Jesus be able to live by the greater ‘bread of heaven’ he came to share with the world?  If Jesus went for the quick fix, he proved that he was no one special, just another mouth to feed.

WHAT WILL DRIVE YOU?  The second temptation had to be harder.  The devil told him, “just give me my due and I’ll give you full control.”  It sounded so good. “You can be everything you came to be.  All the kingdoms of the world will be yours.” Just think of what you’ll be able to do.  If you don’t like the way the way the world works, the way things are being run, you don’t have to put up with it.   I have the ‘real’ power in this world.  All you have to do is worship me, just compromise a little. Face reality.  As you will find out, the world works by my rules.  Integrity will get you nowhere.  If you keep doing things God’s way, all you’re going to get is a cross.  Only by doing things ‘my way’ will you get the world you want.  And, you deserve it, don’t you?  Who better than you to take charge?  All you have to do is bow down to me, ‘take charge’ of your life and your world, and it will all turn out right.  Get it?  

WHAT WILL SAVE YOU?  For the last temptation, the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, to the top of the Temple, and he invited him to jump—to throw himself down in a suicidal act.  “With all God has planned for you, you can’t get hurt.” Surely God will send angels to guarantee that his own Son won’t get hurt.”  Surely, if anyone could count on divine protection, it was Jesus, God’s beloved Son!  God doesn’t let his people get hurt, no matter what stupid things we do, right?  If you ‘jump’ and make a spectacle, you will NOT only NOT get hurt, but the crowds will gather around the word will quickly spread.  Instead of death and pain, you will get a power boost for your ministry!  If you have been saved and spared, people will believe that they too will be spared and saved, having have God’s full protection, no matter what they do.  As the Lord of a life lived above all suffering and pain, there will be no end to the people who will come begging to you do the same for them.  Think of how many people you will influence, Jesus?   But for the third time, Jesus said no.  He knew to live life as a cheap trick was testing God.

There is of course, ways Jesus was tempted and tested that were very unique to Jesus own identity.  Besides Adam in the Garden, Jesus is the only person in the Bible who had to face the devil head on and all alone.  Jesus had to face the devil alone and prove that he was who God wanted him to be, the Messiah, the new Adam—and the first new man who could pass the test.  Jesus’ own resisting of temptation in his flesh, proves that we too can live by a higher standard too in our flesh, and it also says, that when we are tempted, we don’t have to face the devil alone. 

But in the temptation of Jesus, we not only see the uniqueness of Jesus’ own temptation, but we also see what is at the heart of all temptation.  Temptation is not merely about ‘inordinate dysfunction’ nor about ‘inappropriate desires’, but at its core, temptation is to be ‘tempted’ to be someone other than who God intends for us to be.   For some this is a temptation to try to be more than who we are.  For others, it is to settle for being less than who we can be.  But at the heart of all temptation, there is this test, this struggle to be who we are supposed to be or the temptation to be who someone we aren’t.  Just as Jesus’ temptation was about his identity as the Son of God, our temptation is about who we are supposed to be as children of God.  Jesus had to prove who he was, before he could do or be what God called him to be, a beloved Son of God.

Life will also ‘prove’ who we are, and unfortunately, it may also prove who aren’t.   The struggle with temptation for Jesus wasn’t over at the end of the forty days.  If anything, it just intensified. It dogged him throughout his ministry, as he was confronted day after day by people who wanted him to use his powers in ways that would make him less than the person God wanted him to be.  Don’t you remember how the temptations kept coming?  The temptation that asks: What feeds you: "Multiply more of those loaves of bread; we liked that trick." Or what about the temptation about what drives you:  "Once you’ve got the best seat in the kingdom of heaven, reserve us a spot." Or what about, finally, the temptation concerning what really saves us: "If you are the Son of God, come down off that cross."  All through his life, the tempter was never far away from Jesus.  And if the tempter was always close to Jesus, the tempter is never far away from any of us.

THE TEMPTATION WE CAN RESIST

The one thing this story of temptation, nor the Bible directly answers about temptation is “why?”  While we can perhaps understand why Jesus needed to be tested and tempted as the true Messiah, who knows why we are still being tempted? 

Jesus was, as Scripture says, “tempted in all points as we are”, but we are still tempted in many points like Jesus was, too.  We are still tempted about what kind of person we will be, what we will ultimately live for, and what we believe will be the redeeming or saving power for our lives.  The book of James does directly tell us  that we must not dare think that we are tempted by God, but still, James does not directly answer why we are tempted.  James does say that human desire leads to the tests and trials that prove, strengthen or  confirm who we are if we endure and if we pass the tests, but James never directly answers ‘why’ people are tested or tempted to give into selfish desires.

I would dare suggest there is only one answer to the temptation to do evil in this world: The devil is real.  However you imagine the devil, there are powers of evil in this world that resist God, resist God’s will, resist God’s work and powers that rebel against God’s way and will for life.  The ‘real’ devil does not have to be a horned, red suited, pitch-fork carrying creature from middle ages. The devil is, unfortunately, not so easy to recognize.  Even in the Bible, the devil also appears as an angel of light or even as a disciple of Jesus, not once, but several times.  I don’t know of any other meaningful or biblical answer to the why of ‘evil’ than this: The Devil is real.  And the devil can become real in any of us.  Evil is live spelled backward.  The devil still tempts us to do evil instead of choosing to live as God intends. 

When those children and teachers were tragically murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary, the public official was right when he said that ‘evil had visited his town.’   But the problem was not simply the ‘evil’ out there in the world, nor was it simply a mental illness nor was it the guns the boy got hold of.   All mentally ill people don’t kill other people.  And guns don’t shoot people, either.  I’m all for keeping guns out of the hands of stupid or sick people, but the truth is that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  Guns don’t rebel against God.  Guns don’t resist the will and purpose of God.  Guns don’t murder people.  People who give in to temptation and people who give in to the way of evil are the greatest problem in our world.  And it is not who we are that is the problem, but it is when we settle for being less than who we should or could be, that is where Satan, the adversary of God, has his way in this world. 

The devil Jesus knew is the devil we still know.  And Jesus did not just know the devil that came to him in the cruelty of the wilderness, but Jesus also knew the devil that came to him, pretending to be his best friend.  He even had to say to Simon Peter, one of his own: “Get behind me, Satan”.  When Peter told Jesus there had to be easier way than to bear the cross, Jesus had to call him the devil out.  You know that devil too, don’t you?  You know the devil that tempts you to do evil, not by doing something bad, but the devil who tempts you to do less than the good God is calling you to do.  This is what makes evil, evil.  Evil is not people being bad, but evil is people being good in their own way instead of being good God’s way. A mind that gives in to temptation always thinks, at least in that moment, that they are going a ‘good thing’.  Evil is the evil disguised as its own ‘good’ that opposes the humble, loving, caring, and serving will, work and purpose of God. 

Just as Jesus had to get to know the devil that was close to him, we need to get acquainted with the devil who can get inside of each and every one of us.  And we only get to know the devil, (him (or her) by getting to know ourselves.  When you learn who you are and who you aren’t, this is how you start to recognize the devil and his tricks most clearly. 

But the final piece of this puzzle is still “why?”  Why is it so easy for the devil to get into us and so hard to keep God in us?   If there is any answer to ‘why’, it is only answered in the ‘who’ we become when we resist the devil and overcome.   Jesus overcame the devil with God’s truth about who he was, and so can we.  Even though we humans are all vulnerable to evil, it is this very vulnerability can make us who we can be in God. 

Look again at Jesus.  Right when he was willing to be weak, this is when he became strong.  In the same way, those parts of our human nature, our weaknesses, our struggles, our trials, and even our temptations that give rise to the possibility of evil are the same places in our lives that can give rise to the probability of great good in us.  You simply can’t have one without the other.  The garden of the soul is like the garden in life.  You can’t have a good garden without the possibility of a bad garden; of having tender plants, without the possibility of weeds.  The rich soil that nourishes the good has to allow the possibility of both good and bad, or nothing will grow.  This is exactly what James goes on to say.  He says that in the same soul where wayward desires, lusts and sin can grow, if we allow it, if we discipline ourselves, this is the very same soul or soil, where  generosity, meekness, humility and mercy can grow. 

Guess who controls what happens in your garden?   YOU!  You are the one who gets to decide what grows there.   The truth about temptation is that in the end, it is not about who the devil is, but temptation is more about ‘who’ you are and what kind gardener or person you choose to be.  Just as the soil will not grow a good garden without your input, neither will the soul.  Just as this temptation by the devil was never really about the power of the devil, but it was about the power within Jesus to overcome, in the same way, the presence of evil in the world is not about the power of the devil, but it is about whether or not you will choose to make use of the power God has given you.  The devil has no power if we tell him no.  Temptation is never about how powerful the devil is, but it’s about what power we choose to live by.   Temptation is about who you are, and whether you are who you can be.  Overcoming is what temptation is about, and when win over your temptation, its not just you that wins, but everybody wins.  Amen.