A Hard Test

 January 8 2023

Matthew 4:1-11

         The beginning of a new year is always a great time to stop and reflect on just what it is that we are supposed to be doing and to reassess our priorities. I say this because, you know, it is real easy to go through life and just keep doing the same things over and over again and never question why is it that we do what we do. This examining of our life is great at this time, not only because this is the beginning of a new year but also because we have just wrapped up another Christmas season and we have celebrated the birth of Jesus and now we are left wondering what was all that about? What is the big deal about this Jesus, this one who we declare is our king, and why is it exactly that he has come as one of us? The place where we are going to look for answers to questions like these is in the core teachings that Jesus taught. The great thing about these core teachings of Jesus is that they only take up three chapters in the gospel of Matthew, the fifth sixth and seventh ones specifically. I mean, it shouldn’t be too hard for anyone to take and read such a small portion of the Bible and I think that this is kind of the point. What Jesus taught is not some long, drawn out, complicated manifesto; no, what he had to say was rather simple and straightforward. If you look over these three chapters which make up the core teachings of Jesus what you also find is that at the very center of these words of Jesus is what we often call the Lord’s Prayer. It is called the Lord’s Prayer because in Luke’s account found in the first four verses  of chapter eleven, it is the disciples who ask Jesus to teach them how to pray because John the Baptist had taught his disciples how to pray. So, this prayer that our Lord Jesus gave to us is the very essence of what our life is to be about in its most simplest form. 

         Just to go over what has already been said then, we have the whole of scriptures and out of all of these there are the core teachings of Jesus which take up just three chapters out of those scriptures and at the center of those core teachings of Jesus is this prayer that he taught to his disciples. The image all of this conjures up is what is called a nesting doll where you have a big doll which you open up and inside is a smaller doll and inside that doll is a smaller doll and so forth. Well, as we get to the absolute center of all the teachings of Jesus we end up focusing in on the Lord’s Prayer what we also find is that there is one phrase at the center of that prayer which is this,”Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. This is the most fundamental truth that Jesus taught that we must be doing no matter what. Now, where this ties in with our wondering just what was Christmas even all about, is something we find in the sixth chapter of John’s gospel in the thirty-eighth verse where we hear Jesus say, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” Jesus had a reason for being born as a baby in Bethlehem and that is so that he could do the will of his Heavenly Father here on earth. As Jesus understood this to be his life’s purpose we too are to focus in on the most central petition of the prayer that he taught and make the pursuit of the will of our Heavenly Father our life purpose as well. This is why the start of a new year is such a great time to pause and ask ourselves is our central prayer really “Heavenly Father, my hearts desire is that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? Can we really say with all honesty that this is what our life is really all about?

         I think it is vitally important that we understand that Jesus was all about doing the will of God before we begin to take a deep dive into what is known as the temptations of Jesus. While this is the common way that this episode in the life of Jesus is normally described, a better way to think about it is to say that these forty days which Jesus spent in the wilderness is where he was tested. The reason I say this is that, first, it is the Holy Spirit who leads Jesus out into the wilderness so we don’t want to get the impression that God leads people into temptation. As James tells us in the thirteenth verse of his first chapter, “God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” So, we have to be careful not to imply that God is leading Jesus out into the wild places so he can tempt Jesus to do something evil. Instead, what helps us understand just what Jesus undergoes at the leading of the Holy Spirit is something that is written in the second verse of the eighth chapter of the book of Deuteronomy where Moses tells the people of Israel to “remember the way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not”. So, it is not a stretch to see that Jesus is, in someway, going through something very similar to what the people of Israel went through when they had been led by God in the wilderness. Just as God had led his people out to the wild places to test them so that he could examine what was going on in their hearts, so too the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to test him to see just what is going on in his heart. The key question is this: What does it mean for Jesus to be the Son of God? At his baptism there was a voice from heaven which said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” It is immediately after this announcement that Jesus is lead into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit so that he might be tested to see if he is a true son, one worthy of receiving the inheritance from his Heavenly Father.

         After Jesus has fasted for forty days and nights we are told that he was hungry which is quite understandable. It was at this time, the time when the desires of Jesus were doing their best to overwhelm him, this is when the Accuser enters the picture. The little whisper that buzzes around the ear of Jesus tells him to just go ahead turn these stones on the desert floor into bread, satisfy the ache gnawing away at you, go on Jesus, the voice continues, doesn’t being a Son of God mean you can have the power to fulfill every desire? Jesus replies using a scripture, a verse from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy once again, where in the third verse, Moses reminds the people of Israel how God had humbled them and let them hunger and how he fed them with manna, which they did not know, so that he might make them know that people do not live by bread alone but people live by every word the the Lord speaks. This is what Jesus knew deep within himself, this understanding, that as a person he had been created for a greater and higher purpose than any other part of creation and that was that he was to listen to his Heavenly Father and do only what he commanded him to do. Being the Son of God then was not about power but rather it was about obedience. Through hearing our Father in heaven speak, people who obey this word from above can become avenues through which that which is in heaven comes to be a reality here on earth. Does that sound vaguely familiar?

         Well, the Accuser was not finished for he returned once again to Jesus and he led Jesus to the holy city and, in a moment, Jesus found himself hundreds of feet above the ground, teetering on the ledge of the highest point of the Temple. This time the Accuser had his own scripture, quoting from the ninety-first Psalm, the eleventh and twelfth verse which state that, “God will command his angels concerning you. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” The underlying question that this Psalm is putting forth is this: Will the protection of God mean that we will never have to suffer? I mean, if God is indeed our shield then will we really ever have to endure any hardship or loss? Ultimately, what this Psalm was getting at was this thought: Can the faithfulness of God be determined by our circumstances? I mean, if we are having hard times, suffering greatly, can we assume that God has left the building? It can feel like this, can it not? Yet, is that really the truth about God? Jesus wisely rebuked the little whisper in his ear again by quoting from the book of Deuteronomy, this time from the sixth chapter, the sixteenth verse, where Moses, again addressing the people of Israel, tells them that they were not to “…put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” Here Moses is referring to an incident that happened in the wilderness, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, where the people of Israel found themselves without any water. They were suffering, death seemed imminent, and they began to think that perhaps God had brought them out into the desert so that he could kill them off, abandoning them in the time of their greatest need. Was this the truth about God? Absolutely not! They were putting God to the test wondering, is the Lord with us or not? What the shielding presence of God is supposed to do is not to make so that the people of God never experience pain or suffering but rather the hovering presence of God is to assure God’s people that God was always with them, even in the midst of their suffering, even if their obedience to his will meant that they might have to give up their life, they were to be certain that their life is always safely covered by the glory wings of God. 

         Well, the Accuser was not finished with Jesus. This time the Accuser took Jesus up to a very high mountain and he let Jesus gaze out upon the endless horizon and see all of the kingdoms of the world and their glory. The Accuser whispered his lie once again telling Jesus that if he would just come and bow down and worship him he would give Jesus all of these vast kingdoms, all of their immense glory, the very glory of humanity. Once again, not surprisingly, Jesus recalls a verse from Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter, the thirteenth verse. This verse lies right in the center of a warning that God gives to the people of Israel, that when they come to live in the land that God had promised them, a land which had great and good cities which they had not built and houses full of good things which they had not filled and cisterns which they did not dig and vineyards and olive trees that they had not planted- when they had eaten and were full, they were to take care lest they would forget the God who had given this land to them. No, they were to not forget God but rather they were to fear God, be in awe- filled worship of their God and it is God alone that they were to serve. This was the final reply of Jesus to the Accuser because Jesus had passed the test, he had answered correctly and proved that in the depths of his heart he understood what it meant to be the Son of God.

         Now, you might say that’s all well and good but what does this testing of Jesus have to do with me?  Well, if we know that Jesus came into our world, as the Son of God, in order that he might do the will of God then it just stands to reason that the answers with which Jesus rebuked the Accuser are answers which will help us understand just what sort of people we have to be in order that we might be the fulfillment of the prayer that pleads for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. You see, what is as stake in all of this is as we are told in First John, chapter two, the seventeenth verse, “this world is passing away along with its desires  but whoever does the will of God abides forever”. Those who are the answer to this prayer that God’s will come on earth as it is in heaven, these are the ones who have the assurance that they have an eternal home with God. So, it is in our doing not in our believing, this is the way that we can have a peace about our eternity. This is why we need to lean in and listen to what this testing of Jesus has to say to us.

         The first lesson we can learn from the testing of Jesus is that God expects us to be obedient. To be obedient means that, first, we must be willing and able to hear God speak to us. This means that we need to stop seeing God as merely being the power which fulfills our desires and longings. It is our desires and our longings which as James teaches us in the first chapter, the fifteenth verse, which “give birth to sin and sin when it is full grown brings forth death.” You see, God has created us for a greater purpose than merely to eat, drink and be merry. We are the ones God has created to hear his voice, so that in being obedient to that voice, the glories of heaven can be brought down here on earth. The reason why we will stop listening to our base desires is that we at last will catch a glimpse of the greatness for which God has created us. We are the ones that Almighty God has entrusted to help bring about the unity of heaven and earth. This is what God has “done in Christ, he has brought forth his plan to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” This is what Paul understood and wrote of in the first chapter of Ephesians. God invites you and I to be part of this great plan, to set our sights on greater things. We were created to work with God in bringing heaven and earth together and the way we begin to do that is through listening for his voice and then being obedient to do what our Heavenly Father desires us to do.

         The testing of Jesus not only demonstrates that for us to do the will of our Heavenly Father we must be obedient to his voice, but we also learned that we cannot allow our circumstances to determine the faithfulness of our Heavenly Father. We must remember that our God is a holy God which means that he is nothing like any one else we might be in a relationship with because where we falter in our faithfulness, God’s faithfulness is the essence of his name, his character which never changes. God’s faithfulness is proven by his fulfillment of his promises through which we discover that God, in his love, is forever loyal to those who he has bound himself to. It is this unwavering faithfulness of God which is the foundation of our faith. We can trust God and be obedient to what he asks us to do because the faithfulness of God flows from his eternal love. We never have to be concerned about whether God still loves us, if God is still with us, because the love and faithfulness of God is not a choice which God makes but rather the love of God and the faithfulness of God is the very name of God, his unchanging character.

         As we move through each episode of the testing of Jesus it becomes clear that each test builds upon the last. To do the will of God must mean that we will listen for the voice of God and act according to what he commands us to do. As we follow this voice of God we can have faith that God is with us as we do the work which he calls us to do because of the holy name of God. God’s unchanging nature is that he is a God of loyal love and unwavering faithfulness. Only as we are certain that this is who God is and not simply what God chooses to do, only then will we find that we can trust God. Now, it seems to follow, that once we know that the only one with whom we can be in a relationship with who is utterly and completely loyal and faithful to us out of his love for us, and that this one has called us to work with him, then does it not just make sense that we should be in awe of this God? Does it not just make sense that this one who loves us because this is who he is and that he does not love us on account of anything we might do, that this one is the one we would find worthy of giving our life to, serving him in faithful obedience? Why would we abandon the ways of the world upon which all of the kingdoms and governments are built upon? The answer is that in this world where fear rules and love must be earned we have found one who is faithful, one whose love is freely given to us. This is why God alone is the one we worship, the only one worthy of our service.

         Here in the testing of Jesus it is easy to see that the cross already is casting its shadow upon his life. To be obedient to his Heavenly Father, to place his life at the mercy of the faithfulness and love of his Heavenly Father, to find his Father worthy of his service and even his life, it is not hard for us to hear Jesus pray, “Not my will but yours be done.” This is why Jesus went to the cross, so that the power of sin might be at last defeated, so that we might be set free to follow him, so our prayer too might be, “Father, not my will but yours be done! Amen!