Facing Temptation

First Sunday in Lent
St. John's Lutheran Church, Alexandria, VA
Luke 4:1-13

“Facing the Cross: Facing Temptation”

We don’t like to talk about sin, do we? It hits too close to home – at least, it does when we actually are talking about it. If you were here with us on Ash Wednesday, you heard Pastor Meehan’s message about how we face our sin, acknowledging it and turning to God. As he pointed out, people usually think “sin” is some wanton evil or big, malicious actions when it’s really a part of who we are as fallen human beings. Sin is a problem for us each and every day, each and every hour, each and every minute. On Ash Wednesday, if you received that mark of the cross in ashes on your forehead, you received a reminder of how big a problem sin really is. It kills. It’s like you and I are afflicted with an inherited condition that none of us can get rid of. The season of Lent that started on Ash Wednesday is meant to be a time for us to turn from sin and live as the people that God has called us to be. But how do we do that when we still have to face temptation?

Temptation – that’s the snag. It’s been a problem for us since the Garden of Eden. But temptation isn’t the same thing as sin. Consider this for a moment: if sin is turning your back on God, temptation is the sound that’s prompting you to look behind you. The temptation does not make you sin. That’s your choice. You and I don’t have to keep turning away from God, and yet we do. We trip ourselves up or, more likely, run headlong into sin, failing to follow our Lord’s guidance.

Temptation is insidious. It stealthily works its way into your life. It settles into the nooks and crannies of your life, all the cracks and fractures in your heart and mind. It tries to sneak past your defenses so that you won’t notice it’s even there until it’s too late. It evaluates your needs and your desires and uses them to its own advantage, trying to convince you that everything’s just fine. It waits and watches until you’re weakened, and then it strikes at the prime opportunity. The odds are against you. You’ve got the devil, the world, and even your own inclinations working to make you fail. They’re all collaborating to confuse you, persuading you that the wrong thing is right and the right thing’s wrong. They’ve got a huge bag of tricks, ready to throw your way at the opportune time. Temptation works by getting you to think or feel that sin is your best immediate option – it’s what you’ve got to have right now, despite any possible consequences.

What temptations are you facing? It’s like that temptation’s right there behind you, persistently calling to you until you feel like you need to turn to follow it. You know which one or two or twenty temptations keep calling to you, coming back to trip you up time after time, or maybe even have you running straight to them. Temptations come in all shapes and sizes. While there’s no one that catches us all the same way, every temptation is a struggle with restraint. The exercise of restraint is what holds wants and needs in check, keeping them within appropriate boundaries. Every temptation leverages the pressure of the “now,” that immediate gratification that it promises, which it would have you believe is what you need. It calls you to focus on the now over the later: “Don’t think about something better coming, even if you know it will, because this is what you need. Give up on later. This is the choice you have to make!” It was the same for Jesus.

Looking at our Gospel text from Luke 4, you’ll see that Jesus was tempted, too. The devil did the same thing to Jesus that he does to us. “The slanderer,” as he’s called, wanted Jesus to focus on himself, to forget about God. While there are three temptations recorded in this account of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, each of them shares the same goal: to see Jesus turn away from God’s mission, to abandon the path that the Son of God came to earth to follow. Even starting with the first temptation, you can see that the devil is making the most of his opportunity. After forty days in the wild places without eating, Jesus is hungry. He’s fully God, but he’s also fully human. He needs food. And that’s when the devil strikes. But Jesus knew that faithfulness was the better sustenance, denying the food that would just leave him hungry again and depending instead the heavenly food of his Father’s grace that would sustain him in that path through the wilderness which our Lord would follow. The second temptation, like the first, offered an end-run around the suffering that Jesus had before him. The devil’s offer is a simple one: why not just grab the power and glory that the world can offer and skip all that work that comes with being the Messiah? Just take the good stuff and go with it! All he’d need to do was to bow down and submit. Again, though, Jesus knew that what the devil offered was only a false and fleeting “glory.” True glory doesn’t come from the world. The real glory that was and would again be his – and is ours as God’s people – comes in serving God, being in the reconciled relationship that comes through faith. In the final temptation recorded in Luke’s account, the devil again invites Jesus to test the truth of his identity as the Son of God and see if the Father would deliver him from harm. Here, Jesus corrects the devil’s twisting of Psalm 91. Rather than putting God to the test – as the devil has been doing all this time! – faithful dependence on God’s love is to worship and serve Him, following that path even unto death. In the book of Hebrews, we hear:
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:14-15 ESV)
God the Father sent you a Savior who knows what you experience. A Savior who is tempted, just like you are. But unlike you and me, our Savior stayed true to the course that he came to follow. Following his Father’s will in faith, Jesus saves us.

Jesus defeated the devil in the wilderness at the close of those forty days, but that was a mere foreshadowing of what was to come in a few years’ time. This encounter looks ahead to the ultimate victory that Jesus would win for us when he defeated the devil on the cross. What we fail to do, Jesus does perfectly. We give in. We fall short. We listen to that insidious prompting to turn away from God. But Jesus stays strong for us. He stands where we fall, even going to the cross.

In this season of Lent, we are “facing the cross,” turning heart and mind and soul to the cross. We’ll continue to explore what that means as we look ahead to Easter. The cross is where you can go for the strength and deliverance that we heard about in Psalm 91. Temptation is calling us to focus on self, to forget about God; instead, you and I can focus on cross and empty grave for hope. The Sundays in this season are called Sundays “in” Lent and not Sundays “of” Lent for a reason: every Sunday is a little Easter, a looking ahead to Jesus’ resurrection victory and our victory through him. You’ll can see the color of Lent, a rich purple, decorating the sanctuary. That royal color serves as a reminder that you have a King who follows the path to the cross to lift up us fallen people. In Jesus, you have forgiveness and new life which overcomes temptation. And he has given you his word and his Spirit to see you through.

When you engage with God’s living word in the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit prepares you to defeat the devil’s power. You can recognize and refuse temptation and its false and fleeting promises, because you will see them for what they are. Temptation will still come at you, trying to keep you from knowing that it’s even there, that what it’s telling you is normal and right. But with God’s word in your daily life, you will come to know where temptation lurks and, knowing, it loses its power. Do not choose to follow temptation and fall back into that sin. Being engaged in the word focuses your eyes on Jesus, turning you to face the cross. Dedicating time in daily devotions at home with your family or in a break at work or school, in Bible study and the like, you can become “cross eyed” – and that’s a good thing. Gathered together as a community of God’s people in the forty days of Lent, we look to the cross as the sure promise that God will continue to give us the strength that we need.

In some ways, it doesn’t matter that we’re in the Lenten season. You and I are still afflicted with that inherited condition of sin. Temptation still comes at us each and every day. But today, facing the cross of Jesus, we see that temptation doesn’t control us. It’s been beaten by our Savior, who was tempted just as we are but who did not fall for the devil’s tricks and empty promises. In Jesus, you and I can recognize and refuse temptation. We can live as the people God has called us to be. Now in Lent and always.

Amen.