A sermon preached at Holy Cross Cathedral Geraldton 24th January 2021
The place where Jesus was baptized and received his kingly appointment is near the lowest part of the earth’s surface. The way Matthew tells the story, it looks like Jesus went from there straight up into the wilderness, a desolate waterless place, though there are surprising nooks and crannies of water and vegetation.
Matthew says he was led there by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the Devil. Remember that God has just commissioned him and anointed him with the Holy Spirit to establish the kingdom of God—the government of God in the world—and rule forever. What follows is a strange story and we will need God’s Spirit to help us understand it. The fact that the Spirit led him for this confrontation tells us this was a necessary part of God’s plan, just like his baptism by John was “to fulfill all righteousness.”
When Adam was made the king of the world—that is what the Genesis story is all about—he soon ran up against the Tempter. God had given him instructions, and he was tempted to ignore them. He disobeyed, and the world has been in the grip of evil ever since. Jesus must now face a similar attempt to neutralize him. But Jesus did more in the wilderness than wrestle with Satan. Matthew tells us it was only at the end of forty days that Satan struck. What was Jesus doing in the forty days leading up to this?
The first thing that jumps into my mind is something I read in the autobiography of Lord Alan-Brooke, the Englishman who stood next to Churchill and led the Commonwealth through the war of 1939-45. At the end of his account—the war is close to finished and Brooke is looking back—he recalls the time late in 1941 when Churchill asked him to take on the task of Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and afterwards left him alone in his library. Brooke does not see himself as a religious man, but says he fell on his knees and asked God to equip him for the task, and lead him, and help him. Could Jesus have been doing something similar. None of the Gospels say, but I think Jesus knew he had to get away and think—to seek the guidance he would need for the gigantic task that has just been given him. Was he aware that this would turn into a contest with Satan? I don’t know. But when you have an important goal to achieve there are always shortcuts, and some of them may not be good.
For the forty days leading to the temptations Jesus fasted—and here we run into one of the great puzzles of his life: the Gospels do not tell us why he fasted, though perhaps they don’t say, because they regard it as obvious. Israel wandered for forty years in the wilderness. Jesus answered Satan’s three temptations with three passages from Deuteronomy, the account of Israel’s forty year in the wilderness. Jesus’ fast appears to have some connection to his leadership of Israel. But fasting had to do with repentance and sorrow over sin. Remember when Jonah told the people of Ninevah that God was about to destroy them! They called a fast and begged God to spare them – and he did. Could Jesus have been fasting for Israel—asking God to withhold his judgement. This would explain a lot of things. John the Baptist has been warning of a great judgement the Messiah would soon unleash against Israel, yet Jesus began his ministry with no word of judgement, but only of forgiveness and grace. Could it be that God has heard Jesus’ prayer and postponed the coming judgement? Jesus will be given the opportunity to win Israel to God with a ministry of grace.
Satan waited until Jesus was at his lowest point and launched his first attack on his hunger: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread!” Matthew doesn’t say that the Devil was dressed in black with horns and a swishing tail, so I imagine Jesus was tempted in much the same way we are. Temptation can come from the world, the flesh or the Devil. In each case suggestive thoughts are injected into our mind. Sometimes they come from our natural human desires (the flesh), sometimes from TV, education, books, friends (the world). Sometimes they come direct from the Devil. It’s not always obvious where they are coming from.
All of us have experienced hunger. We know how insistent it can be, especially when there is food in sight, food we know we shouldn’t touch. None of us has felt the the driving force of hunger that Jesus was experiencing at the end of his forty day fast. When he says, “If you are the Son of God …” Satan is not suggesting Jesus doubt whether he is the Son of God. He knows that he is; God has just spoken to him. “Since you are the Son of God …” is what Satan means: “You have the power; do it!” And why not? The fast is over, and bread is good. Why should this be a temptation? It is not as though God has forbidden it—as he did with Adam. God has not told Jesus not to use his messianic powers to make bread; at the feeding of the five thousand he will do just that. Jesus’ next words hold the answer.
“It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” You could hardly accuse a man who has a meal at the end of a forty-day fast of trying to live by bread alone. This is not Jesus’ problem. The temptation he answers here is that he use his messianic powers to provide bread for the masses. It occurs to him that one way to achieve empire is to buy his way. The emperors of Rome kept the peace by providing free grain for their citizens. It was called the Annona, and had a whole government department to administer it. Tiberius, the emperor at the time of Jesus, reckoned that if the Annona were to cease, it would mean “the utter ruin of the state.” It is no different now. Our national elections have become like auction sales as parties outbid each other in promising less taxes or more benefits. Tony Abbot lost his prime-ministership because he wanted people to pay seven dollars when they went to the doctor. Jesus knew that if he was willing to provide the material goods people needed or thought they needed, he could be their king. Food and entertainment are what they want. Most could not care a less about knowing God. But Jesus sees this is not the way to life. Jesus looks to the word of God as the key to real life: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word coming out of the mouth of God.” His kingdom will be the kingdom of God, not another Babel.
Jesus faced three great temptations at the outset of his ministry: the first was to buy the kingship by offering what people wanted. The truth is, they did not want God, and still don’t. The second was to put on a great display of power that would impress them into accepting him as king. There is an ancient Jewish sermon that says that when the King-Messiah comes he will stand on the top of the temple and declare his kingdom. And if they do not believe him, he will say, “Behold my light!” And the light of Messiah would go out to the ends of the world—as it is written: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you (Isaiah 60).” Often during his ministry Jesus will be asked to prove himself by doing a miraculous sign. He always said no, though he did many signs on other occasions. Testing God does not lead to faith.
The third temptation was to acknowledge the Devil’s power and to pursue kingship as his ally. “The Devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. ‘All this I will give to you, if you will bow down and worship me.’” This seems strange. Surely Satan didn’t think Jesus would actually worship him. Perhaps not in that blatant way. But if he were to acknowledge Satan’s influence—make use of some of his methods, let the end justify the means—it would be easy to seize power. Or perhaps Satan overplayed his hand here. There is an old Jewish story from the time of Jesus. It is called The Life of Adam and Eve and tells how when God created Adam he brought him before the angels and told them to bow down and worship him. And Satan would not; he was jealous of Adam’s position, and determined to trip him up and disgrace him. Now he fills Jesus thoughts with world dominion and glory. “I will give it to you on a plate,” he suggests, if you will only acknowledge me. Hitler dreamed such a dream, and enlisted Satan’s methods as his own; we all know what a hell-hole he created. Jesus wants to establish the kingdom of God, and will use appropriate methods.
So, at the outset of his ministry Jesus faced three great temptations, and I’m thinking that whenever we face a new task it will be so. There is the human way, and there is God’s way. There is the way that leads a step at a time towards the kingdom of righteousness and a way that leads to death.
Let’s look back over this incident and see what else we can learn. The first thing is that from the beginning Jesus was engaged in a conflict with the Devil. We talk about spiritual warfare, and here we have it. Jesus saw things in spiritual terms. He thought always of God and what God was doing and how to advance God’s cause, and his great opponent in all of this was the Devil. It is not our subject today, but if you want to live for God and his kingdom, it will not be different for you. We had an ex-convict in our congregation and one of the chaps in the church set him up in a handyman business, with a vehicle and some tools. I was called out of bed one night about 2am and found him in a shocked state. Someone found out about his past and threw a can of petrol into the back of his car. He thought he knew who had done it and wanted to go and burn their house down. He was a tough guy and hard to restrain, but he was a new Christian and I was able to say to him that this was Satan’s work, and if he hit back—using the Devil’s method’s—then Satan had won, twice over. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the powers of darkness”—that is what Paul says. You will face situations in your work, at school, at home and in the church when you are up against people over some issue and are tempted to see them as the enemy. But there is a greater struggle going on, and it is about the Devil and God and his kingdom.
As we move on into Jesus’ story we will see that again and again he faces opposition, but he saw beyond this to his real enemy, the one he called “the ruler of this world”. He never let people become his enemy. They saw him as an enemy, but for him they were always the poor, the lost, the sick, the captives to the dark power. Even at the end, when they are driving spikes into his hands, he prays for their forgiveness. His enemy was never humans but the dark power that controlled them. God had sent him to save humans into his new kingdom.
The next important lesson we can learn from this story is that Jesus fought back with the Word of God. Three times he answers the Devil’s suggestions with scriptures: “man shall not live by bread alone”; “you shall not tempt the Lord your God”; “worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.” Jesus’ mind is soaked in Scripture and he knows its true application. Realizing that he is a Bible-man, Satan even uses the Bible in his second attack: “Throw yourself down! As it is written (in the Bible), ‘he will give his angels charge over you lest you dash your foot against a stone.’” But Jesus knows that would not be trusting God, but testing him out. There are people who are good with verses of Scripture, but sometimes they misapply them terribly. Jesus knew the Scriptures—off by heart—and he also understood how to apply them.
Early in my Christian life I discovered that the world regards Bible people as freaks. Many even in the church were suspicious of anyone who carried a Bible. I could show you a book by an Anglican theological college principal with the commendation of an Australian archbishop about how to use the Bible now that we no longer believe it. But I saw that if the Bible is not God’s word, Jesus was sadly mistaken. I saw that if there is no word of God, the promises of God are not to be trusted, and faith is impossible. I saw that without a word from God, obedience is also impossible. I saw that without the Word of God we are lost in the universe without a compass.
People try to drive a wedge between God and the Bible. One bishop used to ask me whether Jesus was the Word of God or the Bible. When I answered that they both were, he was not happy. Others drive a wedge between the Bible and the Holy Spirit. But the Word of God is the words of God, which are the Word of Christ, which is the mind of the Holy Spirit. We cannot know God without his Word, any more than I can know you, if you never speak to me. I hope we are all convinced that the Bible is the Holy Bible, holy because it comes from God—it connects us to God. Nothing is more important in the Christian life than that we soak ourselves in Scripture as Jesus did. Coming to church and a weekly sermon are not enough to build a mature Christian. Every day our human appetites are sending us messages. Every day we are bombarded with messages from the world. Hours every day we are saturated in the world’s godless thinking. How will we distinguish what is good from what is damaging in all these messages? Make a regular time to study the Word of God, to be refreshed in his thoughts. Make up your mind to become a regular Bible reader!
Matthew concludes by telling us that Jesus was ministered to by angels. He is the King-Messiah, and he has armies of angels at his command. But he will not use them to wage a jihad. The way to God’s kingdom will lead him in a very different direction. Last week I said that Jesus started on his task of winning the world for God with nothing else than God’s Spirit and God’s Word. Today we have seen how the Spirit forced Jesus into combat against the great enemy of mankind. We have also seen how he chose the Word of God as his weapon. Next Sunday we will see how Matthew describes the beginning of his ministry.