Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA
This message was delivered at a Vesper’s service back in 2014. My reference and commentary resources were from William Barclay’s writings on the Gospel of Mark.
This is quite a turnaround, isn’t it? Just two weeks ago, we were celebrating Jesus’ victory over death and God’s great gifts of mercy and salvation in the resurrection of the Son; and now, here we are again right back at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. In fact, this story precedes Jesus’ ministry.
There are a couple of things that I would like to mention as background to this story before I get into it. The first is that this story is a personal account from Jesus as retold in the Gospels. What do I mean? The Gospel tells us that Jesus went into the desert alone. So, there was no one there to witness or record the events of those forty days. So, the story we have MUST have been told directly by Jesus to his disciples. This is a personal spiritual autobiography of Jesus’ concerning his own faith journey. I get excited because this is a retelling by Jesus about his own struggles and temptations.
Second, and perhaps the more important element is that Jesus goes into the wilderness to grabble with a core problem for his ministry. Remember where we are. We are at the earliest part of Jesus’ ministry. He has just been baptized by John the Baptizer. God opened up the heavens and spoke saying, “This is my beloved in whom I am greatly pleased.” The Holy Spirit of God came down and alighted upon him like a dove. At this singular moment, Jesus is made know to all who will hear and see AND indeed to himself that he is the chosen “One”. If there had been any doubt in his mind or anyone else’s, God has put an end to it.
So Jesus, as you will recall in Mark’s Gospel is immediately driven out into the wilderness by the Spirit. At this critical moment, Jesus is faced with an immediate problem. How does he make God’s vision of how he will lead & teach the people a reality? How can he identify himself with the people’s search for God? He has to find a way to turn that vision into a reality. How does he do that? What method can he choose to work out the task that God has set before him?
You see Jesus had a choice. He could seek to attract the people to himself by providing a little razzle dazzle. He could use the awesome power of God to provide the signs that the authorities were constantly demanding of him. You will remember that when Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple, the priests came to him and demanded, “What signs will you do to prove your authority?” The problem with that is that slick tricks are addictive. Each day the people would want some new sign that is more outlandish and awesome than the one they saw the day before. No. That would not do; that could not work. Jesus would have to make another choice and you will see how it unfolds in this text.
But first one more tid bit. The word in Greek that we have as “tempted” means less tempted and more “tested”. Think about it. If God tempted us with the purpose of enticing us to “sin”, then that would mean that God was enabling sin. But God does not enable sin. God desires us to conquer sin. So, we must think of this whole incident in the wilderness as the “testing” of Jesus. How is that different? When you are tempted there is a possibility of one of two outcomes. You either overcome it or you fail. If God’s only purpose is to tempt us, we would fail at every time. What good could that accomplish? Instead in testing us and Jesus, God is purifying. God is perfecting God’s plan. How are we going to do this? What is the best plan? “Jesus had to get things straightened out before he started his ministry; and he had to do it alone.” [Barclay]
Let’s look at the circumstances of Jesus going into the wilderness. First, as you will recall, it is immediately following his baptism. Here is one of life’s great truths. Right at the moment of our greatest triumphs is when we are most susceptible to failure. Bible scholar Wiliam Barclay suggests to us to remember Elijah, the Prophet. He defeated the prophets of Baal. Elijah baited the 100 prophets of Baal to a test of whose God was the more powerful. Elijah challenged the priests of Baal that they both would build an altar to their own god. He said you pray to your god to ignite a bull for sacrifice. The priests of Baal tried first but nothing happened. They prayed to their god Baal but Baal did not respond. They couldn’t ignite the fire. Then Elijah soaks down his altar, the bull and the kindling with water and then prays to God and God hears his prayer and responds by igniting a fire and the sacrifice.
This was a great victory of Hebrew’s God over Baal, which was also the god of Jezebel, the queen of Israel. In this moment of Elijah’s great triumph, he suddenly hears that Queen Jezebel is out to get him. But rather than relying on the awesome power of God to protect him, he flees into the desert to hide. Right at the moment of his great triumph he fell victim to his own insecurities.
So now, here we see Jesus, at the great moment of his anointing by God, he is pushed out into the wilderness to be tested. And what is the first thing that he encounters? The Great Tempter – the Evil One.
But we can also say, Jesus encounters his greatest fears and insecurities. These fears and insecurities will be used by God to test Jesus – to purify him. Purify him in the sense that he overcomes those fears and insecurities.
What are they?
There is the temptation to use God’s awesome powers to wow the people – to do great things that would cause them to flock to him. But Jesus knows that the people need more than a good show. They need to know that their God offers them mercy and reconciliation. How can Jesus bring the people closer to the God that they yearn for? In working all this out is how he deals with these tests?
What is the first test? It is after 40 days of fasting, Jesus is hungry. He is walking in the desert where the little limestone rocks look a lot like small loaves of bread. The temptation is to turn these stones into real bread to eat for himself. It was a temptation to use his awesome powers selfishly – to serve his own needs. You see God has given everyone of us gifts. But there are always two questions we must ask ourselves. One is, what can I make of this gift for myself? The other is, what can I do with this gift for others? Jesus had to decide how he was to use the power of God – for himself or for others?
How does Jesus respond to this temptation? Jesus quotes scripture. “No one can live only on food. People need every word that God has spoken.” He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3. Jesus goes to scripture for the strength of the Word of God.
Next, the Tempter takes Jesus to the top of the Temple. He says to Jesus, “If you are God’s Son, jump off for the Scriptures say, ‘God will give his angles a command about you. They will catch you in their arms, and you will not hurt your feet against the stones.’” Now it is the Tempter that is quoting Scripture. It quotes Psalm 91: 11-12. He is tempting Jesus to use the power of God to attract attention and men to his cause. But Jesus realizes that there is no good news if it is built on sensationalism. That kind of Gospel is doomed. But more importantly, Jesus knows that this is not the way to use the power of God. What does Jesus do? He goes back into Scripture. He quotes Deuteronomy 6:16. “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Once again, Jesus draws his strength from the power of the Word of God. He refuses to submit to the temptation of using God’s power to his own ends. Why?
If Jesus were to jump off the pinnacle relying on some miracle where the angels would intervene to save him it would not in fact be trusting God, It would in fact actually be distrusting God. It would be like saying, I know that you have a plan and have selected me for this great task. I know that you have a plan for me to go to the Cross. But I’m going to take an easier path. I jump. You save me. The people will see a great sign and believe. But that would be demanding that God jump through our hoops and working out a plan for salvation on our terms.
That was the Tempter’s proposal to circumvent the Cross. But Jesus wasn’t buying into the Tempter’s plan. He knew that was not the path he was called to travel. God needed more than cheap tricks from God’s Messiah.
Next, the Tempter tries his third attack. He shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and he says to him, “I will give you all of this, if you will bow down and worship me.”
What was the Tempter saying? Compromise. Don’t set your sights so high. Come to terms with me. Let me bring the people to you. I know you think my ways are not exactly how you might want to do it but a little evil now and again will go a long way in catching the people’s eye. The temptation, Jesus’ test, was to sink to the world’s level instead of uncompromisingly presenting God’s demands to the world. Don’t try to change the world, the evil one says. Try to become a little more like the world. Make it easy on yourself. Don’t go to the Cross to be lifted up in sacrifice. Stay on the ground with the rest of the people and me.
Jesus shot back, “Go away Satan. The Scriptures say: Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” This was from Deuteronomy 6: 13. Once again, Jesus goes to the Word of God for his defense, for his strength.
What do we learn from this personal spiritual episode in Jesus’ life? First, that Jesus like us was tested. He was tested at the moment of his great triumph as any of us could be. His greatest strength was attacked as a vulnerability. The Tempter didn’t only try to get Jesus to churn out some meaningless tricks. He tempted Jesus to subvert the power of God; to use the power of God for selfish motives. Ultimately, the Tempter was aiming at driving Jesus off his path to the Cross. The Tempter wanted Jesus to compromise his values, God’s values, God’s plan. But as Jesus progressed through his personal faith journey being purified and prepared for the task before him; he held to the uncompromising core of that faith in God. He would not stoop to the level of this world where the Tempter distracts us with his evil ways. Instead, Jesus calls that the world rise up to God’s level. Jesus asks us to be less like ourselves and that we become more like God. And if we can learn anything from this story of Jesus’ own faith journey, we will find that the strength we need to overcome the Tempter and to work through our own testing will be found in the Word of God. When we go to scripture to listen and learn from the Word of God, we will find the strength we need.
