Back to School
Jesus Reveals Our Temptations
Luke 4:1-13
October 18, 2009
This week I want to lift up to Jesus as a model of healthy emotional spirituality. Turn to the passage read earlier: Luke 4:1-13.
How many of you exercise regularly? Yeah, every morning the alarm clock rings, I jump at of bed and run around the block six times. Not bad, huh.
Then I kick the block under the bed and go back to sleep.
This passage is about the temptation of Jesus while in the desert fasting for forty days in preparation for the start of his public ministry. Jesus has yet to do anything significant. In fact, Jesus is just a simple man and probably a mediocre Jew as he is thirty something and not yet married. He is not a disciple of a Rabbi. Yet at the age that disciples trained by a Rabbi might start their own ministry and gather their own followers, Jesus is about to begin his.
But he hasn’t done a thing yet. However, because Jesus is secure in who he is, this is not a barrier or in any way a limiting factor.
Jesus goes into the desert to prepare and go through a purity ritual. It is here that Jesus is tempted by the devil. It is in these temptations and the responses of Jesus that we see Jesus as a model of emotionally healthy spirituality.
How many times is Jesus tempted? Three. Each of these three temptations reveal to us something about the emotional makeup and maturity of Jesus.
The Temptations of Jesus
1. Performance
The devil tempts Jesus to prove who he is. “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus is hungry. He has done nothing. He is basically a nobody—a loser. Nobody believed in him. Prove it. Show me and everyone how great you are.
Our world still tempts us this way. What have you done? What have you achieved? What do you do? Worth is based on how well you perform at work, with your friends, at school, in your family, in your church, in any of your relationships.
I am what I do.
Our identity and our worth are derived from what we do. When we don’t perform, we work harder and longer or we get depressed or blame others. Jesus’ self-worth came from God the Father’s inexhaustible love.
Do you base your self-worth on your performance?
2. Possession
The devil took Jesus to see the magnificence and power of the earth. Look at all the stuff people have and how important that is. You don’t have any of that. Look at my power. Look at all the stuff that I have. All these things show who really is important. If you recognize this and worship me, I will give you everything. All this is yours.
But Jesus remembers who he is. He is not impressed with all the power and all the stuff. He knows what is truly most important. And he responds with scripture here and each time to remind the devil of what is truly important.
Our culture is measured by our possessions. Marketers spend 15 billion dollars a year seducing children and teens to believe that they need more. We compare ourselves to others. Our sense of worth is tied to our positions at work.
I am what I have.
Who has the best job? Who has the best education from the best school? The bumper stickers that say, “My child is an honor student at such and such school.” Degrees and awards. Who has the handsomest boyfriend? Who has the latest and best gadgets and toys?
When I first saw this I was a teenager and not really a follower of Jesus. I saw how important people’s cars were. They said how successful or cool they were. Often some of these people had wrecks for lives. Lame jobs. Hole in the wall apartments. But they drove a cool car. Nothing else really mattered but what you drove.
I am pulled by this temptation all the time. It is my stuff and my talents and my applause from others is what truly gives me worth. I have to keep reminding myself that God tells me, “You are my child, Mark, whom I love; with you I am well-pleased.”
3. Popularity
Some of us are more tempted popularity. We are addicted to what others think about us. Often it has little to do with being a star although that is what the devil tempted Jesus with. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself off the top of this temple and command the angels to catch.” Jesus wasn’t concerned with popularity or how he looked in other people’s eyes. He didn’t need to put on a show. He didn’t need to prove anything. He didn’t need anyone’s approval.
Yet we do. In some form, we all look for approval and validation from others.
I am what others think.
Becoming emotionally mature, means getting to a place where we value others but we are not dependent on them to give us self-worth. We feel inferior so we do something for someone or give them a gift. We want them to appreciate what we have done. We want validated and told that we did good.
We don’t want to risk saying or doing the wrong thing. True freedom comes when we no longer need to be special in somebody else’s eyes.
Sheila Walsh is a Christian singer, writer, and former host of The 700 Club. She describes how her disconnected spirituality literally hit a wall.
One morning I was sitting on national television with my nice suit and inflatable hairdo and that night I was in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital.
The very first day in the hospital, the psychiatrist asked me, “Who are you?”
“I’m the co-host of The 700 Club,” replied Sheila.
“That is not what I mean,” he said.
“I’m a writer. I’m a singer.”
“That is what you do. Who are you?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
And he replied, “Now that’s why you’re here.”
Sheila goes on:
“I measured myself by what other people thought of me. That was slowly killing me.
“Before I entered the hospital, some of the 700 Club staff said to me, ‘Don’t do this. You will never regain any kind of platform. If people know you wer in a mental institution and on medication, it’s over.’
“I said, ‘You know what? It’s over anyway. So I can’t think about that.’
“I really thought I had lost everything. My house. My salary. My job. Everything. But I found my life. I discovered at the lowest moment of my life that everything that was true about me, God knew.”
Jesus disappointed the people he grew up with. He disappointed his closest friends. People had all kinds of expectation for him as the Messiah. But he refused to conform to their expectations. He was true to himself, to his calling, and his mission. Jesus listened without reacting. He disappointed the religious leaders. Jesus did not live as if only other people counted giving up his sense of self. Jesus did not live as if nobody counted. He gave his life out of love for others. He has a mature, healthy “true self.”
What can we do?
1. Pay attention to your insides.
This probably won’t happen unless you spend time in silence and solitude. We have to learn how to be comfortable in our own skin. We have to learn to accept who we really are and not hide behind some false image.
We need to be alone so we can listen. Listen to God and to ourselves. Jesus spend forty days in the desert fasting.
Every day I spend some time reflecting on what I feel and why I am feeling it. Sometimes, I have to do this several times a day. AT the very least a couple of times each day. I feel the weight of my feelings and name them all. When we are really in touch, we begin to realize that we feel a multitude of emotions at varying degrees ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
This helps countermand the temptation of performance.
2. Find trusted companions.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “Let the person who cannot be alone beware of community. Let the person who is not in community beware of being alone.”
I don’t know anybody who has let the true self emerge without a few, mature companions to help them along the way. We are to be “alone together.” This helps combat the temptation of popularity.
Know this: the pressure of others to keep us living lives that are not really us is enormous. Expectations usually resulting from their own insecurities, fears, and failures are bountifully placed on us. People will try to coerce to change back when you decide you need to grow and change. Sometimes they shun you. Sometimes they guilt you. Your changing causes anxiety and stress in them. This is why it is so hard to make changes in ourselves unless we do it on a regular basis.
3. Seek courage and strength to move out of your comfort zone.
You will need it. Even the smallest of changes even if they are for the best disrupts our relational systems. Without courage, without trusted companions, and with strength, growth and maturity will never happen.
It was 1947 and nobody had broken the sound barrier. Some thought that it couldn’t be done. Some thought that it literally was a wall. 760 mph. Some thought that no matter how well a plane was built, it would literally be smashed to pieces.
Chuck Yeager was invited to be a test pilot that broke the sound barrier. Colonel Body, his superior, said, “Nobody knows for sure what happens until somebody gets there. Chuck, you’ll be flying into the unknown.”
After nine attempts on October 14, 1947, Yeager finally broke the sound barrier. He later wrote, “I was thunderstruck. After all the anxiety, breaking the sound barrier turned out to be a perfectly paved speedway.. After all the anticipation it was really a let down. The ‘unknown’ was a poke through Jell-O.”
Your life like Chuck’s airplane will shake in the process of maturing into the person God wants you to be. The stuff of your life is unaccustomed to this type of pressure. But God is with you and behind you. His grace is sufficient. I think that you find freedom on the other side. Like a friend of mine has said, “I don’t know why I waited so long do it.”
Augustine prayed, “Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.” Perhaps you can make that your prayer today.
