Introduction
Leo Tolstoy tells this story:
A young Russian inherits his father’s small farm.
He immediately starts dreaming of how to expand his property when one morning a well-dressed stranger visits him and makes him an offer that is too good to be true.
He could have free of charge all the land he could cover in one day.
The only condition was that he returned to the same spot from which he started, the grave of his father, before the sun went down.
Seeing the rich fields in the distance, the young man set out without taking any provisions or saying goodbye to his family.
He figured he could cover six square miles in a day.
After a short while he decided to make it nine, then twelve and finally fifteen square miles.
By noon he makes it to the halfway point.
Though hungry with his legs aching he continued.
He was near the point of exhaustion but the obsession to own the land drove him on.
With only a few minutes left before the sun went down, he gathered all his strength, stumbled across the line, the new owner of fifteen square miles of land.
And then collapsed on the ground, dead.
The stranger smiled and said,
‘I offered him all the land he could cover. Now you can see what that is, six feet long by two feet wide, and I thought he would like to have the land close to his father’s grave, rather than to have it anywhere else.’
Having said that, the stranger whose name is Death vanishes, saying ‘I have kept my pledge.’
(based loosely on the story “How Much Land Does A Man Need?” by Leo Tolstoy)
Our Gospel reading shows Jesus being tempted in three important areas of life
1. Our need for food
2. Our need for identity and
3. Our need to worship
It is all built in to us
We have or we all will face these questions sooner or later – and how we respond to them will determine how we live our lives
Having fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, Jesus was on the edge of his mental and physical strength.
And he was vulnerable to sin.
And at that time of crisis, the Devil comes to Jesus with three temptations which mirror these three major areas of Life.
The question is how are we going to respond.
1. The first of these three MAJOR AREAS of life is our need for food
Yet it leaves us vulnerable to the sin of gluttony.
We read in our Gospel reading:
2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Look at any newspaper and you will find one or two articles on food.
You’ll also find something about losing weight or about people who become obsessive in losing weight!
We love food – but so often don’t eat the right things.
There is a multi-million pound industry out there attached to our guilt – an industry built up on concocting diets
Rosemary Conley has made a fortune - as did the late Dr. Atkins - with perfecting diets.
And I am just as concerned as anyone about weight.
I even tried the “Commando diet” (in which I lost a stone in a week, but didn’t keep it off).
As a nation, we are obsessed with food – yet we know too much of it is not good for us.
And it is when I am at my lowest – my most stressed out – that’s when I am more tempted to the sin of gluttony – or put in modern parlance – to “snack out”.
Jesus had committed himself to fast and pray.
He didn’t have to but he had.
Fasting and prayer was a time when Jesus gave himself exclusively to seek God.
So when the Devil comes along and tells him what to do, Jesus has a choice.
He can either listen to him or ignore him.
There was nothing wrong with eating bread- the question was – who was going to direct Jesus’ life
Note it wasn’t his heavenly Father who told Jesus to turn the stones into bread – and then eat – it was the Devil.
And Jesus did not want to be led by the Devil.
Jesus’ reply was poignant:
“It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Who are we going to listen to?
2. The second of these MAJOR AREAS of life is the need for our identity to be recognised
We don’t want to be a NOBODY
Yet it leaves us vulnerable to the sin of being self-seeking.
In our Gospel reading today, we read this, after the first temptation:
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.
6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’
Jesus – you are the Son of God – people need to recognise that
If you’re anything like me – you want your significance to be recognised
Jesus, the Son of God, could have proclaimed his greatness by jumping off the Temple like superman - and God would have sent his angels to protect him.
But that wasn’t the plan that God had for Jesus’ life – because it would have shortcut the Cross.
Imagine what an impact that would have had in the Jerusalem Post the following day!
Look how Jesus handled the temptation:
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’
But that wasn’t God’s way – it was the Devil who suggested it – Jesus wanted to live his life the way God ordained it
3 The last of these three MAJOR AREAS of life is our need to worship
Yet it leaves us vulnerable to the sin of worshipping the wrong thing
In our Gospel reading today, we read of the final temptation:
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
There is a built in need in man to worship.
The question is how do we fill it?
WHO are we going to worship
i) God – the Holy Trinity – the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit or
ii) that unholy Trinity of I , myself and me
We want to be in charge – in some form or other.
Sometimes people just can’t see that we are worshipping the wrong thing.
They think their motivation is right
Let me give you some examples:
1. Making money for you and your family to be comfortable
We see people striving to better themselves to get to the top in business
They spend hours at the office making money – and neglect their family – and where they have a faith God too
Story: No one on their death bed ever said: I wish I had spent more time in the office
2. Another example is worshipping doing great things
Many of us have dreamt about doing great things – whether it be
to earn lots of money like Bill Gates
to play a violin like Ye-hudi Menuhin,
to paint like Pablo Picasso or
to influence the affairs of nations through politics like Pres. Barak Obama
We might even dress it up as leaving the world a better place for our having been here.
But few of us want to do it anonymously!!
We want the accolade of being recognised as being successful.
And here the devil was handing it to Jesus on a plate.
“You want to be the boss, Jesus?” the Devil says: “I can give it to you. Just bow down to me.”
Jesus replied – and it showed where his priorities were:
“Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
4. Conclusion
But the key to all these temptations was the fact that none of them WERE God’s way.
God hadn’t sent Jesus to this world to be an all-conquering hero.
Rather He had sent Jesus to be the suffering servant who takes away the sins of the world through the Cross.
So what can we learn from the temptations of Jesus?
4.1. The first point that I learn from this is that all human beings are open to temptation.
Recognising it is half the battle
Not one of us is exempt.
Even Jesus wasn’t exempt, despite the fact he had a divine nature and well as a human one.
4.2. The Second point I learn is that temptation is NOT A SIN.
It is giving into temptation that is the sin. It is the sin of the second glance that brings about our downfall
4.3. The final point I learn from this reading today is that I am not a robot
I can exercise choice – just as Jesus did. God has given us our lives, and the choice of how we live it is ours
Some years ago now, I was given this poem - after preaching on this passage - at the 8.00 o’clock Holy Communion service at New Romney
Some go to church to laugh and talk
Some go to take a walk
Some go there to seek a lover
Some go there the fashions to discover
Some go there to wink and nod
But a few go there to worship God
I wonder - why did I come to Church this morning?
