40 Days in the Wilderness - Temptation

[00:00:06] Here we go. Who's getting the question? [00:00:11] Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our father and from our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. [00:00:18] So we're going to focus on Jesus'temptation in the wilderness. [00:00:26] The john this morning pointed out the number 40. [00:00:30] Why 40? And I told him, I'll get back to you on that. [00:00:35] But it's worth noting there are a lot of 40s in scripture. Anybody think of any forty s? [00:00:47] Four days? [00:00:50] 40, though? Yeah. Like 40 days of rain in the flood. Yes. Another one. Anybody? 40 years. 40 years in the wilderness. The Israelites. Yes. [00:01:05] Anything else? [00:01:08] Moses was on Mount Sinai receiving the law from God for 40 days, fasting for 40 days. [00:01:16] Elijah. [00:01:17] Elijah also fasts for 40 days at Mount Sinai. [00:01:24] Jonah went to Nineveh and said, in 40 days, Nineveh will be overthrown. [00:01:30] So there are more like Jesus teaches his disciples for 40 days after his resurrection. So anyway, I'll get back to you on why the number 40, but in at least a lot of those cases, 40 days in the wilderness is, well, the wilderness is about having things stripped away from you. Some of those 40s connect. Like, just for example, Jonah says, all right, nineveh, here's a wilderness from God. [00:02:03] Everything's going to be taken away from you in 40 days. It's like, well, everything's already taken away. [00:02:10] They fast and pray, right? [00:02:13] So the wilderness is about repentance. It's about having things stripped away from you. It's kind of a reset, you could say. So Jesus is out there. [00:02:22] The spirit brings him out to be tempted by the devil. But he doesn't just go right into temptation like he could, right? I mean, if anybody could just boldly go in without any prep, it's Jesus, right? But he doesn't think. That's just to say he's fully human. [00:02:45] And it wouldn't be right for him to not do it the human way. [00:02:50] I guess that's just how a human being should approach temptation, with fasting and prayer. [00:02:58] So Jesus goes into the wilderness, and first he fasts and prays for 40 days. [00:03:04] He's ready. [00:03:06] That's the key. Okay, so here we are in our wilderness for 40 days. Lent, this sort of microcosm of life. And I think one key thing to remember is that we're not just tempted after a 40 day period. [00:03:27] Temptation isn't coming at the end of Lent. [00:03:31] It's always around, right. And so we don't always have 40 days to prepare for it. But it's good to take 40 days now and again. To work on it with special attention. But this is just life. This is life as a human being in a fallen world, as a fallen human being that's by nature sinful and unclean. Like we say, we've been messed up. And so every day is the struggle. Every day is the struggle for faith, the struggle for attention toward God. So there Jesus is in the wilderness. He's prepared for 40 days and 40 nights. He's prepared by eliminating distractions, by having things stripped from him in order to focus. So that when the here's the key, what's the opposite of that? It's to say things are going pretty well or to be absorbed in something else, like whatever's taking your time right now. I'm sure you all have things that keep you busy. Most times when I say, oh, how are you doing? It's like hanging in there. [00:04:49] It just seems like we're all busy. We all figure out things to keep busy with. [00:04:56] I suppose there could also be kind of a boredom with life that sets in or something like that. I mean, there are other conditions than busyness, but busyness is pretty common for us. So when you're already wrapped up in a worry or a desire or something like that, and temptation comes your way, you're not necessarily ready to make the right choice. [00:05:23] If you're worried about what people think of you, maybe you've had a couple of failures, or somebody said something critical to you, or whatever it is, if you're already nervous about something and nervous about your reputation being hurt or embarrassed of something, and temptation comes your way to lie or to whatever it is, you might react in fear, fear of having your reputation hurt or something like that, you got to start with a heart that's fortified against all the kinds of things that would tug you one way or another. [00:06:07] Only when you're not worried about your own reputation will you be able to get out of the habit of lying. For example. You see what I mean? It's like if your heart's in chaos and you're being pulled in all kinds of directions by fears and desires and worries, or it's just you don't have a moment to, you can't sort your thoughts out, then you're kind of a sitting said, I'm not talking about Jesus yet. [00:06:43] Maybe that sounds like too practical and not related to Jesus, but it is. [00:06:49] Jesus pulls everything together. That's why we pay attention to him. [00:06:54] We look to him so that he will calm our hearts and bring everything into order so that he'll hold it all together. [00:07:02] So, for example, in him we have nothing to fear. We don't need a reputation. [00:07:08] We should only care about how God thinks of us and like, okay, so we shouldn't just go do whatever we want, go hurt people because we don't care what they think of us. But that's not why you don't do those things anyway. [00:07:24] So Christ comes to us and says, peace be with you. He says, I forgive you. So in him we don't have anything to fear, anything to worry anyway. So Jesus starts out temptation. [00:07:38] He approaches temptation with preparation. Preparation. And that's for us, that's a daily preparation. And it was for him too, right? He was ready for it at other times too. [00:07:48] But the fasting and prayer, the paying attention, the extra focus, that's a daily struggle. So there are some things we could do to work on that. There are some structures that we could set in place. Like you could start your day and maybe you do with a devotion or with some sort of prayer. It could be a set prayer. You could start the day just saying the Lord's prayer, or saying the creed and the Lord's prayer, or saying the creed and the Lord's prayer and looking at a part of the catechism or reading a part of scripture. And then there are tools that you could use, like the daily treasury of prayer. It's got readings. It's got readings from the church fathers and Luther and it's got all kinds of stuff. You could go crazy with it, but just having a routine that sets your mind on, well, upward, right, points your mind in the right direction, looking to God in order to be fortified by him, it can help eliminate some of the chaos. [00:08:53] Take the cloud out of your heart, that dust cloud, that everything's stirred up. And how can you deal with something that surprises you? When Satan comes on the attack, looking for someone to devour, how can you not be devoured if you're all stirred up already? So Jesus comes in prepared. [00:09:14] All right, what's his first temptation? Somebody raise your hand. [00:09:21] The bread. Yeah. Thanks. [00:09:25] So jesus'first temptation is to turn stones into loaves of bread. [00:09:32] So Satan comes first for his stomach. [00:09:35] All right, somebody quietly raise your hand. What's the second one? [00:09:40] I've wanted to do this for so long. [00:09:45] No, second temptation. Thank you, Kathy. You're an excellent student. [00:09:53] Yeah, that's right. You don't mind answering. You are always asking people to answer your questions. [00:09:58] Yeah, the temple. So Jesus, Satan says, hey, jump off the temple. You can do this. If you're the son of God, that's pretty cool, right? And that's kind of a confusing one, I think, or just harder to understand why that matters, but I think that's part of the point. [00:10:23] St. Augustine, he was one of the most important figures in christian history. You could say he was the bishop of Hippo. Where is Hippo? Is that in Italy? [00:10:39] Pastor Schnegelberg? I don't know. [00:10:41] Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. He came to faith in Milan, so probably. I don't know. I would just. No, no. He was an african bishop. That was in Africa. That's right. Thank you, I think. All right. [00:10:53] We all got things to learn. Anyway. Augustine wrote his confessions, really famous christian text and accessible. You could read it and appreciate it sometime. Maybe we could read it together. But in his confessions, he lists out some things that he still struggles with. And one of the things is kind of funny like this. He says that sometimes he pays attention to things for no good reason at all, and he wants to get that under control. [00:11:23] He says, why do I stop and watch the rabbit running through the field? [00:11:29] That seems pretty picky. Or sit in my room and watch the lizard on the wall. [00:11:36] The thing is, he's not wanting his mind to stray to something that doesn't matter. He's not wanting to pay attention just because it's interesting for no reason at all. What he's wanting to do is fast and pray with Jesus in the wilderness. What he's wanting to do is pray constantly, and that's his point. And he uses kind of minute instances to explain it. But I think that's just to say it really matters what we pay attention to from moment to moment, right? And so if Jesus were to. I mean, so Jesus is walking his road of discipline, you could say. And the devil's like, hey, why don't you stop by at this cool thing? Wouldn't it be great to just stop walking and jump off the temple? Just take a little breather, take a little break from all that serious stuff, and do something interesting? [00:12:32] I don't know. I think that's maybe a way to describe that. All right, so the third temptation for Jesus, the mountain. And we've talked a lot about mountains. So the devil brings him up a high mountain, just like also at his transfiguration, it was a high mountain that Jesus went up. So this is a glorious place, right? A place that commands attention, a place that is unassailable if you put a fortress there or if you have an army up there, he takes him up a high mountain so that he can see all the glory of, I think, the cities of the earth, something like that. And the devil says, if you worship me, all this can be yours. Jesus says, nah. [00:13:22] So there's a little bit of a progression there. The devil attacks him with the stomach, and then he tries to swerve his mind off course, just like draw his attention by something that doesn't matter. And then he tries to get him to go for power and glory. And he doesn't bite any of those times. I think you can map those on to Eve's temptation by the devil with the fruit. Okay. Who remembers? There are three things said about the fruit that Eve notices. What does Eve notice about the fruit before she's tempted somebody? [00:14:04] Yep. That's the second one. [00:14:13] Yeah. Right. Desired in this translation. Desired for gaining wisdom. Something like that. That's the third one. And the first one, it's good for food. [00:14:26] So she noticed. It's good for food. A delight to the eyes and to be desired for gaining wisdom. [00:14:35] So back to Jesus'temptation in the wilderness. Food, right? And then a spectacle. Spectacle is related to eyes, right? A spectacle and power, which I think could be related to wisdom. I mean, Eve's trying to puff herself up, right? She's trying to gain power in her own way, I guess you could say. Or glory. Or at least I think we can make that connection. I think those are intentional. I mean, there are three and there are three. There's another place in first john that you can go look up where three are listed, and I can't remember exactly how they're said, but it's similar. It's like the desires of love of the world, something like delight of the eyes and then the pride of life. [00:15:26] Three of them anyway. I mean, I think it's valuable to just meditate on Jesus temptation, jesus'own temptation and to take lessons from that. Or just to just sort of sit in that, see Jesus paying attention in the wilderness, fasting and praying and pay attention ourselves to him, to take all our thoughts captive to the word of God, not to let any of our thoughts straight. Now, we're not going to do that perfectly, but I think that's what Paul says, what Paul means when he says to pray constantly, pray without ceasing. Well, how can you do that? I think it's keep an eye on your thoughts, think about where they're going. Does this matter or not? [00:16:19] Is this valuable or not? Especially in a world that's just looking for our attention and looking to monetize it, looking to earn money on our attention, looking to stir up in our hearts this dust cloud that makes it hard to really see what's going on. You hear about what's going on in the news, and it riles you up. [00:16:42] I mean, when you start talking about what's going on in the world, do you get kind of fired up? [00:16:50] Probably some more than others. [00:16:52] But there are other things that might get your blood pumping. [00:16:59] I think a goal in following Jesus, a goal to not be overcome by the devil who's prowling around looking for someone to devour. [00:17:10] A good goal is to be unaffected, and that happens through prayer. [00:17:19] I'll just close with this. [00:17:23] Athanasius, another church father, he was a bishop. He was the bishop of Alexandria in Africa for like 40 years or 45, something like that, off and on. But he would write a letter, as the bishops would do to his people ahead of Lent, like Lent was coming up. He would write a letter and it would be circulated, and he's announcing what the date of Easter is so that everybody's on the same page, but then also encouraging his people in one of those letters. One year, he said he used Jesus calming the storm. And he said, encourage you all to fast and pray, to be diligent in your discipline during Lent. But then he says, just as Jesus'disciples in the boat woke Jesus up, you when the storms, the winds, and the waves come, and they always do, says, wake Jesus up. Because Jesus isn't far away from you either, right? He's in the boat with you. He's in your heart, and he's encouraging them to pray to him. Like that's waking him. Like if you forget Jesus is in the boat, you're panicking, you're thinking, I'm going to die. [00:18:57] The insult has come. [00:18:59] Or you're not sure how this is going to work out, or you're concerned about your kids, or whatever it is that's just on repeat in your mind, or that's throwing your heart into chaos. [00:19:13] How do you beat that? [00:19:15] Because I know for me, when my heart's in chaos, it's harder to be patient with my kids. Temptation comes in a simple way, and it's not ready. [00:19:29] That's the point. The fasting and praying, that's the point of remaining focused, of paying attention, of praying, praying constantly. [00:19:38] That's the point of our discipline, because can we get off track? Yes, absolutely. And we pray, God, keep us on the straight and narrow, keep us following Jesus. Help me daily to take up my cross and follow him. Help me not to go after any desire and turn away from Christ. Don't let me be easy prey for the devil who just wants to eat me and make me part of his body, preserve my life from the mouth of a lion in Christ. [00:20:16] The beautiful thing is that Jesus won out in the wilderness. He goes out there fast and prays. The devil comes, and the devil cannot find something to yank in Jesus'heart. Like, he just cannot get a grip on Jesus'heart because Jesus'heart is fortified against him. There's nothing that's gonna pull him away. He's looking to God in faith. He's got God's word in his mind, like his thoughts are conformed to God's word, and they're not going to be pulled out of joint. They're not going to be torn in the wrong direction. Because he's steadfast in faith and in prayer focused, his attention is toward God. [00:20:58] God, give us your holy spirit and faith in Jesus to look to him in whatever trial. [00:21:06] To look to him for help and for healing, to rest in his forgiveness and not in our own worthiness or things like that. To rest in his forgiveness. To look to him for every good thing, to not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. [00:21:28] In Jesus name, amen.