John 4: Tempting God to Sin

Hi everyone (especially first time readers of Johno's Commentary)!

Usually when I'm preaching, I put my notes up on the commentary for perusal.  Now note once again - I'm a well-read layman, not a professional preacher!  So it's quite possible that some details here could be (gasp!) incorrect!

Feel free to discuss it in the comments section below, but please be nice to each other.

-Johno

Sermon Begins
--

Luke chapter 4 has a lot going on, and it’s a tough passage to preach on.  Often when I first read the text I have been asked to preach on, the sermon just falls into place.  I love obscure texts, and I really enjoy preaching on passages that can be linked to either of my twin interests of Science and History.

Luke 4 is neither; and the sermon didn’t.  It’s a well-known passage, and preaching it is a bit like going fishing in Berowra Waters – most of the big ones have already been caught! 

Every time I preach, I always pray first that God would help me to communicate from His word well, and this week I particularly need that help; so without further ado, I’ll do just that.

[pray]

It wouldn’t surprise me if most of the people in this congregation (or even those listening on line) could quote large slabs of Luke 4 verbatim.  Even if you can’t do so, the familiarity of the words can lull you into not really listening to what it says. 

It’s a narrative passage – it tells a portion of Christ’s story.  Recapping from last week’s chapter, we have just had Jesus’ baptism and His genealogy.  Both of these were important for His credibility among the Jews who would be the targets of His early ministry. But now He is ready to begin His public ministry.

Or is He?

There is one more thing that has to happen before Jesus can begin His ministry, and that’s his temptation.  The story of the Temptation is told in verses 1 - 13.  Why is this necessary?  Why the showdown with the Devil?

Then we have the real beginning of Jesus’ ministry, at least the intentional part of it (not counting a certain incident involving water and wine at a wedding in Cana).  Verses 14 – 30 tell us of Jesus speaking at a synagogue in His home town of Nazareth, telling them that the words he reads from Isaiah are being fulfilled right there and then.  It goes about as well as you might expect.

Then verses 31 – 37 give us Jesus’ first encounter with the demonic, which would be best described as a “Curb-stomp battle”.    Finally, verses 38 – 44 tell us of some of Jesus’ early healings, beginning with Peter’s mother in law. 

All familiar parts of the story.  All probably tales you’ve read before.  But they’re in the Bible for a reason.  Why are all these here? And just as importantly, do they have anything in particular to say to us today as we look at them?

I believe they do.  And I believe that this passage has a lot to say about Jesus' personality and mission. 

The key is the temptation.  But why did Jesus have to be tempted? 

I have often heard people say that Jesus was tempted here so that the Bible could honestly say, in Hebrews 4:15, that we have a High Priest  “who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet he did not sin”. This is a very reasonable idea, and it’s certainly true that Jesus WAS tempted in every way like us.  However, very few of us have the Devil himself turn up personally to our temptation, so if that’s the answer it’s not the whole answer.  And some of the temptations present here are very different to those we face; I doubt very greatly that Satan would approach me and offer me dominion over the world if I would just worship him!  So something else is going on here.

More than that, at least the first temptation (“Turn these stones into bread”) is a little strange.  Sure, we don’t have the power to do that, but even if we could, would it be wrong to demand that silicates rearrange themselves into carbon compounds for our convenience?  Why is this wrong for Jesus to do?

I was reading last night in a commentary about this passage, and I came across an idea which has intrigued me. 

Firstly, the word “Tempted” can also mean “tested”.  Whilst Jesus was exposed to the constant temptation we all face, this incident was over and above that.  In the wilderness, Satan was allowed by God – note that there, Satan is under God’s authority, so this is with His permission – to spend time with Jesus and determine if He was going to follow His mission.

The interesting idea then follows – each of the temptations represents a version of the Messiah’s priorities that Jesus could have chosen to have!

The first temptation was “Turn these stones into bread.”  Obviously, this was dealing with Jesus’ immediate hunger, but there’s more to it than that.  Satan was suggesting that perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus might be the sort of Messiah whose main priority is the physical needs of others. 

A while back someone sent me an image on facebook.  It shows smiling missionaries handing impoverished Haitians the Bible, and some person has captioned it “Thank you, this looks delicious.”

The obvious source of the humour here is actually a common assumption – that peoples’ physical needs are paramount.  Most people outside of the Christian world would see this as obvious.  Of course a person in Haiti who is starving wouldn’t be interested in a Bible, right?  OF COURSE it’s more important to take care of their hunger first!

Now, my first response to this is that you don’t see what comes first – I have no doubt that Churches supporting the missionary efforts in Haiti, just like all sorts of other places around the world, also supply the physical needs of their people (often, but not always, before they attempt to supply spiritual needs).

But the second thing is that sometimes we forget about the spiritual needs of those we are serving, and can get lost in the needs that we’re meeting.  I can’t help wondering if the subtext in the first test for Christ is this: “Physical needs are most important.  Are you a messiah who will make the top priority the peoples’ physical needs?”

What is Jesus response?  Well, he goes straight to scripture.  And any time we face temptation or testing, that’s a good place for us to go too!  If the One who WROTE the Bible chooses to use it when He is tempted, why should we do any less?

And what scripture does Jesus use?  He uses Deuteronomy 8:3 “Man does not live by bread alone.”

THIS Messiah isn’t going to merely supply peoples’ physical needs.  There  were many people who were sick or hungry in Judea at this time, and it would have been easy for Christ to spend 24 hours a day 7 days a week on healing the sick and feeding the poor.  Now, Jesus does some of this, but as we’ll see at the end of the chapter, He doesn’t make Himself a slave to such activities.  On the contrary, Jesus does just enough of this kind of aid work to make His point, but His real reason for travelling through the towns and villages is to preach the coming kingdom of God!

The second test is a little less subtle.  The devil takes Jesus to a high place where he can see the “kingdoms of the world.”  He offers them to Jesus, saying that they’ll be given to Him if Jesus simply worships the devil!

What subtext is here?  It’s a simple whisper – “Power is everything.  I’ll turn that power over to you without a struggle.  You can be the political liberator of not just the Jews, but everyone else!  Are you the kind of Messiah who prizes power above all else?”

I’ve just been involved in a discussion on line during the week about the historical disputes between the Catholic Church and the Scientist Galileo.  It is definitely my belief that the Church did Galileo great wrong, but the main reasons for that wrong weren’t theological, nor were they scientific; rather, the reasons that the Church did so much wrong to this man were POLITICAL in nature. 

 

Architect Victor Gruen once identified a feature of shopping centres.  He pointed out that in many shops and shopping centres, it is easy to forget why you came there in the first place, get lost, and buy things you didn’t come to buy.  To this day, this moment of forgetting your purpose is called a “Gruen transfer”. 

The Catholic church of  Galileo’s day had gone through something of a Gruen Transfer.  It had acquired power, largely innocently, but in so doing it had forgotten that it was mainly there to do Christ’s work.  When we court the power that this world offers, that Gruen transfer is always a risk. 

Jesus’ response is once again to quote scripture.  This time He uses Deuteronomy 6:13 – “Worship the Lord Your God and serve Him only!”  THIS Messiah isn’t here to play politics.  He understands that the needs He is here to meet won’t be met by a government coup nor a popular revolution.  The needs He is here for are deeper than that.  Yes, people want to be free from the Romans – but ultimately they NEED to be free of Sin and Death, and only Jesus can deal with that need.

The final temptation is where the devil takes Jesus to a high point in the Temple.  This is probably the most publically visible place in the whole city of Jerusalem, which is perhaps why the devil’s next test takes Jesus there.  The devil HIMSELF quotes scripture this time!  He uses Psalm 91 –

“He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

What on Earth could Jesus accomplish here? The first test would satisfy his immediate hunger; the second would secure power.  Both of those make sense; we can see why Jesus would want to do them.  But what about this third one?

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if you would throw yourself to the ground, only to stop a few inches up?” says the Devil.  “And you know that you could order the angels to do it!  What an impressive sign that would be! Are you the kind of messiah who does miracles so that people believe?”

It’s a beguiling idea.  Jesus could have been a showman, doing wonders so that people couldn’t possibly fail to believe.  Many Christians well-meaningly wish that God would do amazing miracles through them, so that people would not have an excuse for not believing in Him!

The problem with this idea is a simple one.  The ultimate sign is the raising of the dead to life – something that Jesus did several times, culminating with Himself!  Yet even this sign wasn’t enough for many people.  Even people who knew directly of Jesus’ resurrection, such as the Pharisees on the Sanhedrin (who even believed in resurrection in principle!) weren’t prepared to believe in Him.  Miracles and magic tricks aren’t enough.

What IS enough?  A great friend of my father’s is Daniel Zelli.  He’s the pastor of a Charismatic church in Queensland.  One thing he says frequently is this: People have to see the FRUIT of the Spirit before they’ll believe or understand the GIFTS of the Spirit!

Yes, God can and will do the miraculous.  Nobody did as many miracles as Jesus when He was on earth!  But the biggest thing that Jesus did to demonstrate the existence of God was not miracles.  His greatest demonstration was LOVE.  All the other gifts of the Spirit are outworkings of  love!  And as 1 Cor 13 points out, we can have the ability to do all kinds of miracles and yet, if we don’t have love, we gain nothing. 

Again Jesus turns to Scripture.  Deuteronomy 6:16 says “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  THIS Messiah isn’t about to be a magician.  He’ll do miracles when they’ll help, but they won’t be the focus of his ministry.

The essence of the tests the Devil gives Jesus can be summed up as “Will you take the easy way?”

The Cross is not mentioned directly here.  But it’s implied in all that Christ says and does.  By rejecting the easy options presented to Him, Jesus knowingly turns his face in the inevitable direction of Golgotha and crucifixion.  The devil leaves for now, but we know that he’ll be back.

But now that Jesus has made it clear that He knows His mission, the rest of the chapter makes sense.  As he goes into the Synagogue and preaches, he’s not stirring up the rabble or courting easy popularity; He’s proclaiming the more difficult message of the Kingdom of God.  And he doesn’t just heal everyone who is sick; though He heals a few, He makes it very clear that His mission is more than simple bodily healing.  Rather than accepting the spectacular evidence of the demon shrieking that He’s the son of God, Jesus tells the demon to be quiet.  For the rest of the chapter, and in fact the rest of ALL the Gospels, we see the actions of a man who is in complete control, who understands His mission totally.

So apart from the conventional message – when tempted, we should reach for scripture -  what can we learn from this passage?

Firstly: We need to ensure that our priorities are God’s priorities.  It’s all too easy to get caught up in other things.  And those things might even be good things!  Feeding the poor and sheltering the homeless; Fighting for social change and justice; doing spectacular things for God; well, they’re all good things.  Important things!  Things that God has commanded us to do, even. But we need to be sure that we understand that to God these are sidelines.  The main game is His mission to the world.  All these things are to serve that mission, which should be our priority too.

Secondly: Just as Christ’s actions after the testing reflect His priorities, so too we need to choose the things that we do so that we ALSO reflect Christ’s priorities.  If we believe that the most important thing is the mission, then why spend so much time doing other things?

And Finally: we recognise that sometimes the easy way of doing things is not God’s way.  Jesus knew that His path took him to the cross, and yet he took it willingly.  We also need to do the same.  When our path takes us to places where we face difficult choices, we need to take the narrow path.  We need to love when love seems difficult.  We need to trust when it’s hard to see what lies ahead.  We need to do what is right regardless of the cost. 

Our Lord and Saviour carried the Cross for us; how can we wimp out?

[pray]