Sermon 3-9-25

Sermon 3-9-25 Luke 4: 1-13 1st Sunday in Lent

When I was a kid, on some Saturday nights in the summer, a large part of our very large family would congregate at an empty house out there in the country for a dance. The adults would be inside, the kids would be out in the yard. The yard looked like a grade school right after lunch.

Down the road half a mile or so, there was and still is, a cemetery, along the road in the woods. None of us young'uns ventured that far from the party, with one exception.

One Saturday evening, just before dark, a group of us boys moseyed down the road and stopped right in front of the cemetery. Our fearless leader was my uncle Lloyd, the oldest of the bunch. He was probably twelve or thirteen. Every last one of us were just a little uncomfortable looking out across the graveyard.

Actually we were more than a little uncomfortable, we were scared. Never being one to pass up a good opportunity, my dad's baby brother started to relate a series of well known and undeniable spooky tales about that place, that he was making up as he went along.

Always the master at reading his audience, just at the best possible moment, Lloyd said, “I'm getting out of here!” and started running back down the road. The result was a stampede of young boys.

The Mediterranean area of the world is ripe with a deep rooted belief in spirits. That is the basis of our Gospel reading today. It is commonly called “The Temptation of Jesus”. The story is not only in all three of the Synoptic Gospels, but it is placed in the exact same place in each of them. Coming immediately after Jesus' baptism by John in the Jordan River.

Jesus has had the Holy Spirit, the Holy Ghost, descend on Him then and there. He is filled to the brim. The voice of God has called Him “My Son”.

At this point, every Mediterranean native knows what must, and will happen next. Jesus will automatically be tested by spirits to see if these two compliments are indeed true. Jesus knows it too. He is a Mediterranean native himself. He has grown up there. He lives there. The customs of the Jewish people who live there and the Mediterranean people as a whole are His customs too.

Jesus does what needs to be done. He walks away from the Jordan River straight into the desert, the wilderness, the well known and undeniable home of a plethora and multitude of spirits, the bad kind. “Where for forty days He was tempted by the devil”, their fearless leader.

The biggest bible study book I own was written by Matthew Henry about the year 1700, he says “the richest ship is the pirate's prize”.

The term “forty days” probably does not mean an exact calendar day count. Forty appears over 150 times in our bible. Forty days and forty nights is used twenty four times. It just means an extended period of time. Try fasting for forty days and see how long it seems to you. Actually fasting just means not eating from sunrise to sunset.

Luke tells us Jesus “ate nothing at all during those days”. He's Jesus, He can do that sort of thing.

The Mediterranean people, even today are fond of wearing garments or amulets to ward off evil spirits. Blue is a color especially prized in those endeavors. They paint the trim around their doors and windows blue for that purpose. Ebay and Amazon websites are full of Spanish and Italian amulets for protection against evil spirits.

We're not told that Jesus wore or carried anything like that. He's Jesus. Luke says, “For forty days He was tempted by the devil”.

We do not hear the devil's voice until the end of the forty days, though we are told he tempted Jesus throughout His time in the desert. At the end of the forty days we hear both the devil's and Jesus' voices. The devil is tempting Jesus with what should be his strongest arguments.

They are alone and Jesus is truly hungry, all He has to do is turn a stone into bread. There is no one there. No one is going to see it. It would be sooo easy. Just like picking an apple off your neighbor's tree.

The devil just wants Jesus to prove that He is the Son of God. Both to himself, the devil, and Jesus as well.

The devil tries again from another angle. He tries to trick Jesus into a compromise by suggesting that he may not actually be the devil. God would not give the devil authority over the entire world. This tack fails as well. He tries again from yet another angle and with a stronger argument.

They go back to town, to Jerusalem, to the very top of the Temple. The devil even uses scripture in his taunt. A quote from Psalm 91, verses eleven and twelve, which we just read this morning.

The three temptations we have here, are from three different directions, but they all have one thing in common. They all come from characteristics of mortal men. The first, hunger, a basic need of all human beings. The second, pride and greed also characteristics of the common man. The third was doubt, another flaw of man. Prove to me and to yourself that you are who you think you are.

At this point in His ministry Jesus has yet to do any miracles, but by studying the miracles He does later we can make some observations.

Jesus did not work miracles until He began to preach, after this sojourn in the desert. Jesus only preformed miracles in the presence of His followers, for the benefit of confirming faith. He never worked miracles for Himself, and He did not ever admit He was the Son of God to anyone.

This story could be arguably considered the most powerful of the Gospel narratives because it would have had to come directly from Jesus' own lips. Luke's purpose in adding it was probably to present Jesus as John the Baptist predicted: the “more powerful one”.

Jesus has the power and He wields it and directs it toward the forces of evil, spirits and demons. Not the kind you can feel and touch. Not the kind you can see and hold a conversation with. It's probably a good thing this whole episode took place in the middle of the desert with no one else around.

Otherwise there very well could have been some injuries in the stampede.

Amen.