Sermon: February 26, 2023, First Sunday in Lent
Preacher: Rev Ryan Slifka
Scriptures: Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Matthew 4:1-11
“Lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil.” These words are part of the Lord’s Prayer, the prayer we say every Sunday in worship. A prayer we say together with millions, if not billions, of Christians around the world. This is Jesus’ basic prayer, his essential prayer. And one of the few key things he included is prayer for strength against temptation. Suggesting that the subject is not only worthy of our attention—it’s something we’ll face. With at least some regularity.
It’s worth pondering something first, though. What do we mean by “temptation?” Nestle has a brand of ice cream called “Temptations.” I’m also reminded of the late comedian Norm Macdonald’s stand up bit about dessert carts somehow taking on a sexual tone: “can I tempt you with dessert?” he asks, eyebrows raised. This is the first Sunday in Lent, and people will often give up things like chocolate, sugar, coffee, Facebook. We think of temptation as a kind of guilty pleasure. Stuff that’s bad for our health—or our wasteline. Temptation is indulging in something we shouldn’t.
Which, fair enough. Praying for the willpower to resist further complicating our diabetes, or for the strength to say “no” to an extramarital affair are in line with the spirit of Jesus’ prayer. Definitely so.
But there are other kinds of temptations. Ones that aren’t so obvious as abstaining from illicit items. Today’s scripture shows us other temptations that are just as dangerous. Maybe even more so.
The first Sunday in Lent always features the temptation of Jesus from one of the four gospels. This year it’s Matthew’s version. Jesus has just been baptized, then the Holy Spirit immediately drives him out to the desert. To the wilderness. And he’s not just there for a silent, rejuvenating retreat. We’re told that he’s traversing cacti and dry brush specifically to be tempted. By the devil, no less.
This journey in the wilderness is a long one—forty days. Forty’s a big biblical number. The one that’s important here is the forty years the Israelites and Moses wandered in the desert after they were freed from slavery in Egypt. Though God provided for their every need—bread from heaven, water from the rock—they constantly doubted. Lost faith, gave up, and longed to return to slavery. Where they’d at least be fed. There they were tempted. And constantly failed. Over and over again.
Here Jesus is re-living that wilderness journey with Israel in the desert. He’s out there to face temptation just like they did. This is when the devil swoops in. And the devil tempts him three times.
Now, normally, we’d walk through and talk about each temptation in a sermon like this one. But the truth is that there’s just so much to each of them that we can give each individual temptation short shrift by looking at them all at the same time. So today we’re just going to look at the first temptation. The first one.
First, the devil challenges Jesus to turn some rocks into bread. Not only could he feed himself. He could also feed everybody. A walking world food grains bank. If you really are God’s son, shouldn’t be a problem.
Now, Jesus has been fasting for forty days, starving, hasn’t had a bite. The temptation that’s front and center here is in our hunger, our weakness. Our longing to be filled. Literal hunger’s one thing. Leave a person hungry enough that they’ll steal, they’ll kill. Displace people and nations to fill it. But it’s not the only hunger we have. We need a place to live, so we’ll put up with an abusive partner to keep it. We long for physical intimacy so we turn to online imagery or find someone to use. We need relief from day-to-day stress, and so when someone holds out a handful of pills, we’ll gladly take it, regardless of the dark road it leads down. We may think ourselves above such things, but that’s usually because we haven’t been in a situation of true desperation before. If Jesus was tempted at his weakest and most vulnerable, then we are, too. We are greatly tempted by our base needs. So much so that we’ll use the devil’s means to fill them. Regardless of the eventual cost.
Unlike us (or the Israelites in the desert), though, Jesus quite easily resists. Sure, maybe Jesus could have just snapped his fingers into a kosher steak dinner. But that’s not what he does. He replies with the Bible. He quotes Deuteronomy, Moses long sermon from the Old Testament: “We don’t live on bread alone,” he says, “but every word that comes from the mouth of God.” “We don’t live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Now, some interpreters have said that Jesus is saying it’s the spiritual that matters more than the physical. But the inclusion of “give us our daily bread” in the Lord’s Prayer, too, suggests no superiority. And Jesus himself does justice by giving literal bread to the hungry. Life really stinks without food.
What Jesus is saying that bread alone, our physical needs alone being satisfied is not enough. I mean, the fact that we’re the least physically deprived society in human history and one of the least happy is a great testimony to this truth. It’s not the only cause of rising rates of anxiety, depression and despair, but it’s a pretty big one. That’s because we have an even deeper longing inside us to be filled, a longing for the transcendent, the true, the beautiful, the good. Our basest hunger is for God.
We may have everything we need to keep our blood pumping and our lungs breathing, but without the everlasting grace of our Creator, our souls will eventually wither and die. Life without bread is starvation. Life without God isn’t really life at all. Our first temptation is to believe that bread alone is enough for true living. And it’s just not working. It never has.
I mean, the first commandment God gives to Moses on Sinai as the Israelites wandered the desert: you shall have no other gods before me. Which they broke. And look at the scripture we heard from Genesis. Eve is tempted by the snake with the prospect of “being like God knowing good from evil.” And when you’re like God, you don’t need God. It’s the first step on the fall into human destruction.
It’s the first temptation of Jesus in the desert, but it’s also the first temptation, the primordial temptation of humanity that sets the pattern for all others. To believe that bread alone is enough for true living.
And it’s a temptation Jesus resists. Unlike Adam and Eve. Unlike the Israelites before him. He resists it here, and he resists it all the way to the cross. Suggesting that, we, too must resist. For our own good, the good of our neighbour, and the good of God’s beloved world. But how do we do that?
Should we just try harder? Should we maybe double our efforts? Commit to being more sincere? I don’t know about you, but the belief that bread is enough to live on is a pretty powerful one. And you ever just tried to will yourself into faith? You ever try to overcome doubt with pure willpower? I know how that’s worked out for me. How’s that working out for you? Resisting any kind of temptation is hard enough as it is. We need something more.
We need something more. And the good news, dear friends, is remembering that we already have it. You’ll remember that just before this scene is Jesus’ baptism. Jesus’ baptism where the heaven’s opened, and the Holy Spirit dove down, and rested on him. Along with a voice proclaiming “this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The truth is that Jesus, even Jesus himself, God’s beloved Son, did not overcome temptation alone, nor did he do so by sheer human strength or willpower. But he did so with God. By the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The same one that descended on his baptism. Though he wandered alone, though he was struck by hunger, through he was tempted in every single way, his baptism was his constant reminder, of the promise of God’s power and presence with him. Even in the desert, even at a time of great aloneness, great hunger and deprivation. He was able to resist. Because God’s strength was his. Even though he could not see or even feel it.
And this is the same promise of our own baptism. It is a sign and seal of our belonging to God, and our union with Christ. That, by grace, we are children of the living God. That God is for us, and God’s own Spirit is with us, at work in us, even if we can’t see it, even if we can’t feel it. And that whatever our temptation may be, even the temptation to live without God. That his strength—a strength that has overcome all sin, and thrown down death itself—that this strength is our strength, and we don’t face any temptation alone, and that with God any and all other temptation can be overcome. It’s the only way.
Friends, like Jesus says, we can not live on bread alone. We live in an age where we have been told that we can. Not only that we can, but we are constantly tempted to believe that we should.
But we know the truth. You know the truth. We know our own weakness, our own deepest hungers have yet to be satisfied. We know that we live not by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God. And the Word from God’s mouth today is that in life, in our trials and temptations… we are not alone. In your life, in your trials and temptations, you are not alone. Not only is there a God… but this God is with you and this God is for you. Though the first temptation is to believe that you can do this life without him, even though the first temptation is to believe that you face this world alone… Even when you can’t see him, even when you can’t feel him, he is here, he is there, and his own Spirit is at work in you as a source of infinite love, and boundless strength.
We can’t live on bread alone. But the good news is that we don’t have to. Because a table is set for us, even in the midst of our enemies… one set with a cup that overflows and will never cease.
Let us pray.
When we face temptation's power,
lonely, struggling, filled with dread,
Christ, who knew the tempter's hour,
come and be our living bread.
By your grace, protect, preserve us
lest we fall, your trust betray.
Yours, above all other voices,
be the Word we hear, obey.[i]
Amen.
[i] Herman Stuempfle, “Jesus, Tempted in the Desert,” Voices United #115.