A Legitimate Need In An Illegitimate Way
Some Housekeeping:
Matthew Part 2 begins on Monday! Books arrive this weekend; get your book Sunday at Asbury, or email Sandie and get one in the mail.
I preached on the testing in the wilderness these past 3 weeks. The sermons are here.
Our next churchwide Bible study is NEXT WEDNESDAY, 9/13. 6:30-8:00 PM. It will only have been 2 weeks since the August study, but don’t miss this one. We only have 1 per month. The remaining dates are:
October 11
November 8
Matthew 4:1-4
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” 4 But he answered, “It is written,
“ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
In yesterday’s reading, we saw how the Father gives the Spirit to the Son at the Baptism of Jesus. The Spirit then leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted.
The Temptation of Jesus is a re-enactment of Israel’s temptation and wanderings in the desert following the Exodus from Egypt, and each of the three temptations involves being willing to trust that God will provide provision on God’s timing.
It seems as if the devil heard the Father’s words at the baptism: “This is my beloved Son.” And it is as the Son that Jesus is tempted:
“Since you are the Son, why don’t you...?”
There is nothing wrong with being hungry and needing food. In fact, Jesus’s response shows that eating bread is not the problem— “Man does not live by bread alone.” The problem is that bread without learning to trust God sets us up for failure.
“The temptation from Satan, then, is that Jesus should distrust God by taking the responsibility for his life on himself. Jesus remembers, however, that trustful submission to God’s word is as necessary for true existence as food itself.” —David Bauer, The Gospel of the Son of God
Jesus replies to each temptation with a verse from Deuteronomy 6-8, which in its original context is a sermon from Moses to the Israelites in the wilderness, preparing them to enter the Promised Land.
As we will see in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’s worldview is that God can be trusted to provide all our needs, no matter what, and so therefore we ought to live without anxiety.
Where do you need to choose to trust God’s provision today?
NOTE: We have been reading through Psalms, and until we get to Psalm 150, I’m going to keep posting at the bottom of each Matthew post daily commentary on that day’s psalm. (On the weekends, it will just be that day’s psalm by itself.) If you’ve read this far, you are an over-achiever. —AF
We Praise Because God is a Just Judge - Psalm 149
1 Praise the Lord!
Sing to the Lord a new song,
his praise in the assembly of the godly!
2 Let Israel be glad in his Maker;
let the children of Zion rejoice in their King!
3 Let them praise his name with dancing,
making melody to him with tambourine and lyre!
4 For the Lord takes pleasure in his people;
he adorns the humble with salvation.
5 Let the godly exult in glory;
let them sing for joy on their beds.
6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats
and two-edged swords in their hands,
7 to execute vengeance on the nations
and punishments on the peoples,
8 to bind their kings with chains
and their nobles with fetters of iron,
9 to execute on them the judgment written!
This is honor for all his godly ones.
Praise the Lord!
This is a song of praise, and one of the reasons it calls for praise is because God executes vengeance. That might strike us as strange, but can you imagine a judge that refused to address wrongs? The reason we can love our enemies is because we trust that God is the perfect judge and he will make all things right in the end.
A Close Look at the Fall of Man
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.
What do we know about the serpent?
He was made by God;
He is a beast, i.e., not a man;
He is wise. The other times the Hebrew word “arum” is used in the Bible, it has a positive sense, like “prudent” or “clever.” Here, the serpent is using his wisdom to undermine the harmony of God’s creation.
So, who is the serpent? Some kind of spiritual being who is in rebellion against God. Putting together what we learn from the rest of the Bible, we can see that the serpent is the devil, who is some kind of fallen angel.
We are totally free in our actions, and totally accountable for our actions. But it is also true that there is a dark power that tempts and trips and teases us into making the wrong choice. Who among us has not felt it? If you have ever given over to sudden, snarling rage, for example, you know exactly what I’m talking about: you made the choice to be angry, but there was also a strong pull towards anger, as if something were urging you on.
He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
Notice how the serpent insidiously flips around what God actually said.
Rather than focusing on ALL the trees that God gave the man and the woman, the serpent draws her attention to the ONE tree that’s forbidden.
Whenever we focus on what we lack rather than on what we have, we are imitating the devil’s voice, so to speak.
The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”
The serpent’s work is already bearing fruit:
Although the woman correctly states that God gave the humans the trees in the garden for food, note how she nevertheless focuses on the prohibition, and even intensifies it, as God, as far as we know, has not forbidden them to touch the fruit.
“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
As we will shortly see, it is literally true that they do not drop dead when they eat from the tree, but it is the case that their innocence immediately dies, and, once lost, can never be regained. And, literal death inevitably follows. The serpent cleverly mixes in just enough truth to bait the woman.
The devil is a liar. Don’t ever believe what he says.
And here’s the other thing: the man and the woman already are like God. What do we read on page one of the Bible?
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
So, the serpent tricks the woman into forgetting what God has already given her, namely his own image.
See what’s at stake when you focus on what you lack rather than on what you possess? You end up totally forgetting the most important things about you.
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.
Although God’s prohibition was as clear as possible, the woman decides that she knows best and reaches out and takes and eats the fruit. She is “wise in her own eyes.”
She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
I’m convinced that passivity is the primal temptation of men.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
They were beguiled by the serpent’s prediction that they would become god-like, but the only result of their sin is their awareness of their own shame.
Sin always works that way: promises the world, and delivers woe.
Today’s Scripture
What Temptation Is
Each of the devil's temptations is about receiving something legitimate but in an illegitimate way.
- Jesus is hungry--food is a legitimate need;
- Jesus is Lord--having the authority and splendor of the world's kingdoms is his right;
- Jesus is Messiah--it is right that all the people in Jerusalem see his power.
The problem is that each of those legitimate ends can only come through suffering, and this is the temptation that the devil puts before Jesus: have what you need or what is rightfully yours, but have it without suffering for it.
Remember, though, that it's Cross before Crown.
What temptations are you facing today?
Today’s Scripture:
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Whatever It Takes
Whatever it takes, get rid of the temptations to sin you have around you.
Today’s Scripture
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The Gospel According to Mark
For the next 2 months, I'm going to be reading and blogging through the Gospel of Mark. Here's what you need to know.
These Are Saint Peter's Memoirs
The earliest tradition we have (dating from the end of the 1st century AD!) links Mark to the Apostle Peter, and Marks's Gospel is filled with the kind of eyewitness details that one would expect from Peter's preaching: details that do not make any difference to the plot, but are the kind odd details an eyewitness would remember. For example, when Jesus is about to feed the 5,000, Mark tells us, "Then he commanded them all to sit down on the green grass" (Mark 6:39, emphasis added), or when Jesus heals Jairus's daughter, Mark, who is writing in Greek, records the Aramaic phrase that Jesus actually used: "Taking her by the hand he said to her, 'Talitha cumi,' which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, arise'" (Mark 5:41). Neither the detail about the green grass nor the recounting of Jesus's literal words makes any difference to the story; they are the kind of details that Peter the eyewitness would never forget. There are many more eyewitness details like this.
Mark Has Arranged Peter's Preaching to Make a Point
And yet Mark has done more than just put down on paper Peter’s eyewitness testimony about Jesus: Mark has shaped his material to bring a particular question into prominence. That question is the central question of history, Who Is Jesus? That is the question that Jesus puts to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” (Mark 8:29), and it is the question that ultimately every person must answer for himself or herself.
Mark's is the Shortest Gospel
Mark begins not with the birth of Jesus--as do Matthew and Luke--nor with a meditation on on the cosmic significance of Jesus--as does John. Rather, Mark begins with the wild prophet John the Baptist baptizing the adult Jesus in the Judean Wilderness. From that startling beginning, Mark's Gospel hurtles forward, skipping over much of the teaching material in the other gospels (there is no "Sermon on the Mount" in Mark, e.g.) and the famous parables of Jesus, all leading up to the horrifying crucifixion of the Son of God. Mark's is a mysterious, powerful little book.
Let's Begin
And so, I'd like to invite you to read along with me each weekday, starting today and finishing on Tuesday, July 2. Each day's reading will take less than 5 minutes to read--you can do this. To help, each weekday I'll write a brief reflection on that day's reading. Here's today's:
The baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan by John the Baptist seems to have been one of the spiritual highpoints of Jesus's life, and the moment when his identity of the incarnate Son of God was confirmed:
9 At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Mark 1:9-11
And yet immediately after that moment of spiritual intensity, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to be tested:
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
Mark 1:12-13
Here's the point: don't make the mistake of thinking that the hard times you're facing mean that the Lord has abandoned you. In fact, it might be because of his love for you that the hard times have come: diamonds are only made when pressure is applied.
Today's Scripture
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If you sign up for my Andrew Forrest newsletter, I’ll send you a white paper I’ve written called “The Simple Technique Anyone Can Immediately Use to Become a Better Communicator”.
There Is No Shortcut Through Suffering
The essence of the devil's testing of Jesus in the Wilderness in Matthew 4 is about suffering. The crucial question: is there a shortcut through suffering for Jesus?
Jesus and the devil are in agreement: Jesus will reign in the end. The question is, can he receive his glory without going through suffering? Look carefully and see that the temptations are all about a shortcut through suffering: food instead of fasting, safety instead of danger, the crown without the cross.
The temptation for Jesus to avoid suffering must have been nearly irresistible.
Nearly irresistible, but not ultimately so. Jesus resists. He knows that, for whatever reason, there is no shortcut through suffering in this life. For whatever reason, the cross comes before the crown.
I wish I could tell you that it is possible to live life without difficulty, but that would be a lie. The good news, though, is that there is nothing unusual about your difficulties--everyone has trials. The even better news is that God redeems all that he allows, and that our "present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18).
So, there's no shortcut through suffering. It's just one foot in front of the other. But, be hopeful: the Lord has something amazing planned at the end.
Today's Scripture