Praise from the Desert

Matthew 4:1-11

What do you tell someone who comes and asks you what have been the highpoints of your life? If you have a photo album or are particularly “with it” and have a digital collection of your photos, what do you show someone who wants to know the most important events in your life?

I would imagine that Jesus has a cooler way of showing pictures than photo albums or digital collections of photos. If, when you get to heaven, you have the opportunity to sit down with Jesus and ask him, what would he say were the highlights of his life on earth?

Parades are wonderful. We celebrate today the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, a parade with palm branches waving and crowds of people shouting Hosannas. Do you think that Jesus would show you pictures of that day as the highlight of his life on earth?

Or maybe he would show you film of the time he raised Lazarus from the dead; that was pretty spectacular. How about walking on water? Calming the storm? Casting out demons?

Those are all pretty spectacular events but I think the most meaningful experience in the life of Jesus occurred at the very beginning of his ministry when he went to see his cousin John who was baptizing people.

It is not clear at this point what Jesus knew about himself and his future. At the age of twelve he had an understanding that he had a special relationship with God, his father. It was not until much later at the Mount of Transfiguration when he was revealed in his heavenly glory that he knew he was to go to Jerusalem and die. After his wilderness experience when he announced his ministry in the synagogue in Nazareth, he read from Isaiah 61 indicating that he knew he was the Messiah, the promised one of God who had come.

But at his baptism I believe there was still some uncertainty about who he was. He was the son of Mary but who was his father? So when he was baptized and saw heaven torn open, the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove and heard these words, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” that was an extraordinary moment in his life. It was a moment of clarity for him. If he was wondering about the mystery of his life he received an answer that day and immediately after this he went into the desert to fast and pray for forty days, to process this revelation that had come to him, to hear God speak to him about his ministry, and to face the temptation of the devil.

Jesus heard from his heavenly father words of affirmation and approval. It doesn’t get better than that.

The triumphal entry into Jerusalem was wonderful, but after all, it was only the praise of men and women and he knew how fickle that praise could be.

In John’s gospel, chapter 2, Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast and many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.
24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.  25 He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.

There is something insubstantial about the praise of people. Sometimes people are just being nice and not saying what they really think. Sometimes people praise but do not really have an understanding of what you do and so their praise can be discounted. Sometimes people praise but do not really know who you are deep down and so their praise is conditional.

People can praise you one week and then attack you the next. I don’t think there was much of an overlap between the people who praised Jesus when he entered Jerusalem and then shouted for him to be crucified later that week. The two crowds were made up of different people. But it is not outside of the realm of human character to change that quickly.

We like to hear good things about ourselves from others but what we crave, deep inside our being, is to receive this praise from God, our creator. In the parable of the talents the ones who took their gift and made good use of it were greeted by their master at the end with this affirmation, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” When we arrive at heaven at the end of our lives, this is a greeting we would be delighted to receive.

This greeting will be fresh water to our thirsty souls because God knows us completely, he knows the work we did in his name, he knows what we were capable of doing, he knows what our motives were in what we did and knowing all this he gives his approval.

When I was in the desert this past weekend, I meditated on Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and it became clear to me that this is what I long for, to hear God say to me, “You are my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.” I slept out in the desert under the stars and looked and prayed and asked God for this word for me.

I hope to receive this word from God in this life, but whether or not I hear it while my feet walk this earth, I have hope I will hear it when I come into his presence. I have hope that I will hear Jesus say to me, “Welcome Jack. I am so proud of you for all the work you did in my name. You have been a faithful servant.”

This is my deep longing.

Jesus received a wonderful word of affirmation and approval from God at his baptism that I would think he carried with him through all the stresses of his public ministry. This was reinforced when he met with Moses and Elijah at the Mount of Transfiguration. It was these experiences that helped Jesus turn his face toward Jerusalem and his crucifixion. In his obedience to his call Jesus has been elevated so that he will receive wonderful words of affirmation when he sits on his throne and all creation from all time will praise him.

I hope also to receive wonderful words of affirmation but that will be in some measure dependent on me making good choices and this leads to the text from Matthew 4. When Jesus was led into the wilderness, the devil came to him to tempt him and in those temptations and Jesus’ responses to those temptations, we can learn how to make similarly good choices that will allow us one day to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The first temptation came at the end of Jesus’ forty days and nights in the desert, forty days and nights without eating. The longest I have ever fasted was three days and nights and I know how difficult it is to fight the desire to eat to satisfy my hunger. I have been told that it gets easier in the days after that, but I do not think it stays easy and after forty days and nights, Jesus was hungry.

The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

What was the temptation for Jesus? Jesus knew he had powers and the devil tempted him to use those powers for his personal benefit. Jesus was hungry, he had the power to make bread out of stones. Why not do this? Where was the harm in taking care of himself?

This is a pretty human temptation.

In the Jim Carey movie, Bruce Almighty, Jim Carey’s character is given the powers of God and what does he do with God’s powers? He decides he likes the clothes he sees in a window display and uses his power to trade his clothes for the mannequin’s clothes. He sees some gang members who had beat him up and gets his revenge. He uses his new powers to get his girlfriend to come back to him and to love him. He uses his new powers to get news stories that make him successful as a newscaster. He uses his powers to make his life better and richer.

What would I do if I had God’s powers? Of course I would heal people who were ill. I would feed people who were hungry. But I would also be sitting in bed feeling lazy and command a breakfast to appear before me on a tray. “That’s good, but a little more onion in the potatoes. And peach jam, not strawberry this morning.”

Instead of working so hard to prepare a sermon, I would simply command the sermon to appear on my computer.

If I woke up and my back was sore or if I had a headache, I would simply heal myself and get on with the day. I increasingly dislike traveling by plane and so I would simply transport myself from place to place, as happened with Phillip in the book of Acts.

We don’t have this power but what do we do with the gifts God gives us through the Holy Spirit? Have you ever seen pastors and faith healers use their gift to draw people to themselves and develop a great reputation and make a lot of money.

When I came to Rabat, there was a Liberian who worked as an administrator in the church. After many years of absence he made a trip back home and while there explored options for setting up a business. He had in mind that he could buy clothes or other things here and then ship them to Liberia. So he asked around and what he was told was the if he really wanted to make money, the best way to do that was to start a church.

It is dangerous to receive money for doing God’s work. John Wimber wrote a book about his healing ministry and one of the things he said is that he never accepted money for any of the healings that he prayed for.

Pastors receive money from their congregations. I receive money from this congregation. But it is a danger. There are Christians in the world who are supported by their churches to do what they do. And that too is a danger. Anytime we receive income for doing the work of God in the world, it is a danger.

The danger is that we begin to do what we do to earn a living rather than to serve God with the gifts he has given us. I remember when I was a pastor in the 1980s and feeling I should leave the church I was pastoring but was slow to do so because I was dependant on the money I received from the church.

There are people who are living overseas who feel trapped because they no longer want to live overseas but are dependant on the money they receive for doing so.

And in a less innocent way, there are those who start new churches as a way of earning a living and disguise this pursuit of money as a godly act of service.

The devil comes to us and says, “Use your gifts to satisfy your needs and desires,” and we need to resist.

There was a second temptation.
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.  6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
”‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a
stone.’”

There was a rabbinical tradition that the Messiah would reveal himself by standing on the roof of the Temple. At the corner where the Royal Porch and Solomon’s Porch met, there was a drop of 150 meters into the valley of the brook Kidron. If Jesus had appeared from above on the corner of the roof and jumped off, landing safely, unharmed, he would have been revealed as the great wonder-worker who would save Israel.

This is the temptation to take a shortcut to get to where you believe God has called you to go.

Jesus had an understanding that he was the Messiah and although he may not have know the details of how his life would end, I think he knew it would not be easy. All the difficulties could be bypassed if he only demonstrated to the people of Israel that he was the Messiah. The easy route, the shortcut to where you are going, this was the temptation presented to Jesus.

This too is our temptation. We believe God is calling us to do something and when we see a shortcut we want to take it.

There are many in our congregation who believe it is God’s will for them to go to Spain. Because it is difficult to get a visa to go to Spain, the shortcut is taken of going illegally. The shortcut is not easy and it is not really very short. What is imagined as a one year trip turns into three or four or seven or eight years of struggle, but this is what shortcuts often do. What seems easy turns out not to be the case.

I was in the desert with Louwrens Scheepers, the pastor of the international church in Fes. Like me, he is committed to staying in Morocco for a long time. To live in Morocco means having to learn Arabic and French, so he and his family made plans to go to France for this next year to study French in preparation for his future years of service to the church in Fes. But just before the desert retreat, he received news that it is not likely he will be given a visa to go to France and study. He is from South Africa and the French consulate was not satisfied with the papers and letters he submitted.

So what should he do? If he is like many in this church, he will find a way to go illegally to France to do what he believes God has called him to do. But he will not do that. If he does not get a visa, he will find another way to study French. He is viewing this a way that God is directing him in this next year.

When we give in to the temptation to take a shortcut to where we believe God is calling us, how is that we can receive from God his direction in our lives? God often directs us through circumstances. When a door closes, we look around and see where it is we are being directed. If we do not get accepted in one college, we look to another and God often directs us in this way. What should we do if a college says no? Go anyway and hang around and hope somehow it will work out? When we pay no attention to the closed doors and pursue any and every means of getting where we want to go, we have stopped being directed by God and are making ourselves masters of our lives and following where we want to go, not where God wants us to go.

God has a plan for our lives but when we take control and determine to go where we think we should go, at all costs, when we take what seems like a shortcut, we give in to this second temptation.

There was a third temptation.
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.  9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

All the devil offered Jesus was one day to be his but this was again a huge shortcut that gave him the kingdoms of the world without having to suffer to get it. This temptation is to get what we want without having to work or suffer for it.

John Fischer has lyrics to a song that express the desirability of this temptation. The song is titled, Nobody Wants to Die.
You want to have wisdom
Without making mistakes
You want to have money
Without the work that it takes
You want to be loved
But you don’t want the heartaches.

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord
Nobody wants to die
Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord
Nobody wants to die.

You want to be forgiven
Without taking the blame
You want to eat forbidden fruit
Without leaving a stain
You want the glory
But you don’t want the shame.

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord
Nobody wants to die
Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord
Nobody wants to die.

You want to be a winner
Without taking a loss
You want to be a disciple
Without counting the cost
You want to follow Jesus
But you don’t want to go to the cross.

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord
Nobody wants to die
Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord
Nobody wants to die

Growth does not come without pain and difficulty. Our character is shaped not by the easy times but by the difficult times in our lives. When we rejoice in our sufferings because we know these light and momentary troubles are shaping us to be like Jesus, then we are growing as God wants us to grow.

The deepest part of our being wants to hear from God, our creator, that we are loved, that we are valued and that our service for him is appreciated. I believe this is what we will hear one day. That we are loved and valued is evident because of the death of Jesus for us. We will come into the presence of God not because of our efforts, but because of our relationship with Christ.

But I hope also to hear the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I want to live my life in such a way that God is pleased with what I do.

If you also want to hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” when you face the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness, resist the one who tempts you. When you are tempted to use the gifts of God for your own personal benefit, remember that only God truly knows what you need.

In Bruce Almighty, the Jim Carey character is overwhelmed with all the requests he receives from people praying so he simplifies the situation and sets up all the prayers as emails and answers all the emails with “Yes.”

The consequence is a disaster. Everyone gets what they pray for and the world is a mess. At the end God and Bruce have a conversation about this.

God: You made a mess of things, huh?

Bruce: I just gave them what they wanted.

God: Yeah, but since when does anyone know what they want?

We confuse what we need with what we want. Only God knows the difference. So use your gifts for God. Resist the temptation to take care of your personal needs through the use of your gifts. Make your service to God first and trust him to provide you with what you need. There is nothing wrong with receiving money for being a pastor or for in some other way serving the church, but don’t allow your financial needs to dictate what it is you do and where it is you go.

Beware of the easy road, the shortcut. It starts out looking easy and then becomes impossible.

Fortunately for us, Jesus resisted the temptations offered by the devil and he entered Jerusalem to face the suffering and death that offers us hope for eternal life. He resurrected from the dead and has been raised to his place of glory.

We too have a path to follow. May we follow his example by being obedient, seeking God’s direction, not fearing what will come, being willing to face trials and difficulties and then may we hear the words of affirmation and approval when we come into his presence, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”