Temptation and Trust

Luke 4:1-13

As I read this text I can’t help but imagine an infomercial for “The True Identity Challenge.”  I imagine a devil figure dressed in red with a flaming pitchfork.  Do you want to know who the real Son of God is?  In this 40 day reading guide with step-by-step instructions you can test the identity of the real Son of God.  First, say, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”  The real Son of God will resist your temptation despite his hunger.  Second, say, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please.  If you, then, will worship me, it will be all yours.”  The real Son of God will resist your temptation by saying “worship only the Lord.”  Thirdly, say, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.”  Again, the real Son of God will resist your temptation.  Jesus’ ability to resist your temptation will be the proof that he is indeed the Son of God.  You can have your very own copy of this step-by-step guide for only $40.  To purchase this 40 day reading guide dial 1-800-Son-O-God.  If you make your purchase in the next five minutes we will throw in a free copy of how to protect your own identity as a child of God.

Temptation is all around us.  Want to be tempted?  Turn on the television.  Each day we are exposed to thousands of advertisements.  Open the advertisements in a magazine and be exposed to the pressure to have flawless external beauty.  Walk through the grocery store, especially when you are hungry and be tempted by junk food.  Listen to the radio and hear about the newest car or the new way to lose weight.  Talk to your friend and find out the latest gossip.  Seriously, temptation is all around us.  Not a day goes by without temptations being thrown at us, whether we seek them out or not.  Jesus was not exempt from that temptation.  Jesus, as one who was fully human, was tempted.  He understands what it is like to be tempted.  Now Jesus wasn’t tempted with new technology or a new car.  He wasn’t tempted by the new flavor of ice cream or the new clothing color for the season.  He wasn’t tempted by weight loss schemes or the latest gossip.  He was tempted to prove his identity as the Son of God.

Temptation and trust seem to have a lot in common here.  Jesus trusted who he was.  Jesus trusted his identity as the Son of God.  Since he had trust he was able to resist the temptation being sent his way.  In our lives I think the same is true.  If we trust who we are as children of God then temptation is easier to resist.  One author puts it this way, “To the degree that we trust God for our daily needs, for a sense of purpose, for our identity as a child of God, the temptations of the world have, frankly, little appeal.  But to the degree that we allow our natural insecurity to lead us to mistrust God, we are open to the possibility, appeal, and temptation of the proposition that it is all up to us, that God is not able to provide and so we’d better take matters into our own hands.”  Sounds easy, right?  No, not really.  I will be the first to admit that trust is hard to put into practice.  So much around us in our world causes us to put our trust in ourselves or in other things, so that we don’t actually trust God.

I just finished reading an incredible book that focused on trust.  The book, “By Faith, Not By Sight,” is written by Scott MacIntyre.  It is Scott’s story about his first twenty plus years as a singer, pianist, and songwriter.  So what does music have to do with trust?  Well, Scott was vision impaired from birth, and while not completely blind, he suffered from severe tunnel vision.  He started making music by ear when he was very young and then sang with his family in a family band.  Each time they performed they trusted that God would use their gifts to bless others.  He studied music, wrote music, and recorded music.  The day of his college graduation, with plans and a scholarship to further his education abroad, he was diagnosed with kidney failure.  Throughout the trials of his blindness and life threatening illness he trusted God, at a time when most people might think that God has somehow abandoned them.  After a kidney transplant he goes on to be the first blind performer on season eight of American Idol, reaching out to others with his story, his faith, and his trust in God.  Scott trusted God.

I want you to take a moment to think about what it is that you do trust God with.  Think of just one thing, one thing that you feel confident to trust God with.  Maybe it is your family or friends.  Maybe it is your job or sense of security.  Tuck it away in your mind.  Over the next 40 days of our Lenten journey I would invite you to thank God for that piece of your life and the ability to trust God with it.  Now think of one thing that you are struggling to trust God with.  Maybe it is a relationship or a struggle at work.  Maybe it is uncertainty about the future or finances.  Tuck it away in your mind.  Think about what makes it easier for you to trust God with one thing and not the other.  Over the next 40 days of Lent I would invite you to pray for the ability to give God control of that thing which you are struggling to trust God with.

Let that trust in God become part of your identity not just for Lent, but for forever.  At the core of the temptations that Jesus resisted was the theme of his identity.  The tempter was questioning Jesus’ identity, who he was as the Son of God.  There are days when our very identity is questioned as well.  Who are we?  We are parents, spouses, children, siblings, co-workers, and friends.  Ultimately we are children of God.  That is central to our identity.  There are, however, things and people in our world who want to question that identity.  They want to question who we are as individuals, as Christians and as God’s children.  That identity stems from our ability to trust God, our ability to know that God sent God’s only son into this world that we should not perish, but that we should have eternal life.  So, when the storms of life rage around us.  When the temptations are thrown at us with full force.  Use your identity as a child of God to resist those temptations.  Use your identity as a child of God to trust God, for who God is and for who God has created you to be.  Amen.

Jesus: Hometown Prophet

 Luke 4:21-30

Have you ever returned to your hometown, the place you grew up in, after being away for some time?  If your hometown was small, like mine was, it is likely that you go back and pick up right where you left off.  People still remember you and they are excited to hear about your life, or maybe they have been kept up to date about your life by another family member living in the area.  Often you can quickly catch up on all the gossip and local happenings.  But have you ever tried to be a prophet in your hometown?  Have you mentioned that the schools should consolidate?  Have you mentioned that the local pizza joint seems quiet these days?  Have you suggested that new mayor is needed?  Have you ever tried to speak a word that the locals were maybe not ready to hear?  Today Jesus heads to his hometown.  The lesson he proclaims, after being asked to do in Nazareth what he had done in Capernaum, is that “No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”

This is the exact reason I used, in not so eloquent terms, when someone asked me if I wanted to come back to my home church and be their pastor someday.  I remember saying, you all know me and I know you.  I can’t possibly be your pastor.  Now, I have been back to my home church to preach and lead worship.  They are a very loving group of people and are always very affirmative in my call to ministry.  The day I was ordained, a first for them, was likely one of the proudest moments in their over 120 year history.  Yet, I know there are words that they need to hear that I cannot say to them, because I know them.  There are words they may need to say to me that I cannot hear, because they know me.  There are realities that lie ahead of them that they are not prepared to receive.  There are likely critiques I need to hear that they are not able to tell me.

On a second occasion, after a few years in seminary, the parent of one of my high school classmates and a member of another church in town stopped me in a restaurant to ask if I would come back and be their pastor.  Again, I said no, I would not be a good pastor of the local town church.  I knew those people and they knew me, too.  They knew about who I was as a kid.  They knew about my family.  They knew the car I drove.  They knew about all the choices I had made growing up.  Some of them were even related to me.  Besides it not typically being a good practice to be a pastor in your home church, I knew that I would not be a good pastor for these people.  I knew it would be difficult to be a prophet in my hometown.

Part of the difficulty of being a prophet in your own hometown is that the listeners or the audience know you.  I came here as someone you did not know.  But really the difficulty of being a prophet in your own hometown is two-fold.  The other factor is that you know the other people.  I came here as someone who did not know you.  In my hometown people knew me and I knew them.  I knew about relationships gone bad.  I knew about the personalities they had in school.  I knew who had money and who didn’t.  I knew how they treated other people.  I knew them just as well as they knew me.

The same was true of Jesus.  He knew everything about the people in Nazareth.  In fact, he knew more than the average person would know.  After all, he was God.  So, Jesus shows up in his own hometown and speaks prophetic words.  Just before our text today, Jesus, while in the synagogue, stood up and read this text from the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  After hearing that the locals expected to perform, to be a prophet, to be the person he is in other places.  His response seems to be filled with some reservations.  And I think some of his reservation about this is that he knows these people and they know him.  He doesn’t just know these people; he knows them!  He knows the good, the bad, and even the ugly.  Yet, because the locals know Jesus as their hometown hero they feel entitled.  They feel like they deserve to have Jesus’ care, concern, healing hand, and prophetic nature, because of who they are in relation to Jesus.  They fill entitled to his divine power because they knew him from when he was a kid.  We know that is not how God works though.  God doesn’t work out of requirement or entitlement.  God works where God needs to work, regardless of where we think God should place God’s divine energy and time.

If we look back to the Old Testament, Jeremiah is in a similar situation.  He is being appointed to go and be a prophet, not only in Judah, but to all the nations.  Jeremiah uses his age, his youth, as an excuse to God to use someone else, someone more fit for the job.  He is appointed “over nations and kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”  That is a big job.  He is to be a prophet in his hometown.  He is to proclaim a message to people he knows and people that know him.  He is to speak a word that people may not be ready to hear, let alone to receive.  And Jeremiah is filled with reservations. 

We, too, are often filled with reservations when it comes to being prophets in our own town, our own schools, our own church, We are filled with reservations when it comes to speaking a word that people might not be ready to hear in our own neighborhoods, our own jobs, and our own families.  We know the people whom we are called to speak to and they know us.  Despite the odds we may feel we are against, we are surrounded by a promise of protection.  In Jeremiah, we hear the words, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.”  And in Luke as the townspeople drove Jesus out of town in hopes to “hurl him off the cliff,” he was protected as “he passed through the midst of them.”  I firmly believe if God protects these two prophets, Jesus and Jeremiah, then God will protect us, too.  Specifically, I find these words of protection are very comforting.  Before we were formed God knew us.  Before we took our first breath on earth God knew us.  Before we spoke words of wisdom and intellect God knew us.  So, I would challenge us to speak that word that others might not be ready to hear and trust that God will protect us.  I would challenge us to be prophets in this town and know that God will not let us be hurled off the cliff.  If God protected the speakers of prophetic words in the past then God will protect us as we speak prophetic words in today’s world.  Amen.