Tag Archives: temptation

please take care of me

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“You aren’t going to leave me, are you?”

When you are getting to know someone too good to be true, you have questions.  You acknowledge their greatness. You ask them for help. You acknowledge your weakness.

Then, after all that, as you are starting to relax a bit, you are suddenly seized with fear. What if they aren’t going to stick around? What if they aren’t going to follow through? What is they are going to be like everyone else we have ever known in our lives who sometime, someday, doesn’t come through?

We get so used to people who don’t keep their word, who let us down. We are familiar with the feeling of betrayal, of abandonment, of disappointment. We watch every leader we know prove to be human, at best.

And so, having made all our requests known, we stop and we say

“Don’t lead us into temptation.”

“Do deliver us from evil.”

God, please don’t bring us this far and leave us. Don’t bring us through the week and into the weekend and then leave us alone, facing temptation.

Don’t do to us what you did to your own son.

There it is.

We want to be able to trust God but we somehow can’t.  We look at what happens to people who follow him, who even are Him, and what we see undermines what we think should happen.

Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted by the devil. By the Spirit. Just two chapters ago. And Jesus survived the direct testing. Now he says, “Ask the Father not to do the first part with you, and to just do the second part.”

Maybe we don’t have to understand the theology to say these words. Maybe we just have to give voice to our fears.

when help comes.

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Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. Matthew 4: 11

How far will a text  stretch to absorb the applications we try to make?

We often take what people say and we add to it, we misquote it, we leave words out, we add implications.  It happens all the time in real life, in the life that we live as we walk around work.

But how far can we go when it comes to the words in the Bible?

I mean, in the middle of testing Jesus, the devil cites Psalm 91. “He will command his angels” the devil says, telling Jesus to jump. And Jesus refuses.

And then we get to the end of this round of testing and the devil leaves. And angels show up to take care of Jesus.

Here’s the reason for asking about texts. When we go back to Psalm 91, it is about protection, it is about angels, it is about trampling on lions and snakes.

My symbolism side want to say this:

The devil is known as a serpent. The devil is known as a roaring lion. Psalm 91, quoted by the devil inappropriately, is acted out in this whole period of testing appropriately, with symbolic detail.

But I don’t want to work too hard to make the connections. Part of the challenge of following, the challenge of obeying is, as we talked about a couple days ago, looking at the whole text, not just pieces. And so we have to be careful of flights of application fancy.

However.

What we see acted out in the time of testing is that Jesus went through trials, he didn’t disobey the Father, he quoted God’s words to the devil, the devil left. Deutoronomy 6 and Exodus 7 and Psalm 91 have all been useful. And angels attended him.

Hmmm.

learned means usable

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Many people have memorized  the Bible. Most people who watch sporting events have memorized John 3:16, for example.

But that doesn’t mean they know what it means.

Some people have memorized parts of the Bible. From phrases to sentences to paragraphs to pages to whole books, people have memorized  the Bible.

But that doesn’t mean they know what it means.

Some people teach other people about the Bible. They can talk about how many books there are, how many versions have been written. They can talk about how many authors may have written which books of the Bible. They can speak with great confidence.

But that doesn’t mean they know what it means.

Some people can study in several languages. They have learned Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic and Latin. They can explain now the tenses of a particular verb mean this in the original language, but were translated incorrectly by that group. As a result, they tell us, we have all been wrong for the last 1900 years about what Jesus really meant.

But that doesn’t mean they know what it means.

Jesus was forty days into a fast. He was hungry. He needed food.  Not wanted, needed. And forty days into this fast, the devil shows up to test him, to show him what it feels like to be human.

The devil reminds Jesus that Jesus has the power to turn stones into bread. (As will be seen later, Jesus could take a five dinner rolls and feed 15,000 people.)

And Jesus says, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”Matthew 4:4

In the face of adversity, to remember and say and live even one sentence our dad told us, that is knowing what it means.

Jesus knew.

up and down

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[Matthew 3:17-4:2]

The heavens parted.

We use that phrase jokingly when someone is about to make some dramatic pronouncement. In the situation that Matthew talks about, there was a dramatic pronouncement. Though not a joke, it feels pretty friendly.

The Father says of the Son, “I’m proud of him.”

And then, while there is still a warm feeling, the scene changes.

Jesus is led out into the desert.

Jesus doesn’t eat for forty days and nights.

Satan shows up and suggests that Jesus make some bread out of the rocks.

We look at the story and we cheer for Jesus. We talk about how well he resists the temptation to turn well-baked stones into no-need-to-bake loaves. We sing about how he quotes Deuteronomy to the devil.

But our optimism is because we are looking at the story long after the forty days are over. We’ve got to look at it from ground level.

Jesus gets the affirmation of his life. What he already knew to be true is stated to his cousin and whoever else was around. From a human perspective, this is as big an affirmation as you can have.

And then Jesus is directed to the desert.  There is no food. And the next day, no food. And the next day, no food and the next day and the next. And then, when he was in the desert as long as Moses had been on the mountain, as long as Noah watched it rain, satan shows up.

Big high, long period of dryness, big confrontation.

It sounds exactly like the lives of many people I know. Just when they think that God loves them, stuff blows up. And they wonder where the love is.

But God’s love isn’t measured by weeks.

Relationship never is.

And Jesus understands.