4/27/52

Scripture: Matthew 4: 1-11.

The story of Jesus’ temptation has in it that which should make us think profoundly. It comes along immediately after the account of the baptism of Jesus by John at the River Jordan. And you remember that the gospel says that, when Jesus came from the water after his baptism, "he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him; and lo a voice from heaven saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’" It was a time of exaltation and ecstasy of spirit. He knew that the Holy Spirit of God was upon him, and that he was there to do something great; to fulfill some tremendous mission!

The very next story we read, as we continue with the gospel account, is this account of Jesus’ temptation. It begins: "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." What a swift change, from holy exaltation to struggle with evil!

Actually, it is not the contrast which it appears to be. God’s hand had been laid upon this Son of His. Jesus was ordained to some great mission. Now he must think through some of it. How could it best be fulfilled? He is here led into a most earnest searching of heart, with the accompanying testing.

The testing is personal. This is the Old Testament doctrine of the devil. The seductions that beset us are personal persuasions; sometimes within ourselves, sometimes from other persons. We face the leading of the Holy Spirit, and the opportunity of the devil, and we must choose, as our Master had to choose.

In the case of Jesus, we see that the lures of the devil were overcome by the power of God. And the power of God is not just that which suddenly appears when one cries unto Him because of a desperate situation. Prayer is better a long-cultivated relationship with God than a sudden search for Him in crisis.

It is said that Dwight L. Moody was once upbraided for his failure to attend a prayer meeting in the midst of threatened shipwreck. Moody replied: "I’m prayed up!" His life was so full of prayerful confidence in God that he could accept the emergency without panic.

Jesus was also well fortified. He had his Bible at his command; he had prayed much; and now, Bible and prayer were together carried into resolve. But his struggle there in the wilderness is real. His first act, after he had been conscious of God’s voice, "This is my Son," was to go by himself and pray. How to fulfill God’s will? How to accomplish the task? How to act as God’s Son? He was probably going ahead like Abraham who was led out "not knowing whither he went." The struggle in the wilderness was a real struggle. It followed the ecstasy of his baptism. It was real in his physical hunger. It was real in his loneliness in a wilderness. Temptation is often a lonely business. It was real in that Jesus might have failed, as many of us do.

Tremendous issues hung there in the balance. Because Jesus overcame in that hour, we can sing: "In the hour of trial, Jesus, plead for me." In the intensity of his prayerful search for the way in which God the Father would have him go, Jesus faced at least three temptations:

1) Having become physically hungry, it was as though the evil voice said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread." Wouldn’t that be a convenient way to satisfy hunger? Wonderful, if it would work! Perhaps the very thought that stones could become bread is fantastic to us. But doesn’t that situation describe precisely a spiritual temptation that besets all of us? If we are placed in some position where we have a power not common to others, which could be used to get something for ourselves, why not use that power? Is not this, for instance, the basis upon which graft and even embezzlement are seen as possible? There are as well other sins which are thus occasioned.

At the moment, Jesus was in real physical hunger. Should he presume on his power, satisfy his craving, to try to defeat the barrenness of the wilderness? It was not the only temptation of that kind Jesus was to encounter. There was the whole question as to the kind of kingdom he would try to introduce. Many of the people of his country were in need; hungry; oppressed by the Roman taxes which ground down the poor. Surely it would be righteous and merciful to overturn social injustice, and try to bring the kingdom by that path. This is a temptation so subtle that it hardly seems possible that there could be any wrong in it. And yet, it leaves unanswered the more profound questions: From what motive? By what power? To what end?

The compassion of Jesus and the evident injustice of his time must have given this temptation terrific force. But note well the answer to this temptation. Jesus would not forsake the comradeship, or ever use for himself, powers given only for use in love. He did not, and would not, center his mission in an economic crusade. "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." His answer was a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy [8: 3], but it came from his own decision as well.

Man does live by bread; but not by bread alone. Economic righteousness is a Christian concern. But spiritual integrity is also a Christian concern, and a matter of far greater moment.

2) The second temptation of Jesus, as he wrestled with his destiny and the search for God’s will, is the temptation to get noticed by some sensational means. Each of these temptations also contains the artful digs of doubt: "If you are the Son of God," turn stones to bread; "If you are the Son of God," throw yourself, unharmed, from the temple pinnacle; "If you are the Son of God," do these things. This second temptation has both a personal and a social impact. Jesus could prove his own trust by throwing himself down, despite the risk. And he might startle a shallow generation out of indifference into some sudden kind of belief. Noble spirits are tempted to the sensational, for the sake of God.

Jesus could feel the urge. He could imagine a crowd watching: "Surely he is not going to jump! Look, he has jumped! He is safe! He must be the Messiah!" Again he probes the suggestion. Would the multitude thus find God and follow him? Later, he was say, "Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

Conviction goes deeper than the eyes, deeper than a spine-tingling sensation. God is not proved in peoples’ experience by sleight-of-hand, nor by that which is alone startling. The soul has its own testimony. And the ablest of all who have know Him through the years have been well convinced that man has no right to presume to force God’s hand.

In reaching his decision to resist this second temptation, Jesus chose not to follow his own way, but to live his life, and fulfill his ministry, waiting upon God and trusting Him. And so when the spirit of evil whispered to him: "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down ... Is it not written [in the Scriptures] ‘He will give his angles charge of you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone?’, Jesus replied with another quotation from Deuteronomy: "It is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’" [Deuteronomy 6: 16].

3) The third temptation which assailed Jesus was one which appealed to the desire for political leadership and power. Perhaps it was worse that either of the first two. Here the devil drops the subtle suggestion: "if thou be the Son of God." Without even mentioning that, he appeals to a dream that had long haunted Jewry. Political power was an ambition that had been acutely provoked in Israel. They had often been trampled in the midst of mightier powers; for they were a buffer state between larger states. At that moment, every Hebrew town of any size had a Roman garrison by which crushing taxes were levied and all attempts at revolt were ruthlessly crushed. There were 6 million Jews scattered through the ancient world. If the right leader came to make them a confederacy, and to form an alliance with some other power ----- who knows but that a Jewish kingdom might be reestablished which could realize the vision that all nations should honor Israel and Israel’s God!

How Jesus must have hungered, with his people, for such a glory! But temptation was temptation. The bane of political leadership is its expediency and its compromise, the falling back on a notion that a desirable aim or end justifies the use of almost any kind of means. Actually "means" and "end" are joined together like a river which flows into a lake. If we have poison in the river, we arrive at a poisoned lake where the beauty and fineness we sought are contaminated.

The devil was so sure of his appeal (do not most people presented with assurance of this kind of power, reach out for it?) that he made no attempt to hide the price: "If thou wilt fall down and worship me." This is the deal by which many a man’s rise to power has been purchased, that he exalts evil, saying, "this is what is right," in place of the high, majestic, good and true God! And the dictator or demagogue will try to enforce a whole new set of ethics based on the evil he has come to worship, in place of Jehovah.

Jesus had a defense against the power of the devil’s attack. Again, it was expressed in the words of his Bible, and again from the book of Deuteronomy. Summoning every resource of his own will, he replies: "It is written, ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.’" [Deuteronomy 6:13, 10:20].

Before closing this sermon today, I want to point out the implications of this account of Jesus’ temptations, not only for our personal lives but for political life. The only thing that can really undergird a political purpose and maintain its true power, is deep devotion to the truth of God. Its ethic must not be devised of the selfish personal and group desire, but in the sole light of what is right before God.

You see, there is a deeply religious basis for politics. If political leadership truly worships God, the whole force of truth is what the government seeks, and is the basis upon which it may rest. If political leadership will not worship God, but worships instead the "devil," the whole force of evil permeates the government and evil torments the citizenry.

The kind of representative government we have known in our country since the establishment of this nation, has it successes rooted in adherence to the truth of God. Our nation was founded upon religious belief, faithfully translated into political action! This by no means implies church control. Quite the opposite! For the church itself, on its organization side, is plagued by the temptation to power! and the church is quite as dangerous when it gets drunken with temporal power as is the state! So long as the church is most deeply concerned with finding and doing the will of God, it can best serve as the conscience of government through the lives of consecrated governors.

With the kind of representative government upon which this nation has arisen, there is always a fair chance that the governors who may be found to have fallen down and worshipped the devil, becoming drunken with their power, may be replaced, if the electorate will put forward candidates who will uphold the truth to which they themselves are devoted.

Communism, whatever may have been its original aim, has evidently become a kind of government in which almost any kind of means may at any time be used to attain power. It is a form of socialism in which one group, a minority group, a disciplined group, has completely yielded to the temptation to power. Its leaders appear to have forsaken the eternal truths of the only righteous God, and to have transferred their worship to the evil force that promises temporal power.

The temptation to power is a conspicuous possibility in that socialism which disclaims either communism or the government of the political right. The only circumstance under which socialism might work well is a circumstance in which all people involved are deeply committed to the truth of God and constantly striving to know and perform His will [a circumstance in which no member of the state yields to the temptation for personal power]. Its great danger is that, if socialistic leaders fall in love with power, and begin worshipping evil, in order to get and to hold power, it is too difficult to unseat them and get consecrated leadership put in their place. The tendency is to drift toward state autocracy. God alone is good enough to withstand the temptations of sovereign power. His perfect holiness and loving kindness are our guarantee that his might alone is incorruptible.

Wherever anyone else seizes, or is given, unconditional authority, first that one become tyrannical, and then he either sets himself up as a god, or worships some other evil. Absolute autocracy usually comes up with the corrupt and evil dictum, "I the Emperor, am God. We, the State, are the ultimate."

"Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." This is the first and greatest law of right living. It keeps power where it belongs in the hand of God, operating as he wills, and as man is yielded, through lives consecrated to him. When we worship and serve God, this happens --- and this is the conclusion of our Scripture story of Christ’s temptation --- "Then the devil leaveth him."

If you want a truly happy ending to the awful story, if we want the end to be basically right, then look for the power of soul that can resist the temptations to power as Our Lord resisted them, with the rightness of God. If we resist the temptation of materialism, if we resist the temptation of sensationalism, if we resist the temptation to power and all forms of selfishness, what then? "Then the devil leaveth him." That ought to be enough! but it is not all, for there is a wonderful bonus: "And behold, the angels came and ministered unto him."

Jesus later put it concisely: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all else needful shall be added unto you." [Matthew 6: 33].

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, April 27, 1952.

Wisconsin Rapids, May 17, 1959.