It’s a fascinating thing that three of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, all have fairly early in their accounts of the life of Jesus this story of Jesus’ temptation. They don’t all have the same stories every time in their memories of the life of Jesus, just as in your memories of one another in your life together. Different ones remember different things and tell different parts of the life of Jesus. But this memory they all share: At the beginning of his ministry, after he was baptized, Jesus was led by the Spirit into a wilderness. And there, for forty days, he was tempted.

 

You’re struggling with temptation, too. I know that’s true because you tell me, and because I know you’re human. And that’s a part of our journey together. I don’t know what your individual temptations might me. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it’s wrong for me to presume that your temptations are the same as mine. You may not be tempted by worry. But then again, some of you are.

 

Sometimes I’m tempted by books. That’s a real struggle for me. I was tempted this week to buy yet one more copy of Edward Schweitzer’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke. Did anybody else have that temptation this week? Then it’s just me alone. It’s a fierce devil I have to wrestle with! I’m teasing a little bit, but I really do struggle with having more books than I need. And I’m sharing with you temptations that aren’t a scandal in the church for me to share.

 

But some of the temptations are profound ones, aren’t they. I think because the gospel writers knew that about us, they all want us to remember that Jesus was tempted, too. The scriptures say, “He was sent into the wilderness and he was tempted.” He had to wrestle with temptation there. He struggled with the devil. He understood that it was temptation toward evil and away from God.

 

It’s a fascinating thing that temptation comes to him in three forms. In some way, they are kind of glittery or shimmering. They don’t look like evil. They are masked to look like good. But everything that glitters isn’t gold. And every temptation isn’t immediately apparent as evil, as sometimes it looks good at first. In a different context, it might be good.

 

Consider, for example, another story that Luke tells, the story of the Good Samaritan. Do you remember the three people who walked by the man, broken on the side of the road, and passed him by? Do you remember the Levites who walked by him, and where they were headed, so that they did not have time to stay and take care of him? They were headed to lead singing in the temple, in the church. And that’s a good thing. It wasn’t a bad thing that they were going to do. But at that moment, the better calling was to take care of this man, broken on the side of the road.

 

And it may be like that for you, also, with some of your temptation.

 

The text tells us of three gifts that were given to Jesus, three tools he leans on to help him here in this struggle. My prayer, my hope, is that they may be a help to you and to me as we struggle with temptation also. Because it looks to me like that is meant to be a part of our walk through the Christian life, struggling with temptation.

 

The first tool is that Jesus asked for and is given the gift of discernment. Call it awareness. He’s able to recognize temptation when it shows up in front of him. That may be the greatest gift because it isn’t a simple thing to recognize temptation when it approaches us. But when we can come to an awareness of it, when we can see that this is not something for the good but something that pulls us away from God’s intentions for our lives, then I think that is over half the battle.

 

So Jesus, I think in fasting, prays. I think that’s a kind of his praying, his fasting. Ask for the gift of discernment. And that’s what I pray for you as well.

 

As we gather around this sacrament, I hope you bring the prayer that God will give you discernment to recognize temptation toward evil from the good call towards God’s intentions for your lives.

 

Then Jesus is also given the gift of prayer. He is praying in this fasting, and in other places in the gospels he prays. He prays that God will help him to be able to resist. Not here in this story with as much clarity do we see it, but in the Garden of Gethsemane, when we find Jesus praying. He’s tempted to avoid the suffering that is ahead of him the next day. Do you remember? He prays that the Lord will let that cup pass. So he teaches us in the prayer, The Lord’s Prayer that we share together as a family as a central petition in it to pray that we might not be led into temptation. Prayer is meant to be a tool to help us resist temptation. And I think that’s a way of our understanding that when we avoid temptation, it comes to us in the largest part as a gift of God’s grace. Not by our own merit, but as a sign of God’s goodness that we are able to avoid it and be taken from it.

 

The last tool that I see Jesus leaning on here, that we also have accessible to us, is the tool of Scripture. Jesus has in his heart and in his mind Scripture. At some point, he got it inside of him, even as we were telling the Muellers to place it inside of their little girl as they raise her, he got Scripture inside of him. Don’t we remember how the gospels tell us he was in the temple as a boy of twelve, studying Scripture with the elders? Somewhere, he got those Scriptures inside of him so they are close enough to his heart and his mind, that later when he does need them, the Spirit is able to bring them forth.

 

Each of the three temptations that the devil brings him here, he refutes by bringing Scripture to bear. It doesn’t say that he had a Bible in his hand. I think they came to him out of his prior study, his preparing himself through the study of Scripture for the moment of temptation.

 

The course, Luke is clear, that Jesus is not the only one who quotes scripture. The devil quotes scripture as well. And I think Luke shares that memory with us to help us know that we belong to a community that is called to study the text and to have the Bible interpret the Bible. Scripture to interpret scripture. And to hold each other accountable to what the Scripture is calling us to at any particular moment in our lives. Because scripture is also used by the devil here, and so we are given the privilege of partnering with God and listening to the Word and having the Spirit direct us within it, so that we know how the Scripture is speaking to us at any time.

 

I am tempted to preach a long sermon this morning. But by prayer and by leaning on Scripture and by asking God for the gift of discernment, I am aware that that’s not a liberty I should take.

 

But I hope the text will stay with you throughout the journey towards Easter, so that as you seek to be faithful Christians, as you encounter your own temptations, these gifts might come to you and help you to live lives of faithful obedience.

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2007