And Lead Us Not Into Temptation ...

Gold tried in a fire is said to become pure, and even more brilliant in shine than it was before.  But from the perspective of the gold, not such a thrilling prospect.  The reward may be worth the upheaval of the journey, but that is hard to see at the beginning, and nearly impossible to see in the midst.  Gold, and humans, often see themselves as “good enough” in whatever condition they find themselves.  To enter the furnace in order to emerge finer still, is something almost none of us would choose to do.  So most often, the choice is made by fate, or by a design beyond our sight and imagination.  It makes logical sense to us that faith that has never been tested, is at best an unknown quantity.  Faith that has been through the crucible and emerged on the other side even more brilliant than before, is a faith that can be relied upon more than the untested one. 

Faith that is untested could prove fatal when it matters the most.  Faith that is untested could be discarded without formal notice; but by the aggregation of competing philosophies and theories that require no “constriction” of our desires and lives.  Discarded faith is often cast aside because the gold of our characters believes it is simply good enough.  Atheists are quick to tell you that “good” behavior requires no God to see it in action.  Good people are everywhere, and none require God to instantiate that good behavior.  In the world of the Atheist, there is no understanding of “temptation”.  There is only choice to do one thing or another.  Morality absent in the decision, or subjective in the decision.  Faith discarded.  Faith killed upon an altar of self-reliance.  Untested.  And finally un-needed.

But those Christians who examine this rarely think of themselves as candidates for a discarded faith.  And simultaneously we desire a life of ease, and free from the burdens that conflict with the world must inevitably bring.  So for us temptation continues to exist.  Temptation for those of faith represents decisions where the morality is known, one for service, one for selfish.  But despite our knowledge of which is which, our desire, long crafted in this world, longs for the selfish, despite knowing better.  We continue to want the wrong things.  So the hold they have on us is deep and abiding.  Chains of slavery masquerading as simple desires for little white elements of destruction.  They look innocuous.  But the tentacles of these desires that would lead us on the wrong path seem to reach as deep in us as our DNA.  Heredity or environment, matters not if the result is to find ourselves on the wrong side of temptation.  The pain we cause is real, remains, and spreads like a virus.

For the Savior of our world, without the repetition of failure, temptation was to be something epic and singular.  Unlike us, He was to face something we could not face.  Matthew begins his account in chapter four of his gospel picking up in verse 1 saying … “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.”  Context matters here.  Jesus has just been baptized.  His formal ministry has just begun.  It has been proclaimed by John the Baptist, and by the voice of the Father God Himself, and the Spirit in the form of a dove.  No greater public spectacle has been witnessed.  Jesus has just symbolically laid down His life in the waters and emerged purified before God ready to start a ministry.  And literally seconds later the first thing He must face is direction by the Spirit of God Himself to travel into the wilderness, away from the people, away from anything that could sustain a man, and prepare for temptation of the devil himself.

And silly Christians; we somehow think that emerging from the baptismal waters will insulate us from the devil’s temptations.  If anything, it intensifies the devils attempts to bring us back into the creatures who needed the baptismal waters in the first place.  Baptism is not the sealing of our faith, it is only a step in the journey of our faith.  Baptism does not keep temptation away from us, it invites the fury of Satan to see us returned to our former condition.  But the devil need not win.  Yet Jesus did not just stumble into temptation.  He was led to it.  He did not just decide to go face off with the devil and see who wins.  The Spirit of God literally drove Him into the desert to face His (or ours) worst fears.  Failure here would not result in a quick forgiveness.  Jesus was to be the instrument of forgiveness.  If Jesus messed up, there might not ever be forgiveness.  The pressure was to be enormous.

Matthew continues in verse 2 … “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.”  The deck was to be stacked in Satan’s favor.  Starvation would drive the body of Jesus to a barely alive condition.  Hallucinations could be only the beginning.  To say he was hungry was the understatement of the millennia.  Most men would give anything they had to eat.  Esau’s test in a similar vein had come and gone with an entire birthright given away.  But the birthright here was the entire human race. 

Matthew continues in verse 3 saying … “And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.”  The argument of the Atheist is born.  This temptation was not about bread or hunger, this was about one thing … prove it.  “If”, notice the pronounced use of the word “if”; if you are the Son of God.  It does not even matter what follows next.  In the day of Jesus it was a temptation to use divine power on Himself, which Jesus never did throughout His life.  But in our day, it is to “fill in the blank”.  Atheists always promise reform of their beliefs and positions if our God just proves that He exists, in physical terms, in literal terms, in any kind of manner that requires zero faith.  Let faith remain dead, and furnish only a tangible means of proof that God is God.  For untested faith, discarded faith, it would lead only to the result it sees today.  Should any proof actually be provided, it would be discarded as “not enough”.  The lack of faith can always find an excuse NOT to believe.

Matthew continues in verse 4 saying … “But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Let us not lose sight of the subtlety of this challenge to His identity.  Jesus does not directly argue with the chief of all Atheists.  Instead He turns to scripture, to the Word of God, to answer.  Jesus recites scripture to Satan.  Our response to our Atheist friends should not be a direct argument with their logic and assumptions.  It should be to put the salvation of our friends squarely into the mouth of God.  We should call out to our God to save our friends, lift them up before the throne of God, that He may save them.  We in effect give God permission to answer our prayers even if the Atheists would never reach out on his own.  This mechanism may be responsible for more converted souls into His kingdom than we will ever know.

Matthew continues in verse 5 saying … “Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple,”  In this gesture the devil reveals he is a creature beyond the limits of humanity.  The devil has supernatural abilities, from the perspective of men.  Perhaps Satan hoped that this gesture might affirm his disguise of being cloaked in light, trying to impersonate a heavenly angel and servant of God.  As he still comes to us.  Satan does not appear to the believer as a cloven hoofed, red painted, forked tail creature with horns.  That imagery might work in a renaissance painting, but in modern society this image provides him with nothing but cover to appear as a creature of light.  Satan is not interested in clarity, he is the master of obfuscation.  He tells you to do what you want to do, and then tells you it is the right thing to do, that God wants you to do it.  Just like he is doing to Jesus so many years ago.

Matthew continues in verse 6 saying … “And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. [verse 7] Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”  This is a second challenge to the identity of God.  The word “if” prominently used.  This time Satan challenges Jesus as the Son of God, but also challenges that God will uphold the promises He has offered in scripture.  It is a double insult.  But it remains so terribly effective in our day.  We pursue a course we know we should not.  Then once down the evil path, we call on God to save us from the consequences of our actions, and expect Him to do it, and blame Him if He does not.

While God has promised to protect us from forces beyond our sight, and dangers that Satan would otherwise pose to us.  God has not promised to protect us from our own stupidity.  When we disregard common sense, the laws of physics, and the word of God … we put ourselves in a place where we should expect normal results, not ones influenced by the power of God.  It is not that God cannot protect us, but it is that “we” are “tempting” God to save us.  Mercy, is not the same thing as expectation.  Pity, is not the same thing as expectation.  God is not to blame for the stupidity of our choices, though often His love for us finds a way to save us in spite of ourselves.

Matthew continues in verse 8 saying … “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; [verse 9] And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.”  Satan no longer care to challenge the identity of Jesus, now all he cares about is “who” we worship.  Turn your eyes away from God.  Worship self.  Just once.  How bad could it be?  One time for all this.  He offers the Atheist freedom from the restraints that religion imposes.  He offers the Christian a fulfillment of the texts that imply they must “do” something to be saved beyond accept the gift of God.  He offers Jesus an easy way out.  No pain, no death, just compliance and all this is yours.  But his offer was a lie.  And his offers are still a lie.

Matthew continues in verse 10 saying … “Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. [verse 11] Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.”  We would like to picture a victorious Christ, full of strength and vigor telling Satan off, driving him away, and hiking back down the mountain to begin picking up disciples.  But this is not how it was.  Human frailty insured it.  An emaciated, starving, to the point of death, Jesus uses His last ounce of strength to resist for the final time the temptations of Satan.  Satan does not leave Him because he was driven away.  He leaves Jesus because there are no more temptations left to offer.  Nothing left to say.  Jesus will not be defeated by the temptations man succumbed to.

After these words, Jesus collapses.  And now the promises of God are fulfilled in the heart break of heaven.  Angels who were veiled from Him, now appear in full glory bringing food, water, and love to the Savior who without their aid might have died on the spot.  They revive the broken body of man, ever compliant with the direction of the Spirit.  Jesus has not run from temptation as Jonah might have done.  He has not lost trust in God as Adam did.  He offers Himself here, even to the point of His life as few others did.  Whatever the challenge He has neither shrunk from it, or been defeated by it.  It is the gold tried in the fire.  He was in all pointed tempted as we are.  But without our failures.  Jesus wanted different things.  We need different wants as well.

Temptations remain effective against us, because we still want the wrong things.  We need different desires.  We need ones put within us by Jesus Christ.  Not ones we think up ourselves, but one’s placed within us by a divine hand.  This can only happen when we let go of our desires to Jesus Christ.  When we surrender what we “want” to Jesus, He can take them from us.  He breaks our chains of slavery, and in their place puts desires we “should” have, and come to appreciate very much.  Over time, we come to learn that what He puts in us to want, are the best things to want.  We cannot trust ourselves, or our desires.  But we can trust Him fully with our salvation, and our characters.  We can trust Him to save our Atheist friends and family we lift up to Him in prayer, as we trust Him to save us, and our Christian brothers and sisters who we also lift up to Him in prayer.

This was a crucible for Jesus.  This was a fire experience.  It was not a casual Sunday drive through the park (or the desert).  It was a life threatening, dangerous fire, that could have consumed the hope of the human race.  It was a fire no one would choose to go through.  And it carved a memory in Him He could not forget.  When asked later by His disciples to teach them how to pray, the words … and lead us not into temptation … are included.  These words were not just part of some formula.  They were a reflection of these 40 days of hunger and temptation in the desert of His ministry.  No one would choose to be led there.  And so He reminds us to ask God, please not to be led into this kind of fire. 

Our faith will be tested.  But as our desires change, perhaps temptation will no longer be the mechanism of test.  Perhaps then only trust will remain the trying fire.  Do we trust that our God strong enough to save this Atheist who wants nothing to do with Him?  Do I trust God completely with my own salvation?  After all my track record is not that good.  Nevertheless; Lead us not …