I’ve always been a big believer in testing things out, and I’m thinking here particularly in my own context of a church service.  Every Friday, I set up the mics and guitars on the platform.  I test them.  Make sure everything is working.  Make sure the monitors are working.  I hook my laptop up to the projector and test it.  The question is, “Is everything working?”  Is everything fit for service?

You might think one would get to the point where such testing was no longer required, and this would be wrong.  Things go wrong, you see.  Settings may be changed.  Cords may have been unplugged.  The process of testing never ends.  We’re following Jesus into the wilderness today.  The wilderness is a place of testing, and we follow Jesus there.  One of my favourite images for the church is that of a pilgrim people, making our way through the wilderness together.  The wilderness is harsh.  It can be a place of privation (lack).  We remember the people of God in the wilderness and if we count ourselves among the people of God, we know that the wilderness can be a place of complaint, of us wanting to test God, of questions being asked like “Is God with us or not?”, of failure to put God above everything and anything.  The wilderness is also the place where God’s guidance is made known, where God’s promises are made known, where the nature of God and the word of God is revealed to us.  The wilderness is a place where slaves are turned into children of God through the one who we are invited to follow.  I’m talking about Jesus. The unfailing one. I’m talking about our lives.  Let’s ask for God’s help as we begin our journey through Lent with Jesus today in Matthew 4. 

We’re going to be going through the Gospel of Matthew throughout Lent and for some weeks beyond.  I think it’s a good thing to journey with Jesus through a Gospel through the weeks of Lent, but it’s hardly enough time to do justice to the Gospel, so we’ll keep it going through the season known as Eastertide, which lasts 50 days after Easter.  Matthew is a much-beloved Gospel and was given pride of place among the four.  It contains five blocks of Jesus’ teaching, which we’ll look at through these weeks.  The Sermon on the Mount is probably the most famous.

More so, perhaps, than any other Gospel writer, Matthew is explicit in emphasizing the ethical nature of what it means to be a follower of Christ.  I’m talking about what being in Christ means in terms of the choices we make, what we say, what we do.  The connection between faith and morality.   What we believe and what we do.   It is significant that Jesus ends the story of the wise man who built his house upon the rock like this: “So is anyone who hears my words and does them.”  It is significant among Jesus’ last words to his followers is a command to go and make disciples of all nations, “Teaching them to obey everything I commanded you.”  The only Gospel writer to use the word “church.”  A Gospel writer who was concerned that the church is living out its calling as the body of Christ in the world.

So unless you think we’ve got that down no problem, it’s a Gospel for our age.  A Gospel for followers of Christ and a Gospel that serves as an invitation for those who aren’t following Christ.

The heading in my Bible at Matthew 4 is entitled “The Temptation of Jesus.”  It might equally be called “The Testing of Jesus” because that is also what is going on here.  Matthew has told of the story of the birth of Emmanuel (God-with-us), son of Abraham, son of David.  The King.  Magi from the east have come to bow down before this King.  Christ’s identity has been affirmed at his baptism when a voice from heaven is heard saying, “This is my beloved Son.”  The Holy Spirit rests on him and leads him.  “What sort of man is this?” is the overarching question we’re looking at through these weeks.  What does it mean in terms of those who follow Jesus? 

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (the accuser, the deceiver, the one who speaks against).  He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.”  He was hungry.  The Judean wilderness is a harsh place.  It’s barren.  Rocks and desert.  It’s not like what we might consider wilderness here in Canada with all our woods and rivers and lakes.  The wilderness is a harsh place, but it’s also a place of the Spirit’s leading.  It’s a place of God’s provision and protection.  When we think of this story, we can’t hear “wilderness” and the number 40 without thinking of the people of Israel.  Israel not being ready to take on the call that God had for them to be God’s people.  The people of Israel being in the wilderness for 40 years.  Being tested.

Which is what God does.  God tests to make us fit for service in the same way that we test equipment or metal that’s going to make up an airplane or mics or amps or all the things we test. The word for test and temptation is the same word, which is interesting.  It has two meanings, which are really representative of the two opposing forces that are at work here.  God who tests and the accuser, the liar, the deceiver, the one who speaks against, who tempts.  Note that this story is happening under the Spirit’s leading.  The devil has a useful role to play here, just as he did when he asked the heavenly council in the book of Job, “Is God worthy of our worship/adoration/devotion no matter our circumstances?”  The question for us I,s “How will we respond?”

The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”  The “if….then” proposition being made here is not so much about whether or not Jesus truly is the Son of God.  The question might be better phrased, “Since you are the Son of God…”  Since you are the Son of God, what are you going to do?  What is this sonship going to mean?

To whom or to what are you going to pledge allegiance?  Is Jesus going to be, as someone has said, “a self-serving wonder-worker flexing power for his own ends?”  We may be very familiar with this story and how it turns out (and, of course, I just read it and told you how it turns out if you’re familiar).  Let us not presume that this outcome was inevitable or say, “Well, it was Jesus, what choice did he really have in the matter?”  Jesus in his humanity had a choice, the same way he’ll have a choice a little later in the story where he’s tested again and he’ll tell his followers “Do you not know that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”  He had a choice the same way he had a choice when he was mocked on the cross.  “He saved others; he cannot save himself!  He trusts in God; let God deliver him now, if he wants to for he said, ‘I am God’s Son!”  This story looks back, and it looks forward.  Jesus will show that salvation/deliverance can be experienced not only from death but even through death.   

Trust can fail.  We know what this is like.  Our trust can fail.  Jesus’ trust never does, and he names a promise of God here.  But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  This is not simply a moral tale which we read and say, “And so the lesson is that with the Holy Spirit and the Bible we can overcome temptation.”  Jesus is the one who remained faithful to his Father – the one in whom and by whose faithfulness we are enabled to do the same.  We cannot hear about 40 days in the wilderness without thinking of the people of Israel, and we can’t hear of being hungry in the wilderness without thinking of the people of Israel who after being delivered from slavery complained to Moses and Aaron and said they might as well have died in Egypt than to be killed out in this wilderness by hunger.

They failed.  We failed.  The question that hangs over this entire is one of allegiance.  Here, the specific question is one of trust.  Who are you going to trust?  God?  “Trust yourself,” says the deceiver. Help yourself.  Then we hear this wonderful answer from Jesus: “One lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”  Our entire existence is dependent on God.  In whom Jesus trusts.  In whom we are invited to put our trust.  God who has us, who holds us in His strong right hand.

The second temptation is to put these promises of God to the test.  If Jesus is held in God’s strong right hand, why not test the theory out?  The accuser can use scripture too, and we are reminded here that Holy Scripture can be twisted and used to justify horrific things.  “Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands, they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’”  Do something spectacular. It will cause a sensation, and hasn’t God promised protection after all?  Jesus replies, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”  Again this goes back to the people of Israel in the wilderness Exodus (17 this time) when they had no water and they quarrelled with Moses and put God to the test and said “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” and they said, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  Is God’s hand really with us or not?  Jesus doesn’t need to test anything when it comes to his Father.  I may need to test out the mics and the amps, but I have no need to test that God cares for me.  “Again it is written,” says Jesus, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Finally, the big one.  The devil isn’t even bothering with the “Since you are the Son of God” stuff now.  Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour, and he said to him, “All these I will give you (not even bothering now with the “If or since you are the Son of God”), if you will fall down and worship me.”

At heart, this episode is about allegiance. Here, the choice is laid bare.  Who are you going to serve?  Again, we look back in this story and remember the failure of the people of Israel.  The golden calf episode.  We look at our own failures, and if it’s not so much about golden calves now, we can perhaps say it’s gold or cash or ourselves or whatever our world turns into gods and whatever we turn into gods.  “Worship me, and I will do something for you,” says the devil.  Quid pro quo, this is the way of the world.  Everything is transactional, right?” 

Jesus, the unfailing one, reflecting the words of the Shema, that daily Jewish prayer, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”  Jesus says, “Away with you Satan, for it is written,  ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

This is what sonship means for Jesus.  It’s quite the thing to be at the top, looking down on everyone.  This is where we should aim to be, no?  Personal power, popularity, political power, social power, economic power.  This is what we’re told to crave no?  It’s quite the thing to be on top, looking down.  Raised up.

Of course, the only place Jesus will be looking down from is a cross.  The power of self-sacrificing, other-serving love is what sonship means for Jesus.  God doesn’t demand our worship in exchange for God’s services.  God commands our worship and is worthy of our worship because Jesus loved us even unto death.

Immediately afterward, as we have this great line - suddenly, angels came and waited on him.  They cared for him, served him, it’s a word that suggests offering food and drink.  Our unfailing one will journey on.  We will journey on with him.

Now, we may be saying, “What does this have to do with us?”  We’re not divine.  We’re not being whisked from place to place by the devil.  We’re not the Son of God.

The thing is, to follow Christ is to be an adopted daughter of God, an adopted son of God.  What does sonship mean for us?  What does daughtership mean?  It means we have a brother who identifies with us.  Someone has said, “Jesus came to us to become as we are.” Here in chapter 4, we see Jesus passing the test, fitted perfectly for service to his Father and worthy of our allegiance and love.

This testing/tempting doesn’t stop for Jesus, and it doesn’t stop for us.  The accuser still goes about like a roaring lion.  The accuser doesn’t have any power over us except for the power to deceive, to make us believe his lies.  Lies like “We should really be looking at for ourselves first.”  To cause us to wonder, “Is God really worthy of our trust or do we really depend on ourselves?” 

We fail, and I’m glad for seasons like Lent, which call us to intentionally turn to our forgiving God.  Our tests, trials or temptations take many forms.  We may fall into the temptation to rely on our own usefulness, our own ability to do things/show things/prove things that make a difference in people’s lives.  The temptation to be spectacular, to do something to win applause and popularity.  The temptation to be powerful. 

We’re a pilgrim people journeying with Jesus, looking to his prayer as a way of life, vulnerability to others in shared ministry, and fully committed trust in God’s love and care.

Jesus is not only our example in passing the test; he’s our enabler through his Spirit.  He has blazed the trail for us.  The trail has been blazed, and it’s been walked by faithful followers of Christ for over 2,000 years now.  Thank God Jesus passed the test.  Hear these words from Hebrews 4: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested, as we are, yet without sin.  Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” (4:15-16)

What sort of man is this?  This is the Son of God.  This is the one through whom and in whom we claim sonship and daughtership.  May all of us approach the throne of grace confidently and boldly in him.  Amen.