(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Anything But”,
originally shared on February 20, 2026. It was the 400th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams
of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my
wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
The playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist anything but
temptation.” Today, we’re going to see why that is the foundation of the Good
News.
We
marked Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent, last Wednesday.
Somebody actually asked me once what day Ash Wednesday was going to be
that year. I think that they meant “date”. At least I hope so, anyway. 😊
The
Christmas Cycle has finished. Now we’re in the Easter Cycle (Lent to reflect
and prepare, Holy Week and Easter Sunday for the event, and the Easter season
after Easter Sunday to learn and to apply).
We
will mark the first Sunday in Lent this Sunday with a reflection on temptation.
Jesus, the promised Messiah, the Anointed One, the deliverer, has
arrived and is about to begin his work after1,000 years of waiting by God’s
people.
Jesus
was being tempted in the wilderness to give up what he hasn’t even started yet,
his public ministry, his death and his resurrection.
We
will see in Matthew 4:1-11, that Jesus was led up into the wilderness to
be tempted. The context is set in the first two verses, Matthew 4:1-2,
1Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit
into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2He fasted
forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.
I just want to point out something that, I
think, we sometimes forget.
Jesus wasn’t on a retreat to prepare for his
public ministry. He wasn’t in the wilderness to learn what he was supposed to
do. And Jesus wasn’t sent there by the devil.
Jesus was led up by the Spirit into
the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Why?
I think that it has something to do with us.
I think that Jesus is there to demonstrate who he is, that there is not some
cosmic struggle going on between good and evil. God is in control. Jesus knows
that we are sinners, that we need a Savior. Jesus knows where he is going and
is ready to go. But it wasn’t going to be easy.
I saw a meme a while ago that showed a woman wearing a headscarf reading a note. The caption said, “It sure
wasn’t easy being the mother of Jesus…” The note read, “Dear Mom, Gone into the
wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by Satan. Don’t worry! xo J.”
I’m very sure that it was difficult
being the mother of Jesus.
Forty is a
significant number in the history of Salvation. It rained for 40 days and 40
nights while Noah and his family and the animals floated in the Ark, Moses was
on the mountain with God for 40 days, the liberated nation of Israel wandered
in the desert for 40 years before they could enter the promised land, the
prophet Elijah fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, Saul, David, and Solomon
ruled over Israel for 40 years, Jesus fasted for 40 days and nights before his
Temptation, there are 40 days in Lent (excluding Sundays) and there were 40
days between Jesus’ Resurrection and his Ascension,
The devil comes to Jesus in the wilderness
in what would be Jesus’ very physically weakened state and right off the bat
hits him at his point of greatest vulnerability, in verses 3-4,
3The
tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones
to become loaves of bread.” 4But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth
of God.’”
The devil questions whether Jesus is who he
is, sowing seeds of doubt, i.e., “If [note: bold added] you are the Son
of God,” and challenging him to prove it at a time when Jesus might be the most
easily tempted to do so.
I once fasted
for 3 days and nights. A fast was called at my college after the
assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. People signed-up with the
food service on campus and the money saved was donated to the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference. By the second day, I was dreaming about food.
Food would
have been a huge temptation for Jesus. Any physical need is a huge temptation.
Any perceived need is an occasion for temptation.
We are
sometimes tempted, and sometimes we fail, and when we have messed up the devil
says, “What a hypocrite! You aren’t a Christian. Why pretend? Give up!”
But, that’s
not the Word of God, that’s the word of the devil. That’s the word of the
forces that defy God.
God’s answer
is that we have been given a Savior, Christ the Lord. We can resist anything but
temptation. The Good News, the Gospel, The Word of God says, “I died for you.
I overcame temptation, sin, death, and the power of the devil, for
you.”
Jesus, full of
the Holy Spirit, answers the devil by quoting from scripture, in Deuteronomy
8:3,
He humbled you by letting you
hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your
ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not
live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.
So, the devil tries to get Jesus to prove
who he is by an act of spiritual courage, in Matthew 4:5-7,
5Then
the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the
temple, 6saying 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.’” 7Jesus said to him, “Again it is written,
‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
The devil’s
words sound plausible, and he answers Jesus’ resistance by also quoting
scripture. The devil knows the Bible, and he quotes from Psalm 91:11-12,
11 For he will command his angels
concerning you
to
guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear
you up,
so
that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
But the devil
is quoting scripture to serve his own purpose and not the purpose of God.
Jesus responds
by quoting Deuteronomy 6:16,
Do not put the LORD your God to the
test, as you tested him at Massah.
I thought of
this section during the pandemic when people said that they were not wearing
masks, or getting vaccinated, or washing their hands or anything else because
they trusted in God to protect them.
It seems to me
that they were putting God to the test.
I believe that
God does act in our best interests, but in what form and by what means are not
always clear to us. God is God and we’re not. We cannot use God for our
purposes. That is putting God to the test.
The temptations continue with verses 8-10,
8Again,
the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world and their splendor; 9and he said to him, “All these I
will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10Jesus
said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your
God, and serve only him.’”
So now it seems to me that the devil is
getting frustrated. He resorts to a flat-out lie, some plausible
disinformation, offering Jesus something that isn’t his to give, something that
belongs to God, something that is Jesus’ for the asking, “all the kingdoms of
the world and their splendor”, and the devil shows his true desire when he
says, “if you will fall down and worship me.”
Jesus responds, quoting Deuteronomy
6:13,
13The Lord your God you shall
fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear.
The devil has no power over us. God promises
us that we will never be tempted beyond our ability to endure. All the devil
has is lies.
The Gospel reading concludes with verse
11,
11Then
the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.
I’ve read a fair amount online from
intercepted messages sent home by Russian soldiers in Ukraine on digital media.
Some conversations are with their mothers and wives and girlfriends. Many of
them discuss how war has changed their behavior, particularly their values of
right and wrong. What was once unthinkable becomes commonplace. Fear, peer
pressure, and the sinful human heart have carried them to everyday atrocities.
War can do that.
We have come to call it “moral injury”.
So, what are we to do when we are tempted to
do what we know is wrong? Well, the short answer is to not do that. But how do
we resist temptation? And how do we know the difference between what is right
and what is wrong?
We learn about that from Jesus in today’s
Gospel reading.
Jesus was fully God. But he was also fully a
human being. He was tempted because the devil thought he could break Him. How
did Jesus know right from wrong, and how did he act on it? What can we learn
from Jesus?
First, we learn that Jesus knew the
scriptures. He knew them by heart. He knew the words and he knew the presence
of God in reading them.
The same Spirit that had led him into the
wilderness to be tempted had prepared him through scriptures.
Second, we learn right from wrong
from the Law of God that is in our heart. It becomes who we are and that
becomes what we do.
This is very different from what much of our
culture teaches.
Is everything just right for one person but
not for the other? Or are some things right for everybody.
Who decides what is right from wrong.
Christians and Jews and Muslims all agree and believe that morality comes from
God.
Morality, knowing right from wrong, has to
come from outside us. Otherwise, morality is just what we decide it is.
We see what happens when people forget about
God in the Old Testament.
When you see that there is no one to rule
the people for God and the words (i.e. Judges 17:6),
“In those days there was no king in Israel, all the people did what was right
in their own eyes,” appear, you know something very bad is about to happen. It
happens again and again.
Third, we learn that the devil seeks
us at a point of weakness with something that seems desirable, even good.
The devil tempted Jesus with an easy way out
of the cross, with things that anybody might want, like us.
I once talked with a man whose vocation was
in sales. He was a good salesman. His job required some travel, but he was also
able to spend time with his family, which he loved.
One day, someone from higher-up I n the
company offered him a promotion at a sizably higher salary, but in a position
that would require a great deal more travel, so much that he would have very
little time with his family.
The man declined, saying that he wanted to
be there for his wife and children.
“But,” the executive said, “think of all the
good you could do for your family with more money.”
That’s a temptation. That’s the way the
devil works.
Fourth, we learn that we are not
alone. We have a model and helper for doing what is right, whatever the cost,
in Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in Hebrews 4:14-16,
14 Since,
then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus,
the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. 15 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. 16 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.
Fifth,
we learn that resisting temptation is more than denying ourselves things. It
takes us to a whole new life of devotion and purpose, and we are called to live
it.
Two little boys were eating the
pancakes that their mother had made for them for breakfast one day.
When the mother stepped out for
a few minutes and came back again, she found them fighting over the last
pancake. “Boy, boys”, she said. “What would Jesus do?”
The older brother said, “She’s
right, Billy. You be Jesus.”
Everybody wants to be like
Jesus, until it’s time to be like Jesus.
The plain fact is that all
human beings are a mess. We have always been a mess.
We sin, we separate ourselves
from God. We put ourselves above all else.
We can make no claim to
righteousness of our own.
All we can do is to point to
Jesus, who has given us new life and salvation through the cross, Jesus gave
his life for we sinners, and then he took it back again in the Resurrection to
validate the power of the cross. No one can do that for us but Jesus. He
who is God has reconciled us to God. We just live the new, transformed life he
has given us, from the inside, out, in a living relationship with the one true
living God.
Sixth,
we learn that the devil is a liar and that God is in control. It’s why we pray.
Martin Luther, the 16th century Church reformer, in his Small
Catechism on the basics of the Christian faith, in his explanation of the
Lord’s prayer, in his explanation of the words, “And lead us not into
temptation”, asks, “What does this mean?”, and he answers:
“God
tempts no one to sin, but we ask in this prayer that God would watch over us
and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful self may not deceive
us and draw us into false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.
And we pray that even though we are so tempted we may still win the final
victory.”
Seventh,
we learn that there is no easy fix, only the honor and challenge of right
living, and growing through life transformation in a living relationship with
the one true living God. There is only
one Supreme Being, and his relationship is personal.
You
may have seen people wearing clothing with the word “Supreme” in white letters
on a red background. The “Supreme” brand is based on an interesting business
model.
The
clothing it sells comes in limited batches from new lines that are released
twice a year. That makes the street-wear merchandise seem exclusive, yet the
merchandise keeps coming. So, when one of the few actual stores are open,
selling a few pieces every Thursday, huge lines form and sometimes fights break
out, both in the line and in the store, because many people buy goods to sell
online. Clothing bought for about $150 in a store can sell for $500 online.
That’s a huge mark-up, and some people do make money. But other people
pay the inflated prices because they think that they are getting something
exclusive, even if that “exclusivity” is artificially produced to be highly
prized on the street.
That’s the thing about temptation. It only offers us something that is
not real and can actually bring us harm.
Martin Luther once said, “You cannot keep birds from
flying over your head but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”
We can’t keep from having thoughts that are contrary to the will of God, but we
can keep from acting on them or allowing them to change who we are.
Lent is a time for reflection
on that, for turning away from those things in our lives that grieve God, and
for living in the power of the Holy Spirit, which wells up from within us, and
opens our hearts and minds to the presence and power of God in the Bible, in
ourselves, and everywhere around us.
Let us grow in our sense of
Christian morality during this Lenten season and seek to live more deeply in
the transformational relationship empowering us to live as the people of God.
Especially in the wilderness times in our lives.
Let us make it a practice to
spend time in self-examination and show our appreciation for what God has done
for us in Jesus Christ on the cross, and express it through love for God and
love for one another and for the world.
And, though temptations may come to us to give up the narrow way and follow an easier path, let us be grateful that we are not alone. That we are never alone. That Jesus fights with us, and that Jesus, our light and our salvation, has overcome the world!
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