Lord’s Prayer theme: Daily bread…forgive sins…deliver from evil
Jesus teaches us to pray: Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not in to temptation, but deliver us from evil…
During Last year Schoolies celebrations at Port Elliot, a school leaver was seriously injured by hurling himself off a toilet block roof at a Port Elliot holiday park accommodation site. Encouraged by other school leavers who were standing below chanting “table, table, table” two lads jumped off the roof onto a plastic trestle table below, which collapsed under the force of impact, with the second jumper concussing the first[1].
In Matthew 4, Jesus himself was tempted to do something like this. The devil took Jesus to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” (Matthew 4:5-6).
Did you notice how Satan used God’s word to tempt Jesus? He used verses from Psalm 91 to make it sound as though something not pleasing to God would be acceptable for Jesus to do. The Devil twists God’s word out of context to make something forbidden sound permissible.
At Christian Life Week we talked about how this was the first temptation to Adam and Eve. It wasn’t to eat forbidden fruit, but distrust God’s clear command. Up until the point of God creating male and female in his image, everything had gone according to what God had said, and the result was good. But when human beings wanted to be gods themselves, deciding what was good and evil, they brought sin into the world, and with it its wages of death. This impacts every person at our core, in which we will not only physically die but in our natural state are spiritually dead too, captive to the kingdom of darkness. We have no life or power within ourselves to be able to effect our great escape.
The Kingdom of darkness is a powerful kingdom. Jesus says in John’s Gospel: “The thief comes to kill, steal and destroy” Satan doesn’t want you to know Jesus, trust in Jesus, and follow him. He doesn’t want you to live in the freedom and fullness of life and peace that Jesus gives. But Jesus came to give us life, and give it abundantly” (John 10:10).
Jesus responds to the temptation to hurl himself down with Deuteronomy 6:16: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” In the Garden of Eden, there was an abundance of food for Adam and Eve to eat, yet they desired more than what God had provided, and decided for themselves that would be fitting and good. By contrast, in the wilderness, Jesus has nothing, and having fasted for forty days and forty nights, he is famished. The devil came to him and said, “Since you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” (Matthew 4:3).
But where the first humans failed in Eden, Jesus triumphed in the wilderness, by living faithfully to God’s word. He answered: “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” (Matthew 4:5).
When the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour he tempted Jesus to switch allegiances: “All this I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me” Jesus answered again from Deuteronomy 6: “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended to Jesus (Matthew 4:8-11).
What so tempted the youths that they would do something like jumping off a toilet block roof?Footage shows dozens cheering on from the ground, spurring them on. The temptation was to meet the deep need of affirmation, acceptance and approval. “I was looking for something to give me a bit of attention at the end of the day…” the schoolie who had been concussed told the media after his recovery.
Affirmation and approval are core needs we have as people. How we feed and fill those needs is the issue. We talked about that at CLW. Temptations don’t usually begin with the big stuff—to kill someone, rob a bank or cheat on our husband or wife. But it is usually the smaller things that lead to the bigger things—turning to all kinds of self-engineered ways to meet our needs for love, acceptance, worth, and identity.
We are not immune from this temptation in the church. Satan’s temptation to us is to look for other ways than God to meet our longings to be loved, and approved and to belong. We can be very good at people pleasing and working at gaining the approval of others. The temptation is to think that our worth is based on how well we create our religious, moral lives, and be focused on how well we are performing in our roles, or in our worship, comparing ourselves to others. The temptation to meet our needs for affirmation can often result in us looking for the splinter in our brothers and sisters’ eyes while not attending to the plank in our own. When we dive down to the deep level of our hearts, do we secretly harbour disappointment that we are not recognised? Do we feel the need to have control and preserve our standing in the congregation? Would we be anxious about the thought of others doing the work we are? Would we find it too difficult—even impossible—to hand over our role to someone else? If we do, then we are not truly serving others, because we have fallen to the temptation to serve our own needs in ways that are not God-pleasing.
The Devil tempts us to doubt God’s word another way—to doubt that we have God’s acceptance, worth, value, love, forgiveness and welcome in Christ. He tempts us to look for it in everyway except in Jesus, who has ransomed us by his precious blood to be God’s redeemed people. He tempts us to doubt that God’s full forgiveness, his promise of divine favour and approval, and the reality for us of a place of honour for us as his dignitaries in his kingdom could ever be ours. He tempts us to doubt that because of our track record God wouldn’t love us, and isn’t interested in forgiving us.
Jesus knew we weren’t a match for the devil’s power and couldn’t overcome this fierce kingdom by ourselves. So he experienced the power of the Devil’s temptation himself, and overcame it for us, not by a mighty army or military weapons, but by his word. If Jesus had have succumbed to that temptation it would have been game over for us.
But Jesus didn’t, and then he defeated the devil once for all when he made a public mockery of the demonic powers and trampled all over them by the Cross. The devil thought that he had Jesus exactly where he wanted him when Jesus was crucified. But this was precisely how Jesus won the victory, suffering unto death and shedding his blood to deliver us from evil, and rescue us from the kingdom of darkness. The price for all people to be redeemed and reconciled to God has been paid for everyone, even those who persist in their rejection of him. By his death Jesus burst us out of hell’s dark prison, paying the debt none of us possibly could, not with silver or gold, but his holy and precious blood.
That is why we can be assured of God’s grace and forgiveness. It comes from outside of ourselves—outside of our feelings and life experience. For the Cross was how he delivered us from evil. This is how he took away the sin of the world—by being the once for all sacrifice, to bring free and full forgiveness for all. Jesus took upon himself your sin, and gave you his very own righteousness, so that when the Father looks upon you it is as if he sees you have lived as perfectly as Jesus!
Why did God do this? The story of the prodigal son from Luke 15, which we heard in the children’s message, shows us why—because of his compassion. No matter how lost a person is, no matter how spiritually dead, no matter how far away from God’s way they have wandered, no matter how much their life is in the pits, there is always a way back to God—not because of how they have lived, but despite how they have lived. God himself has made that way, so that because of Christ, and through faith in him, you are God’s holy and precious, redeemed, fully forgiven, child of God, clothed with Jesus’ own righteousness and holiness.
Another great temptation in the world today is to speak of self-esteem. But to look for self-esteem sells us short. Self-esteem doesn’t even come close to the regard that God has for us. Instead, we need to hear and know God’s esteem for us: Bulletin insert.
That is how God sees everyone he has gathered in his church. By trusting in Jesus for forgiveness, righteousness and salvation, you are forgiven, you are righteous in Christ, and you are saved for life in his kingdom. You are free from the condemnation of the devil and of others. Jesus has won the victory for you, to live under him in his kingdom, and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness. In baptism Jesus brings this to us personally, delivering from evil, death and hell. This real, mighty power is yours as Jesus lives in you and walks beside you.
The devil will tempt us to doubt God’s promise. He will tempt us to evaluate our worth to God based on how we feel, and on what we experience, rather than what our Father has done for us in Christ, and what he promises in his word. That is why Jesus said “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” It is precisely because the Kingdom of God has come near in the person of Christ to reign with grace and compassion that Jesus invites us to repent—not to turn away from our sin, and then to him—but to turn to Jesus with our sin so that he can extend the gracious rule of the Kingdom of God to us, taking away our guilt and covering our shame.
Living in this victory of Jesus as his freed and forgiven people means being God’s agents of forgiveness to one another. When others sin against us, it hurts. Our human nature wants to make them pay; to get even, for them to know what our hurt feels like. That is what the devil tempts us to do as well. But that just traps us further, rather than frees us. Jesus teaches us: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Forgiving others is not forgetting about it. God doesn’t forget about our sins, as if he has been struck with amnesia. Forgetting about serious sin done against us is not God’s way of dealing with serious hurt. Trying to forget about the sins others have done to us and moving forward is not freeing, but burdening, and enslaving, hurting ourselves and those who have sinned against us, because we still carry pain and bitterness. It is just as dangerous as taking things into our own hands, which only increases the cycle of sin and hurt. The only appropriate way to deal with sin against us is to turn to Jesus with it and ask him to take it from us.
Forgiveness means to not treat someone else as they deserve, which is what God has done for each one of us. That is at the heart of the story of the prodigal son. This is a story about you too. We are all like the prodigal son, unable to help ourselves or do anything to warrant the Father’s favour and saving help. But God is like the Father, watching and longing for his people to come to him, embracing them when they do.
The Devil tempts us to triumph over his temptations by using our own strength and efforts alone, rather than asking our Father in heaven to help us. When the devil comes knocking, don’t look to what you have done, or what you could do, or what you keep endeavouring to do, but send Jesus to the door. He is the victor. He is the one who has swallowed up death and exercises complete authority over Satan. He is the one who has freed you to come to his table again today, as those whom he has clothed in his own righteousness and restored to a place of honour in the Father’s house. And as you turn to him with your sin, and he gives you his holy body and precious blood to strengthen you to life eternal, washing away all guilt and emptying all accusations of their condemning power, there is great rejoicing in heaven over you, and all those who eat and drink in faith at the Table with you. Amen.
[1]https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/south-australia-education/oh-s-schoolie-knocked-unconscious-after-hurling-himself-off-roof/news-story/9d3d0e82e5baa981291a521139cc3a2c?utm_source=AdelaideNow&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign= Editorial&utm_content=ADV_BREAKING_BREAKING_01&net_sub_id=284171265&type=curated&position=1&overallPos=1.0
