To Know Who You Are

Matthew 4: 1 – 11.

Introduction.

I don’t know if this is a true story or not.  …

When George Herbert Walker Bush was president of the United States of America, he took an afternoon to visit in a nursing home.  It was a big event for most of the residents.  They had the opportunity to meet the current president of the United States. 

After several minutes of shaking hands with the men and hugging the necks of the women, one of the nursing home employees pointed out a frail woman sitting in a wheel chair off by herself.  She was obviously not as interested in seeing President Bush as the other residents were.  But she was also very lonely. 

The nursing home employee spoke quietly to the President about the woman and sent the president over to speak to her.

President Bush approached very calmly and quietly.  He gently placed his hand on the woman’s shoulder and slowly knelt down to speak to her face to face.  When the woman turned and looked into the president’s face, President Bush spoke, “Do you know who I am?”

The woman replied, “No.  But if you ask the nice lady at the desk, she can tell you.”

Perhaps that is a good question for each of us to think about this morning…Do you know who you are?  I mean what makes you who you are…What is you purpose in life…Why are you even here on earth?  (Someone should write a book about that…)

It is also a good question for us to ask of our church…Do you know who we are as a church?  I mean what makes us the church that we are…What is our purpose in life…Why is First Baptist Church even here on earth?

As a church, we are currently involved in One Focus.  We are encouraging all our members to focus on one person…To identify one person who needs to know Jesus as their Lord…To love that one person…To serve that one person…To pray for that one person…To invite that one person to hear the Gospel in our church.

This One Focus vision grows out of Jesus’ last words to his disciples in Matthew 28: 18 – 20.  We know this as the Great Commission:  All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.  And surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.

This is who we are!  We are disciples of Jesus.  This is what God has called us to do!  We are called to make disciples of other men and women (and nations).  This is the reason we are still on this earth!

When we describe the purpose for our church, we have to do two things simultaneously.  On one hand, we state in positive terms the things we will DO.  On the other hand, we state in negative terms the things we will NOT DO.  In other words, if we want to remain faithful to our Mission, then we must learn how to say YES to some opportunities and say NO to other opportunities.  In other words we have to make choices about who we are and how we live out our Mission in the world.

I wish these choices were as easy as choosing between Right and Wrong…Or Good and Bad.  Most of our choices are difficult choices between Right and Acceptable…What God wants us to Do and Everybody Will Understand…Good and God’s Best…

This is the definition of a temptation.  We are faced with a choice between Good and God’s Best…The Right Thing and Everybody Will Understand…

Today I want to take an honest look at the temptations that might distract us or prevent us from accomplishing our God-Given Mission. 

I would like to direct your attention to a story in the New Testament that illustrates our temptations… The temptations that Jesus faced.

Read Matthew 4: 1 – 11.

1 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ [fn1] ”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “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.’ [fn2] ”

 

7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ [fn3] ”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ [fn4] ”

11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Jesus Rejected Serving Himself.

The first temptation centered on Messiah’s ability to provide food…After 40 days of fasting in the desert, Jesus was hungry.  This is perhaps the greatest understatement in the entire Bible…Jesus wasn’t hungry, Jesus was STARVING.  He was weak with hunger like none of us have ever experienced before.  And Satan approached Jesus at his weakest point.

Satan said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

It is interesting how Satan said this to Jesus.  It looks to us that Satan is questioning Jesus’ authority and ability to work miracles by saying “If you are the Son of God.”  But that is not the case at all.  The choice of Greek words illustrates a subtle difference in meaning that could actually be translated into English as, “Since you are the Son of God.”

This translation fits with a theme that we see throughout the Gospels.  Satan was the first person in all of the Gospel to recognize Jesus for who he truly is, the Son of God. 

Satan is not testing Jesus to see if he truly is the Son of God.  Satan is testing Jesus BECAUSE he is the Son of God…And Satan wants to know if Jesus will remain faithful to his calling.  This was an attempt to manipulate Jesus into sinning and thus failing in God’s intention for Jesus to be a sinless offering that takes away the sins of the world.

But there must be something more to this than just food.  What is so sinful about turning stones to bread?

Satan was appealing to a common belief or expectation concerning the promised Messiah.  It was commonly expected that when the Messiah came, he would provide food for those who were without.  Jesus did perform this miracle later in his ministry by feeding 5000, and Jesus will do it in the coming Kingdom. 

But for Jesus to perform this miracle at this particular point in his ministry would have been wrong.  There was no one else around for Jesus to feed…It would have been self-serving.  This was too early for God’s plan… It was the Right thing, but at the Wrong time.

Jesus refused to be a Welfare Messiah by appealing to something more important.  Food is not the only thing that people need to survive.  God’s word is even more important. 

Jesus refused to serve himself.  Yes, he was hungry.  Yes, he needed food to live.  BUT, this was not the most important thing at this point in Jesus’ life.  The most important thing was for Jesus to hear and obey the word of God.

I see a connection here between what Jesus said about God’s word and how we understand God’s will.  In a purely Hebrew understanding, the words that come out of a person’s mouth reveal their inner thoughts and character.  (Is that a scary thought?  The words you speak reveal who you are on the inside.)

And the words that God has spoken reveal God’s character…God’s intentions…God’s purposes…And God’s will for all his people…  For this reason, God’s word is more important to us than food!

If we apply this to our church, we can say that turning the stone into bread is like doing things to insure our self-preservation as a church.  BUT, if we focus all our efforts into surviving, how can we really accomplish God’s will for our church?  We need to put things in the opposite order.  Surviving is not really our responsibility.  It is God’s responsibility to help us survive.  Our job is to do God’s work and to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission!

Jesus Rejected Entertaining the World.

The second temptation focused on having Jesus to jump from the pinnacle of the Temple.

Again, Satan tried to manipulate Jesus by confessing, “Since you are the Son of God.”  But in this case, Satan made reference to Scripture.  He quoted from Psalm 91, a familiar passage about the ways that God offers his provision and his protection to God’s own children.  But the verse in question refers to how God protects us when we stumble, not when we intentionally jump.

At its root, this temptation was for Jesus to attract a crowd by performing a spectacular miracle.  Since the Temple was in the middle of downtown Jerusalem, and people were constantly walking around doing business and shopping in the crowded marketplace, Jesus would have attracted a lot of attention by performing this stunt.  If Jesus had staged a jump and rescue, he would have won many converts.  But Jesus didn’t come to perform for our entertainment.  NO!  Jesus came to suffer and die in order to offer us forgiveness and salvation.

To become a Performing Arts Messiah would be to avoid suffering.  Jesus would have sacrificed God’s plan of salvation for human entertainment.  God’s plan was for people to discover who Jesus really is through his suffering and humiliation, not through a manufactured stunt.

If Jesus had given in to this temptation, he would have been manipulating God.  Forcing God to prove his love and protection by stepping out of his will.  Of course it would have attracted a large crowd of followers.

In order that Jesus could become the kind of Messiah that God had called him to become, Jesus had to say NO to the kinds of gimmicks and stunts that would have brought in a big crowd of followers.

If we apply this to our church, we can say jumping from the pinnacle of the Temple is like performing gimmicks to bring people into the church for the wrong reasons.  On one hand, if we can bring people into the church to watch a circus clown ride a motorcycle across a high wire, should we be happy that they came to church?  On the other hand, if it takes a motorcycle riding clown to bring people into the church, what will it take to keep them in the church?

               

Jesus Rejected Instant Gratification.

The Third temptation focused on worshipping Satan.  This is the most ironic of all the temptations.

Satan offered Jesus something that Jesus would eventually have.  In the coming Kingdom, all Heaven and earth will worship Jesus alone…Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord to the Glory of God the Father.

The temptation here is to seek instant gratification rather than wait on God.  To accept Satan’s offer would again be to avoid the cross.  And it would have compromised Jesus’ loyalty to the Father.  It would also have resulted in our destruction, leaving us no hope for salvation

In order that Jesus could become the kind of Messiah that God had called him to become, Jesus had to say NO to doing things the way the world suggests and getting everything at the beginning of his life.

Conclusion.

The temptations of Jesus can be summarized into one basic temptation.  When Jesus came face to face with Satan, he came face to face with the possibility of either fulfilling his God-Given Mission or becoming exactly what the world was looking for. 

Sometimes I imagine myself in the George Bush story.  Sometimes I imagine our church in the story.  “Do you know who I am?”  No.  But if you look to Jesus, he can tell you who you are.

Are you willing to listen to his answer to that question?  Are you willing to live out that calling personally and as a church?

Last week, my family traveled to Branson, Missouri to spend Christmas with my Mississippi family.  Instead of driving to Mississippi to visit them or having them travel to Texas to visit us, we decided to meet in Branson.  We drove up on Wednesday (the day after Christmas).  If you remember what the weather was like on Wednesday, you remember that Arkansas was frozen solid.

We were supposed to drive to Little Rock and then up to Branson.  But, we decided not to drive through Arkansas.  So, we stopped in Texarkana and bought a map larger than our iPhone maps and figured out how to avoid Arkansas, drive through eastern Oklahoma, and add three hours to our family time in the car.

At one point, we stopped at a gas station in a little town—I think it was Idabel, Oklahoma.  There was a deputy sheriff pumping gas in his four wheel drive pickup.  I walked up to him and asked about the road conditions between there and Branson.  He answered my questions and told us what we could expect.  Without thinking about what I was saying, I said to the deputy… 

“I don’t know where I am; and I don’t know where I’m going; but I think I’m making good time.”

                That may be a good way to spend your vacation, but it’s not a good way to live.  I don’t want my life to be like that in 2013, and I don’t want our church to be like that.

I want us to know who we are as a church and where we are going.  We are disciples of Jesus who are called to make more disciples.  And, the way we are going to get there is by focusing on one person at a time.