Sermon, Sunday Nov 19th "Testing? Temptation? Which is it?"

(Read Luke 4:1-13)

Now, I’m gonna be honest with you about an aspect of my life, and maybe you can relate. I haven’t been through a lot of trauma in my life…part of that is probably because I’m still relatively young, and part of that is probably because I had a safe upbringing, my parents set up boundaries for me, I haven’t lived in a war-torn nation, and the Shenandoah Valley is a relatively safe place to grow up. But I HAVE been through traumatic experiences, and two weeks ago starting at 5:15 in the morning was one of them, when I heard the simple message from Rowena, “The church is burning.”

I’ve been through my share of emotions since then, and I’ve seen the emotions on the faces of more than a few of you since then; some feeling overwhelmed…crushed by the responsibilities suddenly placed on you…some feeling numb, aimless, as images I’m sure rushed through your mind of events that have taken place at that church that were meaningful to you; gave you a sense of belonging. I’ve heard Jean Landrum say twice something that moved me…she said to God in prayer, “I know that you will bring life out of the ashes.” Jean’s been through some things in life…she can say something like that with experience to back it up.

And last week, I mentioned the question one of our youth asked the night of the fire, “Why us? Why did this happen to us?” A good question that a lot of people are asking around the world in the situations they’ve been thrust into in their lives…everything from relationship difficulties to wondering about the importance of their lives to family members being casualties of war to long periods of repression and starvation…lots of people are asking that question. And if they’re being honest with the answers, the answers aren’t easy.

Last week, at the end of the worship service, Rick got up and stated quite simply what I think may be the most necessary reflection for us to have right now, “What is our goal as a church? If it is simply to rebuild a physical building, that’s not good enough, and it’s not high enough. Many of us saw how gutted the sanctuary was, and maybe just like the sanctuary was gutted, God knew that we need to be gutted too.”

Honest awareness, I think. I know how easy it is to say that I WANT change, that I WANT a God-centered life, that I WANT to pursue righteousness, that I WANT to love God and my neighbor more today than I did yesterday, that I WANT to pray more, that I WANT to grow. I also know how hard it is to put those things in practice with everything else shouting for my attention…and the problem is, I listen to them and turn towards those things instead of pursuing God. And I find myself growing numb and lukewarm…and it takes something that rips me right out of my comfort zone and shoves me into a place of pain or doubt or discomfort for me to WAKE UP again.

This is one such situation. The question hangs in the air: Was this an act of evil to try to tear us apart as a church community? I’m not talking arson here…just taking a second to think…did the forces of evil that we can’t see, taste, touch, feel get together to try to plunge a knife into our heart as a church, try to make us throw up our hands and say forget it? Or is this a test by God to put us in a place of discomfort, a place where we need to figure out what our identity is and where our foundation is? Or is this just a part of living in a broken world where things like this happen, and our response to this thing determines who we’re going to lean on and where our treasure is? Or is it all three? Short of an angel appearing here behind me to talk to us today, I don’t think we can point at any one of these suggestions and say; THAT’S the one. We have to be honest. We don’t know.

And that’s why this passage from Luke today grabbed me as I read it. Some of you who have been around churches for a little while in your life have probably heard of this situation, and some of you have heard more than a few messages on the topic as well. We could be tempted (no pun intended) to simplify this situation and say, Jesus was weak from fasting, Jesus was tempted, but Jesus was God, and Jesus emerged free from sinning. End of story. But if we did that, we’re missing a terribly important reality here that has a big-time message for us today.

The word temptation shows us twice in this passage; verse 2 and verse 13, both times associated with the devil. The word test shows up once, when Jesus says, “Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test.” You may have known this. You may have come to the conclusion, if you have a broad understanding of Scripture that God “tests,” while Satan “tempts.” But you may not have known, if you didn’t know that New Testament was written first in Greek, that the word translated into English as “temptation” and the word translated into English as “test” are the same word in Greek: peirazo. (repeat)

The biblical idea of temptation is not primarily of seduction, as in modern usage, but of making trial of a person, or putting them to the test; which may be done for the good purpose of proving or improving their quality, or the evil purpose of exposing them or tricking them into unfaithfulness.

We can see the difference of the two in the book of Job, a terribly confusing section of the Bible, where it looks like the LORD lets himself to be talked into destroying Job’s life by Satan. Job ends up losing everything and finally sits in the ashes of his life, scraping boils on his body with a shattered piece of pottery, and the very first thing his friends do is tell him; you did something bad to deserve this, Job! What’d you do? Jobs’ friends reacted like we’re tempted to react; bad things, bad consequences, happen to people that MESS up. ALL the time. But Job was blameless and upright, and his life is in shambles. And on top of that, God LET that happen to him! John Waggy and I have had a couple conversations around the problem this passage raises! I find it disturbing in this passage that it wasn’t just things that were destroyed in Job’s life, but his sons and daughters.

And I continue to wrestle with this reality. And the simplest conclusion I think we can come to is to recognize that the intention of the two parties the LORD and Satan is clearly different; the LORD wants to see Job pass this test (display his character), and Satan desires to see Job fail. Who and what passes away in this situation is very secondary to God; what matters most to the LORD is the faithfulness of Job, and what matters most to Satan is that Job would curse God.

This should illustrate an important point for us. God really doesn’t necessarily care what material things he gives us or doesn’t give us, whether we have no cars or 2, a house or an apartment, no house, whatever. What God wants is our hearts, what God wants is that we would center our lives around him, whether things are flowing along quite nicely or everything’s falling apart around us. God doesn’t exist to make us happy…we exist to be in a relationship with Him and to heal the brokenness around us, starting right here. (point at heart)

The difference between a test and temptation is found in the tester’s motivations and expectations; the devil tempts that the believer might fail and sin; God tests that he might determine and sharpen character, with no focus on making the believer fail.

And when it comes to this situation of the temptation of Jesus, we simply can’t sugarcoat the reality that Jesus was “led by the Spirit” into the situation of tempting! So, just like Job’s situation, this shows it is completely possible for divine and demonic intention to flow through the exact same experience; working for different ends. What does that show us? I think it shows that our lives are right smack-dab in the middle of the battle between good and evil; where our consistency in faithfulness or failure determines the impact of our life, and when we’re speaking of our church family, determines the impact of our church.

And I think that requires honesty from us: honesty with God and honesty with one another. The thing that God loves the most is our faithfulness and our commitment to pursuing Him, the thing that God HATES the most, and we should to, is our unfaithfulness and inconsistencies. And that’s a tough thing to deal with, because we’re all inconsistent and unfaithful on some level…and that’s where our honesty and accountability to one another comes in.

If we run with Rick’s suggestion that simply setting the goal of rebuilding the physical structure of our place of worship isn’t good enough, and that maybe God is waking us up as his people to gut us, take us out of our comfort zone, and figure out what we’re made of, then we need to deal with some tough reality.

We can’t consider our church to be successful or a failure by how many butts we have in seats or don’t have in seats on Sunday mornings at worship…lots of churches how lots of people, and are spiritually dead. (and in the same vein, lots of churches have little to no people, and are spiritually dead). But I'm of the mind that God would take a church of 5 people living into their faith and actively growing than 25,000 warm bodies occupying a seat on a Sunday morning. So we’ve gotta look deeper to test our success as a church. Are lives being transformed? Is Nate changing for the better, struggling with less weakness, and pursuing God more this year than last? Are we as a church changing for the better, struggling with less weakness, and pursuing God more this year than the last? These are questions we should ask, and we should seek to be as open and trusting of one another as possible…that demands that we take risks to trust one another with our lives.

You have in your bulletin the letter Ted Haggard, the guy we talked about two weeks ago, wrote to his church community. For those of us who seek to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, the news of the truth was a shock. What makes the situation even more ironic was the fact that the Sunday before this came to light, Haggard’s prayer before the sermon was that deception would be brought to light. God answered his prayer. He was deceiving his wife, his family, his church, and those around him. But I’m not highlighting this to point a finger at him, because Ted Haggard isn’t the only one responsible in this situation. We are too…and the reality we have to deal with is that quite often we don’t create the space in churches where we talk about our weaknesses and temptations and failings, we pray for each other, and walk with each other as we seek to grow and strengthen as followers of Jesus. Because of this environment, Ted was afraid to share his weakness and hid from the church.

The good thing about this situation is that Haggard himself now is free to choose to be honest. He no longer has to hide in the dark and deceive those closest to him. Now that he’s been removed from his position of leadership, he has the opportunity to find out what he really believes by the way that he wants to live. I pray God’s grace upon him and his family in the process. I pray that New Life Church of Colorado would make the move to be a people who recognize their common weakness as followers of Jesus, who pursue honesty, forgiveness, and the pursuit of righteousness together.

This situation demands: How will we respond? Will we shove Haggard under the bus as an embarrassing exposure of our weakness, or will we take a hard look at ourselves?

Certainly Haggard is not alone in his struggle. So it might be good to ask whether our congregation is a grace-filled place of accountability and healing or a performance-based social club where we all hide from one another, and get better and better at it as we get older.

Ted failed his testing and gave in to temptation, and is facing consequences because of it. It is good that he is being held accountable…it is hypocritical if those holding him accountable are carrying secrets of their own. The open question for us, given that we have no idea of knowing whether this Sanctuary fire is a situation of testing or temptation, or both, is how we respond.

God is in the business of shaping a people who will passionately pursue Him, and he is completely free (as we see in the book of Job…even if we feel terribly uncomfortable with that reality) to do anything or allow anything that will bring His people to stop relying on themselves and instead rely on Him. He’s the Creator, and he’s free to do that…we can trust that God knows what he’s doing. So the story of Middle River’s success or failure starts right here in each of our hearts, moves outward into our actions and our priorities, and our conversations, and what we center our lives around.

If we stick together as a people and walk this road of discipleship honestly, passionately, and openly, we’ll be able to look back at this situation and see how God used this fire to drive us to our knees and depend on Him. This is his desire, and he will stop at nothing to achieve it. Our legacy hinges on our commitment. So what will we do? Will we stumble and bumble along, giving off a self-sufficient front that is completely false, or will we do the hard work to make Middle River a place where we both pursue righteousness and have high goals and accountability while recognizing we are all flawed and weak and broken…and that we need grace and forgiveness to be able to make progress. Perfect love drives out fear. What is our goal?