Sermon

Mark 1:9-15

To Tempt

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Mark 1:9-15

To Tempt

By The Pastor Tim Zingale

Our lesson from Mark is the familiar story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. Mark leaves out many of the details that Luke and Matthew have in their gospels. But that gives us a chance to dwell on the key concept of this story — the idea that Jesus was tempted.

“To tempt” means to try and convince someone to do something. Or I think in this case with Jesus’ temptation, God wanted to see if Jesus would do what was required of him. I believe that this is God’s purpose in times of testing. At the same time, Satan has his own purpose — to turn Jesus away from God.

We need to look at this story in the context of Jesus’ life. Jesus had just been baptized by John. He had come out of the water and immediately the Holy Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness.

Can you sense the major change in the emotion of the story? Jesus was living in the ecstasy of his baptism and then immediately he was in the wilderness experiencing the brokenness of this world. In Mark’s gospel, we do not have the three acts of temptation that we find in the other gospels. All we know is that Jesus was tempted, period. And I think that is enough for us to know.

The question that begs to be asked and answered is why was Jesus tempted? Why as the Son of God did he have to go through this?

Jesus, I think, was not so much tempted by the devil, but by the situation itself to see if he would follow His Father in heaven.

Lent is the time when we follow this journey of Jesus to the cross. We follow Him as He is tempted, as the Devil tries to convince Jesus to steer away from his course of undeserved suffering and death. We see Jesus come through this period of temptation with His face renewed. Along the way, we see Jesus set His face, and we see those who would minister to him as he faces the cross of Calvary.

Jesus knew that He should follow the path set for Him by His Father.  And in that wilderness experience, he was able to show himself and his father that He could follow that path.

And that brings us to another question? Does God tempt us? Does God put temptations in our path to see if we will follow Him?

The answer to that question, for me at least, is no. God does not tempt us individually, but he allows the sinfulness of this world to tempt us.

God has given us two commandments to follow.  We find the story in Mark 12:28:

28  And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”
29 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; 30and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’  31 The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

Our commandments are in a sense easier than what Jesus was told to do by God. We are to love God and love our neighbor. But we find that very difficult in this world of brokenness.

We are tempted not by God to break these commandments, but by the devil, the brokenness of this world. A story about the devil says:

“The Evil Spirit once came dejected before God and wailed, “Almighty God — I want you to know that I am bored — bored to tears! I go around doing nothing all day long. There isn’t a stitch of work for me to do!”

“I can’t understand you,” replied God. There’s plenty of work to be done only you’ve got to have more initiative. Why don’t you try to lead people into sin? That’s your job!”

“Lead people into sin!” muttered the Evil Spirit contemptuously. “Why Lord, even before I can get a chance to say a blessed word to anyone he has already gone and sinned.”1

The temptations of this world are all around us. We are as Luther says, “Saint and sinner at the same” — saint because of the saving power of Christ, and sinner, because we don’t always do what God requires. We don’t love God with our whole heart or our neighbor as ourselves.

I do not believe that God brings temptations into our lives, but rather that temptations are part of living in a world that is not fully redeemed. So all around us are things that would lead us away from believing in God with our whole heart and loving our neighbor as our selves.

Bumper sticker: “Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself.”

Sometimes we make other things God-like. We emphasize making money, having power, being famous. Now those things in and of themselves are not wrong, but they are temptations when they lead us away from God.

There is a story that tells this point well:

Many years ago a king had one beautiful daughter. She had many offers of marriage, but she couldn’t make up her mind. A romantic girl, she wanted a man who would love her more than he loved anything else.

Finally, she devised a way to test the love of her suitors. An announcement was made and sent throughout the kingdom that on a certain day, there would be a race. The winner of the race would marry the princess. The race was open to every man in the kingdom, regardless of his position. All that was required was that the man had to profess to love the princess more than he loved anything else.

On the chosen day, men rich and poor gathered for the race. Each professed wholehearted love for the princess. They gathered at the starting line, prepared to run the course of many miles that had been marked for the race. Each man was told that the princess waited at the finish line. Whoever reached her first could take her as his bride.

Just before the race was to begin, an announcement was made. The king, they were reminded, was a wealthy man with treasures gathered from all over the world. Not wanting any man to run in vain, it was announced, the king had liberally scattered some of his finest treasures along the course. Each runner was welcome to take as many as he liked.

The race was begun. Almost immediately, the runners began to come across great gems and bags of gold. There were necklaces and pendants and jewel encrusted cups and swords and knives. One by one, the runners, princes and paupers alike, turned aside to fill their pockets and carry off what treasures they could. Blinded by the immediate promise of wealth, they forgot the princess and all their professions of love.

All except one! He pressed on, ignoring what to him were trinkets when compared to incomparable beauty of the princess and the prospect of gaining her hand in marriage, finally crossing the finish line. 2

That is the way temptation works. It places things in our path meant to blind our eyes to the kind of life God wants us to live.

With God’s grace we can learn to avoid temptation, we can learn to walk away from those things that would be gods in our life. With God’s grace, we can keep our focus on Him and the love we have for Him. With God’s grace, we can turn to loving our neighbor. We can learn to love others instead of loving ourselves.

12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.
13 And he was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan;
and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to him.

Amen

Copyright 2006, Tim Zingale.  Used by permission

1 A short story from A Treasury of Jewish Folklore: Stories, Traditions, Legends, Humor, Wisdom and Folk Songs of the Jewish People, Edited by Nathan Ausubel (NY: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1948)