eFollowingJesusJan9 - Tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1-4)

   So Jesus is beloved, baptized, gifted with the Spirit - and then led directly out into a harrowing, barren zone to be assaulted by the devil himself?  We may bat around the question "Does God test us?"  But God surely tested Jesus - and for anyone who would stick close to Jesus, the going is rough.  Martin Luther believed that being wooed by evil was a sign you were in sync with Jesus.

   Forty days in the wilderness of Judea with no food!  How strange to us, whose mission is the satisfaction of every desire, to consider Jesus, choosing not to eat when he could eat, refusing to turn rocks into bread.  Jesus seemed to intuit that if you satisfy every little earthly whim, your deeper craving for God gets caked over with dust, it grows numb, and you forget that your deepest hunger is not for "bread alone, but for every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Deuteronomy 8:3).  So the Christian chooses renunciation, periodic fasts - not to be miserable, but to discover our hunger for God, our dependence upon God. 

   Lord, are You leading me into a difficult place?  Is it a test?  May You alone be my food, my sustenance; keep me hungry for You alone.

James

james@mpumc.org

Here is the full text of Matthew 4:1-4 - 1:  Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2: And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. 3: And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." 4: But he answered, "It is written, `Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'"

Sunday's sermon on the Baptism of Jesus may be heard on our web site by clicking here.

The full eFollowingJesus series (thus far!) may be found on our web site.