Sunday Service 26th April
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
Temptation
26/4/26
Call to worship
Hymn 404: I danced in the morning
Time for all
Hymn 641: Seek ye first
Reading: Luke 4: 1-15 Gil
Prayer
Hymn 468: Son of God, eternal Saviour
Sermon
Prayer
Hymn 547: What a friend we have in Jesus
Benediction
Welcome to our meditation for 26th April.
This week we are looking at the time just before Christ’s public ministry.
Before Jesus has even started to relate to the world what God’s love looks like
he has temptations about HOW he will show that love...because how Jesus does his ministry will be just as important as what he says.
And why would that be important to us?
But we will reflect on that after Gil leads us in our prayer and reading for today.
Sermon
Why is this passage important?
I am reminded of the story of the man whose dog is dying. He loves his dog and when the vet tells him the dog can live, but it needs to eat his medication every day, then the man is overjoyed. There is hope.
But the next morning when the man puts his hand out with the pill the dog sniffs it and then turns away.
So knowing how important the medication is the man grabs the dog, opens his mouth and forces the pill down his throat.
From that moment on every morning it is a battle with the dog to get him to take this pill.
After a week the man goes back to the vet with the dog.
The dogs relationship with the owner is a mess, the man’s arms are covered in bites and cuts from the dog fighting him.
The owner pleads with the vet for other medication. The dog just won’t willingly take the medication.
At which point the vet takes a pill, crushes it into some dog meat, and puts the plate on the ground where the dog cheerfully eats it all up.
Then the vet just turns to the owner and says, ‘It wasn’t that the dog didn’t like the medication, it was just that the dog didn’t like how you were giving it to him.’
Many believe that is what it happening in our passage today.
Before the message has got out, Satan is trying to corrupt it.
What Satan is trying to do is NOT change Jesus’ message, but change HOW Jesus gives that message.
Satan is trying to convince Jesus not to be Jesus, ‘the Son of God’, but to be Jesus the political dictator, or Jesus the showman, or Jesus the miracle worker.
Satan tries to get Jesus to question WHO he is, hopefully to change who he becomes, to take a path different from the path God had planned for Jesus.
How does every temptation begin?
With the words, ‘If you are God’s Son...’
And everything that follows is something that God’s Son could do.
God’s Son could turn five loaves and two fish into enough food for 20,000 men women and children....so he could turn stones into bread.
God’s Son could ride into Jerusalem and the populace call him the one who comes in the name of the Lord, a descendant of David, and he could do this in front of a Roman garrison and everyone would be too frightened to touch him...so he could rule the nations.
God’s Son could walk on water in the middle of a raging storm...so he could walk off the top of the Temple and float down to the ground.
None of these tasks were impossible.
If he was God’s Son he could do any one them.
So why didn’t he?
Why didn’t he do any or all of them and prove that he was God’s Son?
‘If you are God’s Son...’
What Jesus understood too well, is that it is not enough to have power; it is how you use that power,
when you use that power,
that counts.
To be truly God’s Son, Jesus didn’t just need to have God’s power; he had to use that power when and how God would want him to use that power.
Jesus’ role wasn’t just to have God’s power, but to show how God uses that power. Jesus was not just here to prove he was part of the Godhead, he was here to show the nature of the Godhead.
We see this in the parables where Jesus often has sons representing the father.
In the parable of the tenants and the vineyard that we looked at about a month or two ago Jesus tells the story of the man who owns a vineyard and rents it out to some famers. Then comes the harvest and the owner sends a servant to collect the rent.
But the farmers don’t think much of the servant, or the other servants that come along to collect the rent. So what does the owner do?
He sends his son, because his son has the authority and the power of the father.
When Jesus is condemning the Pharisees, he tells the story we call the prodigal son. There the father is looking out always for the younger son; the father has great concern for the younger son.
But the older brother doesn’t.
The elder son is angry with the younger son and wishes him dead.
And Jesus condemns the Pharisees by portraying them like that older son, who should be trying to fulfil the wishes of the father and look out for the younger sons of the world, but instead have abandoned them.
The son represents the father. When the son fails to do that in word and deed, then the son is rejecting the father.
That is what Satan is trying to do with Jesus.
Before the message of God is even given, Satan wants to corrupt it, taint it
Turn the rocks into bread...it seems so innocent, even good.
Wouldn’t the Son of God want to stop world hunger?
Give the people what they want and they will love you for it, your message will get through.
I imagine every politician wishes that was true. Tell the people what they want to hear; we will save the NHS,
we will create new jobs,
we will cut energy prices.
The only problem with that?
As every politician knows, give the people what they want, and they will want more.
Winston Churchill gave the British people what they wanted. He saved them from Nazi Germany. You would think the least they people could do in return was elect him and his party to be the next prime minister and government.
Nope, because leading the country through a war they thought they would lose, wasn’t enough, they wanted more.
Turning stones into bread, feeding the starving. It would never be enough. That’s not to say that helping people isn’t important...but just helping people will not change their hearts.
It is the same with the spectacular entrance and undeniable signs, or ruling the governments of the world.
At face value they seem to good things, better than we have just now.
Whose faith wouldn’t be strengthened by some miracle right in front of our face that we couldn’t deny?
Who doesn’t believe that Jesus would make a better Prime minister that Kier Starmer, a better President than Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, be a better First Minister than ANY of the candidates up for election in Scotland?
But if Jesus followed that path then how would that work in our personal journey of faith?
We have no personal responsibility if Jesus is completely in charge.
We would never deal with suffering if we expected Jesus to always perform a miracle and take the problem away.
And this is where it gets personal.
Because the temptations of Christ are the very temptations we face.
Sure we will never be tempted to perform a miracle, or to jump off the church bell tower, or to take over the world.
But the one temptation Jesus faced is the one temptation that we face every day.
‘If you are the Son of God...’
‘If you are a child of God...’
Every day Jesus had to face the question of his own purpose...if you are the Son of God.
Not only what he did, but why he did it.
Jesus only had to say to himself once, ‘Maybe I am not...’ and his ministry would have been destroyed.
Only once did he need to question his motives and everything would have fallen apart.
The reason Jesus did what he did, was because he believed he was God’s Son, and God was guiding him to do what he did, the way he did.
That is our temptation.
‘If you are a child of God...’
How often does an idea come into our head about helping someone, or asking about someone, and we do nothing because a voice in our head says,
‘Who do you think you are...’?
How often do we see something is not right and we want to say something or challenge someone and we do nothing because a voice in our head says,
‘Who do you think you are...’?
And too often our answer is...
Well I am not educated enough.
I am not important enough.
I am not powerful enough.
I am not strong enough.
I am not connected enough.
I am not popular enough.
I am not respected enough.
In essence Jesus’ answer was, ‘I am God’s son, and I will do the Father’s work in the Father’s way.
Our answer needs to be, ‘I am a child of God who will do God’s will in God’s way.’
But...I hear you ask, ‘How?’ How can I become that confident in my faith that I do God’s work in God’s way?
By being in God’s presence, or rather seeing that we are always in God’s presence...
Practical ways to do that are having regular times of reflection.
Or maybe each hour have one minute to give thanks to God for what has happened in that hour.
Reading the parables of Jesus and maybe asking ourselves who we are in each of the parables.
Maybe once and a while actually talking about our faith to other members of the community, sharing doubts or fears or worries...they may have insights as to how they dealt with their doubts or worries that can help us.
Maybe reflecting on practical parts of our faith: who are we helping and why are we helping them?
When Jesus faced his temptations and questions he went back again and again to scripture, to God, got himself grounded in what he knew to be true.
It might help our journey of faith if we started to do the same.
Let us pray
Heavenly Father,
We give thanks for the honesty of Jesus sharing this part of his life to the disciples so that in turn we might hear of it.
It would have been so easy to believe that Jesus never had any questions about his place in the world, that eh was always certain and never had to confront the idea that he might be wrong.
But that wouldn’t have been true, and that wouldn’t have helped us.
By facing the ‘what ifs’ that come to all of us we find a comfort and a strength.
If Jesus could face them, then with his strength so can we.
If we are facing them then it isn’t a sign that we are weak, or failures or less than we should be, it is just a sign that we are human.
And in Christ we are reminded that you love an care and support humans, no matter what they face.
And so we pray for all who need resilience in their calling, to be faithful to you and your path for them.
We pray for those in whose hands great power has been entrusted by their people,
elected leaders chosen as their representatives,
that they would keep themselves focused on what they have been called to do,
forgetting the desire to feather their own nest and instead create laws that seek to protect the weakest and most vulnerable in society.
We pray for those in our teaching and healing professions, who can change the destinies of others by what they do and how they do it.
So can feel disheartened by their own limitations and frustrated by how the institutions of society can disadvantage so many. May they feel your love and care as a strength, may they be motivated by compassion and inspired by the learning and healing that happens because of their presence in the loves of others.
We pray today for the situations in our world where the ‘what ifs’ have run out of control,
where hard-won freedoms are being undermined, where long-term relationships are jeopardised by short-term profiteering,
and agreements that maintain peace are torn asunder by selfish intentions.
May you give energy to the peacemakers, give wisdom to those who hold those in authority accountable.,
And we pray today for all of us as we face our own ‘what ifs’
in our churches, in our workplaces, in our families, in our friendship groups,
that we may be examples of the kind of life that reveals your holy commonwealth...one act of love at a time.
We are your children, may we do your will in your way.
Amen.
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