"Temptation"
Gen. 2:15-17; 3:1-7; Ps. 32; Rom. 5:12-19; Matt. 4:1-11
Dr. George R. Sinclair
Pastor
February 10, 2008
Mardi Gras made it a short week. I was tempted to preach an old sermon—you know, dig one out of the barrel—who would know?
On the way to the grocery store the other day, a guy cut right in front of me. I was tempted to blast him with my horn and flip him an unpleasant sign. I was tempted.
At lunch last week, a waiter asked if we wanted dessert—I started to ask for the menu. I was tempted.
If there’s one subject that requires little or no explanation, it is temptation. Everybody knows about temptation. We face it everyday. We’re tempted to eat too much, to drink too much. We’re tempted by sex. We’re tempted to lie when telling the truth is painful. We’re tempted to use the truth to inflict pain. We know about temptation, but where does it come from? Why are we tempted?
I have a fairly simple theory about temptation. I think the Bible is right when it says our fundamental temptation is to be like God. Said another way, our fundamental temptation is not to be human. We are tempted because we want to be like God. We are tempted because we refuse to be human.
I love Genesis. Genesis is one of my favorite books. Now, I don’t want to argue about the literalness of Genesis. It matters not to me whether you take Genesis literally or figuratively. I am more concerned about taking Genesis seriously. And by seriously I mean reading Genesis as a reliable understanding of human experience. Here’s how I read it.
In Genesis, the serpent, which is described as a wild animal craftier than any other, the serpent represents an alternate way of being in the world, a path other than the one posed by the Creator. Genesis does not explain why this alternate exists—only that it does. And it poses this alternate through the talking snake. That is where temptation begins. It begins when God’s intent is questioned: “Did God say?”
Actually, the serpent plays fast and loose with what God says. The talking snake takes the positive command of God and turns it into a negative. The talking snake conveniently omits the permission God gave Adam and Eve to “freely eat of every tree of the garden.” The talking snake seizes on the prohibition and that slight twist exposes a brooding resentment when the woman answers: “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”
You know how kids are when you tell them to leave something alone. “I don’t want you using so and so (and you can fill in the blank with whatever you don’t want your children messing with when you’re not around) and what does the child hear? “Stupid old man, he doesn’t want me to have any fun.”
God created a beautiful garden with plenty of low-hanging fruit but the garden is also host to danger. The danger is unexplained. We don’t know why danger is in the garden. No reason is offered. It is a given like the alternate way posed by the talking snake. But we are told that the danger is fatal. Choosing it over the command of God brings death—“in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
So what does the talking snake suggest, “My dear Eve, you are not going to die if you eat that fruit. God knows when you eat your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.”
Preachers be warned. The first preacher, the first theologian, is a talking snake. The snake, craftier than any other wild animal, is the first to speak a word on God’s behalf, which should give pause to anyone who takes up preaching for a living. “God knows you won’t die,” the snake says. “You’re going to be like God.”
We are tempted to be like God. Said otherwise, we are tempted to decline, deny or refuse our humanity. God wants us to be human—to be limited. We can’t do everything. We don’t know everything. We can’t know everything—especially not good and evil. There are some things we must be told. Good and evil are among the things we must be told. We must rely on God to distinguish good from evil. We’re not positioned to know good and evil, but we’d like to be, which is what the snake invites us to do: “God knows when you eat your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.”
So begins the first temptation. Our first parents sinned because they wanted to be like God. Our first parents sinned because they didn’t want to be human. Jesus faced the same temptation. Come with me now from the garden to the wilderness.
Matthew says Jesus was “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” Matthew’s wilderness connects us not just with that region beyond Jerusalem where John baptized, but also with the wilderness where Aaron made the golden calf. Matthew’s wilderness also connects us with God’s beautiful garden gone wrong and its talking snake. For Matthew, Jesus is something like a second Adam, but as we will see, Jesus is the Adam who gets it right.
We’re told first that Jesus fasted for forty days. Forty is a stout Biblical number. It rains for forty days and nights in the story of Noah. Jonah warned Nineveh that it had forty days and of course Israel spent forty years in the wilderness. Jesus was in the wilderness a long time—forty days and forty nights—and “afterwards he was famished.”
I don’t know what you’ve given up for Lent, but does fasting make you more or less tempted? Emily mentioned in her newsletter article that fasting can increase spiritual defenses by enabling self-control. I think there’s something to that. Jesus fasted forty days and so he is prepared. He’s ready to do battle. To be sure he is hungry, but he is also spiritually ready. And that’s when the devil comes after him, which suggests that temptation doesn’t just happen when we’re weak but also and perhaps especially when we’re strong.
“If you are the Son of God, command these stones.” The Greek is better translated, “Since you are the Son of God, turn these stones to bread.” The devil does not question Jesus’ god-ness. The issue is not the divinity of Jesus. At issue is his humanity which is exactly how Jesus answers: “A human being does not live by bread alone.” That’s what Jesus says about being human. “A human being does not live by bread alone.”
A few weeks ago, I read an article by a woman named Katherine Reynolds Lewis. She was writing about economics. I don’t know anything about Katherine and I know even less about economics, but I liked her curiosity. She did a word count using The New York Times. She read their archives wanting to know how many times the word citizen is used compared to the word consumer. Both of those are words used to describe humans. We are citizens and consumers. Katherine wanted to know if one was used more than the other or if their use had remained constant over the last one hundred years.
Katherine found that there has been virtually no change in the use of the word citizen. Over the past one hundred years, the word citizen pops up about as frequently as it did in 1880. Not so with the word consumer. Katherine found a forty fold increase in the word consumer.
Katherine was trying to make a point about economics, but she also makes a very telling point about human beings. We are increasingly defined as consumers. That word consume means “to use up, to destroy, to lay waste.” As Katherine points out, where we once thought using up limited resources was a bad idea our economy now depends on it. The trouble is, at the rate we’re using resources, pretty soon there will be nothing left. Not to put too fine a point on it—but we are consuming ourselves to death.
“Human beings do not live by bread alone.” When bread is our only sustenance, we starve, which is not unlike eating from the dangerous tree in the garden. Both lead to death.
If, in the first temptation Jesus is tempted to reduce his humanity to sustenance, in the second he is tempted to claim exemption from his humanity. In the second temptation, the devil takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem and basically says, “Jump off. God will save you.” Actually, the devil first quotes scripture, which is kind of like the talking snake in the garden, and he says, “Alright, Jesus. So you trust God. You live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Prove it. Jump off this steeple and let God rescue you.”
The Psalm that the devil quotes makes astonishing claims about God’s providence, God’s protection: “Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.” That’s a pretty tall order—“no evil will harm you.” The devil wants to know if that includes gravity or any other force that might cause or bring Jesus harm.
Jesus answered the devil by saying that we aren’t supposed to test God, which was another way of saying that living by God’s word does not exempt us from forces, natural and otherwise, which make us human. Faith doesn’t let us play a “get out of jail free card” when things get rough. The better prayer is not “Lord, get me out of this mess.” But “Lord, give me strength to get through this mess.” Jesus opted for the second prayer, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Jesus did not claim an exemption. Jesus accepted his humanity.
In the third temptation, the devil says to Jesus, “You see all these kingdoms. They could be yours.”
Think about all the good Jesus could have done. He could have eliminated poverty, slavery, warfare. He could have brought peace and prosperity, the perfect kingdom or maybe not. Maybe kingdom was the problem. Maybe kingdom or what the world means by kingdom is the problem—the use of violence or the threat of violence—maybe that is the devil’s ultimate ploy, that, or economic hegemony. “He who controls the markets controls the world.”
Peace and prosperity and the means of achieving them are and always have been favorites of kings and kingdoms. Jesus rejects them. He will have no part in them—“Get behind me Satan.”
Jesus is content to let God be God. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.” Jesus knows but one King and he will serve no other. His marching orders come from neither the marketplace nor the fortress. Jesus refuses to let those powers define his humanity. He will be defined by one and one relation only—he is the son of his Father. He is a human being, a child of God. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
When Jesus answered the devil, “the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.” Amen.