Scripture: Romans 10:8 -13;
Luke 4:1-13
We have set Paul’s letter to the Galatians aside during
Lent, but interestingly, his letter to the Romans is still encouraging the
church to accept the true way of faith, and to never fall back into depending
on personal abilities for their salvation!
But if we think about it, this life has always been about living a life
that is “good enough”, regardless of what or who it may be that we are trying
to impress. The problem is that we
never, ever, could be good enough to impress our precious and loving God!
Goodness has never been a viable part of our human
nature, and the Lord knows that, because He created us for relationship, and
not for functional perfection! The
Lord’s desire for us is to live, love, walk and work with Him, not to
find our own way to victory! The best
news, however, is that God has all of the “goodness” that will ever be needed,
and He is prepared to shower us with all of the ”goodness” that we will ever
need!
And all that our Almighty God asks of us is to
believe that He is all we will ever need, and that by faith, trust and
obedience in the ways that He has laid down for us, His compassion and love
will see us through those times when our imperfections seem to rise to
the top of our lives. Repentance for
those actions, and making a concerted effort to never accept those old ways
again, will be enough for those who have given their lives to the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Relationship in the way of Jesus, and obedience to
all that He desires of us, is all that we should ever strive for.
Read Romans 10:8-13
Paul asks the rhetorical question “What does it
say?” And we need to understand that the
preceding verses, are essentially asking – is there anyone sufficiently worthy
of bringing Christ any closer to us by their own desires or works? And he then proclaims that they have heard
the answer, and that they should already be closer to the Lord through the
faith that had been revealed to them! In
1 Corinthians 1:21-25,
Paul addresses this very issue when he tells us that neither Jews nor Gentiles
like to surrender their lives to the crucified Christ, for they see faith in
the Risen Christ as either “foolishness” or “weakness”.
And for those who still believe that Gentile
converts to Christ must become Jewish in their very nature, he reminds them
that as far as God is concerned, there is no difference between Jews and
Gentiles, for all must faithfully call on the name of the Lord if their hope
for salvation is to have any chance at all.
For Paul, this is the very essence of faith in
Jesus. Without believing that only God
could lift Himself up out of death, and that Jesus is our Lord God Himself,
there is no true faith in our lives.
Believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not optional in faith –
it is our sure sign that the gospel that has been proclaimed throughout the
years is always true and undeniable!
In Matthew 5:17-18,
Jesus tells us that He is the fulfillment of the Law! Of course, He isn’t referring to humanity’s
law, that which the Pharisees were so focused upon, but rather to the Law that
God has set down for all mankind! And
unless we submit ourselves to the precious, righteous, holy name of Jesus, salvation
will only be an illusive word in our lives.
But proclaiming Jesus as Lord of our life, by surrendering ourselves to
His Lordship, His Authority, and His Truth, it is then and only then that
salvation from the condemnation of sin will become ours.
Read Luke 4:1-13
This passage, of course, relates the temptations
that Satan threw at Jesus during a time when His life was at its weakest. He had just spent 40 days of fasting after He
had been baptized by John in the Jordan.
The one thing that we have to remember about this event is that Jesus
was as human as each of us is, and through our humanity and the many forms of
weakness that plague us. We are also opened up to the temptations that evil
brings into this life.
While it is true that Jesus was mighty in His divine
and holy Being, his humanness experienced just as many worldly enticements as
we do, and He had to constantly be on the alert if He was to remain in the plan
that His Father had set in motion. So
why were the temptations that Satan offered him so similar to the ones that we
have to deal with, and how did the Lord teach us to deal with each one?
In the first temptation, Jesus was hungry, and He
needed to be nourished. Satan challenges
Him to feed Himself – after all, He had the power to do that! But Jesus recalls a verse from Deuteronomy 8:1-5 – that was offered to the people during a
time of uncertainty for Israel. They
were on the verge of entering the Promised Land, but they weren’t all that
certain as to whether they could defeat the people who lived there or not.
They were reminded that when they ran out of food in
the wilderness, that God provided manna and quail to feed them each and every
day. The point is that we need to depend
on God’s promised provision in more ways than we trust in our own
abilities. This is what Jesus
remembered, and spoke this truth to Satan – “man does not live on
bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of
the Lord.”
Satan tried to tempt Jesus to care for His own
needs, instead of trusting that His Father would provide all that He would ever
need. And when we are in a situation
where we are tempted to strike out on our own, we need to turn to the word of
God, and trust in the way that the Lord will provide for us.
In the second temptation, Jesus is tempted to receive
authority and power over all of the world in a way that would allow Him to
avoid the agony and terror of His Father’s plan. He was being asked to compromise in all that
He knew to be true. And all He had to do
was to turn away from the only One He had ever been able to depend upon
throughout the time He had lived on Earth.
The passage He would lean upon was from Deuteronomy 6:10-13. The
people were being told that their Lord had prepared the way for them to be
blessed when they entered the Land He had promised to them. It would be complete with large wonderful
cities that were just waiting for them to live in, there were wells with good
water, there were flourishing orchards that they wouldn’t have to plant, so
remember that the God who provides all of these good things is also the God who
freed you from slavery in Egypt, and led you all the way through the wilderness
and its uncertainty for many years.
So don’t even think about serving and worshiping anything
else, but “13 Fear
the Lord your
God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name.” He has helped you in the past, and still has
good things in store for you from here on, so don’t start looking to the world
to take over now that everything is going so well!
Satan’s challenges had been defeated every time
when Jesus turned to God’s promises in scripture, but there was one more
challenge awaiting Him. And this time,
Satan uses scripture in trying to convince Jesus that God had promised that He
would never be harmed, no matter what He did (Psalm 91:9-12). Of course, Satan left out a couple of verses
in his quotation, verses that would have totally changed the meaning – and what
were those omitted verses? “If you say, “9The Lord is my refuge, and
you make the Most High your dwelling, 10 no
harm will overtake you,”
And how does Jesus respond to Satan’s
deception? He lifts up another quotation
from Deuteronomy 6:16 – “Do not put
the Lord your God to the test…” In
other words, accept and trust in the totality of God’s word, and don’t
take portions of it out of context just because they work better to prove your
intent!
So what are our lessons for today?
First, don’t trust more in your own abilities than
you do in God’s!
Second, when temptation tries to convince you that
God doesn’t really care what happens to you, remember the promises that
scripture holds, and know that God has always been there for you, and always
will.
And Third, when the world uses words that sound like
a command from God, don’t accept them blindly until you consider what other
passages in scripture tell you, and then compare them to see where the complete
truth lies.
This is essentially what Paul was telling us through
his letter to the Galatians – trust in God, and don’t let others try to tell
you any different!
