Jesus the Underdog and the Half-Truths from Hell Matthew July 8, 2012

Transcription

1 Jesus the Underdog and the Half-Truths from Hell Matthew July 8, 2012 Introduction: As I sure most of you know, the Olympic Games are just a few short weeks away. Now I m not a very big fan of sports, but I must admit that I do enjoy watching the Olympics. It s very exciting to see the best of the best athletes from around the world gather together and compete for Olympic gold. Also, sometimes amazing stories come out of the Olympics, stories of athletes overcoming incredible odds or teams that weren t expected to win have an amazing run and against all odds come out victorious. Perhaps one of the most famous stories like that comes from the 1980 US Hockey Team that incredibly defeated the top-ranked Soviets to go on and win the gold. They were a team composed of amateur and collegiate players who, except for one player, had never been in the Olympics before. The Russian team on the other hand had won nearly every world championship and Olympic gold since Yet the underdog US hockey team did what nobody at the start of the 1980 Olympics thought could be done: they defeated the Russians 4-3 and took the Olympic gold medal. You can t help but like a good underdog story. It s fun to cheer for the team that nobody expects win. Maybe that s why Chicago folks are such suckers for the Cubs: they haven t won a World Series in over 100 years and yet still every home game at Wrigley Field is packed! People like the underdog. Let s face it: some of the best sports stories aren t about one team easily dominating another, but about the underdog winning when nobody thought they could. This morning I have a little underdog story I d to share with you that comes straight out of the Bible. At the beginning of the fourth chapter of Matthew s gospel, we re told of the biggest showdown between two rivals that the world has ever seen, bigger than any Super Bowl or World Series you could imagine. It s a showdown between the two-time reigning champion called the devil and a local unknown who goes by the name of Jesus. And these two aren t playing for gold rings or trophies; nothing petty like that. In this contest, the stakes are much higher: if Jesus the underdog wins, he ll be able to continue on the path towards the cross, to die as a sinless sacrifice to save mankind. But if Jesus fails and the reigning champion the devil wins, then mankind s only hope for salvation is lost. Now I hate to have to give away the ending before the story is told, but hey, people still liked Rocky even though everyone knew Sylvester Stalone was going to win the boxing match in the end, so I think you ll live if I give the ending away. Let me give you the main idea that I believe Matthew wants us to grasp from our passage today and it s just this Main Idea: When faced with temptation, Jesus, the Son of God, succeeds where others have failed. Let s try to unpack this idea by opening up your Bibles to Matthew 4, starting at verse 1. Please follow along as I read the first two verses. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit 1

2 into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. Now by way of introduction, sort of a pre-game show to keep with the sports metaphor, we need to talk a little bit about why Jesus is the underdog here and what exactly makes the devil the two-time reigning champion. First, let s consider the devil for a moment. As you might be aware, the devil has a fairly good track record when it comes to tempting people, especially those who are hungry and are looking for a little bite to eat. Way back in Genesis 3, Satan in the form of a serpent shows up and works his charms on Adam and Eve, convincing them to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil in direct disobedience to God s command. Now elsewhere in Scripture a connection between Adam and Christ are made; for example, Paul refers to Christ as the second Adam in 1 Corinthians 15. Also, in Luke s parallel account of this event, he precedes it with a genealogy that ends with these words, the son of Adam, the son of God, which of course is how God identified Jesus at his baptism, which we just talked about last week. So the first thing you need to see is that Adam, the son of God in Luke s genealogy and now Jesus, the Son of God and the second Adam according to Paul, both have an encounter with the devil where he tries to tempt them to sin. Well, anybody remember how that went for Adam? Yeah, it didn t go all that great, did it? Adam fell for the devil s lies and plunged all of mankind into spiritual death. So the first time the devil had a match with a son of God back in Genesis 3, Satan trounced him. The score: the devil 1, mankind 0. But there s a second son of God this passage alludes to. Think about those first two verses of Matthew 4 we just read. Does going out into the wilderness, being hungry, and the number 40 bring anything to mind? Let s say perhaps oh just a wild guess here the Israelites? Listen to what it says in Exodus 4:22 for just a moment. God is telling Moses what he should say to Pharaoh and note how God refers to Israel here. He says in verse 22, Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, Let my son go that he may serve me. So Israel is referred to as God s son in Exodus 4. God calls them out of Egypt to form a people who are to be a righteous nation. But while they re in the wilderness what happens? They re tempted, aren t they? How do they fair when faced with temptation? They fall into sin. Once again, God s son isn t successful at resisting the devil s temptation. The nation of Israel failed to obey God time and time again. By the time we get to the New Testament; we find Israel is a divided, conquered people living under the heel of the Roman Empire. The score: the devil 2, mankind 0. That brings us to Jesus. Adam, the son of God, failed. Israel, God s son wandering in the wilderness, failed. Now Jesus, the Son of God, is stepping up to the plate. Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to face the devil. Jesus is the untested underdog facing the reigning undefeated champion. So now the question before us is, Will Jesus the Son of God be successful? Will he succumb to the temptations that tripped up Adam and the nation of Israel or will Jesus resist Satan s lies and stay true to God? 2

3 Well, as I said in our main idea, When faced with temptation, Jesus, the Son of God, succeeds where others have failed. Since I m assuming you know the story, you know that Jesus wins yea! But while that tells us the outcome of the showdown between Jesus and the devil, but it doesn t say much about how it happened. What temptations did Jesus face and how did he resist them? Well, the passage gives us three temptations Satan used to get Jesus to fall into sin. He did this in the form of half-truths straight from the pit of hell that Satan has used effectively in the past and which he still uses on us today. What s a half-truth? It s a lie mixed up with enough truth to make it sound plausible. It s like poison mixed into a glass of wine it smells good and tastes good because the wine hides the poison, but once you ingest it, that small amount of poison begins to have its destructive effect. It s been the devil s weapon of choice since Adam first stepped foot in the garden. So as we identify these half-truths from hell and see how Jesus handled them, we can learn how to successfully resist those same temptations in our lives today. So let s start by looking at the first half-truth that the devil uses to tempt Jesus which I m sure we ve all heard before Half-Truth #1 - God helps those who help themselves Let s turn back to Matthew 4 and see how the devil presents this half-truth by reading along with me in your Bibles v And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread. But he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. So the first thing that the devil tries to get Jesus to do is turn a stone into bread. Now after fasting for forty days that would be pretty tempting to do, don t you think? I know how hungry I am after I do a little 24-hour fast; after forty day fast that stone would be a loaf of Wonder Bread in an instant! So the devil has Jesus in about the worst position he could be in to face this particular temptation. It s not looking good for the home team. But before we go any further, perhaps we should ask, Why should we consider this to be a temptation at all? So what s the big deal if Jesus turns some stones into bread? Later on he turns water into wine and takes a few loaves of bread and some fish and feeds 5000 people with it. So what s the problem if he does it here? The problem is that Jesus was to be totally submissive to the Father. He wasn t to go and take matters into his own hands and use his divine power to benefit himself. He needs to do what the Father tells him and trust in God to provide for his need; at this time, the Spirit led him into the wilderness to fast: until God told him otherwise, he was to continue in steadfast obedience in spite of his hunger. But the devil knows Jesus is in a weakened physical condition and so he appeals to Jesus, C mon, Jesus. All you have to do is turn that stone over there into some bread. No big deal. You ve been out here for 40 days now and God hasn t provided you with any food. Well, if you don t eat soon, you re going to die out here. Lots of good that s going to do for mankind if the carcass of the promised Messiah is being eating by birds. 3

4 After all, God helps those who help themselves. You ve got to take care of your own needs first. Obviously God isn t exactly providing you manna from heaven to eat right now is he? Stop all this waiting on God nonsense and just go and make yourself something to eat. That half-truth worked pretty well for Satan in the past. Hey Adam, God s holding out on you. You want knowledge and God s isn t giving it to you. So if you want it, you ve got to take it. Why don t you help yourself to that fruit and make it happen? It worked on the Israelites too. Hey you Israelites, God obviously isn t too happy with this Moses fellow. He s been up on that mountain way too long. If you want a real god to worship, you better make it yourself instead of waiting around for Moses. Maybe if you melt down some gold you can create a nice god for yourself in the form of a calf. Stop wasting time standing around in the desert waiting for Moses to come back down from the mountain and take matters into your own hands. Do you and I fall for that half-truth today? Yeah, we do, don t we? We question if God really is going to provide for us. Instead of trusting him, we take matters into our own hands and work extra hours to the neglect of our children and the church so we can make sure we have plenty of money to buy security and comfort. Or we think we can t wait for God to right the wrongs committed against us. Hey that person hurt me and I can t just let it go and forgive them. No way! They need to get what s coming to them. I ve got a few choice words they need to hear! It s not hard to fall into that trap, is it? But what does Jesus say in verse 4? He quotes from Deut 8:3. Here s the full verse: And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Jesus resists this temptation because he knew that obedience to God comes before anything else. Jesus is going to trust God the Father to provide for him. The Holy Spirit led him into the wilderness to fast and that s what Jesus is going to do until the Father tells him otherwise. Jesus will not use his power to do something that God hasn t instructed him to do. He refuses to put God s will ahead of his own. So listen: sometimes obeying God means we don t do things we have the power to do. Now that s counter-intuitive for us because we think we ought to take the bull by the horns and make things happen. But remember what Jesus said later in his ministry? Seek first the kingdom of God, and all of these things food, clothing, and shelter will be added unto you. Put obedience to God first and you get the other things thrown in. Seek your physical needs above God s kingdom and in the end you lose both. God doesn t help those who help themselves, because in helping yourself you re putting your needs and wants ahead of God. God wants us to put obedience to his Word first in our lives, which means we don t always take matters into our own hands but rather we wait on God confident that he will provide for us in his time. 4

5 So Jesus successfully fended off that attack, but there are two more to come. The second half-truth that the devil tries goes like this Half-Truth #2 - Let go and let God Follow along in your Bibles with me starting at verse 4, Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Now this half-truth is nearly the opposite of the first half-truth the devil used. At first he tried to get Jesus to take matters into his own hands by turning stones into bread, but Jesus insisted that he needed to entrust himself to God s care. So now Satan says, Hey Jesus, since you re into trusting God to take care of you and all, why don t you throw yourself down from here? Let go of the temple and let God rescue you. That s what the Bible says he promised to do, right? So let s test it out. Once again, it s a half-truth from hell that has been historically effective. Adam and Eve fell for it. He tricked them into testing to see if what God said really was true, that they would die from eating the fruit. He used it on the Israelites when in their grumbling and complaining we re told in Deuteronomy they tested God in the wilderness. And it s a half-truth the devil still uses on us today. Instead of simply doing what we know God has called us to do, we are tempted to play games or makes deals with God. We say things like, If you do this for me God, then I promise I ll go to church! or If you make me well, I promise to clean up my act and live righteously. No, that s not how it works. God made it clear in his Word what is expected of you, so don t try to throw the ball back into his court to make him do something first in order for you to do it. For example, there s a scene in the television show The Simpsons where Homer, the father of the family, is praying to God and he says, "Dear Lord: For the first time in my life, everything is absolutely perfect just the way it is. So here's the deal: You freeze everything the way it is, and I won't ask for anything more. If that is OK, please give me absolutely no sign. OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, give me no sign. Thy will be done." We all fall for this temptation to try to make deals with God and put him to the test instead of doing what we re supposed to do in the first place. But Jesus, thankfully, doesn t fall for this half-truth. He replies to the devil saying, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. Jesus knows it would be a sin to try to force God s hand to rescue him by jumping off the Temple. He s not going to try some stupid stunt and expect God to bail him out of it. 5

6 Now before we move on to the third point, I need to make an important aside here in regards to memorizing Scripture. I know how this passage is normally preached: Jesus used Scripture to defeat the devil and so we need to memorize Scripture so we can resist the devil as well. Now that s not the point of this passage Matthew doesn t relate this story to us to hammer home the idea that you need to memorize Scripture. Luke s point here is to show us that Jesus, the Son of God, resisted the temptations of the devil where Adam and the nation of Israel failed. But although this passage doesn t have Scripture memorization as its primary focus, it s not too shabby as a secondary application. So let me be the first to say Scripture memorization is a good thing. But who else has Scripture memorized in this passage? The devil knows the Bible too, doesn t he? Satan is case in point that memorizing Bible verses doesn t mean you have properly understood or applied Scripture. You can toss out Bible verses to prove all kinds of things. For example, people from a Church of Christ or Disciples of Christ church can quote you all kinds of passages that say you need to be baptized in order to be saved. Jehovah Witnesses can come to your door and quote Scripture passages that demonstrate that Jesus wasn t really God, but was only a god. The Unitarians can provide you with verses in the Bible that insinuates that God saves everyone. So just because you have Scripture memorized doesn t guarantee you understand it correctly. If this passage teaches us anything about Scripture memorization, it teaches us that memorization alone is not enough. We need to understand it properly. We need to see that Bible passages don t exist in isolation like little islands of wisdom, but that verses are part of a larger context of the paragraph, the chapter, the book, and the entire Bible. As Christians, we need to do the hard work of understanding how any passage of Scripture fits into the larger context that it is found. Otherwise, as my seminary professor and renowned Bible scholar D. A. Carson has famously said, A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text." This is part of the reason why I preach through a whole book of Scripture. I want to help you see that these passages are all connected, that the correct interpretation is not found in isolated verses but in the larger context. If we don t recognize how any given passage fits into the larger context that it is found, we run the risk of both misunderstanding and misapplying it. The difference between Jesus and the devil is not that one had Scripture memorized and the other one didn t. It s that Jesus understood it correctly because he knew how the passages being quoted fit into the larger context of God s Word; the devil was just throwing out a proof-text that was misleading because it ignored the context that it was part of. If we re to be mature Christians who rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15), then we need to both memorize Scripture as well as do the hard work of studying it so we understand how it fits into the larger context of the Bible. So then Satan hasn t meet with any luck yet. He s tried to appeal to Jesus hunger and he s tried to appeal to his pride, but both have failed. So now he ll make one last ditch effort to use power as a means of leading Jesus to sin. So our third half-truth is 6

7 Half-Truth #3 - The ends justifies the means Look back in your Bibles at verses Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. So the next thing the devil tries to do is tempt Jesus to take a shortcut to the kingly rule that is coming to him by worshipping Satan instead of God. See, what the devil is doing here is offering Jesus is something God has promised Jesus he would get. Turn back in your Bibles with me to Psalm 2 for a moment. We looked at this Psalm briefly last week as the fulfillment of God identifying Jesus as his Son at his baptism. Now check out the promise that follows it. Look at verses 7-8, I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. So Jesus has been promised in Scripture exactly what Satan is offering him. Okay, so maybe God didn t tell Jesus to break his fast by turning stones into bread, and maybe Jesus shouldn t throw himself off the Temple and test God, but God did promise Jesus he would be King over all the nations of the world. You can t argue with Satan on that one! And to sweeten the deal, Jesus can have it all without needing to go through the suffering and death of the cross. It s no pain and all gain if Jesus just bows down to Satan. The ends immediately ruling the kingdoms of the world that God promised to Jesus in Scripture would justify the means avoiding suffering and bowing down to Satan. Certainly Jesus can see this is a win-win situation! That s a pretty effective half-truth. We can hear echoes of it with Adam and Eve. Hey, you can have all this knowledge of good and evil and be like God, if you just take a bite from this here fruit. Think of how much better you d be able to take care of the earth, which by the way God instructed you to do, if you possessed the kind of knowledge God has. Certainly those ends justify eating the fruit, doesn t it? Or take Israel. You know, you d have a lot more to gain if instead of destroying all the Canaanites, you intermarry with them, make their gods your gods. And by all means don t destroy everything keep some loot for yourself. God wants to bless you right? Think of all the good you could do with a few extra sheep or cattle. It s alright to keep some because you re going to do some really good things with it. Are we guilty of falling to this? How often do we buy into this idea that the ends justify the means? We say, It s okay to cheat on my taxes because I m going to give part of that money to charity. Plus, the government would only waste it anyway. Or maybe we think, If I go and party with my friends and have a few beers, they will think I m cool 7

8 and be more willing to maybe come to the youth group with me. Or we try to convince ourselves saying, I want to be a good steward of my money, so rather than buying new DVDs, I ll just make copies of the DVDs I get from Netflix, or rather than buying that song I like on itunes, I ll just borrow it by downloading it off of my friend s computer. Somehow we think we can justify means that are sinful because we see those means as accomplishing a good end. But Jesus doesn t fall for that half-truth either. Instead he replies to the devil s offer in verse 10, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. No matter how good the goal may be, it never justifies the means if it is a sinful means. Yes, the route that Satan offered Jesus was quicker and far less painful, but it was absolutely sinful. It meant denying God and worshipping Satan. To make the ends justify the means simply was not an option for Jesus and neither should it be an option for us. Conclusion: So then, as you watch the Olympics in a few weeks, remember that the biggest showdown between two rivals has already taken place some 2000 years ago. Jesus, the underdog, defeated the devil in the wilderness by staying true to God the Father and resisted falling for the half-truths Satan threw in his way. When faced with temptation, Jesus, the Son of God, succeed where all the others had failed. Adam failed to resist the devil s lies and as a result all of mankind fell into sin. The nation of Israel fell into sin time and time again in the wilderness when tempted and as a result that first generation of Israelites perished in the desert. But Jesus, the Son of God who is the new Israel and the second Adam, stood up under the test, resisting the temptations Satan threw at him in the wilderness, remaining obedient to God. And now his victory has become our victory through faith in him. Christ did for us what we were unable to do: to resist the devil s lies and live the perfect righteous life we should have lived. May each of you, through faith in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit in you who believe, resist the lies of the devil this week and live your life in humble obedience to God our Father, for the sake of his glory. Let s pray. This sermon was addressed originally to the people at Grace Brethren Church of Waterloo, IA by Pastor Rob Borkowitz. Copyright