Text: Mark 1:9-15 Date: February 22, 2015 Title: A World Worth Saving > For the Sake of Integrity Theme: Resisting temptation is about living our identity in Jesus with integrity. Question of the Week Intro On Ash Wednesday, we started a series called A World Worth Saving. If you missed Ash Wednesday, you can read that sermon on our website so you have a sense of where we re headed this Lent. If I could sum it all up in a few words: Let s make this Lent less about us and more about the people Jesus came to save. Prayer Sermon Most of the sermons I ve heard on temptation have been pretty trite They start with an illustration about chocolate and go from there But I think there s more to this season than that There s more to temptation than that Now for a lot of people, the relationship with food is no laughing matter I get that For a lot of people, though, the real struggles are much more intense When you find yourself attracted to someone at your office until you re sharing more with them than you do with your spouse Or saying that you re going to stick to one drink and ending up having four - again Or surfing to that website that you know you ought not to be on for the third time this week 1
Temptation is everywhere At work we re tempted to bend the truth about how a project is progressing, or claim credit for someone else s idea At school we re tempted to cheat on a test, or copy content off the internet for a paper There are many temptations that we rationalize giving into because our assumption is we re only hurting ourselves I m not sure that s true There s precious little that we do that doesn t affect someone else We might perceive that no one else is affected because we re hoping not to be found out in something that we re doing I guess the test is to ask yourself the question what if my spouse, kids, teacher, boss, fill in the blank found out? The fact that there s something we have to keep secret is already a clue that something is out of control If you can t talk about it, that s one sign you might have a problem Mark s gospel doesn t give us as much detail about the temptation of Jesus as do Matthew s and Luke s gospels I suppose we could talk about the specifics of Jesus temptations but that wouldn t be dealing with the text at hand All Mark says is this after Jesus baptism by John at the Jordan River, The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. That s it, two verses. Jesus has this incredible high point: a revelation, if he didn t know it already, of his identity as God s Son The fact that the temptation comes so close on the heels of that experience tells us something about what we re up against: temptation doesn t just hit us when we re at our lowest point. It can strike equally hard at our highest points, the time when we feel like we can do no wrong. In fact, it might hit us harder then because we do have this pride telling us we can do no wrong. But there s even one more point to make here and that is to say that testing is actually part of the divine plan. 2
As he comes up out of the water of baptism, he hears a voice and sees the skies ripped open: You are my Son, the beloved, with you I am well pleased. Then the very next sentence is The Spirit drove him out into the wilderness. The word translated drove the Spirit drove him out is the same word in Greek that s used to talk about exorcisms cast out It s a word with a lot of force Jesus was literally thrown out into the wilderness This is by design. God s design. God s purpose. There is a testing happening here. In fact, the word translated tempted here is used in other places in Mark to describe testing. 1 So Jesus is being tested. Pushed. And it s uncomfortable for us to think about that being intentionally tested/tempted, whatever you want to call it by God. The Bible says in James 1:13 that We should never say God is tempting us. Because God cannot be tempted and God tempts no one. And yet, every week we pray, Lead us not into temptation. So there s a hazy area here. We can parse the words to try and resolve it, but it s still a little hazy. Maybe it s different for us, but for Jesus, the testing was necessary to back up who God just said he was. If he s really the Son, he s got to demonstrate it by not giving in. By not taking the easy way. By not grasping power or fame as the ultimate good. If we look at Matthew or Luke, these are the kinds of temptations Jesus faced. If he could stand up to them, then God could use him to fulfill the ultimate purpose saving the world. Jews in Jesus time would have heard this story about Jesus temptations in the wilderness and immediately thought of the stories of the Exodus <photos during this part, through middle of next page> 3
When Moses led the people from slavery in Egypt, they wandered the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula and the area east of the Jordan for forty years And it was a time of testing the people testing God and God testing the people They were constantly hungry, thirsty, tired, on the run from enemies They tested their trust in each other, their reliance on each other Would the people trust God to provide for them in the desert? Could God trust them to follow where he was leading? The whole question really was one of identity: imagine for a second God s perspective wouldn t you be asking yourself, How can I call these my chosen people if they won t listen to me? So the wilderness is the backdrop for this testing. And when you open the story up like that, thinking not only about temptation but about testing in the wilderness parts of our lives, well, suddenly we could be talking about any challenge Cancer, losing a job, divorce, the death of someone you love All those things are wildernesses where we re tested, where it s uncertain how we re going to respond Will we draw closer to God, or pull back? If we ve been going to church, if we ve been wearing this label Christian all these years, how are we going to react? Are we going to trust God to get us through this? Testing is a question of identity: are we who we say we are? Maybe more importantly: are we who God says we are? It s also a question of integrity, because some of us are totally different people in different places. One person at home, one at work or at school, one out among friends, one at church. Integrity as a concept seems a bit nebulous we seem to know it when we see it. We understand that it vaguely has something to do with making moral choices. 4
I also see a big part of it as doing what you say you re going to do, being a person of your word straightforwardly, honestly. The word has the same Latin root as the word integer if you remember that from math class a whole number. 2 So at its core integrity is about being whole and undivided. That means, to me not being one person when I m over here and another when I m over here. It s about having one identity. A core. Something that everyone who knows you can rely on. Every test we face, every temptation we come across has within it a question: who are you? Jesus identity was as Son of God, the Savior of the World. Who are we? We can choose to divide ourselves up into Sunday church selves and going out with friends selves and work selves and school selves and husband or wife selves. We can rationalize hiding pieces of one self here and another piece there, so that anything we do wrong is safely tucked away somewhere. But that s not the path that Jesus calls us to. It s not the path of integrity, of wholeness. It s not the path of forgiven people called to extend God s forgiveness to others. Essentially, resisting temptation whether the temptation to sin or even just the temptation to walk away is about a couple things. First, learning to rely on God. Just like Israel in the wilderness, just like Jesus in the desert, we are not strong enough to do this on our own. We need that strength. When you re having a hard time making the right choice, throw up that prayer that says, simply, help me. Even Jesus needed the angels to minister to him. 5
Second, it s about remembering who we really are that when we are baptized we identify with HIM with Jesus who loves us more than anything, with Jesus who came to save us. And not just us, but the whole world. The way we respond to temptation and testing isn t just about us being better people. It s about our witness and the church s witness to a world that needs to see examples of integrity. We represent not just ourselves, but Christ and the church. What people see in us is what they will think about Jesus and all his followers. Just like Jesus has his identity as God s Son, we have our identity as forgiven and beloved people who forgive and love others. So when we re tempted to give up, when we re tempted to give in, to sin or cynicism remember who you are remember who you belong to Amen. By Joe Monahan, Medford UMC, Medford NJ 1 The verb is peirazo, Strong s G3985. http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?strongs=g3985&t=kjv 2 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/integrity?s=t 6