“A Dwelling Place for the People of God"
February 17, 2013
The 1st Sunday of the Christian Season of Lent
Deuteronomy 26: 1 – 11/Psalm 91: 9 – 15/Romans 10: 8b – 13/Luke 4: 1 - 13
His Eminence
The Most Reverend Archbishop Loren Thomas Hines D.D.
Archbishop of Manila
and
Primate
of the
National Church in the Philippines
and
the Territorial Church of Asia
International Communion of the Charismatic Episcopal Church
Through the Seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, we see God’s compassion - His mercy, His love, and His covenant demonstrated to us as His people. This provision of His is greater than anything that we would struggle with and we would find involvement in our lives. Christ demonstrates this to us, obviously not necessarily by His choice, but by God’s direction and will.
The gospel today begins the Season of Lent for us. Jesus has just been baptized in the River Jordan. In His baptism, the heavens are burst open. God speaks forth and makes the declaration, “This is My beloved Son.” A dove descends out of heaven to land upon Christ to indicate and to show to all the world that He is the Son of God. He is fully flesh, not just divine. He took upon flesh that He could demonstrate to us the love of God and the ability that God had given to man.
Luke 4:1 says, “And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit had come upon Him. This particular portion of Scriptures says that He was full of the Holy Spirit. Returning from the Jordan, He was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness. Some translations say that He was taken by the Spirit to the wilderness; some translations say that He was compelled or thrown into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil.
These are the words that Scripture gives to us. God intends for us to understand His power and His ability. With a little deeper understanding of what is taking place, Christ, baptized in the River Jordan, filled with the Holy Spirit and with the proclamation of God, “This is the Son of God,” perhaps was sent into the wilderness to conquer, to overcome. It is to set a pattern for us that once we have been baptized, and the Holy Spirit has come upon us, greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.
For forty days, Jesus was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during these days. When He had ended, He became hungry. After forty days, the natural man becomes desperate to receive something to eat. Doctors tell us that if we do not eat at the point, the body begins to take a different direction and it could even bring death.
Christ fasted for forty days in the wilderness. The devil said to Him, “If you are the Son of God.”’ He was confronting this statement that God spoke at the baptism of Christ. He was planting doubt in the mind of Christ. He wanted to deceive Him. He said, “If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.” Is it wrong that Christ would want to eat? Is it wrong that He would want bread? He had fasted for forty days and now comes the temptation presented by the devil, “Tell this stone, if You arethe Son of God, if You are, come on, prove it to us! Turn this stone to bread.” Would it not be an indication of His power and His authority? Would it not be an indication of His divinity that He could turn the stone into bread? He could, but He did not.
Christ responded to the devil because He knew this was a temptation. He knew that if He submitted to what the devil was tempting Him, He would lose His power. He refused to listen to the temptation. He responded, “Man shall not live on bread alone.” The gospel of Matthew goes on a little further, “But by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Jesus knew why He was in the wilderness. He understood. He was hungry, but in this hunger, there is no place in any of the gospel that it tells us that He was murmuring and complaining about the fact that He had nothing to eat.
During the time when Israel was removed from Egypt, Israel was redeemed from curse, set free from their bondage and given new life by the power of God, by many miracles when they were taken into the wilderness. In the wilderness, rather than being thankful for what God was doing for them and listening to Him because He had promised that He was taking them to the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey, they began to murmur and complain. “We have nothing to eat. We would rather go back to Egypt because we would have leeks and garlic.”
Here was Jesus in forty days of fasting, symbolic perhaps of the forty years in the wilderness. He fasted for forty days, yet, He has not complained. Now, the devil is tempting Him to turn the rock into bread, and He says, “God speaks, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’” Was it wrong? Was it sin that He would want the bread? He was hungry, but the temptation was He could do it on His own and He said, “No.”
Jesus responded to the devil with the words of God. The enemy led Him and showed all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. The devil said to Him, “I will give You all this domain and its glory; for this has been handed over to me, and I give it to whom I wish. Therefore, if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.”
There would be a question probably in most of our minds, “What does the devil mean that this has been given to him?” Does he have the authority over that? In the Garden of Eden, in the creation of man, God spoke to man, “All things are subject to your authority.” God put man in the Garden and said to him, “Cultivate and keep it. But of one tree in the Garden, you shall not eat – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of deciding for yourself of what is good and what is evil.”
The devil tempted Adam and Eve. He used the very words of God against them. “You want to be like God? You have been created like God and you can’t make your own decisions? You can’t make your own choices? If only you will eat this, you will be greater than God.” Adam failed; he ate. In so eating, he gave the authority of his dominion over the things of the earth to the enemy because he did not obey God.
When Jesus was tempted by the enemy, I am sure that in His own mind this was what the enemy wanted Him to think, “If you will just do it my way, you are not going to have to suffer. You are not going to have the pain. Just bow down and worship me and I will give you all this authority.” Jesus knew the Word of God. He said, “It is written that you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” He responded to the devil with the Word of God, in obedience to what God had said, in obedience to the course that God had set for man.
History has brought in the lives of mankind turmoil, stress and anxiety. It seems for a moment that maybe in the world, there is fulfillment, satisfaction, and joy; but it is temporal. It brings death. Jesus was in the wilderness to make a declaration, to make a confrontation to the enemy. He was turning things around. No longer was the enemy going to be able to be in control. No longer was he going to be able to say that those things belong to him.
Jesus was not tempted by the enemy’s lies. Jesus knew who created all of these. He knew who it belonged to. He knew how the enemy got his authority. Jesus had come to destroy what the enemy had done. He had come with one purpose and that was to bring man back to the kingdom of God and into relationship with the Father.
Jesus was not tempted in a manner wherein He was weak to give of Himself to the enemy. The devil, having lost the first two temptations, led Him to Jerusalem and let Him stand upon the pinnacle of the temple. The devil said to Him again, “If You are the Son of God.” Here was the taunting, this temptation, and this statement by the enemy to question and to put doubts into the mind of Christ, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.”
The enemy now realizes that Jesus is using Scriptures against him so the enemy, in his deception, also then quotes the Scripture, “It is written, ‘He will give His angels charge concerning You, to guard You, and on their hands they will bear You up lest You strike Your foot against a stone.’” The devil quotes the very word of God in such a manner as he did in the Garden of Eden. He was doing his best to deceive Christ and to cause Christ to fail so that he could maintain his dominion and his power.
Jesus answered him, and this is my evaluation, that very calmly, without anxiety, without stress, without fear, He knew who He was. It had been declared unto Him at His baptism. “This is My Son.” The dove descending upon Him, coming down out of heaven, the heavens rent apart, with a declaration by God, “I am coming back. I am taking over. The enemy has had this long enough. I am taking that which He has done and I am tearing it apart.”
Now comes the temptation in the wilderness. Jesus said, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the lord your God to the test.’” Christ was standing firm in His faith in God. Yes, He was God, but He was also fully man. He was sharing with us that even in this flesh, the authority of God is greater than the temptations of the enemy. The authority of God will supply all that we need. We need not turn to the enemy and think that the enemy is our source; that the enemy is our provision; that the enemy is our fulfillment and satisfaction. No, God and God alone is!
Jesus was tested for forty days, but He does not fail. He is hungry, but He does not let His hunger control Him. He learns to discipline His flesh to a point where that He only submits to that which is righteous. His emotions, His feelings, He brings into control so that it does not lead Him astray as it did in the wilderness with Israel when they were hungry and they had no water and when they eating just manna. How they would murmur and complain. Christ held firm His feelings and His emotions.
Paralleling the Old Testament, now comes the victory and the conquering. The enemy is losing his place, his authority, and his power and he knows it. He is struggling hard because he heard what was said at the Jordan River, “This is My Son.” It was a declaration that caused the forces of evil to shake. It was a declaration which caused the earth to rejoice, to be set free.
Jesus overcame the temptation. He did this not just for Himself, but for God and for you and I. Have you been baptized? If we have been baptized and the Holy Spirit has come upon us, greater is He who is with us than he who tempts us.
The world is taunting us; the world is tempting us today. Sad to say, we are bowing our knees; the world is our source of security. The enemy rejoices because Christianity has not stood in the promises of God. They have bowed and have tempted and succumbed to the temptations of comfort, of relaxation. Instead of obedience to the Word of God to multiply, to fill the earth, we have an RH Bill which will eventually give us the authority to slaughter innocent babies.
This is what the world is doing. We are succumbing to the temptations when we have the authority and the power to overcome, to conquer, and to put the enemy down. The enemy is not our source! He is not our provider. God is the Source.
Scriptures says that it is God who gives us the power to make wealth, not the world. God speaks to us; He calls us to come into His kingdom which is not of earthly power. It is not one of earthly possessions. Jesus was tempted by the enemy to come over to the other side and succumb to the earthly power.
We see the battle of human need against divine goodness. Man thinks he has to have something and is willing to do whatever he can do to get it rather than controlling his emotions and his feelings and realizing, “Maybe, I don’t need this. Maybe, this is not important to me. It is more important that the things of God are the priority of my life.”
Lent speaks to us of this new hope. We are the Sons of God. If we are the Sons of God, this authority and this power that has been given unto us makes us stand in the midst of the temptation. We can stand in the midst of the wilderness.
Matthew 4:11 says, “When the temptation was finished, when the devil had done all that he could for the moment and was going away, waiting for another opportune time, the angels came and ministered to Christ.” Jesus did not do without, but the source of His bread was not through temptation. The source of His bread was the promise of God, “I will supply all your needs. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness and all these things will be given unto you.”
The temptation of Christ begins the Lenten Season. It is the challenge for us to realize who we are – a springtime – to bring forth the roots and the power and the nourishment of that which God has implanted within us. To let it bring forth and bloom and bring life to our being that we become the source for others. We become the implementation of God’s grace and mercy toward men.
Lent is marked by fasting, prayer, and charity. Knowing who we are, we become the source. Knowing who we are, we become compassionate and we begin to take care of others. This is how God created and intended us to be.
The need may be there, but if it really is a need, God will supply it. It will not be that we do it on our own. We have been trained to think that we can do anything we want to do. There is a truth to that, but when that which we do is not what God has given to us, it will pass away. It will fail.
I challenge us to let this gospel speak to us. That we, being brought into the kingdom of God through our baptism, may realize that we have been brought out into the Kingdom wherein there is abundance. The Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy 26 is our Offertory Proclamation. We are making this declaration that we have been taken out of the evil; we have been delivered from the evil; now, we come to make a declaration and a proclamation before God that we have been set free. The enemy has no longer control over our lives.
It doesn’t mean that we are not going to work; it doesn’t mean that we are not going to use our hands for things, but it means that our heart is set knowing the source of all these is God. He is the very principle of our lives. He is the very goal of our being. We are not doing anything for self; we are doing it all for Him to make a declaration of how great He is and how He takes care of His own.
May Lent prepare us. May we prepare to bring forth the very greatness of God in our lives, making a declaration that the kingdom of God is greater than the kingdom of the world! We are to take it over, to clean it up, and bring it under the provision of the Kingdom. Rather than being submitted to, it is supposed to be submitted to us. We are supposed to be the ones in dominion instead of in slavery.
When God brought Israel out of Egypt, out of slavery, the demands of Egypt was, “You do this. You do that. You can’t have this recreation. You can’t have this time. You can’t have children.” God brought us out of this and set us free from Egypt. This is what our baptism has also done for us. May we begin to realize how blessed we are and how that we should live out what God has given to us.
In the temptation in the wilderness, the tempting of Christ, and Christ saying, “No,” the devil pulls back for a better opportune time. He meets Christ once again in the Garden of Gethsemane. The devil tempts Him to let this cup pass away. Christ defeats the devil one last fatal time when He says to the Father, “Not My will but Thy will be done.” Satan lost because Christ obeyed!
This is the power of obedience to the Word of God. It is our victory that God gives to us!
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