Dear Faith Family,
And Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After forty days and forty nights of fasting, he was hungry. (Matthew 4:1-2)
Let's be honest with each other for a moment; we tend to read scripture with ourselves at the center, don't we? We'd, of course, never say that we are at the center of any of the stories. Still, we can't help but read incredibly familiar stories like The Temptation of Jesus in Matthew's gospel without identifying ways we are like Jesus.
Like Jesus, we are living our lives led by the Spirit, perhaps even feeling led by the Spirit into unknown places. Like Jesus, we feel the pangs of hunger, the fatigue of faithfulness, the disorientation of knowing who we are and what we are here for (Matt. 3:15-17), and yet with still so much further to go. Like Jesus, we, too, experience the temptations to do what we are able to do to fulfill our desires rather than be sustained in our waiting. Like Jesus, we are tempted to twist scripture to our advantage, forcing God's hand in our favor. Like Jesus, we are tempted to speed up God's promises, to get what is ours through the means directly before us.
Relatively easily, and perhaps inadvertently, we've made this story about us! About what we are going through and how Jesus has been through something similar. And, there is great comfort in knowing that Jesus has been through what we are going through, especially as we struggle to be faithful like Him, as the author of Hebrews attests:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
(Hebrews 4:15-16)
Yet, as we discussed on Sunday, while the similarities of Jesus to us are comforting, it is how He is different than us that makes all the difference for us.
While it is easy to get lost in the individual temptations and Jesus' particular responses to each, the story, taken as a whole, should remind us of another story, the story of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and their run in the woods with the tempter (Genesis 3). Like them, the tempter comes to Jesus, playing on his needs, desires, and even his promised destiny. Like them, Jesus is forced to discern truth and choose to trust, to have faith in what He has heard, even if he can yet see it, even if he would want something different and immediate. Yet, unlike them, He stays faithful to the one who has led Him here and who will finish what has been started through Him.
In this story, Jesus resets the world as we know it. Here, in a place similar to places we've been in, Jesus recreates the universe and reality as we know it, becoming for us what we could not become in sin nor through our efforts alone: righteous.
Therefore, as the trespass of one [Adam] led to condemnation for all men, so the act of righteousness of one [Jesus] leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.
(Romans 5:18-19)
What we do not do, are unable to do, He has done. It is Jesus' faith and faithfulness, His "obedience," that makes you and me righteous (in a right relationship with God) and so able to live righteously (in a right relationship with God and one another). In Jesus' faith, we can anticipate our faith's beginning, persevering, and end:
...let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith... (Hebrews 12:1-2)
May being reminded of this essential truth lead us to see that not only this story but everything that makes up our daily living is All About Jesus for us,
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:36)
Love you, faith family! God bless.