I want to begin this morning with a question: What are you tempted by?  Not whom, but what?  This is not a rhetorical question I am truly asking for audience participation in Presbyterian Church.  What are you tempted by?..... Our difficulty with temptation is not that the things we want are inherently evil or bad for us, many if not most are quite pleasurable or delicious and that is where the difficulty lies.  We are not tempted by bad things.  We are tempted by things that seem good to us and for us.  The quintessential story of temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden makes this point as well.  The fruit of that forbidden tree in Eden is said to be “good for food, a delight to the eye, and desired to make one wise.”  All of these are good qualities, but it is precisely in chasing after these seemingly good qualities that Adam and Eve run afoul of God.  That tree and its fruit were off limits, regardless of how good they seemed.  God’s judgment of good and evil trumps ours.

          Jesus is faced with a similar temptation, although it does not seem as such on face.  After Jesus’ baptism, he is led by the Spirit to be tempted in the wilderness.  The test that Adam and Eve failed, Jesus must pass. After the biblical time period of forty days and forty nights, Jesus is hungry. And enter the tempter.  “If you are the Son of God, command the stones to become loaves of bread.”  Jesus refuses. “Man should not live by bread alone”, he says, “but from every word that comes from the mouth God.”  So the devil takes him to the top of the temple, “Cast yourself down.  God will take care of you.”  Jesus refuses. “You shall not put God to the test.”  So the devil takes him to the top of the mountain, shows him the kingdoms of the world, and offers them to him simply for worshiping him.  Jesus refuses. For God alone is to be worshiped and served.

          Often we look at this passage and it seems obvious to us that Jesus would turn the devil down, but then again Adam and Eve lived in the perfect Garden of Eden and they sinned against God.  I think it is telling that first temptation is about food again. Bread a building block of life.  Gives sustenance to us.  Nourishes in one form or another nearly everybody earth.  Is one of two essential elements in the Lord’s Supper.  And very useful in feeding all those crowds that will hang around Jesus later in the gospels.  It is good.  Yet Jesus refuses.   Jesus also refuses to cast himself from the top of the temple.  A very public act that if successful will prove his identity to the crowds below.  I mean angels holding you in midair will get you noticed.  If people saw that and believed in him because of that, because of what they saw, then think of the difference he could make.  Enforcing peace in a time of war.  Ruling justly over a nation familiar with injustice.  He would be perfect for the job.  It would be a good thing.  Yet Jesus refuses.  Raising the stakes, the devil takes Jesus to highest mountain and offers him everything.  Think of the difference he could make there.  Not just over Israel, but everywhere.  Think of an end to death.  An end to poverty and starvation.  Think of an end to all evil and brokenness.  That would be a very good think.  Yet Jesus refuses. 

          Jesus refuses not because these things are inherently bad, he will do most of them in one way or another throughout his life and ministry, but as he reiterates again and again these things run contrary to the will of God.  Ultimately, God is the only judge of good and evil.  What is powerful about this story is the connection between these temptations that seem so uniquely suited for Jesus alone and the temptations that we are faced with everyday.  Faced with temptations involving power and prestige, helping our families and helping our friends.  One-third of all business bankruptcies that take place in America happen as a result of employee theft.  It cost American businesses between twenty and forty billion dollars a year.  Most of these are not hardened career criminals running a scam on some small business.  They are everyday people that when tempted by the opportunity to help themselves and their families take a few dollars from the register, cook the books, or steal from their employers.  They give into temptation.  They had a bill to pay.  Or they were short this month.  Or their kid needs some new shoes or clothes.  There is a hundred other scenarios and a hundred other reasons, but what they all come down to is giving into temptation and not trusting God.

          And that “trusting of God” is key to this temptation situation.  The rules, the prohibitions are there for reasons. They are there so God can be the one who blesses us and so that what we do aligns with that will.  What the devil was asking Jesus to do, did not align with God’s will.  God had another plan for salvation and renewal that was not about quick fixes and awing crowds with magic tricks.  God had a plan that was about genuine relationships, partnered ministry, his only son dying on the cross for us and then rising from dead, and it also included this strange institution, the church.  God had a plan for blessing humanity and Jesus Christ was not tempted by the alternative.

          The church on the other had often is.  Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in his book The Brothers Karamazov about just such a situation.  A hypothetical situation where the deal offered to Jesus in the wilderness by the devil is extended to church and they take it.  The medieval church can do more good if they have the resources to feed the world, the miracles to keep their faith, and authority to rule over them.  And all they had to do was, literally, make a deal with the devil.  The church could do everything they wanted to as long as they did not do God’s will.  The modern church flirts with that line as well.  Worthy social justices causes done without any concern for God’s will.  Done without prayer even.  Done solely because helping people makes us feel good.  Instead of being about doing God’s will and participating in God’s plan.  With the rise to political prominence of many Christian ministers that line between God’s will and our human will becomes even more risking. 

          But how do we know when we come to that line and what do when we do then?  Jesus taught us how.  If you do not have the scripture recall down like Jesus, and who are we kidding we do not, then Jesus teaches us to pray. To pray.  Often in our bibles, episodes of temptation are found right alongside prayers.  We are doing a study of the Lord’s Prayer for our Lenten Lunches on Thursday. Remember in the Lord’s Prayer there is a line “lead me not into temptation and deliver me from evil”.  Jesus knew the temptation we face and asked us to rely God to save us from that time. Particularly in important times, Jesus asks his disciple to pray that they are not tempted.  In the garden of Gethsemane before Jesus is taken away by the soldiers, the disciples are asked to stay awake. They continually fall asleep or as my fiancée Kati calls it “praying with your eyes closed.”  Jesus comes back to them, startles them awake, and tells them to pray that they not fall into temptation.   

          And that is a vital message for us, as well.  A few weeks ago, I preached over the importance of prayer in our individual lives and in the life of this church. It is key.  It is key because when we pray, we center our hearts and minds on God and God’s will and not ours.  When it is just us talking, it just us.  God is not the focus. If we pray and search out God’s will, then we won’t fall into temptation.  We won’t chase after our own will.  We won’t chase after things that only seem to be good, when God’s will goes in another direction.  To do that, it takes sacrificing of our own desires and wants.  It takes an acknowledgment that God’s will is greater than our own.  It takes a realization that God and God’s will for us is not about sacrificing our will, but allowing God to bless in everything we do.