God Guided Goals
The Rev. Dr. John Judson
February 27, 2011
Before we begin today I need you to take your bulletin and look at the road sign on the cover. Then I need you to take a pencil or a pen and write on it. On the left hand arrow I want you to write, “God honoring, life giving way.” On the right arrow I want you to write, “Self centered, dead end detour.”
He was in shock. As the pastor of a Presbyterian church the next to last thing he expected to have happen was to be served with papers saying that he and the session were being sued. That was only the next to last thing he expected because the last thing he expected was the identity of the person doing the suing and the reason for the law suit; the first was the church’s former business manager who had stolen more than a half of a million dollars from the church. And for what were they being sued? They were sued for making it too easy for their bookkeeper to steal. It was their fault for tempting her.
Temptation is a funny thing isn’t it? In fact let me a take a quick poll this morning. How many of you have ever been tempted? And by that I don’t necessarily mean in the big things, Ten Commandment kind of things, simply how many of you have ever been tempted? Second question, how many of you have ever given into a temptation? It’s hard isn’t it not to give in when temptation is right there in front of you. But before I pry any further into your lives I would like to take a moment or two and have us look more carefully at the whole issue of temptation. I do so for two reasons. First I do so because temptation is at the heart of our morning’s story. I want us to see more clearly how temptation works. The second reason is because some people have trouble believing that Jus could be tempted. After all he is Jesus. But I hope that when we are done you will have much clearer view of both.
To begin with we need to see that three things must be present for temptation to be temptation. The first two are motive and opportunity. You have to have both if something is going to be a temptation. First you need motive. You have to want or desire something. If you don’t actually want something then it cannot tempt you. If you don’t like chocolate cake and there is a big slab in front of you…you will not be tempted. The second condition is opportunity. If you love chocolate cake but there is none around, then you are not tempted either.
The third necessity for temptation is that the offer we are given must appear to be taking us down the road to the left, the God honoring and life giving road, when in reality it is taking us down the other way, the self-centered, dead end detour. I say this because not all motives and opportunities are temptations. Some are God given gifts that empower our lives. The issue is trying to tell the difference between the two.
So now let’s look at the offers that are made to Jesus. Jesus’s temptations begin with the temptation to turn stones into bread. Now the immediate motive was that he was hungry. The deeper motive was that if he was going to save the world, which was his God given goal, then he needed his strength. So why not turn the stones into bread.
The second temptation was to throw himself off of the top of the Temple in order that angels catch him. His motive again was to save the world, and if he was going to save the world then he needed followers. What better way to get followers than with an amazing feat of magic. It would certainly attract the number of people he needed to make his mission a success.
The final temptation was to give his allegiance to the devil and be given political control of the world. Again, if Jesus’ motive was to save the world, what better way to save it than by being in charge. It would seem then that this trade off of following Satan would be worth it in order to make all of the rules such that people would live the way God wanted them to live.
Each of these offers then fits our three fold criterion for a temptation. There is motive, opportunity and what looks like an offer that would lead us down the road to God honoring, life giving ways. This is why Jesus was tempted. The gift that Jesus possessed fortunately was that he was able to discern between what would lead him down the left hand road and what would lead him down the right hand road. He understood clearly that each of these temptations would put himself and not God at the center of his ministry. Changing the bread would make satisfying Jesus’ physical needs the center of his ministry. Leaping off of the Temple would make Jesus’ fame the center of his ministry. Taking political power would make Jesus’ personal power the center of his ministry. Each of these motives and opportunities then would lead Jesus away from his God given goal, and not toward it.
I wish at this point in this sermon that I could say something like, “As you leave this morning we will be handing out pamphlets which give a simple seven step process for discerning which motives and opportunities will lead you to fulfilling your God given goals and which will tempt you to turn down self-centered dead end detours. Also you will be able to download the discernment ap for your smart phone which you can use at your convenience.” Unfortunately I can’t do that. And I can’t do that because life and the choices we make are not only extraordinarily complex but our ability to discern the truth behind our motives is always clouded. It is clouded by our wants and desires, the desires others have of us, societies expectations upon us and, getting theological for a moment, the impact of sin which skews our vision as well. To get a snapshot of just how easy it is to lose our way let me simply offer some names: Tiger Woods, Gary Hart, John Edwards, Bernie Madoff and the people who ran Enron. Let’s be clear these were all very, very smart people. They were accomplished people. They were successful people. Yet their ability to tell the difference between motives and opportunities that led to God given goals and those motives and opportunities that tempted them to turn down self-centered dead end detours was so clouded that they could not tell the difference. So if the smartest guys in the room can’t see the difference clearly how can we?
One way perhaps for us to get a handle on this would be to return to our story and see how Jesus did it. It is interesting that each time Jesus was tempted he did not ask questions for further clarification about the offers. He did not do further research on possible outcomes of the choices he might make. Instead he returned to his understanding of his relationship with God. He returned to the foundation of his mission, to the one who had given him the goals in the first place to see if he was still in alignment with the one who sent him. He began by reminding himself that his mission was to be in alignment with the scriptures, not in alignment with Jesus’s needs. “Human beings do not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus continued by reminding himself that he was not to put himself in a position from which God would have to rescue him.. “You shall not tempt the Lord your God.” Finally he reminds himself that he was to serve God and God was not to serve him. “You shall worship and serve God alone.” With each temptation Jesus intentionally reoriented himself to his fundamental relationship with God. And by so doing he was able discern the truth behind the offers which had been laid before him.
Each day you and I make hundreds of choices. Most of them are, in the end, of little moral consequence in our lives. Yet there come those moments when offers come our way and the choice we make will have a significant impact on our future and on our ability to accomplish the goals which God has set before us. It is in those moments that we are offered a choice. We can choose to simply go with the flow, or we can ask ourselves…does this offer align with the scriptures? Will this offer force God to rescue me? Does this offer allow me to serve God rather than God serving me?
The challenge before us is this, am I willing to ask the right questions and return to my God centered roots that I might make the right choices in my life?
