"Call Me, Israel": What the Temptations of Jesus are Really About

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. ²He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. ³The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” ⁴But he answered, “It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” ⁵Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, ⁶saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” ⁷Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” ⁸Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; ⁹and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” ¹¹Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.  ~ Matthew 4:1-11

My wife is a historian at Westmont College and teaches a variety of courses. One of them is World History. In one of her lectures she begins a discussion on the Renaissance by introducing the students to Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors and asks a deceptively simple question: “What do you see that is Renaissance?” 

On the surface you can experience a beautifully detailed Renaissance painting (perspective, realism, humanism and new learning) but if you will pay more careful attention an even richer piece of art begins to emerge that reveals a more complicated drama (discord, division, religious wars, death). 

Now, this is not a class on Renaissance art so if you are intrigued and have more questions or interests my wife is right over there to answer all of them. But what happens when we look at our biblical story more carefully – a story that connects to more complicated historical drama than we might first imagine – the Exodus. Take a look at the slide on the screen.

New Testament, Matt. 4:1-11  “led up by the Spirit to be tested”, 4:1 “wilderness,” 4:1 “Forty days and forty nights,” 4:2 “If you are the son,” 4:3 “It is written, ‘one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,’” 4:4 N.B. Fundamental to this is the idea that the fasting and hunger are the will of the Father for the Son. To turn the stones into bread would be in effect to refuse God’s will and disobey. The son will not exercise his messianic power to satisfy his own desires. “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” 4:7 (c.f. Psalm 95:9) N.B. Jesus will be obedient and will not fail as did God’s son Israel. To act otherwise – to jump to safety – would be to act only out of self-interest and to act against the will of God. Devil tempts him with riches for the price of idolatry, vss. 4:8-9 “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,’” 4:10

Old Testament, Deuteronomy, chs.6-9 “the LORD your God has led you,” 8:2 “wilderness,” 8:2  “forty days and forty nights; [Moses] neither ate bread nor drank water,” 9:9 Israel is likened to a “son,” 8:5 He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. ~ Deuteronomy 8:3 Do not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. ~ Deuteronomy 6:16 (c.f. Ex. 17:1-7 . . . the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’”) Moses warns the people not to be tempted by the riches of Canaan, for it is God who gives wealth (Deut. 8:18) The Lord your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name alone you shall swear. ~ Deuteronomy 6:13

         

          1.     We are invited to hear the story of Israel “again.” That word “again” rings out at us from the passage, vss. 4:7-8. What was the point of the project of Israel? Why would it matter?

You have to know the salvation story to recognize it is being retold! What’s that story? It’s about Adam and Eve, and Abraham and Moses. About God calling out a small, insignificant group of people to love and send out as his emissaries to the whole world. God’s purpose in choosing Israel was for them to be a model nation to other nations and that through them “all the families of the earth” would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). He wanted Israel to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). Other nations would see that when the Israelites obeyed God, they were blessed (verse 5). So, it’s a particular story, a historical story and, in the end, a failed story. Through stubbornness, idolatry, militarism, xenophobia, failing the poor, looking only out for its self-interest Israel proved to be an unwilling and failed servant and son of YHWH.

So this point is what I meant last week when I said we need to read the Old and New Testaments both backwards and forwards. This is one of the forward readings where if we aren’t familiar with the OT we would miss the recapitulated drama that Jesus is being asked to perform. We would miss the dramatic faithfulness of God. Here, in other words, we need the OT to interpret the New. If Israel cannot fulfill its side of covenantal love (which is one of the basic plot lines of the OT), God will still not be stopped. The point of this story is that Jesus will do for Israel what Israel cannot do. That’s the backwards reading – God’s plan of redemption through this particular people will happen through Jesus – God is so faithful, in other words, he pretty much sticks to the original plan for blessing the nations, so to speak.       

           2.     This is not a story about your temptations but it is a story about you.

What’s the point of this elaborate Old Testament redux? We aren’t being asked to fast for 40 days or re-envision our temptations to match these bombastic ones of miraculous baking, temple jumping or world domination. These things aren’t “ours” to claim, exactly. But all these things – bread, safety, and the kingdoms of this world – are rightfully Jesus’ by virtue of his sonship and messianic identity. Yet, Jesus is being asked to exemplify a costly obedience to the will of the Father as a test. Matthew 4:1-11 reveals that where Israel (and by extension “we”) fail, Jesus will not. So this is NOT a story about our temptations per se, at least not as we have often heard it. Jesus’ obedience to God is not so much exemplary as it is one of solidarity – he becomes one of us to fulfill Israel’s and our destiny which makes this about the incarnation and salvation rather than temptation. He observes God’s commandments and statues “for our lasting good” so that “we will be in the right” (Deut. 6:24, 25). Jesus is qualified to be the savior and leader of the new Israel by being the perfect Israelite in the same old wilderness of temptation. The emphasis of the temptation narrative then is clearly not on the result of the temptations, but instead on the contrast between Israel in the wilderness and Jesus in the wilderness. The emphasis is on a new people being created “in” Jesus because he encounters the wilderness and comes out victorious. So if we know our Old Testament we should read this, weep, and shout, “Hallelujah!”

            3.     When reading the Old Testament, better to stick with the Devil you know.

I wanted this to only be a two-point sermon but then Ashley Miller happened. Yes, Ashley Miller met with me to talk about preaching – asking good questions about how I go about. And I distinctly remember telling her that I try and pay attention to what I don’t like or resist in a text, sometimes what I ignore. And as I continued to write I discovered that I was experiencing my on little crisis and temptation - what about this strange Satan character? Now Satan literally means “Adversary” and can apply to human or celestial beings – King David, for example, is considered a “satan” of the Philistines. The celestial figure appears only a handful of times in the OT  (1 Chron. 21:1; Job 1:6-12; 2:1-7; Zech. 3:1-2) and never appears in the Exodus story, yet one gets the sense that the devil is at least familiar with it. So I found myself having to resist two temptations here: 1) to simply ignore this part of the story, to turn a blind eye to the Adversary; or 2) to take you into a thorough yet complicated discussion about what or who a Satan or “the” Satan might be. And believe me when I tell you it’s complicated.

It’s interesting though that as I sat with the text and struggled with this satan – something emerged that helped me make sense of this passage. We, of course, never know what this figure looks like. In some of the art of the medieval period the character of Satan is not some dark, ominous angel but a very human looking character, often dressed in religious garb – a monk or a priest, with only either small horns or talons for feet to clue us physically into his diabolical nature.

And I believe the religious nature and character of Satan is instructive for us on two critical points – which point out the Devil we can know. 1) It reminds us that the fight to follow God –is about which story is true. The devil tries to use the scriptures to confuse Jesus, to deter him from submitting himself to God’s suffering will, to confuse him about his vocation as a suffering messiah. Like last week, I pointed out that the Pharisees could only read the OT as a “book of glory,” they couldn’t read it in such a way where God would willingly enter into our condition of suffering, be present in our suffering. It’s interesting to me that the Devil tries to do the same to Jesus. He seeks to define Jesus’ role solely by the miraculous, by power and glory. The Devil quotes Psalm 91:11-12, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Psalm 91 was not a messianic Psalm but considered for all the faithful. So he is being encouraged to both disobey and also to think he is nothing special.

The contest between the devil and Jesus is thus presented as an interpretive fight over biblical texts – a refusal to acknowledge Jesus as a suffering interpreter who submits to the will of God will help. 2) Second, it (and the “it” here is the devil because there is no sense that the figure is a he or she) fails. Whatever or whoever the devil is, we don’t need to be afraid. Jesus won this contest – and not simply for himself but all of us. Jesus' faithfulness to Scripture, in other words, is done so on our behalf as well. So, in conclusion, I have only one question.

Are you willing to trust this?