“Identity Theft”
Luke 4:1-13
In Luke Chapter 4 it’s bread, power and safety.
But it could be something else because the point of it isn’t the specifics of the temptations as much as it is the nature of temptation itself.
We must remember that Jesus heads out into the wilderness, not on His own, but full of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus has just been baptized and has received His identity from God: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
But the devil is trying to undermine Jesus’ confidence in both God and Himself.
He is trying to undermine Jesus’ identity.
Jesus, of course, picks up on this.
Which is why when the devil temps Jesus with bread, Jesus responds with a declaration of His trust in God.
The next temptation is more easy to see through, offering Jesus the power of the world’s leaders in return for Jesus’ allegiance and worship.
But again, Jesus knows that His allegiance can only be given to the One from Whom He has received His identity.
Finally, the devil tells Jesus that God is not trustworthy, and he tries to get Jesus to test His relationship with God.
But Jesus refuses.
In the face of these temptations Jesus quotes Scripture from the time of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness in order to reaffirm His identity as the Son of God.
Rooted in the Scriptures, Jesus reminds Himself not only that He has enough and is enough but that He is of infinite worth in the eyes of God.
Bread, power and safety.
Those are the things the devil temps Jesus with in order to try and get Him to move away from His trust and relationship with God.
But it just as well might have been youth, beauty and wealth.
Or confidence, fame and security.
On one level we experience specific temptations very concretely, but on another they are all the same…
…they seek to shift our allegiance away from God and toward some substitute that promises a more secure identity.
That’s why, on some levels, I think that Luke Chapter 4 is about Identity Theft.
And the devil not only tries to steal Jesus’ identity but ours as well.
All of us, in our natural state are sinners by nature and by choice and are slaves to sin apart from Christ.
But once we accept Jesus Christ’s free gift of salvation by grace through faith, we become born again and thus, children of God.
This becomes our new identity as the Holy Spirit takes up residence in us.
Again, Jesus’ time in the desert is similar to Israel’s forty years in the wilderness.
It’s a second run-through, shall we say.
Where Israel failed, Jesus remains obedient.
Jesus is, in fact, representative of what Israel was supposed to be…
…He is the New Israel…
…He is the New Adam…
…the Perfect Person…
…He takes our place in order to set things right between God and human beings.
And like the Israelites whose habits formed by slavery in Egypt must be discarded and new ways of complete trust in God must be formed…
…we, who were once in slavery to sin, must discard our old habits and ways…
Because, behold! All things have become new.
This is a life-long learning experience as we are continually tempted by the devil, as Jesus was, and must learn to rely on God—through the power of the Holy Spirt—as Jesus did in order to overcome the devil’s lies and live as new creatures in Christ…
…as Children of God—to live into our new identities.
It is so important that you and I seek to put all our trust in God and don’t give in to the devil’s schemes.
I mean, we are the Church of Jesus Christ and the devil is waging a huge battle against us.
If he can bring down the Church, how many souls can he keep for his own?
And, as we all know, the Church is has not always been good at remaining obedient to God.
Every scandal, every corrupt pastor or priest, every greedy television evangelist and even those who wed a certain brand of politics—no matter whether it be on the left or on the right—to Christianity and the Church are giving in to the devil and blurring the identity of the children of God.
And the world scoffs and walks away.
And the unsaved go without the light of Christ.
And those who do not know the love of Christ, continue to live without hope.
The desperate, the lonely, the seeking are not harvested for the Kingdom when the children of God are giving in to the temptations of the devil.
Now, certainly, we can’t hang it all on our shoulders.
It is God Who convicts.
It is God Who saves.
But God uses His children as witnesses, as salt and light to help bring others into a saving knowledge of Him.
What a great privilege.
What an amazing opportunity.
It’s a huge responsibility and we will not be perfect, no matter how hard we try.
But we must be authentic.
We must admit our short-comings while at the same time continue to love and strive and return to the One Who has called us.
Sin pulls us away from God.
It enslaves us again to the things Christ has come to save us from.
Let’s face it.
No authentic Christ-follower can be truly happy living in sin without repentance.
No authentic Christ-follower can be truly happy if we are not living into our identity as the adopted Children of God.
Once we have tasted and seen just how radically good and lovely and loving and life-changing a relationship with Jesus Christ is…
…we can never be satisfied with the rubbish that the devil offers.
And while we will always be tempted, and in this life…
…almost all of us will continue to give-in to sin in one way or another, we are to become more and more like Christ and less and less tied to the lives we lived before we came to know Christ.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Why do we live as though we want to be slaves again?
It is so easy, is it not?
One minute we can be going along just fine, following Jesus and rejoicing in our faith.
Then, in the twinkle of an eye something happens.
We move away from God somehow…
…maybe it is clinging to wealth or material things for our safety rather than Christ.
Maybe it is trusting in humanly created systems with the anger and division that goes with it rather than in Christ and His love, His peace, His sovereignty.
Perhaps it is not trusting in God to ultimately take care of us.
So, we withhold our tithe to God and to the Church.
We keep things for ourselves because we won’t trust God.
What does Paul tell us in 1 Timothy Chapter 6: “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
Some people, eager for money have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”
Tithing helps keep this in check.
It reminds us of who we are and Whose we are.
(pause)
What temptations have you been struggling with lately?
Do you ever feel as though you are wandering in the wilderness…a bit lost and bewildered?
I think we all feel this way sometimes.
But let’s not waste too much time in the wilderness.
Notice this about our Gospel Lesson for this morning: Jesus was in the wilderness, but Jesus wasn’t alone.
The Holy Spirit didn’t drop Him off and say, “I’ll pick you up later.”
The Holy Spirit stayed with Him the entire time.
And that is key to our ability to respond to temptation with an affirmation of our trust in God.
Before I gave my life to Christ, I was a slave to sin.
I didn’t know any other way to be.
I didn’t know there was another way.
I hadn’t experienced it yet.
But, once I gave myself--once and for all, to Jesus Christ and decided to trust in Him and Him alone to forgive me my sins and bring me into the new life of the Kingdom of God I became aware of a new force in my life.
And that force is the Holy Spirit.
And the Holy Spirit frees us to be able to walk with God.
And there is nothing like it; it is truly other-worldly.
This being said, we still have our sinful nature—our flesh.
And the Holy Spirit and our sinful nature are at odds with one another.
Where the Holy Spirit desires a selfless and humble trusting in God for everything in life…
…my flesh says: “I can’t trust in anyone but myself.”
Where the Holy Spirit says: “Love God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself…”
…my flesh says, “Look out for number one and trust no one.”
That is what the Apostle Paul was talking about in Galatians Chapter 5 when he wrote: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.
Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery…
…the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.
They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”
So let us “live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
And keeping in step with the Holy Spirit is complete submission to the will of God.
And that is what Jesus did.
Remember in John Chapter 8 when Jesus said, “I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.”
That is keeping in step with the Spirit.
And that is complete and pure freedom.
And that is what I want more than anything in the world.
How about you?
Jesus resisted temptation and kept His identity by relying on God and His Word.
The devil tempted and Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.’”
The devil tempted and Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
The devil tempted and Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Now the devil used Scripture too but he used it out of context.
How much do we know about God’s Word?
How much time do we spend in prayer, reading and devotion?
How deep is our understanding?
It is vitally important that we know God’s Word and we know it deeply.
Our Gospel lesson gives us a glimpse about how evil works on the basis of distortions and lies.
The devil presents wants as needs, falsehoods as truths, distrust as faith.
The devil’s second pitch—that all the kingdoms of the world have been given to him—sounds as if it could be true.
It is false, however, and that is revealed by his demand for false worship.
At stake in our lives and in our world is who will be trusted and worshiped.
We don’t have to look very far to see that this world is in horrible shape.
So many of us are lost.
So many are terribly angry.
So many are violent.
There is a scary lack of value given to human life.
We are killing ourselves with drugs.
We are wasting our lives on pornography and other addictions.
Human beings are used and abused and thrown away.
Something has to change.
Today’s Gospel Lesson is about Jesus’ choice—and ours—to be obedient to God.
And the way of obedience to God is the way of freedom.
Will we be obedient or will we waste so much of what has been entrusted to us?
You know, the appearance of the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism answered the question of whether Jesus is the Son of God.
The question in Luke Chapter 4 is what kind of Son will Jesus be?
What we see in the Gospels is unmistakable.
Jesus is unlike Adam and unlike us; the power of evil will have no sway over the Son of God, in Whom God’s saving purpose has been made plain.
The question remains, though, for you and for me: “What kind of Christians will we be?”
Will we be miserable and backsliding—returning again and again to our old ways?
Will we be continually questioning the validity of our call—not sure whether we trust God enough…
…not sure God is enough…
…not sure God loves us enough?
Will we be unconfident in our faith and thus, unfruitful?
Or will we keep our eyes fixed and focused on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our Faith?
Will we trust in God’s Word, keep in step with the Holy Spirit’s leading, do good, do no harm and stay in love with God?
Will we be confident at the end of our lives, that although we have a sinful nature, and we have made sinful choices that we have decided to follow Jesus, we have decided to trust in His blood to cover our sins, and we have decided to live into our identities as God’s children resisting the temptation to pull away from God and instead living inside the miracle of following Christ and making disciples?
As Jesus’ brother James writes in James Chapter 4: “Submit yourselves, then, to God.
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
Come near to God and he will come near to you.”
It is true.
May we live into it.
Amen.
