Romans 10: 8b-13                                                                                                       Rev. Dr. Galen E. Russell III

Matthew 4: 1-11                                                                                                                                   March 9, 2025

“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

        Prayer: O God, may we feel your presence tending to us as we do some faith mountain climbing. Amen.

WGAL News 8 reporter Brian Roche has a segment called “8 On Your Side.”  He often tells the public about the different scams that are out there. I’m blown away at how often scammers tempt people with false promises, or sneaky phrasing designed to lure you into a trap. They feed you a line, tempt you to take the bait, and if you’re not careful, they’ve gotcha! I mean Brian Roche is on at least once or twice a week telling us to be diligent. Be on your guard. Don’t be tempted. I just wish all that scammer energy could be used for something productive and productive!

Well friends, truth is, we are all tempted. It’s not a sin to be tempted. It’s part of being human. We are going to experience temptation. We get enticed by worldly things. We get tempted to love some worldly things like alcohol, substances, excessive Internet time, money, power, physical pleasure. Because, let’s face it, we want to enjoy stuff.  We are always tempted to make ourselves our top priority, and therefore, we want to meet our needs, and get deep satisfaction, and often we want the quickest way to make that happen.

It’s not that any of those things are sinful per se.  It’s when we love those things, and when that love gets so strong that we manipulate, or find short cuts, or walk over others, just to satisfy our love and our cravings, that we have gone down the rabbit hole.

That’s why I think it’s important to call out temptation as one of the mountains we face requiring us to do some faith mountain climbing on our journeys.

Lent is the season when we think about how things are within our souls, and how we are with God. And I found myself asking this past week, how is my soul with God? And I want to ask you, How is yours? Or are you tempted to find it somewhere else?  Do you find your deepest satisfaction in God? Do you know that your identity is more than your name, and where you’re from, and what you do for a living? That mostly your identity is that you are a child of God? And God is the source of your deepest satisfaction?

When we believe– right there, my beloved ones, is where some of our deepest temptations come, I think. We are tempted to downplay who we truly are. Tempted to believe something else. I don’t think that we are tempted to indulge in some worldly things nearly as much as we are tempted to believe that we are less than what God says we are. What the world says we should be. These are temptations at a deeper level, I think.

It’s like a young woman named Emily who grew up as an overachiever in an affluent community. Her parents pushed her to have high expectations, to be successful. Her identity was wrapped up in how well she achieved worldly success. But she grew up with no personal faith. Then, at age 19, she experienced chronic health problems, and her life became unglued. Talking to a friend of hers who had always had to struggle academically, Emily asked her friend how she coped with disappointed expectations.  The friend said that she knew she was a child of God and that was all that mattered. She was loved.

Emily found that response different from anything she ever heard. It set her on a journey of spiritual discovery that ultimately led to her becoming a Christian and later being ordained as a Presbyterian minister. She is now a chaplain at a children’s hospital (Child Of God | Homiletics Online, retrieved March 8, 2025).

See? When we open ourselves to the way God sees you and me, God can transform us on the inside, take up residency in our spirit, and we become one with God. And the things of the world don’t have nearly the allure they once had. Then the mountain of temptation is at a deeper level. We call out and resist anything that takes us away from finding our deepest satisfaction in God. Our deepest needs being met in God alone. And yeah, some of those things are likely things of the world, but we trust in God’s presence and aid as we resist them.

This I think is the deeper level where Jesus was tempted. Because our man Jesus was taken by the Spirit right after his baptism, right after the voice from heaven declared His identity-that he was God’s beloved Son. And it’s that identity that the Tempter was trying to get Jesus to prove—by tempting him to not trust in God, but instead to trust in his inherent power as the Son of God to do some fantastic things.

  Like take care of his physical needs. Just ease your hunger, Jesus, and turn these stones into a Panera Bread bowl. Or Sal’s Chicken Cheese steak! No need to trust God to provide what you need; do it yourself.

Jesus said, nope. One doesn’t live on bread alone.

No? Well, how about proving your identity by ensuring your own survival? Take a risk. Jump off the cliff. You’ll be fine. Drink the Kool-Aid. No worries. Put God to the test. See if God’s angels will protect you. Because the Bible says they will. When they do, Bingo! No doubt, you’re the Son of God.

Jesus said, nope. Do not put the Lord your God to the test.

So, you won’t do that either? Hmph. Well, how about engaging worldly power that I can give you? You like power, don’t you, Jesus? Just worship me, and I will give you control of all the world’s kingdoms, play stock options, incentives, authority to dismantle organizations in the name of government efficiency. You can become a social media influencer and make videos and do podcasts. Just take the short cut of worshipping me, and all the power in the world can be yours.

Jesus said, nope. Worship the Lord your God. Serve only God. And get out of here!

        I think Jesus recognized the scam. He saw all the short cuts, the sneaky phrasing, the false promises for what they were—a bunch of baloney.  Because he knew God, and trusted in God, and understood what  God called him to be—the Son of God—and to do—bear the sins of the world. It’s when we have God in our heats that we can face temptations on a deeper level. But trust in God, and the deepest satisfaction we can know will be ours.

One last thing I want to say for us today. Many of you have asked, a few have complained, others are just plain curious, why I encouraged our Worship committee to endorse an updated version of the Lord’s Prayer. Some of our youth were like, “Why did we change that? I mean I’ve been saying ‘debts and debtors’ and ‘Lead us not into temptation’ my whole life!” Some of our college students came back to worship after not worshiping for a while and stumbled over the phrases while the rest of us were saying “sins and sin against us” and “Do not let us fall into temptation.”

Well, two quick answers. One is that theologically speaking, I believe God never leads us into temptation; we do that all by ourselves.  The second is to become more accurate with the Greek language. The Greek uses the word ‘sin,’ and also words that nuance a request to not let us be brought into temptation. And then a few years ago Pope Francis authorized the phrase “Do not let us fall into temptation,” capturing that nuance.

So, we adopted our current version after trying several forms of the Lord’s Prayer in our worship gatherings. Because we sin more frequently than we are in debt to someone. And God doesn’t lead us into temptation but can help us not fall into it.

  And we can trust that God aids us when we do.

And God will help us do our faith mountain climbing so that we can truly find our deepest satisfaction in our God in whom we trust and whose word is near to our hearts and on our lips. Whose word calls us a beloved child of God, and whose love saves us.



Thanks be to God. Amen.