Materials
Temptations Of Christ #2
The Temptation of Power
Matthew 4:8-11
by R. Todd Bouldin
Sometimes I think we are tempted to believe that Jesus wasn’t really tempted. That is because we believe that really spiritual people don’t experience temptation. But I think one of the reasons that Matthew includes this story is to tell the church that even the most spiritual person in all of history experienced real temptation from the devil. When the devil asked Jesus to turn stones into bread, he knew Jesus was really hungry. When the devil asked Jesus to jump from the top of the temple to see if God would catch Him, he knew Jesus really wanted to be certain God was with Him. Now in the third temptation the devil has appealed to the greatest desire of Jesus – His longing to bring the reign of God by saving the world.
Prayer
Matthew tells us that the devil took Jesus up on a high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. Then he said, “All of these I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.” Jesus responds, as He does to all the temptations of the devil, with Scripture: “Away with you Satan! For it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.’” But notice that Jesus does not say to Satan, “What do I care about the kingdoms of the world?” That is because Jesus would love to save the world. Saving it was central to His mission. Furthermore, He already ruled the kingdoms of the world. This was not a temptation about ends – ruling and saving the world. It was a temptation about means. The devil is not tempting Jesus to forget about the Messiah business and just play golf for the rest of his life. The devil was tempting to help Jesus achieve his own goals.
To suggest that this temptation is just about ruling the world is to trivialize it. Why would that mean anything to the one who created the heavens and the earth? I think what is offered here is something more … the opportunity to save the world. Think for a moment about the opportunity. The opportunity to clean up the graft and corruption of governments, of all ruling classes. There would be no Communist dictators in Cuba, no fascists, no politics. Every person that's ever been oppressed by the ruling class would be free. That would have been better than making the world safe for democracy--to have the Son of God's love in charge. There would have been no persecution of His followers--a small thing for one man to give his soul to the devil to end political oppression. How much more relevant could you get by solving the two great human needs of our time and all times--solve hunger, solve the power struggles. But something other than power and the need for power controlled the life of Jesus. “You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.” Life and love are not about power.
There are many other things you could be doing on Sunday morning, but you choose to come to worship because you want to make some holy sense of life. You want to raise your children well or find a real purpose for your long days at work. You want to do your part to make the world a better place. So do you really think that the devil is going to show up one day and tempt you to start a prostitution ring, or to run numbers for the mob? I doubt it. It’s interesting to me that we so often think about temptation in terms of sex, alcohol, dishonesty or greed … but in every case with the temptations of Jesus, the temptations were never to do something “evil” . . . in fact, in every case, they were temptations to do something that was otherwise good . . . to eat, to step out in faith, to save the world. The devil often is found in the temptation, not to do evil, but to accomplish something good by the wrong means. He may even show up in your life at just the places where you intend good the most.
The devil is running a blue light special with us these days. All of the deals he wants to make with us are appealing because they offer to help us with our great dreams for life, to assist us in filling our deepest hungers. But once you make the deal, you’ll soon discover that the cost was your own soul.
One deal the devil wants to make with you is to convince you that the great dreams for your life will only happen if you earn them. But think about the things you cherish most: family, friends, health, freedom, life itself. Which of those things did you earn? Not a one. But the demonic deal that claims that it is up to you to make your dreams for life come true is a deal that will rob you of life and kill your soul. “No one is going to hand it to you, so you’re going to have to make it happen” the devil tells us. That is just the way the world works, he explains. But in spite of what the devil tells you, the world doesn’t belong to him. It belongs to God, and all the blessings in your life come from the hand of God who gives them freely by grace. You cannot earn a blessing, but the best way to screw one up is to insist on earning it.
Another deal the devil wants to make with you is to make the great dreams in your life happen by forcing them to happen. Whether it is the goal to have a relationship, to succeed at work, or to see your children follow your wishes for them – eventually you are going to meet resistance if you have decided that the only way to make good things happen for you or even for the kingdom of God is to force them. We like to force things to happen. Almost everything. All the time. We force decisions. The decision has to be made now; we can’t stand the uncertainty. We force issues. We force people to take sides, to clarify their positions, when they haven’t had the time or the opportunity to really think things through. We force relationships and friendships. We can’t stand ambiguity, and we need to know now where a particular relationship is going. We force conversations. We can’t stand the silence, and so we say things we regret. We force our careers, our sense of the way we want our lives to go, at whatever inconvenience or real pain or loss to others. And we keep forcing our agendas—the way we want things to be—all the time, all the while losing the Big Picture, including where God fits in our lives. Sometimes as a result, we sell off parts of our soul, and lose our integrity, our credibility, even our dignity. Meanwhile, all along the bottom line, as a follower of Jesus, is: If it has to be forced, don’t do it, because you will have to draw on the exercise of power rather than on the provision of God.
When you attempt to bring about the kingdom of God in your life by power and force, you will almost always meet resistance. When you run into that resistance, you are going to double your efforts, which will then result in a redoubling of the resistance. Eventually you will find that you are doing whatever it takes to succeed. Then you find yourself becoming mean and stubborn, all in an attempt to do good. Your children, your colleagues at work, and your church aren’t helped by you turning into the stubborn mean Messiah. It does not help things to say, “Well, that is just the way I am.” No, you are not. You are who God made you to be, and God did not make you mean, or stubborn, or pushy.
By contrast, God made you to be a person who waits on His salvation to bring about the great dreams for your life. Isaiah describes those who wait for the Lord for their dreams as those who mount up with wings like eagles. If you have ever watched an eagle soar, you have noticed that they do not soar by flapping but by riding on the waves of wind that come from heaven. That is how you will soar too – not by forcing but by waiting. Allow things to unfold in their own way.
Dale Pauls wrote this in a recent bulletin article, “ What Jesus calls us to is always so natural: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30). And, yes, things are “easy” if you know when to leave matters in the hands of God. So slowly, following Jesus, I am learning to trust God, and thereby to accept people and situations and circumstances as they occur. I am learning to trust that whatever relationships God has given me in this moment are precisely the ones I need at this moment in my life. I am learning to trust that whatever resources God has given me are sufficient to see me through whatever I’m facing. I am learning to quit insisting on my way and my point of view, and to relinquish my need to control others. I am learning to do only those things that are motivated by love, for I am beginning to see that God’s universe is held together only by the power of love. Things don’t have to go as I want them to go. In fact, they probably shouldn’t if I have to force them.” So the next time you are tempted to force your way in life, look the devil in the eyes and say, “Away with you! I will worship God and let Him unfold His kingdom in my life in His way.”
Another deal the devil is peddling is the deal to be realistic. It seems to me that one reason Jesus resisted this temptation is because the devil could only offer the world that could be seen, but Jesus was committed to the world that He imagined. So the last thing Jesus was going to accept was only the kingdoms He could see from the mountain. When Jesus claimed to be the Messiah, the Pharisees said, “Who are you?” When Paul wanted to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, they told him it would never happen. Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela were all told that their dreams were unrealistic too, but thank God that they were men and women who refused to accept the world they could see and called us to work for the world they envisioned.
The world, and even the church, has too many realists and not enough visionaries. Of course you have to know reality, and you had better learn how to deal with it. But our society, and the church, are dying for leaders who know how to envision another reality other than the reality that can be seen with our eyes. That is why worship is so important to our mission, and for your life. It is in worship that we come to see a world that can only be imagined and not seen. It is where many people, including those I’ve just mentioned, discovered their visions. It is where you will catch a glimpse of the coming Kingdom of God, and it is a kingdom that will not come by force or by determination but by the hand of God. The dreams of God are the ultimate reality, and these are breaking into the day if only you can see beyond what you can see.
Remember that all of these temptations came after the baptism of Jesus where He heard a voice from heaven saying, “You are My Beloved.” It was only because He could hear those words still ringing in His ears that He could resist the devil. In your baptism God has claimed you as His beloved. This is where your power in life comes from. It comes from the God who is blessing you today, from the God who gives you visionary dreams, from the God who will make the dreams happen – In His timing, by His grace, by His hand. All because you are the Beloved of God, and He will give you everything that is His all in His good time.
You have to believe that, or you will waste your whole life trying to earn or force what can only come to you by grace. It is the only way you can find the courage to say no to the devil’s lousy deals for your life.
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