Control

I don't know if this happens to you, but when I am, you know, I'm going all day long and maybe eight o'clock or so, I finally, eight or nine, I sit down and I just start to relax and all of a sudden this happens. Can you take one guess who dropped it? Mabel. Very good.

And another guess on what she wants to do? Tug of war. And she is pretty good at it. She will go and go and go and she sounds really vicious while she's doing it too.

She growls and she pulls and she pulls and we got one arm. Sometimes Colin is on the floor with her with both hands, trying to pull and make sure that he can hold on to it and she doesn't yank it away, and then she'll yank it away and then she'll come back and, or if you yank it away, she waits patiently until you put it back down there for the tug of war. Have any of you ever been caught in tug of war with a dog? Or have you ever played the tug of war with rope and you have teams on each side? And sometimes when you're playing tug of war, you feel it slipping away.

And sometimes you feel this empowerment when the flag in the middle is moving toward your side. Tug of war is really a lot of what we're talking about here during Lent. But our tug of war is not with a 45-pound dog, but with God.

Lent is a time where we can wrestle with God and learn to trust in God more than we ever have. As we are going through the temptation of Jesus in Luke 4, we see that Jesus, we started off by talking about he was full of the Holy Spirit and he was covered by the Holy Spirit, so he was ready to go in the wilderness for the fasting and temptation that the Holy Spirit led him into. The covering of the Holy Spirit made all the difference.

And then the first temptation that came up here was he was hungry, so the devil tempted him to turn the stone into bread. And Jesus said, It is written, A man shall not live by bread alone. And today we're going to look at the second temptation of Jesus.

And will you stand as you are able? We're going to look at Luke 4, verses 5 through 8. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will be yours. And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

The word of God inspired by God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

You may be seated. All right. It was tough enough to answer the questions or attempt to answer the question, Why did Jesus need to be baptized? You know, do you remember talking about that? Everybody remember theologically and the depth of that? We're good.

He did it for us. He did it for righteousness sake. So God's will would be fulfilled.

And why would he be tempted? Why would he be here in this situation? And now, you know, part of me even says when I say time out, I mean, why would he even be talking to the devil? Why would he waste his time talking to the devil? And then look at this. Does Jesus really ride with the devil? I mean, we're taught in preschool that if a stranger comes up, you yell stranger danger and run off. And Jesus, it said all of a sudden, and the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

Did Jesus really ride with the devil? Like, does the devil still have wings like an angel, even though he's a fallen angel? How does that work? Was it a vision? Can he really get in Jesus head? You ready for the deep theological answer? I don't know. I didn't see any consensus. People were guessing maybe it was a vision.

Maybe it was all this stuff. Maybe they took the whole last week of his fasting time and hiked up the mountain. Who knows? Here's another one.

Does the devil have the authority? I came out of seminary, and I was at my first full-time appointment, and I had a guy who loved to come in and sit down right in front of my desk and ask me tough questions. And he wasn't even a member of our church. He was Catholic.

But he loved to test the Methodist preacher and see what he was going to say. And he called himself a Metholic. So the Metholic would come, he would sit down, and one day he would go, he pointed to this verse, and he said, how does the devil have authority? Is he lying? What is going on here? And I was like, yeah, we didn't talk about that in seminary, so I got nothing for you.

So he prompted me to sit down and write a page or two single-spaced on the devil and understand more about what's going on with the devil. So did he have this authority? Was he lying? Yes, to both of them. Finally, it leaves me with this question.

Who is in control? Is the devil in control? Is God in control? Am I in control? Not me personally, but are you in control? Control is something that is huge for the purposes of Lent. Control is the reason why on Ash Wednesday, we started doing the covenant prayer in the Wesleyan tradition and why I could not take that off the order of worship throughout this whole series. It's control.

Sometimes I think maybe we should say it after the sermon too because there's such a prayer of, put me to what thou wilt, rank me with who thou wilt, put me to suffering, let me be a slate aside for thee, let me brought low for thee, let me be full, let me be empty. You know, usually we're praying, God, get this thing out of my way so I don't have to suffer. Get this out of my way so I don't have to struggle with this stuff.

When in fact, Wesley was telling us to pray, God, get me out of my way so I can be in your presence, so I can trust in you and give you the control. So the same thing happens. The devil tempts him.

He says, hey, you can have all this. You can be the king of the world, but the fine print says you have to bow down and worship me. And Jesus responds again with, it is written.

And he did that with the bread too. He said, it is written. And it surprises me how he can just say it is written and quote scripture and then they move on.

That's some confidence in scripture. Did you ever think about how Jesus could have so much confidence in God's word? Other than that he had a hand in helping the writers write it. It is written.

The devil says, why don't you, all you got to do is worship me. I have power to give you that I brought other leaders up in this world. I can make you the king of everything you can see, which could have been a lot of Asia, might even extend it into Africa.

Who knows about Europe? Now, worship is an interesting word in the Greek where we have, where Jesus says, worship the Lord and him alone. In Luke 4, 7 and 4, 8, where it talks about worship, it's the Greek word proskuneo. Is that word a part of your Greek? Is it a part of your daily lives? Proskuneo.

Now, if you look at that Greek word, it's pretty interesting. Abad. Abad is from the Hebrew, but proskuneo is from the Greek.

And it actually is a derivative of the word kiss. And it has the connotation of a dog who licks his owner's hand. So now you can only think of that the rest of your life when you think of worship.

But see, it's about direction. Proskuneo, what English word comes to your mind when I say proskuneo? Prostrate. Not prostate, prostrate.

And prostrate, it has to do with direction. It means bowing down before God, as in admitting that God is worthy of our worship, that God is the one whom we turn to, that we are lower than God. The lowness of prostration is a lot of what that is, meaning almost to say, I am no better than a dog before his master.

Actually, my dog is probably a lot closer to me than I am to God. But that's the meaning behind it, that proskuneo. And in the Hebrew, the Abad, which Jesus quotes from the Hebrew that Bill read, and if we look at Deuteronomy 4, 6, 4 and 5 and then 13 and 14, it says, Does this sound familiar? With all your soul and with all your might.

It is the Lord your God whom you shall fear. Him shall serve, you shall serve by his name, you shall swear, you shall not go after other gods, the gods of the people who are around you. Now, the Hebrew word for worship there is Abad.

Abad. And that means that focus is often interpreted as serve. You shall serve the Lord your God.

Some interpretations of the Bible, when you look at Exodus, when Moses is talking to God at the burning bush and God says, hey, I want you to do this thing for my people. He says, I want you to tell Pharaoh that my people need to go out into the wilderness and worship me. You see, the whole point of that freedom was about worship and that the freedom we have to worship God is the freedom that they begged for when they were in slavery to move from worshiping or serving Pharaoh, Egypt, to worshiping or serving God.

It was a purposeful statement that God wanted to make. You are not supposed to serve Pharaoh. You were born to serve me.

And Jesus is quoting that and showing in Deuteronomy that God has something big when Jesus said, worship in the Hebrew has a lot to do with serve. Who are you serving? Who are you worshiping? Who are you living your life for? Again, it's like direction, like in the New Testament, but just a different way to look at it. Who has that direction in your life? Now, if we look at Jesus and the devil says, hey, I'm going to give you all of this.

The short answer is if the devil gave him authority over all the kings of the world, you know, the prophecies say the Messiah is the king. Would he really be a king? Absolutely, he'd be a king. He would have been a king of the world.

And he would have died like every other king in history and not come back from the grave. If Jesus would have chosen himself over God's plan, who would have been left out? All y'all. We'd all be left out if Jesus would have done what the devil was trying to tempt him to do.

He can have power now. He wouldn't have to suffer. He wouldn't have to die.

He wouldn't have to be chastised. He wouldn't have to be criticised. He wouldn't have to be put down.

He wouldn't have to carry the sins of the world. He became sin who knew no sin. All that, what do we call that today? Instant gratification.

Instant gratification is the one thing that if we want control, then we seek that instant gratification and we say, I want it now. Why wait? I want it now. And Jesus, even in his hungry state, but he was covered by the Spirit.

And he said, you shall worship the Lord and serve him only. Quoting from Deuteronomy 6. Here. Here.

John 14, 26 that we talked about last week or the week before is where Jesus is at the Last Supper with the disciples. And he tells them about the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit will bring to their remembrance his words at the right time.

And that when the Holy Spirit brings those words, they'll know what to say. And they will have this on their hearts or in their life. And that's what the Holy Spirit will do for each one of us.

It is written that we can remember the words of Jesus in the right place at the right time. Like Bruce was talking about, or Richard, sorry. That you can be ready in a moment's time because the Holy Spirit will give you the words.

What do you have to do to have the words of Jesus be reminded in your head? You have to have read them. Or heard them or studied them or something. So what I discovered, which I hadn't thought about in as much depth this time with this series, is why did Jesus quote Deuteronomy? I'm sorry, that's a spoiler alert for next week too.

He's going to quote Deuteronomy again. You've still got to come back because there's a lot more than that. But why does he quote Deuteronomy? Historically, I always thought, well, is that his favorite? Does he like Deuteronomy less than the rest of the Old Testament or even the Pentateuch? But here's some other thoughts that I have come to my mind and some things some people, some scholars would say.

Jesus read the book, just read the book so it was fresh on his mind. You know how like if you read the Bible and then you go out, you got that scripture on your mind? I mean, if he did that, then, well, let me say this. He read the scroll and then went out.

That's a little more accurate. But was it just fresh on his mind? But it was probably more like it was fresh on his mind because of the Holy Spirit. So others would say this book may be all that Luke knows of in the Old Testament.

Luke, after all, was a Greek and he wouldn't have grown up with the Old Testament. Maybe he didn't know the Old Testament as well as, say, Paul would have known it even though they were associates. Do you think that's the reason that it's in here? I don't think that's the reason.

Jesus, oh, here's my favorite one. Jesus had to dumb it down for the devil to understand. Do you think that's true? Some of you are going, yeah.

No, no, the devil's smarter. He's always smarter than we give him credit for. What about number four? Jesus quoted Deuteronomy on purpose.

Does anybody think that Jesus did something on purpose instead of randomly? He did it on purpose. You see, why Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy was the reiteration of the Ten Commandments with the words of encouragement from God and then to Moses after 40 years in the wilderness before entering the rest of the promise. The rest that was promised for them in the promised land.

The second rest that they would get in the promised land. Jesus, before he finished those 40 days like they, like the Egyptians finished them. Us, like with the 40 days of Lent, is it's not just 40 days of suffering and then you just binge on whatever you gave up afterwards.

It's 40 days of getting to know God. Remember when the Israelites were in the, we talked about manna last week when we talked about bread. They had to know God.

They had to rely on God 100% before they could go in the promised land. And 40 years passed and most of the first generation was gone. And the next generation is who took him into the promised land.

And Jesus is saying when the 40 days had passed and we, once he begins his ministry, then it's like us being set free so we could worship him. Set free so that we could put God first. Set free so we quit playing tug of war with God.

Or even worse, just try to let the devil play tug of war with us. The Lenten work to conquer temptation for us is to release control. Let go and let God.

Let go. Just let go. What are you struggling with? Let go.

Trust in God. God's work is to empower the transformation within us and controlling the plan. God's work is to do the work within us through the Holy Spirit.

I mean we think of things like Lent. We think of things like Bible study. We think of things like whatever we have going in our lives that are temptations, things we struggle with as our battle.

But it is not something we ever face alone. We give up control to God. There are some things that are so tough to overcome for us that we can only overcome if we give it up to God.

Let's pray. Almighty God, thank you for the season. Thank you for the 40 days that allow us like Jesus to work on overcome temptation, but even more to work on giving up control to you.

Some of us have so much stress in our lives because we want so much control. Some of us feel so lost because we try to control it, but yet we fail. Today, God, we release.

We release this control to you. We pray that control and wanting control would no longer stress us out. And even the work of overcoming temptation, we give that control to you.

Work in us. Help us only to love you with our heart, mind, soul, and strength, to serve you, to worship you, and to glorify your name, and through the power of the Holy Spirit by the blood of Jesus Christ, you will transform us so that we can conquer temptation. We praise you, God, for that.

In Jesus' name, amen.