Grace Lutheran Church The First Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2006

The Rev. Evan Gaertner

First Sunday in Lent "In the Wilderness without Getting Lost"

March 6, 2006 Mark 1:12-15

Today we begin the Sundays in Lent with a study of the temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness. Jesus emerged from the waters of baptism and heard the voice from heaven say, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." And then immediately the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness. He emerged from the wilderness with his good news intact. Jesus entered Galilee and proclaimed the gospel of God.

Jesus was driven into the wilderness and did not get lost in the temptations of Satan. This wilderness was more than a location; the wilderness is the reality that we are dependent upon God.

I want you to consider how Jesus Christ driven into the wilderness was him being driven into same problems we have in our lives. But we also are going to back up a bit from our lives and look at how Jesus going into the wilderness was a reliving of Israel. Israel had been driven into the wilderness when they escaped Egypt and the Pharaoh. Israel spent forty years in the wilderness. Those forty years were filled with moments when they were ready to give up. They grumbled to Moses, "Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full. For you have brought us into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."

Because of their bitterness and turning away from trusting in God, no one in the generation that left Egypt entered the Promised Land. Turning away from God in the wilderness left them in the wilderness. In our own lives as we struggle and try to go it alone without God we would be left in the wilderness. Jesus emerging from the wilderness with his good news intact was a reliving of Israel but without their failure. Instead of turning away from God like the Israelites, Jesus was perfectly obedient to his heavenly father.

Life can become very comfortable. Get the right house, obedient and brilliant children, job, car, vacation, computer, or entertainment system, life can become relaxed. But then there are those moments of anger, worry, death, disease, or disaster that remind us that we are in the wilderness. Worldly comforts which are so sought after as we try to move up the economic ladder can be stripped away and revealed to be a deception. God’s drives us into the wilderness to confront us with how much we relied on comforts that in the end cannot satisfy our needs in this world. I am certain that we can deceive ourselves into thinking that if only I have this or that then I would be comfortable.

Israel in the wilderness for forty years found water and food through the hand of the Lord because their own hands could find nothing that would satisfy.

God drives us into the wilderness to uncover the frailty of our lives. With your own hands you cannot fix your problems. The only way to make it out of the wilderness is to depend upon God.

What would happen (or for some of you has happened) to you when the cushions of a comfortable life are taken away? Are you still able to find comfort in your savior Jesus Christ? The wilderness can act as the refiner’s fire that strips away all that makes life comfortable and reveals how utterly dependent we are upon God.

It is hard to consider that God can work and allow such harshness in our lives. I think some people have this notion that if God is doing his work, then our lives will be comfortable. I know that as children learn how to walk the temptation for the parents is to make their pathway as soft as possible so if they tumble they land softly. But we need some firmness of ground to get our footing. Certainly, learning how to walk on pillows would be soft, but it would also be very difficult because of the unsteady footing.

We do not learn how to walk in our Christian faith by walking on clouds. We learn how to walk in our Christian faith by walking toward the cross, not away from it. We are tested by our Lord.

But the Lord tempts no one. In the open of the wilderness, in the vulnerability of this world, not only is God at work providing all that we need, Satan is tempting us by our own sinful desires and by the working of his lies. Satan tempts us in order to make us fall. God tests us in order to strengthen our faith and give us opportunities to demonstrate our commitment to him. But through the trials of life that God allows in our lives Satan is ready to pounce upon us and turn us away from our trust in God.

James writes that we should, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness." (Jas 1:2)

When Abraham, the Old Testament patriarch, was tested by the Lord, he answered with the response of a servant, "Here I am."

The apostle Paul wrote, "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

James, Abraham, and Paul all give witness to a faith that does not look toward our own strength in the wilderness but to what the Lord will provide. In our weakness the strength of Christ is given opportunity to shine.

Jesus went directly from the blessing of baptism to being driven by the Spirit into the vastness of wilderness. Jesus was driven into our lives of sin and temptation. Both externally and internally, Jesus faced the harshness of life lived in the presence of evil. Satan is the great accuser desiring to tempt us so that we will fall away from trusting in God.

Jesus went into the wilderness. He did not react to the temptation of Satan with violence or attacks. Jesus is the reversal of power in this world that responds to attack with attack, violence with violence, hatred with hatred.

Jesus resisted the temptations of Satan who wanted Jesus to buy into the power plays of this world. Jesus remained faithful to his mission to suffer violence at the hands of God's enemies and be raised for our forgiveness. Jesus did not meet the challenge of death and the devil with a science fiction explosion of violence. Jesus met the challenge of sin, death, and the devil with a humble obedience to the will of God to redeem through the sacrificial death and victorious resurrection.

In the wilderness Jesus exchanged our sin and wildness for his good. This is who Jesus is, he is the one who comes into our lives of sin and wildness and gives back to us his good. Instead of garbage in, garbage out, Jesus took upon himself all the garbage of the world and gives out the good news of God.

On the cross Jesus took on our bad—our bad punishment, our bad words, our bad strikes, and most importantly our bad death. He emerged from our wilderness with his good news. He emerged from the cross with his good news. Jesus gives back to us not what we deserve but instead he gives freely his love.

We kid ourselves if we believe that we can walk through the desert and survive. We must be joking if we try to live our lives apart from the mercy of God. In the trials of this world we either walk with God or we fail and die in our sin.

It was not on account of his own strength that Abraham could say to God, "Here I am." It was his faith that was credited to him as righteousness. Abraham velcroed himself to God.

Noah did not begin to build the ark because he saw the storm clouds approaching. He built the ark because of the command of the Lord. It was faith and trust in the promises of God that led Noah to build. Surrounded in a wilderness of sin and blindness to God, Noah trusted in the path that God laid before him.

In Corrie ten Boom's book The Hiding Place, she states that if you want to have some idea about where God is taking you in the future, look at where He has taken you in the past, because He uses the events in the past to prepare you for the things you'll face in the future. If we want to know how to take our steps in the wilderness of our lives we are well served by remembering how God has acted in the past for us.

Israel in the wilderness was reminded of the Lord by the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. They were reminded that the Lord that guided them in the wilderness was the same Lord who rescued them from the Pharaoh.

How do we survive today in the wilderness without getting lost? Follow Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life. The Lord is our strength. In the wilderness the only way to not get lost is to trust in Jesus Christ, the living Word of God. Look in the past and find that Jesus has gone into the wilderness of your life to exchange out your bad for his love. He went into your death, when he died on the cross. He rose again on the third day, taking away your death and giving you life. Jesus emerged from the wilderness with his good news to proclaim to the world. Stand firm upon Jesus Christ and you will not get lost in the wilderness.

Soli Deo Gloria

Grace Lutheran Church

Sermons