Sermon 6th March 2022 – 1st Sunday of Lent
Text: Luke 4:1-13 – Abundant blessings
In our Old Testament reading Israel are about to enter Canaan, the
Promised Land. It will be a land of plenty that God will bless.But there is a
danger that in their prosperity that they will forget about their need for God.
They will start to believe that all their blessings are because of all the work
they do.
I’m not sure if you know the story of Gideon in the bible. When Gideon
was sent to fight against Midian, one of the largest nations in the land,
Gideon was told to reduce his army to the bare bones. The Lord said to Gideon,
“You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel
would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ God wanted Israel to
see how much he has blessed them but was worried they would congratulate
themselves. So in today’s Old Testament reading listen again to what Moses says
to them: When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you
as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, you shall
take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from
the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket
and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his
name.
Notice the focus – the blessings come from the land – that the Lord your
God is giving you. The harvest will come from the land – that the Lord your God
is giving you. That they will go to the place – that the Lord your God will
choose as a dwelling for his name. Blessings abound when God is the one who
blesses.
In our Gospel reading for this First Sunday in Lent, which is always the
reading for the opening of Lent, Satan is attempting, by tempting, to have
Jesus source his blessing, not from his Heavenly Father, but from himself. You’re
hungry, YOU turn these rocks into bread. If YOU want to know how much God loves
you – YOU jump of this temple roof and let God prove it by catching you. If YOU
want to have authority over all the kingdoms of the world – bow down and
worship, not God, but me. And the problem, apart from the blasphemy, is that
blessings become limited to the works of our hands. When the blessings come
from God they are limitless and abundant – filled to the brim and overflowing –
my cup runneth over. And as we see in our Gospel reading the blessings abound
even in the wilderness – even in times of fasting from food and water.
These temptations go right back to Adam and Eve when they were tempted
to look away from God’s abundance and to their own blessings. Eat this fruit –
the fruit that God forbid you to eat – and you will be “like” God. What Adam
and Eve didn’t realise was that this was a reduction in their blessing. They
went from being in the very image of God almighty, to being like God. No longer
would their cup runneth over – filled to the brim, but it would always be
limited as God would declare to them: Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It
will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the
field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the
ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will
return.
But the blessing were not stopped by God despite their actions as we see
God replace their pitiful attempts to cover their nakedness with vine leaves as
the Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. But,
just as God’s blessings will never abandon us, neither will the attempts by
Satan to divert us away from God’s abundant blessings to our pitiful limited
blessings. After 3 attempts to tempt Jesus we hear that when the devil had
finished every test, he departed from Jesus until an opportune time. The devil
doesn’t give up and therefore we should not give up on our Spiritual
Discipline.
The devil looks for an opportune time in our lives. That opportune time
is in times of vulnerability such as with Jesus hanging almost lifeless on the
cross – if you are the Son of God come down from the cross and save yourself –
then we’ll believe in you. That opportune time could come in a time of anger,
when life doesn’t go way. In times when we are angry and he tempts us to say
and do things we wouldn’t normally do and they can’t be taken back.
How do we respond? The answers come in Jesus words in response to Satan
- One does not live by bread alone; Matthew adds but on the very Word of God. The
Word of God that Satan is continually casting doubts upon even today – “did God
really say”?
And so we keep close to the word of God so we can say – yes, God really
did say. As Paul reminds us the word is near your. And then Jesus points to
worship - Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. As numbers in worship
are continuing to decline you can understand therefore why our world seems to
be in so much disarray. And finally, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. When
we question God’s love for us, as Satan tempted Jesus to do – Jump off and see
if God will catch you as he promised. When we question God’s love for us our
faith comes under attack.
We need never question God’s love as St Paul says - if you confess with
your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from
the dead, you will be saved. And just in case we missed that he repeats it -
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. You can’t find a
more abundant blessing that that. Sometimes it feels like our faith is in the
wilderness like Jesus was. That there is just emptiness. But let us remember,
as Paul stated, The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart. And God
is able to lead us out of the wilderness as our Good Shepherd, through the
valley of the shadow of death – through the path of our enemies – through the
path of fear and evil – to dwell in the house of the Lord forever. What a
blessing that is A blessing that has our
cups filled to the brim and our cups running over to bless others.
No comments:
Post a Comment