“We Belong to God” (Luke 4:1-13)
Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC
Sunday, January 20, 2018
As I mentioned last week, I was in the National
Guard for six years. The obligation was 1 weekend a month and 2 weeks
every summer. We grunts had a lot of
time where we sat around until officers came with orders.
During the down time we talked about any and everything.
On one occassion, dirty jokes were told, guys exaggerated and lied, and
then, the topic of religion came up. I stayed quiet and listened. Guys were arguing, throwing around
opinions. One guy boasted, “I don’t know
much about what you guys are saying, but I have accepted Jesus Christ as my
Lord and Savior, so I know I am going to Heaven. I’m set!” Smiling, he gave his buddy a triumphant
high-five.
This was a boisterous,
life-of-the-party type who cursed and drank with the best of them.
Nothing in his words or actions suggested that Jesus had any voice in the
way he lived. He claimed Jesus was his
Lord. But, he did not live under Jesus’ lordship. He acted as his own master.
I was a youth pastor for
five years before I became a senior pastor. Once the youth group was
hanging out waiting for the Bible study to start. A 15-year-old
girl, Meghan, talked up a storm, bragging about all she had done, naming
guys she had been with and what she had done with them. She wanted to
show off how worldly she was. I got fed
up and asked her, “Meghan, do you know what it means to be a Christian?”
She put her hand on her hip, struck a defiant pose, and said, “It means I
have declared Jesus Christ to be my Lord and Savior.”
Like my fellow soldier,
she spoke words of faith. But, she was not living under Jesus’
authority. She thought she was her own
authority. The soldier I mentioned?
He lived the way he saw fit; his way, not God’s way. I wonder how many of us live a Christianity
in which we, each individual, acts as his or her own authority. What we
have talked about in this sermon series up to now, seeking and obedience,
allows us to step toward Jesus, but still on our own terms.
Along with the wise men,
we follow the star. We work on spiritual disciplines that help us see God
in daily life. It’s something we do. Like Joseph, John the
Baptist, and Jesus, we live obediently. We choose to do what God
says. We commit throughout 2019 to
practice spiritual disciplines that strengthen our resolve to live obediently.
We can live observantly
and obediently and we must if we want to follow Jesus. But then we take a
next step. Once we decide to condition
ourselves to walk in the light by seeking and seeing God in daily life and
obeying God in daily life, then we have to submit to God. We have to
emphasize the “Lord” part of the claim “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.”
Until we submit to him as Lord, it’s an empty statement.
Fully submitting to
Jesus is countercultural. Our culture tells us to feed our own happiness.
It’s all about me. Life is all
about you. When we become Christians, we
know “it,” life, is not about us at all. We live for God’s glory. We belong to God.
In his analysis of the
encounter of Jesus and Satan in the desert, New Testament professor Joel Green
shows the tension between submitting to God and submitting to other
authorities. Jesus goes to the wilderness because the Holy Spirit led
him.
I think he planned the
fast. His 40 days in the wilderness recalls the 40 years of wandering the
Israelites did, recorded in the book of Exodus. God freed them from
slavery in Egypt, but instead of worshiping God and waiting on God, they
created a golden calf and worshiped it. So, God allowed them to march in
circles for 40 years. Jesus would
reenact this time of Israel’s desert trials with his 40-day fast. Only where Israel failed to show faith, he
would succeed. Weakened by hunger with his spiritual alertness heightened
through the prayer and fasting, he would do what Israel did not: rely on God
for salvation. The devil shows up to
test Jesus.
In the devil’s opening salvo, he invites Jesus to abandon
his 40-day fast. The devil knows Jesus has divine power. There’s nothing wrong with a hungry man
eating bread. Jesus was hungry. If
you are the Son of God, turn the stone to bread. What clever irony!
To prove your relationship to God, you simply need to abandon the fast
meant to help you focus on God.
Jesus responds by turning to the word - Deuteronomy 8:3.
“One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the
mouth of the Lord.” Jesus would eat; he would feast. First, he had to submit completely to God and
this required denying himself in order to fix his eyes upon the Father.
Next the devil tempts
Jesus to declare himself independent of God and to then give his allegiance to
the devil. If Jesus will do this, the devil tells him, he can rule the
the earth: Rome; Greece; Persia. He can
have it all. Just reject God as Father and become the son of the
devil. Again, Jesus relies on scripture,
Deuteronomy 6:13. “Worship the Lord your
God, and serve him only.” In worship, we humble ourselves and exalt
God. The devil tempted Jesus with power,
but he humbled himself and pledged not to rule, but to serve.
Rely on God before
relying on food. Serve God and don’t worry about ruling anyone.
What would the devil come up with next?
He drags Jesus to the
rooftop, the pinnacle of the temple. A fall from there would be
deadly. Then, the devil tries to beat
Jesus at his own game. He quotes scripture accurately. Psalm 91:11-12,
“For the Lord will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your
ways. On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash
your foot against a stone.” If the
word of God you keep quoting is true as you say it is, then if you fall from
this great height, nothing will happen. You’ll be protected. Throw yourself off. Let’s see how much you really trust God. Again, Jesus reaches back to Deuteronomy,
this time chapter 6, verse 16. “Do not put the Lord your God to the
test.”
Rely on God before relying
on food. Serve God and don’t worry about ruling anyone. Trust God,
don’t test him. At that point the devil
departs. And then, Matthew’s Gospel reports, those angels the devil said
would help Jesus came and did exactly that (Matt. 4:11).
The devil knows the
scriptures better than any of us and can use the Bible to lead us down the
wrong path, away from God. The devil will use anything he thinks might
work to lead us away from God. Professor
Green points out that the scriptures are valuable because they bear witness to
God’s purpose. “The scriptures are interpreted correctly by those who are
unswervingly committed to God’s purpose and in line with God’s purpose” (Green,
p.28). We do not worship the scriptures. In the scriptures, we meet the God we
worship. We are not submitted to the scriptures. In the scriptures, we hear the words of the
God to whom we are submitted. The Bible
is authoritative because it brings us to the word of God.
By following the lead of
the Holy Spirit, by understanding the scriptures in light of God’s mission for
him, and by leaning on God when temptation came, Jesus fully gave himself over
to God so that his life was not his, but belonged to the Father. As I
said, he would go on to times of feasting.
He would stand in fearless opposition both to the Jewish king Herod and
to the Roman governor Pilate. And, he
was never swayed when people around him tried to win him from flattery. In full surrender to God, Jesus was
completely free from the shackles of human authority, all of it tainted by sin.
He carried out his mission to preach salvation, give healing, and point
people to the Kingdom of God after he received the freedom God gave.
What does full
submission to God look like for us? We submit our marriages to God. We submit our careers to God. We submit
our appetites, longings, money, and dreams to God. We seek God and obey God so that we are
positioned to lean in to God so completely that no part of our lives makes any
sense apart from who we are in Christ.
I’ll watch football this
afternoon. As I do, I submit to God.
I don’t mean I pray for my team to win. That would be the opposite
of submission. One submitted knows God
loves everyone on both teams and everyone in the cities both teams represent.
Submitted to God, I am God-aware during the game, as I watch commercials,
and in my interactions with the people who are with me as we watch the game.
It may be a simple as that - remaining God-aware. It may mean modeling calm and peace if the
game doesn’t go my way. I have had many
times in my own life when I have utterly and completely failed in submitting
myself to God while watching my team lose; or while driving in bad traffic; or
while trying to appropriately, lovingly discipline my children. I need to
be reminded of the call to submission in normal places of life. We all do.
I am not suggesting a
40-day fast, although a pastor friend of mine did exactly that. A 2 or
3-day fast might be better. We need
disciplines that help us submit ourselves fully before God. You have to
find what works for you. Here is a
suggestion. Envision your life in
segments - relationships, family, career, interests, commitments. Now,
focus on one of those segments, for example, your job.
Write down everything
about your job you like. Write all the reasons why you have that
job. Write all the expectations of you
on that job. Write all the temptations you face related to the job. Four lists - what you like; why you have the
job; expectations of you; temptations you face - all in the context of that
job. There should be 3-5 entries on each list.
Now, under each list,
write how what you’ve written changes when you see it under God’s authority.
This exercise should take time and be something you go back to every so
often as you pray regularly. You may have one sense right now of how this
aspect of your life looks when God’s light is shined upon it. After a few
months, it may look different. This can
be a yearlong process, submitting your career to God.
The goal is to become a
person fully connected to Jesus in that context, your workplace. And we
do this in all the segments of our lives.
But start with one.
I invite you to live
under Jesus’ rule because I believe that is the best life you can hope to have.
The only way to see if this is true is to try it. Try this week a discipline that helps you
lived a fully God-directed life. Jesus
said, “I have come that you might have abundant life” (John 10:10). He wants joy for you. We find that joy when we die to self and life
for Christ. Follow him and see what that life is like.
AMEN
.
Works
Cited
Green, Joel B. New Testament Theology: the Theology of the
Gospel of Luke. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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