Sermon Tone Analysis

Date: 2022-01-23

Audience: Grass Valley Corps ONLINE

Title: The King’s Choices

Text: Matthew 4:1-11

Proposition: Jesus made the right choices, even when situation was challenging.

Purpose: Make the choices Jesus did

Grace and peace

Tracing story of Jesus as told by Matthew, who believed Jesus was the Messiah – King of Kings – but that he faced life as an ordinary human, same as any of us.

Matt wanted everyone who reads or hears the story he wrote to understand that we can live the same way Jesus did, if we take time to think like Jesus did.

When we are tested, as Jesus was, we too can come out proven true and strengthened for what will come next.

Matthew is going to tell us about what something that happened in Jesus’ life right after he was baptized by John and there was that amazing voice from heaven and dove that floated down to land on him as a sign from God that this was his son, in whom he was pleased.

And in the immediate moments after that, we hear this happened:

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil.[1]

Devil = diabolos= slanderer – someone who makes accusations.

Not a name, BTW.

A position, perhaps.

We’ll see Jesus call him satanus in a moment – the satan.

That was an old Hebrew word that meant Accuser or Adversary.

Think more in terms of a prosecuting attorney bringing someone to trial, using the circumstances and evidence they have to build a case which matches the narrative they are trying to prove true.

Knowing that, it may make more sense when I tell you that we probably should be reading this verse to say that Jesus was led by the Spirit to the wilderness to be put to the test – or tried – by the devil.

These seem like small things – why am I making an issue of them for us?

Because I want you to see the picture Matthew was painting for his audience, not the picture that popular culture or your Sunday School teacher might have stuck in your head.

Because we’ve lost both the importance of this story as originally presented and we’ve lost the message of empowerment in here for the early Christians and for us today.

The first clue Matt gave us to know there is a bigger picture is where this story is taking place: The Wilderness.

Remember why John the Baptist was in the wilderness?

This is the place where Israel was tested.

It is where they were found wanting and so they were stuck wandering, trying to learn.

They were trapped in the wilderness in the time of the Exodus and again during the Exile.

Any time you hear about something happening in the wilderness, start looking for parallels to these past stories.

Matthew wants us to understand that there is something profoundly spiritual happening.

Don’t worry if you missed it – he’s got another clue to point us the right way.

2 For forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.[2]

Well, duh, right?

I was once inspired to attempt a 40 day fast.

I heard from a couple of guys who had done it that it was a deeply moving experience.

I lasted almost 43 hours before I found myself deeply moved to desperately scarf down an entire box of Honey Nut Cherrios.

Since then I’ve struggled to fast for more than 40 minutes at a time, which is probably indicative of a whole different problem.

My neuroses aside, if you’ve ever read any of the Bible or heard any of the stories from it, you’ve probably recognized that the number 40 shows up pretty regularly.

This is intentional – it’s a kind of symbolic numerology where certain numbers are used to tell you a bigger picture story.

Where the number seven is always about a completion or wholeness of something, like seven days in a week or seven years in a planting and harvest cycle or seven sets of seven years before Jubilee – the great national forgiveness of debts, the number 40 represents change or transition.

Specifically, it is about a new beginning, such as in the story of Noah where the rain is said to have gone on for forty days to wash away the corruption of the old world and introduce Noah’s family to a new opportunity at life.

Jesus fasting for forty days and nights would have reminded Matthew’s audience of Moses, who spent forty days and forty nights up Mount Sinai with God without eating before he came back down with the stone tablets that had the Law written on them.

The rabbis say those 40 days changed Israel from a nation of Egyptian slaves into God’s nation.

There are dozens of these examples in scripture and in the Talmudic teachings but let me share one more.

When a rabbinic court finds someone guilty of a crime and sentences them to be lashed according to the Law those lashes are to be what is called “the forty less one”.

The punishment is meant to bring the offender to a point where they are at the gateway of change, atonement, and transition to new lifestyle choices.

So Jesus is in the wilderness, fasting, for forty days and nights and he’s HUNGRY.

3 During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”[3]

If you are the Son of God… Use your power!

Help yourself!

There is no need to wait on God’s provision.

In Exodus chapter 16, a month after they triumphantly marched out of Egypt, after the miracles of the plagues and the other signs from God, the pillar of flame that led them and the Red Sea that had opened to let them through, the people began to complain.

3 “If only the Lord had killed us back in Egypt,” they moaned.

“There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted.

But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”

[4]

They doubted God’s provision.

Rather than wait for him to give them what they needed, they were rising up and accusing him of failing.

They wanted bread.

God would respond by sending Manna, bread that would appear every day to sustain his people.

This seems to have been his plan all along – Israel just got impatient.

Will Jesus be the same as those who came before, or will he do something different?

3 During that time the devil came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.”

4 But Jesus told him, “No!

The Scriptures say,

‘People do not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” [5]

Faced with a similar situation as the Israelites, starving in the wilderness, put to the test, Jesus chose to rely on God’s provision instead of acting on his own.

He quotes the perfect passage to refute the idea that he should act to bring about an end to his hunger in his own time too.

Look at the whole thing:

3 Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a food previously unknown to you and your ancestors.

He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone; rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.[6]

There was a purpose for the people’s hunger, one that God revealed to them.

But they needed to be patient.

Jesus was willing to wait on God and not push his own timing.

Frustrated, the Accuser tried something different.

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the Temple, 6 and said, “If you are the Son of God, jump off!

For the Scriptures say,

‘He will order his angels to protect you.

And they will hold you up with their hands

so you won’t even hurt your foot on a stone.’

”[7]

Jesus quoted scripture, so the devil pivots to use scripture in his trial.

He quotes from Psalm 91 and gives Jesus the opportunity to demand God make a visible display of protecting him.

The psalm says that those who declare their safety is in God’s hands will find that they are in God’s hands.

And right here?

From the top of the Temple?

What a great place to show off the power of God for all to see and recognize Jesus as the Son! Right?

During the Exodus, not long after the incident which led to manna, Israel moved camp to Massah and this happened:

2 So once more the people complained against Moses.

“Give us water to drink!” they demanded.

“Quiet!”

Moses replied.

“Why are you complaining against me?

And why are you testing the Lord?”

3 But tormented by thirst, they continued to argue with Moses.

“Why did you bring us out of Egypt?

Are you trying to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst?” [8]

Not only are they refusing AGAIN to trust in God’s provision, the people have now decided the LORD is just trying to kill them.

Instead of believing in his providence – his protection – they are accusing him of abandoning them.

In later years, when Psalm 91 was written, the author would say this about God’s protection:

9 If you make the Lord your refuge,