Sermon manuscript:
Nobody had to teach us to have an unbelieving attitude
towards life. What I mean by an unbelieving attitude is that we ignore God. He
is the one from whom all things come. As we are by nature our thoughts do not
rise up that high. We get up, make breakfast, and start in on whatever it is
that we do. Little thought, or, more likely, no thought at all is given to the
one who gave us a comfortable bed, who made the sun shine, who gives us good
things to eat. Every day is filled to the brim with wonderful gifts from our
Creator. We pay him no attention, though, or, at best, very little.
Our thoughts are occupied with all sorts of other things—how
to get ahead, how well or poorly we are doing, what’s going on in Washington.
How we conduct our affairs and what is going on in the country are taken to be
the very serious and very important things. Thinking of God giving us all kinds
of gifts is not going to add to the bottom line. It’s not going to promote
progress. It’s taken to be almost something bad—like daydreaming. Work is the
god who is going to bless us. Wasting time thinking about the true God is a
sin.
Here we are getting closer to understanding why we naturally
act the way that we do. People aren’t stupid, particularly when it comes to the
things that have to do with the bottom line. So why should a person waste his
or her time with the Lord God when there are other ways to be much more
productive? That is to say, the reason why we don’t thank and praise the Lord
God is because it doesn’t work. Since when did this help anybody?
The way to get ahead in life is to work harder than
everybody else, be smarter than everybody else, be more charming than everybody
else, be prettier than everybody else. It’s all up to you. God’s not going to
take care of you. You have to take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of
yourself, then you are screwed. So why would you waste time on anything that
doesn’t have the possibility of making you more competitive? You wouldn’t.
You’re not stupid. You know what works.
Here we have perhaps the root of all sinfulness. The root of
all sinfulness is that the Lord God can’t help me, or, perhaps, the Lord God
won’t help me. The first temptation was that Adam and Eve would be better off on
their own. They could be like God if they believed in themselves and never gave
up. Afterwards, when they heard God walking through the Garden in the cool of
the day, it didn’t even occur to them to ask for or expect help from God. They
thought it much wiser to pretend that nothing had happened. Then they thought
it much wiser to lie about what happened. It was someone else’s fault, you see.
This stupidity has been passed down from one generation to
the next. The worthlessness of God on the one hand, and the much better results
that can be expected by relying upon other things on the other hand—this is the
thread that runs through all subsequent sin. This is true of the out-and-out
unbelievers, such as the descendants of Cain, who relied upon their industry
and technology for their blessings, as well as those who should have known
better such as the Israelites. The Israelites in the wilderness were constantly
saying, “We’re going to die. We’re going to die.” They constantly were desiring
to go back to Egypt. Several times they rebelled in order to go back. Either
the Lord God can’t help or he won’t help. We will be much better blessed in
some other way.
This thread, which runs through all sinfulness, can be
seen in why we break the Ten Commandments.
1st commandment: We do not fear, love, and trust in God
because other things will work better.
2nd commandment: We do not call upon his name because it
won’t do us any good.
3rd commandment: We do not gladly hear and learn his Word
because there are better things we can do with our time.
4th commandment: We do not honor our parents and other
authorities because we know better how to be happy.
5th commandment: We get angry and seek revenge because if
we don’t do it, nobody else will.
6th commandment: We pursue sexual gratification in other people
and other things besides the spouse God has given us or will give to us because
what God has given or will give is not good enough.
7th commandment: We take what doesn’t belong to us or
cheat to get more than we should because God won’t give us what we want.
8th commandment: We lie so as to avoid punishment and to
make ourselves look better than what we really are.
9th and 10th commandments: We don’t think that the Lord God
will take care of us, so we look for our blessing in those things that he
hasn’t given to us.
The reigning and ruling assumption in our sin-darkened minds
is that God can’t help us or God won’t help us. Or, with those who know him,
such as the Israelites and us Christians, he is thought to be rather stingy. He
doesn’t always give us all that we might want, or he might not give it to us as
quickly as we want. So we better take it into our own hands to make sure that
we get what we want.
On the other hand, sometimes God sends things our way that
we don’t like such as sickness, the loss of wealth, or other troubles. A god
that would be more to our own liking would only think like we think and act how
we would act. That is to say, we think that we would be better gods than the
one who actually exists. And so, like the Israelites, we grumble. If only God would
do everything we think he should do.
One of the most important questions in life is whether God is
actually good. This can sound like a Philosophy 101 kind of question, and we
don’t care much for philosophy majors.
It can also sound like a question that we already obviously know the
answer to. The Sunday School answer is that of course God is good. How could it
be otherwise? But I would present to you that this is a very personal question.
Is God good to you?
One clue that this question is important is how little we
think about it. Our spiritual enemies have a way of preventing us from asking
the right questions. We don’t think about whether God is good. We just wake up,
make our breakfast, and go about our day. The routines, the cares, and the
concerns of this world, run our life as we go from one task to the next. The
question of whether God is good to you rarely (if ever) occurs. Maybe we assume
that we already know the answer, and, of course, the correct answer is “yes.”
We go to church, don’t we? Obviously the answer must be “yes.”
Although our mouth might say, “yes,” our heart might be elsewhere.
We might say “yes” with our mouth, but our heart is not interested in thanking
and praising God. We’ll say “yes” but what about all those dark and ugly
things? Then we might not even want to say yes with our mouths anymore. What
about childhood cancer? What about all the cruelty, suffering, grief, and
death? Think of poor Job. God allowed Job to be stripped to the bone. Is a God
like that still good? That’s the very question that Job kept on asking. It
takes up most of text in that rather lengthy book.
Job remained confounded and perplexed until God finally
spoke to him from the whirlwind. That doesn’t come until chapter 38. Basically
God says to hurting Job, “Who do you think you are? Are you God? Can you do
what I can do?” This is what made the fever break for Job. He quit trying to be
God’s teacher, praising God when God did something to his liking, frowning at
God when he sent something unpleasant. Job quit competing with God as a rival,
wiser God. He embraced his role of being a creature. The bones that God had
broken rejoiced.
It is good to be a creature. When we think we are gods we
are not very happy. We aren’t meant to be in control of all things. We aren’t
meant to understand all things. We aren’t meant to judge all things. Our lives
as creatures is such where we see what our Creator has in store for us. These
are things that God does.
The Psalm says, “The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and
you give them their food at the proper time. You open your hand and satisfy the
desires of every living thing.” As creatures who believe in the Creator we
can be certain that he can help us and he will help us. I won’t always know
how. Sometimes it might appear as though he can’t or he won’t, but that’s not
up to me as a creature to know. That’s God’s job. Leave it to him and be at
peace.
In our Gospel reading today we heard about Jesus being
tempted. Jesus is a man, a human being, just like every one of us. As the
Scriptures say, “He was tempted in every way just as we are, but without sin.”
So in our Gospel reading Jesus overcomes temptation.
Notice how the devil tempts him just as he tempts us. The
thread is the same. The devil would have him be dissatisfied with the state
that he was in. He was hungry. How could God have put him in this miserable
state? God was probably going to keep him there too. So Jesus should take
things into his own hands. But Jesus says, “It is written: Man shall not
live by bread alone, by improving his own lot, but by every word that
comes from the mouth of God.”
The devil shows Jesus all the
kingdoms of the world. Jesus could have mastery over all of them. All Jesus
needs to do is not put all his eggs in one basket—not put all his eggs in the
basket of God’s promises. If he splits his allegiance between God and the devil
then he can have his cake and eat it too. But Jesus says, “It is written: You
shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
Then the devil seems like he
changes tactics. Jesus won’t quit trusting in the Lord his God. Let’s see if he
will go to what seems to be the other extreme. So he takes Jesus to the top of
the temple and tells him to trust God—throw himself off. The Scriptures say
that the angels will catch him. He won’t even bang his foot against a stone.”
It might seem as though the
devil has changed tactics here, but he really hasn’t. It might seem as though
the devil is trying to get him to trust in the Lord his God too much, but
that’s impossible. It is impossible for anybody to trust in God too much. It is
always the case that the more we trust the better.
What the devil is really trying
to do is what he’s been trying to do all along: He wants Jesus to be
dissatisfied with what God has given to him. God has given him a perfectly good
set of stairs. The ordinary means of a perfectly good set of stairs is boring. He
could really put on display his spiritual powers if he would throw himself off
to the glory of God. But Jesus says, “It is written: You shall not test the
Lord your God.”
Jesus, a human being just like
us, withstood temptation. He continued to believe that God would put things in
order. He continued to believe that God could and would help him. He believed
that our Father in heaven is good.
God would feed him when the time
was right. God would exalt him when the time was right. Whether the
circumstances appear good or bad, boring or not, he waited for the Lord to open
his hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing.
Where the first Adam failed,
this second Adam, Jesus, prevailed. By the first Adam we inherited unbelief,
sin, and death. By the second Adam we learn that God is good and gracious.
Whoever puts their trust in him will not be disappointed. By the second Adam we
are righteous, having been credited with Jesus’s own righteousness. We inherit
life, for Jesus has risen from the dead. And we can embrace our creatureliness
instead of being unhappy, pretend gods.
God is good, come what may. Even
death cannot prevent us from counting on God to give us every good thing. All
things work for the good of those who love him. Good things will come for those
who trust in him. This is inevitable and certain. Good things will come to
those who trust him. It’s just a question of whether it will be today,
tomorrow, or in the resurrection from the dead. That’s up to him. However he
arranges it, we can be sure that it is good because he loves us. Jesus, our
Savior and Redeemer, is proof of God’s love for us.
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