This morning is the first Sunday in Lent.  Lent is a 40-day journey between Ash Wednesday which we remembered last week and Easter Sunday which we will celebrate on April 9th.  Lent is a time of remembrance and repentance.  We’re called to remember that, were it not for the intervention of Jesus Christ, we would, at the end our lives, return to ashes, never to live again.  We’re also called to remember that our salvation through Jesus Christ came at a great cost to our Lord.  His body was tortured and He hung on a cross in order to save us from eternal death.  In response to this amazingly costly salvation, we Christians use Lent as a season to examine our lives and reorient ourselves back to the way of Jesus, our Lord.  We do this through confession of sin and through repentance.  The truth of the matter is, we’re all sinners.  You and I both fall short of the Glory of God.  But here’s the thing.  It isn’t the case for any of us that we wake up in the morning and think, “Gee, now how am I going to offend God today?  I wonder what I can do to really test His patience.” 

  We don’t do that.  Well, I hope we don’t do that.  Yet nevertheless, during the course of our day, we’ll do something that we ought not do.  Maybe we’re envious when we see an especially nice car.  Perhaps we look on someone with lustful thoughts?  Maybe we tell a lie in order to get our way.  But how did we get there?  As I said, none of us set out to do wrong.  The fact of the matter is that whenever we lapse into sin, the entry point is always temptation.

  When I think of temptation, my mind races to an unusual image.  A glowing red neon sign which announces that which makes me smile even now.  “HOT DOUGHNUTS NOW” it says, beckoning me off East Franklin Avenue in Gastonia into our local Krispy Kreme for many, many unneeded calories, carbs and sugars.  Yet there I am in that drive-through line more often than I’d like to admit.  Temptations strikes and I, too often, yield.

  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  One of the great blessings available to us is our knowledge that our Savior has shown us that overcoming temptation is, in fact, possible.  Temptation is part of the Christian life, so we look to Jesus’s Temptation in the Dessert to see some of the ways it’ll appear and the means and methods by which we can avoid its icy grip.

  Hear now the Word of our Lord recorded in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, verses one through eleven:  “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.  And the tempter came and said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’  But He answered, ‘It is written Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’  Then the devil took Him to the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written He will command His angels concerning You’ and ‘On their hands they will bear You up, lest You strike Your foot against a stone.’  Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’  Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And He said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if You will fall down and worship me.’  Then Jesus said to him, ‘Be gone, Satan!  For it is written ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’ Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to Him.”  This is the Word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God.

  Before we start examining the actual text of this passage, a few things need to be said about its location within the overall Gospel of Matthew because its location reveals much about when and where temptation will strike most prominently in our lives.  Jesus is sent out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit to be tempted by the Devil immediately following His Baptism.  If we look back just one verse into the end of chapter three, what we find is Jesus emerging from the waters of the Jordan – “And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’”  With the temptation coming right on the heels of this glorious moment in which God’s voice intruded into the world, announcing the goodness of His Son, Jesus, we must notice a couple of things. 

  First, temptation often strikes following a spiritual high.  This may surprise us.  Oftentimes we think that it is only when we’re down and out, so to speak, that temptation will interject itself into our world.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  In fact, time and time again, what we see is that the greatest lapses back into sin come on the heels of a spiritual breakthrough.  Perhaps we puff up with pride in those moments and, as I said last week quoting Proverbs 16:18 – “Pride comes before destruction.”