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Worse Sinners?
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
March 20, 2022
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Luke 13:1–9 (ESV)
1 There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. 4 Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” 6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
I think I am going to nerd out a bit this week. I have mentioned often that I think studying scripture is one of the most entertaining hobbies one could have. I say this because there is always something new to learn. I literally spent every evening studying for this week’s sermon. I read this passage many times. And took enough notes to probably speak on this for a couple of weeks. But you are lucky that about ninety percent of everything I learn, I do not put into my messages.
When I speak. I speak only on the things that I find to be the most interesting or the things that have convicted me the most. If anyone were to think I might be reading your mind, I don’t, I can’t. What is going on is that you and I just happen to be on the same wavelength. The things God is convicting me of today might be the same things that God has been working with you.
There is rarely a week that I am not fascinated with scripture. And to study scripture is not just to look at the words on the page. It is to learn about the people, the places, the surrounding history, and cultural influences that interact with the people writing or even reading what was written. It is looking at our own history, our own culture, the things that we are encountering and considering how all of this seems to intertwine. Scripture is not a book of answers. Scripture is not exactly a book of laws, although you can see that within it. Scripture is a conversation. It is a call to look deeper into yourself and to imagine yourself in someone else’s place. Scripture is inspired, it is infallible not because God sent the words directly from heaven, but because when we truly engage with scripture in study and in prayer, we do not leave unchanged.
I start in this manner for a reason. This past month has been challenging to me. My emotions have been all over the place. I pull up the news on my phone, I watch reports from various news outlets, I have watched commentaries, interviews, history presentations and pretty much anything that I could to gain a better understanding of why things are happening in our world.
I spent two months in Ukraine. I went to Ukraine during a very important time of my life. I went in the summer of 2000. I was an unmarried father, still in school, trying to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. I was in a crossroad of life. Was I going to be like every other person I knew my age, would I just pay child support and do my own thing or would I be a man? Would I become someone that stood for something important or would I just live for my own self-indulgence? I went to Ukraine that summer, I went to help organize and teach conversational American English classes to college students. I went to help, but I never imagined that those two months would change the course of my life.
I was a small-town farm kid. The largest city I have ever spent a large amount of time in was Wichita, Kansas. And I lived for two months in Odesa, Ukraine. I spent my entire life in the center of a continent and I spent a some a short walk to the shores of the Black Sea. I spent twenty-one years of my life speaking only if I had to, and that summer I taught classes, interviewed students, attempted to make calls to set up meetings using an extremely broken Russian language, and I also first began studying scripture in a more in-depth manner.
I was a painfully quiet person. It would not be uncommon for me to spend the entire day without say more than ten words prior to that summer. But that summer something changed. Seeds were planted deep within my being that began to sprout. And by the next December in less than six months my entire life changed. I was studying crop science, and as I sat in my car eating lunch one day, I heard a pastor read from John 21. “Do you love me more than these,” Jesus asked Peter. God took me to the other side of the world to show me something. He took me across the ocean and to the eastern regions of Europe to show me that no matter where I am there is something the same as what I am used to. Ukraine is flat. Ukraine in many ways is just like the rolling hills of Kansas. He took me across the world and showed me that people no matter where they live are basically the same and once, we can get through the barriers of language and our own oddness we are all interesting and have more similarities than differences. I heard that pastor read the words Jesus spoke to Peter, and I did not hear anything else that pastor said. All I heard was Jesus asking if I loved wheat more than him, if I loved corn, sorghum, or sunflowers more than him. I heard Jesus calling me out of everything I thought I knew and he led me into a life I have embraced for the past nineteen years. God called me to study scripture and to share what I have learned. God spoke to me, but he first had to get my attention by taking me to the other side of the world and showing me that we might all be different and yet we are the same.
I have spent many evening near tears as I have watched tanks moving down roads, and buildings being turned to rubble because those were the places I had once traveled. Places that to me and my life’s story are holy ground. It was in Ukraine that God really got my attention. It was in Ukraine, in a field of sunflowers where I began to realize that there was more to life than I first imagined.
Today we see Jesus in a conversation. He is again talking with the people within a community and during this time of conversation, like many others, Jesus teaches something profound. We might not get the teaching at first, we might look at these words and simply see Jesus giving some weird altar call. “There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.”
There is something very interesting about this verse. The sense of the wording is that these people had just returned from one place and were sharing the current events that had happened along the way. This is something that had seemingly happened recently. This is intriguing. If we were to investigate the works of the Jewish historians, we can find a couple of instances where something like this has happened, although many scholars would be quick to point out that the timing makes it seem a bit off. Some would say that this would make this portion of scripture less accurate, but the thing is that this historical source places events like what is described both before and after the accepted time frame of Jesus’s ministry. This tells me that it is probable. The depictions are so similar that we can determine that these events most likely happened during the feast of the Passover because that is the only time the sacrificial animal is slaughter by the worshippers.
This is important to note because Passover is one of those feasts where the entire Jewish community comes to one place, the temple. They travel from the far reaches of the world, from western end of the Roman Empire as well as from the Eastern regions of what we would know as Persia. I want us to think about this. The Roman Empire stretched the entire Mediterranean and as far north as the British Isles. And the Empire of the Persians stretched as far east as India and up into the areas we would be bordering what is now consider Russia and Ukraine. The entire known world at the time had pockets, communities of Jewish people. And many of them at some point would make their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the feasts. Imagine now you are a Roman official charged with the security and taxation of this land. Imagine three times a year people from all over the world were congregating in your province, carrying with them ideas, news, and goods. It is a security nightmare. And the annuals of history tell us this. Several times the Roman soldiers used deadly force to keep the peace.
Now at that very time, men that had just returned from Jerusalem had come to talk to Jesus. They told him about this injustice that had just occurred in their holy city. These Galileans are also interesting people. For those of you who have visited Israel, you know that the land of Galilee is beautiful. Galilee is filled with rich farmland and other resources. This is the land that was coveted by the various occupying empires. As these occupying forces came in, they would displace the current inhabitants and place their own people into those areas. People were removed from the homes their ancestors occupied. And they were given a couple of options. Either they had to pay rent to continue to farm the land they had always farmed or they would be removed.
This caused great social, political, and economical unrest in Galilee. The people of Israel were forced to live in towns, they were forced to go into debt, they were forced to find jobs that they were not accustomed to. Disease was rampant because people were living closer together than before. Work was hard, poverty was high, and archeology has found that nearly fifty percent of those buried in Galilee died before they reached adulthood.
From the writings of Josephus, we know that it was from Galilee that the rebellion against the Romans began. From the Book of the Maccabees, we find that is if from Galilee that the rebellion against the Greeks began. Galilee was known as violent and rebellious people. And Pilate sees a group from Galilee congregating in Jerusalem. Imagine what you might think, this group had a stereotypical reputation, and Pilate acted with swift ferocity.
These men came back to Galilee and they shared the news. They brought the news to the synagogue. They shared the news with the men within their community, and they began sowing the seeds of rebellion. But Jesus does something profound. He does not let the talk of nationalistic pride take root around him. He does not speak about these men as martyrs of the faith. He listens to their words and says, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?”
Jesus is doing two things with this question. He is pointing out their pride as well as their hypocrisy. The teachings of the Pharisees at this time were that the reason bad things are happening in your life is because you have sinned. If you got an illness, it is your fault because you were not following the law faithfully enough. If your crops failed, you were not righteous enough. If your husband died, it was because you were not a good enough person and God was judging you. We often get into this trap even today. There are teachers within our churches that will preach that the only reason you have not overcome an illness is because you do not have enough faith. There are teachers that will say that the reason you are in poverty is because you have not claimed your receipts in heaven so the blessings are not flowing. And yet these good men of Galilee died. Their blood was mingled with the blood of their sacrifice.
Do you see the hypocrisy? These men died in such a terrible way because they were sinful, and yet those same teachers would rile their countrymen up in nationalistic and religious pride saying that these men were martyrs of the faith. They were holy and righteous and we should take up arms to defend their honor. Jesus asks, were they sinners? Were they worse sinners than everyone else? “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Jesus answers.
What is he saying? He is not holding these men as being martyrs, and he is not condemning them as heretics. Jesus is calling the people within their community to take a step back and consider what they are doing. He is calling not for war, but peace. He is calling not for fire and brimstone, but repentance among the righteous. Look at yourselves.
Twenty-two years ago, I boarded a plane that took me to Ukraine. In the months leading up to this trip, I remember my grandfather tell me that he would be praying for me because I was going to the frontlines to face the enemy. He told me that he would pray for their repentance and my safety. I love my grandfather. I think he is one of the greatest men that on Earth, but that statement has never really sat well with me. I boarded that plane nervously. I boarded that plane with the self-righteous fervor that I was about to embark on a holy crusade against the heathens. I quickly found out that nearly every student I spoke to were Christians. Most attended worship multiple times a week. I was not converting heathens, the only thing that I was engaged in was mutual discipleship. They taught me just as much about God as I taught them.
Jesus that day encouraged the people of Galilee to stop looking at the people around them as enemies. He encouraged them to stop looking at everything that happened to them as a sin against them or a sin they had committed, and instead to look at how they were living their own lives with each other.
To me Russia has invaded the holy land. They have desecrated that thin space where God got my attention, they have contaminated my holy mountain. I am angry. I am furious. I, at this moment am not a great example of the Quaker testimony of peace. But then God speaks to me, “do you think that these Russians were worse sinners?” And I am taken aback. I listened to their political leaders use scripture in their speeches. I remember that they are the largest Christian nation. We might not agree because they are not Evangelicals and they do not believe the same things that we believe, but that is not the point. They are who they are and they believe that they are following Christ. I listen as the leader of this invading army used scripture to justify something offended my faith to such a degree that I shook with anger.
And I read this passage again. “Are they worse sinners?” We too misuse scripture to manipulate others to do what we want. We too believe our actions are just and our cause is righteous. I still think Putin should withdraw from Ukraine, and I think it in words that are more colorful than I should utter, but I too have sinned.
Jesus is telling us, “Are they worse sinners? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” My demands for better service, my snide comments at the customer service desk, the words that I utter out of frustration and anger, are an invasion of sacred ground. When I demand a refund beyond the true value I am contributing to the violation of God’s sovereignty. Why? Because each human being on the face of this earth is created to bear the image of God. When I think of myself as greater, I have declared war on God. I need repentance, and if I do not repent, I contribute to the continuation of sin and death in this world. I am damning those around me from the blessing of life with God because I speak in God’s name, but I reflect something else. What they see is no better that what they see all around them. What they see in some cases is worse than the things I declare as ungodly.
Over the past few weeks, God has shown me my own hypocrisy. I say I am antiwar, and yet I will get into a shouting match with my own child. I say that I believe all people are created in the image of God, yet at times I will make sure the doors on my car are locked when I come to a stop light. I say a great deal of things, but how do I live? Are they worse sinners?
As we enter in our time of Holy Expectancy we will listen to No Man’s Land by Eric Bogle
If you would like to help support the continued Ministry of Willow Creek Friends Church please consider donating online:
https://secure.piryx.com/donate/nlcsJT87/Willow-Creek-Friends-Church/
To help support the personal ministry of JWQuaker (Jared Warner) online and in the community click to donate.
The Fox in the Henhouse
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
March 13, 2022
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Luke 13:31–35 (ESV)
31 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” 32 And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. 33 Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ 34 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 35 Behold, your house is forsaken. And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
Last week we considered the temptations that Jesus faced. I hope that we were able to see how similar those temptations are to our own temptations. They are not necessarily a desire or urge to do something wrong, but often temptations are a desire to do the right thing the wrong way. We in our desire to do the right things can sin, we can oppose the will of God, because we are not able to see or are unwilling to see how God is using the process.
The first temptation was to turn a stone into bread. And I mentioned that this was a temptation to withdraw from the community aspect of life. Instead of encouraging others to get involved you take all the power on yourself to fulfill your own needs. This does not sound terrible does it, it sounds like great business sense. But what is more important to God? In the kingdoms of men profit is important. Profit is looking out for yourself or your group first. But in the kingdom of God, mutual profit is what is important. Mutual profit is looking out for something larger. Making sure that all within the community benefits from the transactions.
The second temptation was to being all the kingdoms of the world under the rule of Jesus. This is the ultimate goal of God. That all nations, tribes, and languages will come to praise the one Most High God. But the temptation was to get to take a short cut to that goal. So often we are tempted with the same things. I want a good grade on a test because the goal at that moment is to pass. How do I get that grade? I could spend hours studying, or if I just write the answers down on my arm and wear a long-sleeved shirt, I can just cheat my way to the top. Businesses want to make a larger profit, so they use inferior resources to make their goods. They sacrifice quality and possibly safety for their goal. And we see this in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. We could say that this is a battle between the East and West, but really it is a desire to take a short cut. Instead of developing a deeper relationship, they will use force instead.
The third temptation was to make a spectacle. To attract attention not by substance but by show. I want us to think of this. How often are we manipulated by the show? Every political campaign is a spectacle that manipulates the people into thinking that one person is better than the other. The ads are propaganda filled with half-truths to convince each of us to regard the other candidate as just one step less evil than the devil. Even movies, an industry that is based on entertainment, have increasingly devoted resources to special effects instead of plot development. If you do not believe me, look at the latest trailers for the emerging movies, they are filled with special effects. Half the time the best parts of the movie are in the trailers, and the rest of the movie is often a waste of time. This of course does not happen in Star Wars, because they are all good.
Then we come to the church. How often do we get distracted by the spectacular? There are churches that claim to be so holy that gold dust will fall from the ceilings as people sing praises, and that feathers from angel wings are often seen floating down around you. The fact that scripture never says that angels have wings let alone feathers is suspect, but the spectacle is there. We are drawn in by the exciting, but what about substance? I am not saying that those places do not have substance, but the spectacular feats surrounding them causes me to pause and look deeper.
These temptations always surround us. They bombard us from every direction. Half the time we do not even notice that we are being subjected to their influences, and there are people that have gotten very good at manipulating the use of these very things for their own advancement. We as followers of Christ are called to something greater. We are called to look deeper, and to live differently.
This is something that has been part of religious life from the dawn of history. Today we meet Jesus during a conversation. A group of Pharisees come to Jesus and they carry with them a dire warning. “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”
The first thing I want us to see, is that these Pharisees seem to be allies with Jesus and not opponents. Usually when we see the word Pharisee, we quickly assume that they are the bad guys of the story. They are the leaders that are mindlessly trapped in the bondage of religion and fail to see the working of God around them. Many times, we would not be wrong in this assertion, but in this case, these men have respect for Jesus.
I say they have respect, but I also want us to recognize that they have information. They know that the king, or the political ruler over this territory, has a mind to assassinate Jesus. These men and the group they are members of have an insiders’ knowledge of what is going on. This highlights that the larger group of Pharisees are in fact plotting with Herod, but these men are in opposition.
We often regard the religious sect of the Pharisees as this unified monolithic organization that has one overarching perspective to life. But the reality is that they are a human organization and there are different opinions within their organization. With the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls we can develop a deeper understanding of this group of people. First off, their name literally means, to separate, divide, or distinguish. What are they dividing from? The Sadducees, which were largely in charge of the temple traditions. I want us to think of the Pharisees not as this monolithic religious organization, but as the reformers. They are basically the Protestants of the religion of Israel. And their focus was to bring the center of religious identity away from the outward ceremonies performed in the temple, and instead place the center of their religious identity into the home.
They sought to decentralize religion, making it into something that we all could live. It was this group that laid the foundation not only for the rabbinical Judaism we see practiced throughout the world today, but they contributed a great deal to the formation of the Christian church today. Regarding theological understanding the Pharisees and Jesus were very closely related. And yet there were disagreements between Jesus and this group, and if we were to look closely at the various tests the Pharisees challenge Jesus with, we would see that there are differences within the ranks of the Pharisees. Scholars have noted that there are two major schools of thought within the Pharisees. One is the conservative school of Rabbi Shammai, and the second is the more liberal school of Rabbi Hillel. I use the terms liberal and conservative, for a reason because I want us to realize that they are simply words used to scare us. Neither Shammai nor Hillel would be considered liberal today, but Hillel taught that the interpretation of the law was not fixed, but it needed to adapt to the changing conditions of the world. This would mean that the torah are teachings, a moral and ethical guide, instead of divine mandate. To Hillel we were supposed to think and use reason to determine how the law applies in the circumstances of today?
These differences of perspective come up often in the conversations with Jesus, and that is something we see today. Some Pharisees are working with Herod and his plot against Jesus, while others want to preserve this popular teacher.
Jesus tells this group of unsuspected allies, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.’” This is a very interesting statement that is packed full of… well insults. Even today we use the term fox in a derogatory manner. We use this as a way of describing a cunning and deceptive nature. This is true even in the ancient days, but there is another view that may come into play. In some Jewish circles, a fox can also symbolize an individual that is regarded as or considers himself a lion but is in reality a very small threat. This could explain Herod in many ways. He was the son of Herod the Great and had aspired to reunite the territory of his father. Herod wanted to be seen as great, but when he made attempts to show his authority, Rome quickly stepped in and removed him from power. He regarded himself as a lion, but he was nothing more than a small predator that stole chickens from the farmyard.
The insults do not stop there. Some other scholars look at this statement and they see something completely different. The Hebrew word for Saul and fox are homophones. Meaning they are different words that sound the same. Veggie Tales has a wonderful song about homophones if you want to do a quick google search. Jesus might be using a play on words and basically calling Herod Saul. Saul was the first king of Israel that fell from God’s graces. God then chose and anointed David to be the next king and Saul spent the rest of his life focused on how he could somehow get rid of David, only to find every attempt foiled because David had God’s blessing. The will of God will triumph over the will of mankind.
After Jesus insults Herod, he then says something that is also strange. “Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow and the third day I finish my course.” The expression today, tomorrow, and the third day is a Hebraic idiom for a short and indefinite period. Jesus is telling this fox and his allies that I have work to do, and I am going to finish the course set before me, and you will not be able to stop it.
Jesus, had to go to the cross. He had to die so that he could conquer death. Often, we think of the fall of humanity as being where sin entered the human existence. But the reality is that when our first parent ate of the tree of knowledge, death entered. When Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit, they turned from God’s will, that was sin, but the result of that sin was that they were severed from the source of life, God. Death is separation from life, it is not sin. Sin is the opposition of God’s will, where death is the resulting curse that comes from our sin.
We all face death because we have all sinned, we cannot help but to sin because the connection to life has been severed so we are all making vain attempts using whatever is at our disposal to determine good and evil. The reality is that our knowledge is at best incomplete. And when we act with incomplete knowledge, we will inevitably cause harm in some way. When we cause harm, we participate in the continuation of sin because we are making decision based on our will instead of the will of God. Jesus forgives sin, but death is still our destiny. Only God can change the course of our human destiny. The book of Revelation tells us that Jesus holds the keys of death and Hades. And Peter tells us in his letter that Jesus descended into hell. We can get some pretty skewed theological positions from this, but what it means is that Jesus entered the realm of the dead, he was buried and he took the one thing that the devil can hold over us, death.
Jesus had to die, Jesus had to face death with us and for us. He faced this so that he could reverse the curse. And that is what he is speaking about. I cast out demons, the minions of death, and perform cures, the inflictions of death. He speaks of reversing the damage that this spiritual rebellion instituted. And no plot of man, nor the powers of demonic forces can change that. Just as Saul sought to deprive David of his anointed destiny as king, the fox of Herod will not prevent God’s will to be fulfilled on Earth as it is in Heaven.
Jesus has a divine mandate to reverse the damage caused by spiritual rebellion and sin, but this will occur in a way that is beyond human understanding. Last week I spoke about hypocrisy. How our own hypocrisy can sear or dam the lifegiving flow of blessing because it can cause us to lose sight of the image of God within those around us. We can easily fall into this type of hypocrisy. It is found in the three temptations of Christ and always surrounds us. We all want to profit, but we often do not seek mutual profit. We all want the ultimate goal to come to being, but we often do not want to put in the work of developing the relationships to make that happen. We like the spectacular, but we do not have time to develop the substance to make the spectacular a constant reality. This resembles what Jesus says about prayer. We want but we do not ask, and when we ask, we ask wrongly.
The Pharisees were seeking to make the world around them ready for the messiah. Even today you can hear this being taught by the rabbis, we must make the world ready for messiah, and when he comes all things will be set right again. We often get caught in this same practice. Some of us because of our understanding of Eschatology or the theology of the end, believe that certain things must happen before Christ returns so we eagerly watch and wait, and we make decisions based on what we believe will make that return happen more promptly. We look at the world around us and we nearly praise the debauchery instead of seeking to inspire a different lifestyle. The same could be said about the Pharisees. They had ideas; they had their own theories. And Jesus calls them out on it. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”
Jesus here is telling them that they do not understand. They do not understand what God desires. The prophets spoke out against the sins of the Gentiles but they did not only speak out about their sins, but also the sins of Israel. “It is mercy I desire not sacrifice.” Hosea says. The prophets spoke out against the sins of their own people. And the result of their preaching was to be stoned.
Stoning is the prescribed form of execution for those that are apostate and idolatrous. Stoning was the legal means God commanded the people of Israel to deal with those that lived contrary to His will. Yet, it was those that He chose to be his spokesmen, that faced this divinely mandated punishment. We can become so blinded by our own ideology that we would reject the word of God and subject those that speak it to a perversion of justice. God was calling out to his people, yet they rejected God and killed those that were calling them back. What does God want? What does God desire?
The greatest lions among us are simply a fox in the hen house. We think we can change the course of history with our wars and our policies. But where exactly do we stand? Jesus told his followers not to fear the ones that can take life, but the one that can judge the soul. I like everyone reads the news and I wonder if the concept of nuclear war will become a reality, but the lions that I perceive are nothing but foxes, because God is still at work. Are we following the lion or the fox? Are we looking at the people around us as threats to our ideology or are we seeing them as imagers of God in need of mercy?
Jesus looked at the people of his day, people that had the ear of power, and he called them out. They in all their religious posturing were connected to the kingdoms of men instead of the kingdom of God. Fear keeps us in bondage within the kingdoms of men. But perfect love casts out all fear. Our God came to live among us. He was born of a virgin, and he lived a complete life. He taught and ministered within his community and showed us the lifestyle God wants us to live. He stood up to the foxes of men and took on our fear, our shame, and our curse as he was nailed to the cross. He was buried in a tomb and challenged the one thing we all face with fear, death. He ripped the keys out of death’s hand and broke through the vail that separates us from life, as he rose from the grave on the third day, and our God restores our hope.
What does God want? What does God desire? He wants us. He wants us to turn from the foxes that make spectacular claims of power among mankind’s kingdoms, and he wants us to come to him. God so loved the world that he sent his one unique son to us so that whoever believes in him will not perish but will have eternal life with him. And this is eternal life that we believe in God, and the one He sent. Putin and Biden can rattle their sabers, the nations of men can make their postures of power, but they are but foxes in the hen house. They too face the same end that we all face. They cannot stop the goal that God has set from the beginning of creation. We are to bear the image of God, we are to make our world into God’s Garden, and dwell with him. Everything apart from that is sin. Will we stone the prophets and follow the foxes, or will we boldly stand with the lion of Judah?
If you would like to help support the continued Ministry of Willow Creek Friends Church please consider donating online:
https://secure.piryx.com/donate/nlcsJT87/Willow-Creek-Friends-Church/
To help support the personal ministry of JWQuaker (Jared Warner) online and in the community click to donate.
The Searing Reality of Temptation
By Jared Warner
Willow Creek Friends Church
March 6, 2022
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Luke 4:1–13 (ESV)
1 And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. 3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” 4 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’ ” 5 And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, 6 and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.” 8 And Jesus answered him, “It is written, “ ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.’ ” 9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written, “ ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ 11 and “ ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ” 12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” 13 And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
Over the past week I have done a great deal of soul searching. I have struggled with my own core believes in many ways. There is a reason for this. Faith is not easy. Faith is not something we can just jump into and live out. Faith is a struggle because life is a struggle.
I have watched various news reports and questioned my own beliefs. Do I really believe what I say I believe? I have had to face my own doubts, and my own self-deception. We all deceive ourselves. We all live lives of hypocrisy in some manner. We are not perfect.
I must thank a friend for much of this soul searching. Over the past few months, I have engaged in a bible study with this friend, and because of this study I have been required to dig deeper into some areas of my own understanding than I have previously. I want you all to know that when you teach, when you must in some way explain something to someone else you learn more. I have learned more about scripture while preparing for lessons and sermons than I ever did sitting in a pew or even sitting in a classroom learning how to study the Bible. If you want to learn about scripture, I encourage you to find someone or a couple of people to study scripture with. If each of us were to find a friend to study with and actually have to explain our understanding of faith to each other, we would deepen our spiritual lives in a way that we have not experienced it before.
I mention this because we were studying 1 Timothy and in the passage we were studying there was a strange verse that I have never really considered before. 1 Timothy 4:2, “2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,” This to me is a weird verse. Through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, what does that mean? This verse speaks of our own self justification and personal hypocrisy. We can justify our actions. We can claim that they are valid and honorable. We can even use those justifications to direct how we interact with the world around us. And these justifications can cause us to lose the ability to see the harm we are causing to others. Hypocrisy is the insincerity of liars. Lack of empathy is where our consciences are seared or more accurately cauterized. Cauterization is the act of burning to seal off the flow. This is something that was used to prevent blood loss, and since I am not a medical doctor, or doctor of any kind, I cannot tell you if it works well or not, all I know is that we used to do it when we dehorned cattle.
The searing of the conscience stops the flow, it prevents or dams up the flow of blessing from one to another. It prevents us from participating in the mutual profit of those around us. It is in essence greed and pride. We sear our consciences because we do not want to think or even consider that I might be participating in something that is causing harm to others. I have had to struggle with this concept all through this past week. I struggle with this because I am attempting to live my life in faith. I can see how I, and the actions that I have promoted contribute to suffering of others. And how do we live with this? We either must repent or we cauterize our conscience so that we are able to continue living without pangs of guilt.
This single verse got my mind and heart working the past few days. I had to come to terms with my own hypocrisy and blatant refusal to acknowledges others. I read the verse and I thought about things like racism, nationalism, war, peace, trade, and the list can go on. Every form of human interaction has the risk of entering some form of insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared, because we are human. We, with our desire to be right often will unite with those we see as similar and we will neglect and demonize those we see as different. This is something that we have struggled with for most of our human history.
Is this what God wants? Was this what God desired when he told our first parents to go out into all the earth and subdue it? No. This is the fall. This is humanity in their desire to know good and evil struggling to make the world into their image instead of the image of God.
We are told that Jesus is fully human and fully God by the theologians. This is by nature a concept that we are unable to grasp. We cannot wrap our heads around this concept because it is beyond our comprehension. That does not really matter. What matters is what Jesus is. What Jesus did. And where we are in relation to that. One of the greatest struggles we in the western world have with this whole concept is the verses in today’s reading, the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.
How can God be tempted? Is this even possible? The answer is not easy because we approach it from our perspective. And our perspectives are filled with our definitions of good and evil; right and wrong. We equate God with our human understanding and when we do that, we can develop a skewed understanding of who God is.
God can be tempted. God has always been tempted. That is what the whole supernatural rebellion is all about. The sons of God, the spiritual beings that were created before our terrestrial plain, were God’s family. They had communion with God, but God wanted a larger family so he created the world and he said to those spiritual beings, “Let us create man in our image.” So, he created humanity as image bearers of God. This role as image bearers is significant. It means that we have a place in God’s family, it means that we are just as significant to God as the angels of heaven. This significance is something that some of the spiritual beings could not handle, so they rebelled against God. This rebellion is temptation, or a test of God’s character. Will God be true to his nature? Can we as members of God’s created family trust him? The spiritual rebellion tested God; the test was to see if God would give greater honor to one over the other. Will God choose humanity or angels? Our entire history is a temptation of God. It is testing God; it is trying to make God move one way or the other. The angels of rebellion looked at God’s desire to live in Eden as God choosing humanity over them. And they hatched out a plan to make that stop. Get the humans to join the rebellion.
God can be tested, God is tested. But God can handle the test. Our problem is will we trust God. This is the humanity side of the temptation narrative. Is it possible for humans to participate in what God had already set in motion?
We are told that Jesus was led into the desert by the Holy Spirit. I first want us to stop and think about this. We recognize the Holy Spirit as God. In the trinitarian view of God we have God the Father, Son and Spirit. Three distinct personalities that of one essence. The thing to remember is the one essence and not to worry about the three personalities as much, because this will only lead us into human justification and various heresies, because we cannot understand something that is beyond our shared experience. But we have experienced the one essence of God. This verse is telling us that God led God out into the wilderness to face the testing. God met the test head on without reservation.
And for forty days, Jesus was in the wilderness eating nothing. We get many insights from this. The fact that Luke and the other gospel writers use the number forty is significant. It links the experience of Jesus back into the history of Israel. They were tested for forty years in the wilderness. Moses was on the mountain forty days when he was receiving the law, and while he was up there Israel was tested, and they failed that test by building an idol of gold. Forty is a significant touch point that tells us that this is something that is linked to deep ancient roots.
Jesus was led by the Spirt to the wilderness to be tested. During that time, he ate nothing and was hungry. And the devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” I want us to consider this test for a moment. Where is the temptation, where is the sin in this? This is the foundation of what we are talking about. When we think of temptation we think of sin, so we must consider what sin really is.
Theologically and religiously, we have a definition to this word. But I do not think we fully grasp what sin really is. According to our own faith and practice we basically label sin as disobedience to the will of God. I think this is a great definition. So often religious organizations define sin as disobeying God’s law. It might not seem like much of a difference but it is. To look at the will instead of the law is speaking of relationship in comparison of legal conformity. When we base our definition of sin on legal conformity sin is something we overcome through discipline and righteousness. But if the definition of sin is based on disobedience to the will of God, that indicates that we are in a conversation a relationship. Legal transactions can be negotiated, but relationships take something completely different.
It is not a sin to eat. It is not a sin to make bread to eat. It is a sin to make bread out of wheat that does not belong to you, or to grow wheat to make bread on land that is not yours. I want to reiterate that it is not a sin to eat bread. So where is the temptation what is the test?
This devil, this adversary or accuser, is testing Jesus. This personified representative of the rebellion is suggesting to Jesus take use the powers he possesses to provide for himself a necessity. It is not a sin to make bread, but it is a sin to disregard God’s will in the process. The will of God was for humanity to go into the world and subdue it and make it the garden of Eden. The temptation here is not just to make bread. It is to disregard the whole process of making bread. How can we encourage the world to come to God, if we are not interacting with the world? Our participation in the economies of mankind can be a witness to our relationship with God.
How do we make bread? First a seed and soil. Then the seed grows, reproduces and is harvested. Then the seeds are taken and ground into flour. This flour is combined with water and mixed into dough. That dough is formed into a loaf and baked at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. There are many steps involved in making bread, and there are many tools. Making bread even if we make it at home, is a community thing. We must interact with others to make bread. Even if we were to make our own tools, the idea is that there is still a relational aspect to eating involved. We make bread for the family. We trade with others so we have bread for the family. We interact with others. If Jesus were to simply make bread, he is cutting out the humanity of hunger. We do not live on bread alone. We live on the word of God. The word of God is that every single person on the face of this earth is important, and we need you to help provide the most basic things of survival.
To turn a stone into bread, the devil is challenging Jesus, challenging God to undo his own created order of interconnectedness. And that is our temptation as well. When we begin to feel as if we do not need someone else, or even a nation we are denying those people around us the right to bear the image of God in themselves. This is why racism is such a detrimental sin in our society. This is why it is important to recognize where we have denied the expression of the image of God in others. This is why war in every form is wrong. It allows us, it demands us to deny those outside of our group their identity as bearers of God’s image.
God does not need us to make the world into Eden. God could have made the world into Eden all on his own but that was not his will. His will was to have people freely choose to join him in that process. But all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all think we have the answers to all the world’s problems so we build empires and fight wars. This is the crux of the second temptation. “And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. 7 If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’”
This second temptation is connected to the first. If God’s plan was that the entire world be joined in unity under this Edenic garden nation, we have failed immensely. We are told in Deuteronomy that when humanity attempted to make a tower that reached to the heavens God confused the languages and divided the nations among the sons of God, keeping Israel as his allotment. This teaching is strange, but it basically means that God allowed the rebellion to occur so that through one people he could convince everyone to come back into alignment with the plan. Our first parents freely chose to rebel, and we must freely choose to come back to God. When God divided the nations among these rebellious spiritual beings, he was acknowledging that he will not force anyone or thing to conform to his will. Yet his will remains the same. His desire is that all of creation, all people will come to him. And on that glorious day of the Lord, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord. But he waits, he waits for that final battle because he does not want a single person to die without an opportunity to come back to him.
This second temptation is a temptation for Jesus to jump ahead. The ultimate goal is that every nation and every tribe will be brought into and under God’s government. The tester says I can make it happen in an instant if you will just worship me. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?
The temptation again is to circumvent the relational aspects of the kingdom. God does not force people to love him. He freely offers all people the grace but we must choose to join him in his mission. William Penn, one of the early Quaker activists wrote this in a letter to Letter to Lord Arlington, while imprisoned in the Tower, “Force may make hypocrites, but it can make no converts.” He also wrote in Some Fruits of Solitude, “A good end cannot sanctify evil means; nor must we do evil, that good may come of it…” Penn and the other early Friends, opposed the use of force, they believed that the only true and honest way to bring about change was to live that change in front of people. The ultimate goal of God is that all people will come to love him. But if God used force of any kind there would not be love. This would deny God of his nature and us of our own. And because God so loved the world, he allows humanity to be human. It is not God that causes the suffering of humanity, but we cause our own suffering. God does not cause children to live in abusive families, we are the ones that abuse. We are the ones that are broken.
It is only when we are able to see a different way of living, that we can stop the cycles of violence that define our societies. For the people of the world to see a different way that requires us to be convinced to live a different way. For people to stop the violence we must show that there is another way. Our mission statement for Willow Creek is: Loving God, embracing the Holy Spirit, and living the love of Christ with others. This is actively showing the Kingdom of God. To incorporate this into our lives we must be involved in it with God. And we must be vulnerable and risk. Love inherently involves risk, because we cannot control others, we can only act and hope that they respond. Do unto other what you would like done to you is the golden rule so many of us live by, but have we really considered how risky that is?
The devil has tempted Jesus to fulfill his basic needs, and his ultimate desire, the third temptation occurs at the temple. “Throw yourself off, for it is written that the angels will lift you up so you will not strike your foot.” James the Just is said to have been thrown from the pinnacle of temple as the devil encourages Jesus to do. I mention this because it is a real thing that could happen. And this quote comes from one of the Psalms, that speaks of God being our fortress and protector. But what is the devil really tempting Jesus to do? Again, none of these things in themselves would be considered sinful, it is the intent behind the action. What will get the attention of the world? What can we do to get noticed? I remember growing up that there was always some gimmick that a furniture store would use to get people to come to their store. Once a guy sat on the roof in the middle of the summer and the longer he stayed up there the greater the discount would be. The local news was out on location the entire time, giving updates, because in the middle of nowhere there isn’t much news. The temptation here is to use the spectacular to attract attention instead of the truth. We like the show, we like the victory dance after a touchdown, and every hockey player has developed their own celly after a goal. We like these we want to participate in these actions, we want the show.
Do people come for the show or do they come for the truth? Are people coming for healing or the words of life? Are we here for the blessing or are we hear because we are disciples of God?
The devil is asking Jesus to use something spectacular to bring the people back to God. Jump off the roof and show them that God will not allow you to die. But Jesus said to the pharisees that even if someone rose from the grave they would not believe. The spectacular only works for a while, eventually you either have to become more spectacular or you need to deepen the roots. When we base our lives on the spectacular, we will constantly need something more but what we really need is to be part of something meaningful. We need to have a mission and a purpose.
We have a purpose, we are called like every other human being on the face of this planet to make this world into Eden, the place where God and humanity can live together in complete and total harmony. I do not want us to look at the larger picture. I do not want us to look at the news and point to Russia or the United States and say if only they would stop what they are doing then this would happen. No. That is not the point. God already has a government; he does not need our feeble attempts to replace his supremacy. I want us to look at ourselves. Have we succumbed to the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared? Have we fallen to the temptation that we know more and better than those around us? Or are we honoring that of God in the person sitting next to us. Are we honoring the image of God in the life of the clerk at the store? Are we thanking the servers at the restaurants for bringing us our daily bread? Are we actively participating in the kingdom in how we interact with those around us, or are we contributing to the burning of flesh to stop the flow of life?
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