I had no idea what to call this week’s sermon, but since I’m in a good mood this morning, a Hulk reference works. Enjoy!
Luke 4:1-13; Romans 10:8b-13; Psalm 91:1-2,9-16; Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Have you ever been in a situation, or witnessed a situation, where everything seemed absolutely, completely hopeless? I don’t mean this in a major sense necessarily, even though it’s more obvious when it’s major, but sometimes the minor things can affect us as much as the big stuff. I remember when I failed my first differential equations test in college, and really bombed it not just a little fail. I think I got a 34. That’s really minor in the grand scheme of things, but at the time I felt like I was never going to make it in college and I may as well go home and find a crap job somewhere for the rest of my life. It’s a super-minor issue in the long run. But then there’s also the stories of people suffering some major injustice – Christians persecuted in East Asia for example – and yet they persevere. It makes you wonder why.
Our lessons today are all about being at the end of one’s rope, yet God intervenes. In Deuteronomy, Moses is wrapping up his farewell speech to the people of Israel. They’re camped just on the other side of the Jordan River, preparing to cross and invade Jericho, but Moses is using this time to remind everyone what they’ve been through and what God did. For over 200 years all of the descendants of Jacob and his sons were living in slavery in Egypt. They had lost all hope of rescue, for God seemed to do nothing with their cries. Even when God sent Moses to them to be His instrument, they wanted nothing to do with him at first. They were totally without hope.
Yet God intervened, and they were freed from slavery, but when they reached the shores of the Jordan 40 years before the events of our reading today, the people saw another hopeless situation. The people were too strong, the cities too well fortified – there was absolutely no way they were going to be able to invade. And so, instead of going with God, they wandered in the desert for 40 more years until all but 3 of the generation who left Egypt were dead: Moses, Joshua, and Caleb. But this time they knew God was with them. They knew he had intervened for them in the past. And so they could rejoice knowing that God would do so again.
Our Psalm is an example of that kind of rejoicing. It’s a reminder of God’s faithfulness in every situation. In the parts we didn’t chant this morning, it says God will save us from snares, fear, arrows, war, sickness, famine – all because he loves us.
Interestingly enough, it’s from this Psalm that the devil quotes in order to tempt Jesus. He went out in the desert to be tempted for forty days, and the whole time he wasn’t eating. So, typical Biblical understatement, he was hungry. Now I did some looking into this, and forty days is about the longest a person can go on a complete fast. So near-death from hunger might be a more accurate description of Jesus’ state at the time. So the devil shows up and starts with the most basic of temptations: turn stones into bread and eat. Jesus deflects that one, and I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him.
The next temptation was a really deceptive one. Satan offers him all the kingdoms of the earth, if he just bows and worships. Here’s why it’s deceptive. Satan is offering Jesus something he will have anyways. Jesus is the heir of all creation. What Satan is really doing is offering Jesus a way to avoid the cross, because Satan knows that by that cross, he’s getting whooped. But Jesus deflects that one too. The final temptation is about who Jesus is and how confident Jesus is in his identity, and it’s where Satan quotes Scripture to him, specifically Psalm 91. Satan says, “If you’re really the Son of God, jump off.” But Jesus refuses to test God.
Now even though Jesus did not succumb to temptation, his situation was still pretty grim. He hadn’t eaten, he needed food. Yet when Satan left, angels came and looked after him. Luke’s account doesn’t talk about that part, but Matthew and Mark’s version do. God intervened even when it seemed hopeless.
After all this, we come to Romans, where it presents a different kind of hopeless situation. Much of the letter to the Romans is a sort of primer on Christianity, so the first half is essentially explaining that without God, we’re all in deep trouble. We’re in the most hopeless of hopeless situations—living and yet dead in sin, and every time we try and get out on our own we only dig ourselves in deeper. That’s the hopelessness of life away from God, it’s like quicksand pulling us farther down the more we struggle.
And yet in the midst of that hopelessness, God intervenes. Jesus Christ died on a cross and was raised again to new life. And, Paul writes, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. It’s simple. When in the hopelessness of sin, sinking deeper and deeper, God ties a rope around us and pulls us out. He rescues us from our hopelessness through the death and resurrection of His Son.
And this is something He keeps on doing. For the record, after that first failed test in DiffE, God the Holy Spirit used it to push me harder, and by some miracle I passed the class. I’m convinced of God’s intervention in even that minor situation. And I’m convinced that God continues to step in when we see no way out, and all because He loves us more than we can possibly imagine.