The water was still dripping from his hair. You must

remember that.

The River Jordan was only a heartbeat ago. One

moment earlier, there’s the crowd, the dove, the blinding

light, the unmistakable booming voice from heaven: You

are my Son, the Beloved.

And then, the Spirit—that same Spirit that hovered

over the water, that descended like a dove—turns to a

tornado. It doesn’t “lead” him. I know what your Bible

says, but Mark’s Gospel gives us the right Greek verb.

The verb is ekballo. It’s what Jesus does to demons. The

Spirit flings him, thrusts him, throws him, casts him,

drives him away from the affirmations of the clouds and

into the shadows of the wilderness.

Let’s be clear at the start of Lent: the wilderness is not a

punishment. It is not a detour. It is the arena. It is where

the truth of our baptism is tested to its breaking point.

It’s been forty days. The only thing Jesus has heard is

his own breath and the sound of silence. No doubt he

has felt forsaken. No doubt the memory of the water is

beginning to feel like a kind of cruel mirage. This is when

the Tempter moves in.

At first, temptation is a kind of polite suggestion. It

knows when your defenses are down. It knows what you

think you need. It arrives when you’ve begun to wonder

if that voice at the river was a beautiful hallucination and

nothing more.

The Tempter begins with a single word that unsettles

everything you thought you knew: if.

If you are the Son of God...

Remember, just a chapter earlier the heavenly voice

declared a definitive truth. You are my son. Beloved. The

Tempter subtly shifts the ground. IF you are. For most

of us, that’s all it takes. A question mark where there

was once a period. The original identity theft. Every

temptation that follows, all three, conceals the same trap.

If you are who you think you are… If you are who you

thought you heard God say you are… Prove it. Exploit

it. Trade it in for something better. That’s the whole

ballgame, folks. Losing yourself to prove yourself.

Temptation one: turn these stones to bread. Well, why

not? It’s been forty days. You’re famished. You’re

starving. Here is a rock. Why wait for this God who lets

supposedly beloved children go hungry? If you are

God’s Son, prove it.

There’s the trap. Turn the stone to bread, and you’ve

accepted the devil’s premise. Jesus refuses. He quotes

chapter and verse. Deuteronomy. One does not live

by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the

mouth of God.

He anchors himself not in what he lacks, but in what

God has spoken. The voice at the Jordan he trusts is

more real than the hunger in his gut.

The shadows deepen. The Tempter takes Jesus to the

pinnacle of the Temple for temptation number two. And

this time, the devil has a verse too—Psalm 91. If God

really loves you, God’s angels will protect you.

Listen to this. Not every voice that quotes the Bible

speaks for God. The devil knows the text. He uses it to

twist trust into leverage. If God loves you, the angels will

protect you. “Leap,” he says. “Force God’s hand.”

Same trap. If you are really the Beloved, make God

prove it.

Again, Jesus reaches for holy words. Do not put the Lord

your God to the test.

And now the last temptation. The first two were really

just warmups. This time, the Tempter takes Jesus to the

mountaintop, and he shows him all the kingdoms of the

world. Displayed before Jesus is all their wealth, all their

power, all their reach. And these are not illusions. What’s

on offer here is real authority. Real influence. All these I

will give you, if you fall down and worship me.

No more “if you are the Son of God.” Now it’s only a

transaction. You worship me; I give you authority. This

is your chance to escape the wilderness and skip the

cross. Seize the crown, straight to the throne. Trade your

identity for power.

Thucydides had written it centuries before. “The strong

do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

What the Tempter offers here is the logic of every

empire. The powerful tighten their grip, and everyone

else must learn their place.

And now Jesus could control it all. All he needs to do is

give up his soul. This is the temptation that should keep

the church up at night because it’s the one we keep

failing. The history of Christianity is littered with the

wreckage of this bargain.

The church has blessed crusades and conquistadors.

The church has sanctified slavery and segregation. The

church has wrapped the cross in the banner of every

empire that offered us a seat at the table.

It rarely starts that way. It almost never starts that way.

Temptation whispers before it shouts. Temptation is

more trickle than a flood. Gradually, comfort crowds out

conviction. The great apostasies are built of defensible

cowardice accumulated. And we are all guilty.

Perhaps we tell ourselves we can do more good from

the inside. We tell ourselves that power is a tool safe

in our God-fearing hands. Or we tell ourselves that we

can bow a little and still be faithful. We ignore what we

should know best about ourselves, especially in the

Reformed theological tradition. We are well acquainted

with the depth of our capacity for self-deception.

The devil shows up with a shortcut. It doesn’t look evil. It

looks effective. It looks like a crown without a cross. And

Jesus says no. Jesus knew that a gospel in service of

domination is no gospel at all. It is a deal with the devil.

And so, one final time, he reaches for his Bible. Worship

the Lord your God. Serve only him. It’s Deuteronomy

again. It’s the command given to a people who had

chased after other gods and lost everything. Jesus

knows his history, and he will not repeat it. But the

question remains whether we will.

What does it mean, in the face of temptation, to worship

God alone, to serve one Lord? Because it’s easy to

quote the verse. We can find it in our Bibles. The test

comes when another kingdom makes us an offer. And

that offer sounds pragmatic. It looks effective. The crown

looks good on you.

The whisper is familiar. It’s either you or them. You can’t

afford too much compassion right now. You can’t look

weak. Yes, it sounds reasonable, and that is the trap.

In his lonesome valley, Jesus walked another way. He

told us where to find him. What you do to the least of

these, you do to me. He told us who they were. The

hungry. The stranger. The sick. The prisoner.

Do you hear that list? The very ones we are being told

to ignore. When people without homes are treated as

criminals instead of God’s children… When vulnerable

families lose even the most basic support… When

neighbors are threatened because of how they look…

And the church is silent or adds its own amen to

the chorus of cruelty, we must have the courage to

collectively ask:

Which kingdom do we want to reflect?

Whose voice will we obey?

In this moment, Jesus is offered control over all the

kingdoms of the world, and he refused because the

price was simply too high. Worship shapes what we

become. And whenever the church trades its voice for

leverage, whenever we ignore the cross to gain access

to power, whenever we defend what harms the least of

these because it preserves our comfort, we are closer to

that mountaintop than we think.

This temptation is not someone else’s. It is ours. The

voice that tempts institutions also tempts individuals. It

sounds like wisdom. It’s always positioned as patience.

Just wait. Not yet. The moment isn’t right. Wait until you

have more security. Wait until you have more influence.

Wait until someone else goes first. Wait until you’ve got

less to lose.

But the better moment never comes. You see, I know

this temptation. I know the sound of the voice that says

not yet, not here, not now. I’ve made that bargain, and

maybe you have too. But here’s the thing I am learning.

There is no future version of your life where faithfulness

is free. There is no tomorrow coming where courage

costs you nothing.

And while you wait, you are becoming someone.

Every day you stay silent, you practice silence. Every

day you go along, you rehearse compliance, training

yourself in apathy.

It occurs to me as I read Matthew 4 that the Tempter

does not need our devotion if he can get our deferral—

until the voice of Jesus becomes something we admire

but no longer obey.

It occurs to me that the Tempter is patient. That he

does not rush. He does not shout. He simply waits. And

whispers. And those whispers sound like wisdom.

It is easy to forget. And when we forget, we begin to

believe small stories about ourselves. That’s why we

need this place. It’s why we need this time. It’s why we

need these people. Here, we remember.

Before you proved anything—before you earned

anything, before you got it right or wrong—there was

the water. And there was a voice. You are mine. You are

beloved. And my friends, that is the truest thing that will

ever be said about you.

Jesus took that promise to the wilderness, where the

Tempter tried time and again to pry it loose. If you are…

prove it, exploit it, trade it in for something better. All

it costs you is your worship. He would not submit. He

stayed himself. And just when all seemed lost, just when

hope had faded, the angels arrived. I take great comfort

in that because some days faithfulness will not feel like

a victory march. It will feel like holding on.

Friends, we have one Lord. One Lord. One Lord. Serving

Jesus may cost us. But we will keep what the powers of

this world do not offer because they cannot give: we will

keep our souls, our God-given identity.

We will not bow to lesser gods. Because, before the

wilderness—before the whisper, before the stones,

before the mountain and the Temple, before the

Tempter’s if—there was a voice at the edge of the water.

You are mine. Beloved. If we can remember that, we will

find angels waiting in this wasteland. Amen.