Forty Days in the Wilderness
Deuteronomy 8:1-10; Luke 4:1-13
What would your response be if I told you that for the next 40 days
We would be spending that time in the wilderness.
Would you be excited about the possibility or terrified?
I would guess terrified.
And yet that’s what Lent is intended to be
40days in the wilderness with Christ just as the Israelites
Spent 40 years in the wilderness with God.
For Jesus the forty days were not just figurative.
In my visit to the Holy Land, I got a chance to see the wilderness
where Jesus was tempted
And it really is hostile dessert- not a nice retreat.
Humorously there is a restaurant there today
Called the Wilderness Temptation Restaurant
Maybe the place the angels took Jesus
To nurture him back afterwards
But the wilderness for Jesus was a time of real testing.
Just as the wilderness for the Israelites was a time of testing.
The Israelites were tested with temptation to worship idols- and they failed.
Jesus was tempted to worship Satan and he responded
“You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.”
The Israelites were tempted to take more manna than was allotted them
And they failed. Jesus was tempted with bread and responded
“You shall not live by bread alone but by every word that
Proceeds from the mouth of God.”
The Israelites demanded water from God and Moses struck the rock and
Water did appear- but in the process they lost the right to enter
The Promised Land because they had tested God
Jesus was tempted to throw himself down from the Temple
And he responded “You shall not test the Lord your God.”
So in every case the Israelites failed their temptations
And yet Jesus came through with flying colors.
So it doesn’t seem like a good idea for us mere humans
To purposely go into the wilderness.
Perhaps that’s why Jesus says in his prayer
“Lead us not into temptation”
Since we are more like the Israelite people than Jesus
We succumb to temptation more
It seems than we resist.
And yet this Lenten time in the wilderness in not a time to put
Ourselves into more temptation but rather to acknowledge
The temptations we face everyday
And the wilderness that is part of our regular life.
This Lent we recognize that the wilderness is all around us
And that there are temptations that are part of that
Everyday wilderness.
When I was visiting my son and his family in Germany
They have Armed Forces TV which is like US TV
Except instead of the commercials they have
A stream of public service announcements
That try to help soldiers cope with
The temptations of life.
Depression, sexual harassment, family violence,
Sexting on internet, corruptions and greed.
It was actually depressing to watch commercials.
But we have temptations on our television in America as well
It’s just disguised better.
Television's purpose seems to be tempting us to eat more, spend more, covet everything our neighbor has, and wish that we were different than we are.
-The temptation of the internet is with us daily and parental controls
May be even more helpful for the adults than the kids;
-The economic wilderness has become more prominent
As credit card companies and banks try to entice us
To spend more money than we have;
-The political wilderness in which debate and destroy
And win at all cost seems scarier and more hopeless
And more contentious than just decades ago.
-And there is even the religious wilderness which constantly tempts
Us to a corporate mode of consumerism where bigger is better.
So the truth is that we are in the wilderness, whether we like it or not.
We are tempted whether we acknowledge those temptations
As acts of Satan or just a way of life.
And the good news in this Lenten Season is that God will not give up
On us any more than God gave up on the Israelites.
Just as God tabernacled with the Israelites in their wilderness
Just as Jesus wonders into the very real wildernesses that we endure-
We know that the Triune God is with us in our wilderness journey.
And unlike Jesus, we are not forced to endure our wilderness time alone.
We have our church family, our pastors, to surround and support us
When we dare to acknowledge the wildernesses we encounter.
We have a community of faith that believes God is with us
by the power of the Holy Spirit not just two thousand years ago
but in the very wildernesses we wander today.
And God will not give up on us.
God will not abandon us.
God is with us- Emmanuel.
I invite you to journey with me and your church family during Lent
in a series of Lenten devotions each day in the next 40 days
on this blog site named appropriately- Adventures-in-Faith
In this time together we will reflect together on where God is in the midst of our wilderness.
I will be drawing on my own experiences in the past several months to start the conversation
but I want you to feel free to take off from my stories and share you own stories.
In this way our devotional journey will truly be a shared communal journey.
I want you to know that you are not alone in your journey.
God is with you, God has given you a faith family to walk with you
And in Jesus Christ, God has set apart this time to draw alongside you
And take hold of your hand as you walk through the wilderness of life.
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