The days were dark. Not
the sun in the sky, but the whole atmosphere... dark indeed. A
22-year-old young lady – Vibia Perpetua was her name – was one of
the latest targets of a local sweep of persecution in North Africa,
in what's today Tunisia. She and a few others, including her
pregnant maidservant Felicitas, were arrested in the town of Thuburbo
Minus and taken to Carthage; for, you see, Perpetua and company had
decided they wanted to be Christians, and so they'd enrolled in the
introductory training they were supposed to receive before they could
be baptized. And so they were thrown into prison.
Perpetua was torn from
her husband and from the little baby she'd so recently brought into
the world. Her father visited her in jail, trying to talk her into
her senses. “Just give up this ridiculous little fad – can't you
see what it'll cost you, Perpetua?” But, she answered, she
couldn't call herself anything else than what she is – and what she
is, is a Christian. Over the next few days, she managed to get
baptized; Tertius and Pomponius, the deacons of the local church,
arranged for her to see her mother, her other brother, and her little
son.
The trial date grew
closer. Her father visited again, begging her to reconsider, begging
her to go through the motions and give the authorities the little
gestures they wanted, a tiny pinch of incense and a few meaningless
words. Just a token act of service to the old gods – such a little
thing. He was old, he said, and couldn't bear to lose Perpetua! He
needed her! And she was putting the whole family to embarrassment –
her mother, her brothers, her aunt, her baby. And how would this
little baby survive if his mother went through with this? But, she
said, “On that scaffold, whatever God wills shall happen. We
aren't placed in our own power, but in God's.”
The hearing came. Her
father was there, cradling the little baby in his arms, crying out,
“Have pity on this baby, Perpetua!” So, too, the judge
Hilarianus urged her with the same arguments: “Have pity on the
gray hairs of your father, have pity on the infancy of your boy,
offer sacrifice for the well-being of the emperors.” Isn't it
worth this one quick moment of worshipping the gods to spare your
family from suffering? But, she said, she couldn't do it. She
persisted in saying, “I am a Christian.” In front of her eyes,
her father was thrown to the ground and beaten with rods – all this
could be stopped, they said, if she changed her mind and sacrificed!
But still she couldn't. And so the verdict was delivered: “Guilty
as charged!” And after more attempts by her grieving, weeping dad
to get her to give in, she and her fellow Christians were led off to
the arena to die.
But it's an almost
timeless trial, taking place in every age and every place. I
recently read through a collection of the stories of how plenty of
the early martyrs died. And the thing is, their judges usually tried
to talk them into just giving in – making the gesture of pagan
worship and getting on with life. The judges could sound very
persuasive, dangling all sorts of benefits as rewards for doing it,
or heaping up the threats for not doing it. And throughout history,
some of the persecutors have been awfully clever. In
seventeenth-century Japan, authorities decided Christianity had no
place in the country, and the movie Silence
envisions a scene where a missionary, pastor to some of the native
Christian converts, has been captured and given a choice. Outside,
those who heard the gospel from him are being tortured, and will
continue to be tortured – unless he tramples on an image of Jesus
and renounces his faith. And the persecutor says to him, it'd be an
act of mercy and love to do it. The argument is put to him: Wouldn't
Jesus himself do it – reject, for a moment, his God for the sake of
others? Wouldn't he lay down, not just his life, but his
sinlessness, for his friends? Couldn't apostasy, couldn't false
worship, be an act of mercy to save others?
The
truth is, we don't have to guess what Jesus would do. He already
faced that choice. We have, over the past few Sundays, been
considering the forty days when Jesus fasted in the desert. He'd
been led there by the Spirit of God after his baptism, so that, as
God's child in the desert, he could face temptation and make a
choice. And the devil's got one last trick up his sleeve. We've
heard the first offer: feed your hunger how you want. We've heard
the second offer: massage your ego how you want. But now there's a
third offer the devil will make.
“Again, the devil
took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world and their glory”
(Matthew 4:8). What a gorgeous vision. The riches of soaring Roman
temples, and legions marching in ranks. The exotic splendors of the
Parthian Empire in Persia, the divided and embattled Han Dynasty in
China under Emperor Guangwu, the miscellaneous tribes of so-called
barbarians in northern Europe, the far-flung settlements of native
peoples across the sea where we live now – all of it, the devil
showed to Jesus as an enticement, as if to say, “Do you want it?
I'll step out of the way, you can have it all, you can be king of the
world... I just need one little thing from you first.”
The
devil said to Jesus, “All these I will give you, if...
you will fall down and worship me”
(Matthew 4:9). “Just submit one time – you don't even have to
mean it – but take a three-second break from serving that God you
call a Father, bow to the real boss, and we can go our separate ways,
conflict-free.”
That's
what the devil is selling here, a trade: the riches and beauty and
allegiance of all the kingdoms of the whole entire world for one
quick moment of worship. The devil will give up his involvement, his
meddling rule, his clutches, to Jesus. The devil offers his
conditional surrender. Jesus can rule all the kingdoms, he can guide
it, he can reshape it. He can write every law, he can decide every
court case. He can have “dominion
from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth”
(Psalm 72:8) – all his, for the low, low price of one measly bow
with a few muttered words of praise and gratitude to the benevolent
tempter who sponsored this utopia. The proverbial pinch of incense –
and, the devil insinuates, the world hangs in the balance.
And think of all the possibilities! Can you hear the devil plead his
case? If you're silent for a moment, can you catch a snippet of the
sermon pouring off the lips of this angel of light?
Don't you see, Jesus? Don't you get it? I'll give it up, I'll give
it all up! You can take every crown; your name can be shouted in
every temple; you can roam the streets bedecked in jewels and gold;
you can trade your rugged linens for the finest silks. And you can
do it however you please. Do you want to rule with an iron fist? Be
my guest! Or do you want to be a kindly shepherd, making everyone
happy and – oh, what's that word... – 'virtuous'? Go for it,
Jesus! Just think of all the good you could do!
Worship me this once, Jesus, and you can be free from pain and
poverty.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and thorns never have to pierce your
brow.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and Roman soldiers will adore your face,
not spit in it.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and your buddy Simon, the one you'll
find back in Galilee and nickname Peter – he'll never be led off to
hang on an upside-down cross.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and your little pet John will never be
dipped in boiling oil.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and your future devotee Perpetua can
live to a ripe old age. She'll watch her baby grow. She'll see
grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and her family will be happy,
never knowing the torments and heartache that will otherwise be.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and all those tortured martyrs to come –
they can live unashamedly, freely, at the tables of the great all the
days of their lives.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and there need never be any invading
Huns, marauding Mongols, pillaging Vikings.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and all the atrocities of history to
come can be stopped in their tracks.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and no one need ever be kidnapped,
whipped, treated like property, merely for the color of their skin.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and Pearl Harbor will only be known as a
lovely beach.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and the precious citizens of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki need never learn the deadly secrets at the heart of the
atom.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and your kinsmen will never scream their
dying words in a gas chamber.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and the Tutsis and Hutus will never
brutalize each other in Burundi and Rwanda.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and those towers in New York can stand
tall and proud forever; for never need there be an al-Qaeda, nor a
Taliban, a Boko Haram, an ISIS.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and no one will ever have a reason to
invent the word 'genocide.'
Worship me this once, Jesus, and you can stop every pogrom, every
lynching, that would ever be.
Think of it, Jesus. No Soviet gulags. No Cambodian killing fields.
No dissidents imprisoned in Cuba. No Agent Orange. No sarin gas.
No children starving in the streets. No battered wives. No veterans
with PTSD. No such thing as human trafficking.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and you can be crowned with every crown.
All executive power in every government, at your fingertips.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and the legislatures are yours. Write
the laws how you like 'em. Ban what you want banned, permit what you
want permitted.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and every court of law will be in your
hands. Every decision – yours, and yours alone. No injustice will
ever have the final word. No liberty will ever go trampled.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and every media outlet will be in your
hands. You can pump your little Sermon on the Mount over the
airwaves into every home for a thousand years, Son of Man.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and every laboratory ever to be built
will be at your disposal. Train those scientists yourself, and
they'll unravel the secrets of DNA before the century's up, and
Perpetua will scarcely have been born before a cure for every cancer
is on the horizon.
Worship
me this once, Jesus, and I'll forever stand aside while you “crush
the oppressor”
(Psalm 72:4).
As much as I love the chaos and the carnage, I'll trade all the
kingdoms of the earth, with all their glory, if you'll give me this
one measly moment of your time – one act of submission to me, one
word to wipe away all the blood and sweat and tears of history yet to
unfold, all the heartbreak and sorrow of generations yet unborn.
Worship me this once, Jesus, and I'll never entice them to mistrust
you. I'll never trick them, never hurt them, never hinder them.
Teach them your ways, govern them with whatever you call justice –
all I ask is this one little thing.
Worship me just this once, Jesus, and you can give them paradise.
You call yourself kind; you call yourself merciful.
Isn't it most merciful to say yes to all that, at the cost of one
moment, one word, one bow?
Oh yes, all this and more I will give you, if only, just this once,
you'll fall down and worship me.
Hearing that, who among
us doesn't feel the strength of the temptation? Who among us doesn't
see the appeal? Who among us doesn't have days where we might wish
he'd said yes, where we know we'd have said yes had the offer been
ours to take? But there's the question again:
Is that sort of trade worth it, or isn't it?
For
his part, Jesus turns back to the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, the
most important lesson of all. It's a piece of scripture that answers
the question of where real life comes from, where we get real joy and
real abundance. Jesus, like Joseph and Mary and all their neighbors,
would have grown up reciting these words daily: “Hear, O
Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD
is one! You shall love the LORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
might” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
These are the words they're meant to carry in their hearts, teach to
their children, write on their doors and gates, bind to their hands
and foreheads as a sign and a seal – the mark of their God
(Deuteronomy 6:6-9). These are the words they mustn't forget when
they get the blessings they haven't deserved – when they live in
“great and good cities that you didn't build, and houses
full of good things that you didn't fill, and wells you didn't dig,
and vineyards and olive trees you didn't plant” – then
they can't forget that they once were slaves, but the LORD
saved them from Egypt (Deuteronomy 6:10-11).
In
that day, when they enjoy the beauty and bounty of grace, they need
to remember that they have only one God, whose glory outweighs the
heavens and the earth. Other so-called 'gods' will try to entice
them with all sorts of offered blessings. But they aren't to follow
those gods. They aren't to serve or worship those gods. Those gods
make pretty-sounding promises, but they poison everything they touch,
and their lips are full of lies and invite the wrath of the only God
who matters (Deuteronomy 6:14-15). No, no, no: none of the glories,
none of the riches, none of the mercies those poison-gods preach
compare to the richness and mercy of worshipping the one and only
LORD
God – “It is the LORD
your God you shall fear; him you shall serve, and by his name you
shall swear” (Deuteronomy
6:13).
That's
the key message, right there. He says to worship him, and him alone.
It's phrased as an absolute, and it just is
an absolute. He says to never, ever take what's his, like rightful
worship, and render it to someone else – that's very much a 'thou
shalt not.' He says to never, ever withhold our worship from him –
it's very much a 'thou shalt,' with no ifs, ands, or buts. Because
as much as the poison-gods may dress up their proffered benefits as
pleasant and helpful, they're rotten on the inside, and they lead
only to death. But the blessings of the LORD
are life, and life abundantly, even if they rest on the other side of
an old rugged cross.
So
Jesus remembers this passage, and he sees that, no matter how
persuasive the devil's argument, and no matter how enticing the
devil's offer, “it
is written: You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only
shall you serve”
(Matthew 4:10). It can never be an act of love to repudiate the God
who is
Love (1 John 4:1). It can never be merciful to abandon the God who
whom “belongs
mercy and forgiveness”
(Daniel 9:9) – the God who lets human history take the course it
does with the aim that he might “have
mercy on all”
(Romans 11:32).
The world the devil depicts is an appealing world, that's true. The
fabric of its counterfactual history is missing an immense deal of
pain, heartache, sorrow, and ugliness. But it's also missing the
cross. And because it's missing the cross, it's missing redemption.
It's missing salvation. It's missing the beauty that is brighter
than death's shadow is dark. It's a world where our evil is managed,
not abolished; where, in the end of a delightful and utopian life, we
die in our sins and reap the everlasting fruits thereof. That's the
world the devil offers.
And
so, just as Perpetua and the rest of the martyrs and confessors
refused the trades offered by their earthly judges, Jesus refuses the
immensely bold trade offered by the devil. Because, in the end, what
the devil calls 'mercy' isn't so merciful. What the devil talks up
as a great profit turns out to be, in the end, a net loss. “What
does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”
(Matthew 16:26). That, in the final analysis, is the trade the devil
offered – to no avail. How much less the more pitiful offerings
the devil makes us for the same price?
In
the end, Jesus holds firm to the faith that his Father will give him
something better than the devil offers. The first temptation offered
bread from stones, but after refusing it, Jesus still got fed. The
second temptation held forth the service of angels and public
recognition as the Messiah, all by recklessly hurling himself from
the roof of the temple to lay claim to God's action. Jesus refused
the means, but in the end, he had the ministrations of angels, he's
known by billions to be the Messiah, and he's gaining the Psalm 91
victory. And in the end, Jesus receives authority over all the
kingdoms of the earth, on the other side of the cross and the tomb:
“All authority
in heaven and on earth has been given to me”
(Matthew 28:18).
And
slowly, step by step, his active rule goes into effect, as he bears
and redeems all the sufferings of history whereby the devil may well
have sought to taunt him. One day, his rule will be made complete,
and there will be a world with both
redemption and
paradise – where, once purified from our sinful pride, we humbly
receive from the tree of life, “and
eat, and live forever”
(Genesis 3:22). And Jesus' Father “will
wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more,
neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for
the former things [will have] passed away”
(Revelation 21:4).
Everything
the devil tried to induce Jesus to barter away his sinless soul for,
he's trusting the Father to give him. He's trusting the Father to
answer the age-old prayer of the psalmist: “Give
the King your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the Royal
Son! … May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to
the ends of the earth! May desert tribes bow down before him … May
the kings of Tarshish and the coastlands render him tribute; may the
kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts! May all kings bow down before
him, all nations serve him!”
(Psalm 72:1, 8-11).
The
devil offers to answer that prayer in a cheap way, a quick fix, a
Band-Aid on the real problem. But Jesus is a faithful child of God.
And a faithful child of God doesn't go for the quick fix. A faithful
child of God trusts the Father to ultimately provide a real solution,
a deep healing – because Jesus' Father is “the
LORD,
the God of Israel, who alone
does wondrous things”
(Psalm 72:18) – none of the devil's poisoned counterfeits come
close.
But have we learned the lesson Jesus is teaching us? Because the
devil so often comes to us, and though he doesn't promise all the
kingdoms of the earth with all their glory, still, for so much less,
he tempts us to barter away the health of our souls. See, the devil
is desperate to interfere with Christ's claims on us, and so he
scales down this same temptation and offers it to us:
Go ahead, burn the midnight oil and sleep in. Go ahead, sign up to
work Sunday mornings. Skip the fellowship that God commanded you,
stay away from his house, withdraw from where your Christ is
worshipped, Christian, and I'll keep your bank account afloat, I'll
keep your house tidy, just so long as you skip church.
Go ahead, ignore the poor. Go ahead, ignore the hurting. Go ahead,
reject the one who speaks different and talks different and looks
different and thinks different. Behind that face, don't see the eyes
of Christ. Keep away from them, and I'll keep your bodies safe from
those threatening strangers.
Go ahead, tone down your devotion. Let that fervor cool. Don't
speak up, don't speak out, don't become known as a dissident. Be the
'cool' Christian, the not-so-pushy Christian, the not-so-rigid
Christian, the go-along-to-get-along Christian, and I'll trade you
respectability.
Go ahead, ignore what scripture says. Live how you want, let others
live how they want. More loving that way, isn't it? Let your heart
be your guide, sand down the offense of the word you've been given,
and I'll make you irresistible.
In all these things, the devil offers us plenty of trinkets and
tokens if we'll just withhold our worship from our Father, one way or
another. We seldom think that's what we're doing, but these verses
this morning lay bare the crafty stratagem whereby the devil's snare
is laid (cf. 2 Timothy 2:26).
So
what do we want? Do we want the devil's quick fix, or the Father's
deep solution? Which will we choose when the choice is offered us,
under whatever trickery the devil sees fit to veil it? May we follow
the example of Christ our Lord, and learn how better to say with him,
“Be gone,
Satan”
(Matthew 4:10). Amen.