Temptation One: The Denial of Denial (Matthew 4:1-4)

The first few days hadn't been so bad. But after that, things had been... a challenge. He looked around. There was nothing. Nothing but rock and dirt and sand, and the occasional tuft of dry grass. He used to hear the wind as it rippled and roared over the plains, down the ridges, through the dry river-beds. But that was before. All he could hear now was the roaring inside, loud as thunder. He was nauseous, he was dizzy, every breath was a struggle. He had never before felt this weak; every movement was agonizing. His tongue clung to the roof of his mouth, and to speak out loud seemed pointless anyway. Each day dragged on endlessly now, feeling like the year it represented. He watched the course of the baking sun – it was blurry, and there looked like two of them – as the sun traversed the blue dome arching overhead. And in his heart, he squeaked out a thanks. It was harder and harder to keep focus. Every cell in his body felt like it was dying. Starvation. Dehydration. He was on the verge. He was weakened to the brink of his demise, stretched to the utmost limits of human toleration. It felt like nothing mattered but the thunder from his emaciated muscles, from the ruptured capillaries in his arms and legs, from his dry and cracking skin, from his vacant stomach. He looked around and scarcely knew where he was. He only had a distant thought that his people, long, long ago, had sat and grumbled while looking at the same round stones over a thousand years before. And an even more distant thought that he remembered it.

He wrestled – tried to recite the stories to himself, give himself something to focus on, a goal, an anchor for life. The words floated through his mind as he mentally grabbed their syllables, one by one. So hard to focus. But it was the whole reason he was out there. He knew he hadn't come there on his own initiative. Had been sent into the wasteland, led on by the flight of the dove, pulled by a familiar presence, walking in the footsteps of a tale he so well knew. He'd bade his cousin goodbye, the crowds goodbye, at the river bank. He knew the voice he'd heard. He recalled what it had said. What it had called him. “Beloved Son” (Matthew 3:17). And he'd known what that meant, and what he had to do. He had a purpose for living. He had to shoulder the burden of a whole nation, a whole species, a whole universe. Retrace their steps, rewrite the story. So out here he was. Starving in the desert, arguing with his body about whether it would be his grave. Oh, he remembered what he'd heard, recalled the voice from up above. But that had been over a month ago. And a hungry body is so, so forgetful.

As he fought his body's inclination to pass out and give up, the world seemed to swirl around him. The stones, hot under the sun, looked so appetizing – like nice, fresh-baked loaves of bread, the kind he used to excitedly wait for his mother to bake in her village hearth. Above them, the air swirled and danced. Hallucinations atop mirages atop double-vision. He shut his eyes, fiercely determined to focus his last ounce of concentration on the words, visualizing the scroll in his hands, reading with the one back recess of his brain that was a refuge from the crashing thunder inside. Until he smelled an approaching presence.

A bright figure, warm and inviting, leaned toward him with a gaze of compassion. A messenger of relief? “You poor man! Why are you doing this to yourself? You'll starve to death out here unless you do something! If you're really the Son of God, just say the word, and these stones will become loaves of bread. Isn't that what you really want now? Bread? Nutrition? Why are you denying yourself what you want and need? What else is being a child of God good for, if not having what you crave, when you crave it? Surely being a child of God means getting your way here and now. What's all this talk of patience and discipline? If you're who you say you are, you're entitled to live, to be free, to be comfortable, to put your own desires first. So go ahead. With a bare whisper, you can fix all this. If you're really the Son of God, just do it. Satisfy your urges. Feed yourself.”

That's what the devil whispered to tempt Jesus, right when Jesus was physically at his most vulnerable. And we have to admit – it's a strong temptation. Not just because it hit him with what his body cried out for most, but because the devil's picture is an awfully enticing one. Pretty often, we fall for the devil's vision, his version of what it should mean to really call ourselves God's children. Here in America, we're enthusiastic for the idolatry of efficiency. We want instant gratification all the time. We don't want to wait. We don't want to have patience. We don't want to be disciplined. Surely we're above those things. We just want to consume. We are always looking for faster, easier ways to get what we want. We pop little trays in the microwave to get food quick – and we sure keep plenty of food around. We sit and flip through hundreds of entertainment options. We get bored easily, when we aren't being catered to. We're commercialized, from the oldest to the youngest. It was already true in the 1950s when Billy Graham accused America of being “materialistic, worldly, secular, greedy, and covetous,” and it's true in 2019 all the same.

See, when we're in church, what's the question we always ask ourselves? “What am I getting out of this?” – we evaluate worship like a product, and if it doesn't sufficiently cater to our tastes, we behave like good little consumers and take our business elsewhere. If it doesn't come with the right accessories, trade it in. And so even worship becomes a consumer good: Does it give us what we crave, when we crave it? Does it amuse and satisfy us? We have preferences, and we want to pick them out of a menu. We're drawn to any message that tells us we can have it our way. We long to have things cheap and have things easy. We're addicted to instant gratification. We're allergic to suffering – we've come to think of it as abnormal. We don't want to hear that we have to suffer. We don't want to think about the end of all flesh. What are we always told in the world? “Life is long, you've got plenty of time to make a change. But life is short, so make the most of each moment, enjoy yourself. What matters is being happy and self-fulfilled and self-satisfied.” That's the way we're prone to think.

And if we're honest, the way we live our lives from day to day, the thing we usually hold of first importance is bread – the basic stuff of material life, the thing we need to consume to see another day. And if life is all about bread, whatever can satisfy your cravings in the moment, whatever you expect will make you feel good, then there's only one thing to do: get it for yourself wherever and however you can. And what this message is saying to us is, 'Being God's child means you're special, you're entitled to just satisfy yourself and not deny yourself. You're God's child,' the reasoning goes, 'so you're worth it. Just reach out and take it.'

This apparent angel of light comes to Jesus in the desert, and that's the 'gospel' he comes bearing: the gospel of satisfaction guaranteed. The gospel of bread-on-demand. The gospel of the day-to-day. The gospel of having it your way. The gospel of health and wealth, respectability and prosperity. The great and glorious news of the TV dinner. The gospel of the American Dream. That's what it means to be a child of God. Or so the devil says. And, of course, the devil is trying to tempt Jesus – and us – to adopt a rather wrong-headed view of things.

But notice how Jesus reacts to temptation. He could snap his fingers and call down fire from heaven to scorch the devil to ash. But it isn't time yet. He could just tell the devil, “Get lost! As God, I'm necessarily sinless, so you're wasting your time.” That's true – Jesus, as God, could not have sinned. He couldn't have surrendered to any sinful temptation the devil offered him – just like a skilled tightrope walker over a sturdy net can't hit the ground. But what stops him from hitting the ground isn't the net; it's that he can walk across the tightrope without falling. What stops Jesus from sinning here isn't his divine nature; it's his obedience to God as a man “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus is determined to face temptation by making use only of what's available to each and every one of us – and so the resource he brings to bear is nothing less than scripture, those words he memorized and on which he meditated.

Remember: When Jesus was led by the Spirit out into the desert for those forty days, Jesus was following in the footsteps of Israel. Israel was called the son of God, but when tested in the desert for forty years, flunked miserably and sinned. And at the close of that wilderness period, Moses summed up the lessons they'd learned in the Book of Deuteronomy. Jesus has gone out to the desert for forty days to do what Israel didn't. Like Israel, he's the Son of God, but unlike Israel, he's not going to flunk this test. He's going to resist temptation. And he aims to do it with the very arsenal of scripture handed to Israel in the desert.

Because when Jesus reads the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, he finds in there a whole different notion of what it means to be the Son of God. The devil has one theology of sonship, but God through Moses spoke a different one altogether. Deuteronomy presents Israel's time in the wilderness as a test for Israel as the child of God: “You shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not” (Deuteronomy 8:2). That's the question here: what's in Israel's heart? What kind of son will he turn out to be? He's heard God's commandments, but will he be obedient? Will he pass the test?

What Deuteronomy reveals is that the journey was not made to be easy. Israel was led to bitter places – “evil places” – by the Spirit. And that was the Spirit's intentional choice, because God had thereby been offering his son Israel a taste of parental discipline: “Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you” (Deuteronomy 8:5). Not punishment; discipline. Israel was being allowed to go through hardship for the sake of character growth. That's what a father offers a son: occasional deprivation, under loving guidance, for the sake of growth and preparation for life – carefully administered by wisdom. And that's what God was giving Israel here. Moses adds that the intent was to “humble you and test you, to do you good in the end” (Deuteronomy 8:16). It may not have been what they'd have chosen for themselves, but it was meant for their benefit, to build their character and make Israel a more mature son of God.

After this time of testing, this humble fast where they're forced to rely on God's fatherly provision in God's wise time, this season where Israel was forced to walk by faith and not by sight, the plan is that they'll obey the commandments and will “live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers” (Deuteronomy 8:1). And when they do, their fasting will turn to feasting. “For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out of the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing … and you shall eat and be full, and you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land he has given you” (Deuteronomy 8:7-10).

But first they just have to learn the lesson from their test. And there in this passage is the lesson, the thing God wanted them to learn, wanted to make them know. It's the point of the whole journey. And here it is: “He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3).

In other words, God gave them the gift of hunger, put them in a position to depend on him entirely for food, and then gave them a food they found mystifying, all so that they would learn one thing: that bread is not enough for real life, and it isn't the most important thing. What really gives life isn't bread; what really gives life to human beings is God's instruction, which alone is primary and alone is sufficient. Because God's word is what sent the manna to sustain them, and God's word showed them the way to go, and God's word was food for their souls.

When God first sent them manna, he sent it with instructions. And God explicitly says that even the manna was a test: “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not” (Exodus 16:4). They weren't supposed to try to stockpile it, except for the day before the sabbath, when it wouldn't come. On the first day, second day, third, fourth, fifth days of the week, they were supposed to gather only what they could eat that day. “But they did not listen to Moses. Some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and stank, and Moses was angry with them” (Exodus 16:20). Then on the sixth day, they were supposed to gather a double portion and not look for it on the sabbath – and yet “on the seventh day, some of the people went out to gather, but they found none” (Exodus 16:27).

Israel tried to stockpile it. They tried to steal it. They wanted to get it any way but God's way. They wanted to get ahead, to turn it into a manna-gathering competition. They wanted to hoard, wanted to manipulate, wanted to master. They put their satisfaction and gratification first. They wanted to make their lives easier. They wanted to be more efficient consumers. They didn't want to organize the rhythms of their lives according to the word God spoke. They wanted to live by bread alone. They gave in to the devil's version of sonship.

But “man” – the word in Hebrew is actually 'the Adam' – “does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deuteronomy 8:3). Adam needs more than bread. Adam needs more than shiny fruit, no matter how “good for food” or “delight[ful] to the eyes” or “desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3:6). Adam is more than a machine of meat. Adam is more than a bundle of desires. Adam needs a relationship with God. Adam needs to cultivate his soul. Adam needs to trust God's wisdom, follow in God's ways. Adam needs to keep his hand back and wait for God to send the right food at the right time. Adam only lives because the word of God brings him to life, the word of God sends him food in season, the word of God orders his steps. The word of God, and not food on the plate, is what it's all about. And that goes for any Adam, any human – for Israel, for Jesus, for you and me.

What's most important is God's words, the decrees and instruction and counsel that comes from God's mouth. God's word shows us the way to go and sustains us as we go that way: “So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him” (Deuteronomy 8:6). God's words give us a life that hunger can't steal, even at its strongest. And so God's word is more important than bread. Bread alone does not add up to a life, no matter how much our society insists it does. But God's words open the gates of life in the land of good and plenty. You can't live by bread alone; you need God's word.

And so when Moses went up the mountain to seek God's word, he turned away from bread so that he could focus on the more important thing. Hear what Moses says: “When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. And the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the LORD had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of fire on the day of the assembly” (Deuteronomy 9:10-11). Moses disciplined himself. He went up and fasted. Moses patiently accepted God's discipline, because God's word took priority. Moses knew he didn't live by bread alone; he needed every word that came from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8:3).

So it's this passage that Jesus uses to deflect the devil's temptation, the temptation to deny denial. Jesus doesn't bicker endlessly with the devil, he doesn't try to reach a compromise position, he doesn't take the devil's vision for a test drive. Jesus just retorts back to him, “It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God'” (Matthew 4:4). Jesus has heard the devil's version of what it means to be God's child, but Jesus uses Deuteronomy to show that the truth is much different. The devil says that being a child of God means getting what you want, when you want it. But Jesus sees that being a child of God means being grateful for God's fatherly provision in God's wise time.

The devil says that being a child of God means reaching out and taking whatever bread you can get, because you're entitled to it. But Jesus sees that being a child of God means humbly accepting a life that has to be lived by faith, not by sight; it doesn't mean reaching out and grabbing for more, but holding up open and empty hands for the Father to fill when the Father chooses.

The devil says that being a child of God means prosperity and instant gratification, a life free from discomfort or hardship. But Jesus sees that being a child of God means refusing to take the shortcut, it means turning away from the easy road when God's word doesn't lead down it. It means patiently letting God shape and mold our character, even when it feels like we're starving. It means not grabbing at forbidden fruit or an ill-gotten loaf.

The devil says that being a child of God means living by bread, focusing on whatever it is that satisfies you in the moment, whatever you can consume and control. But Jesus sees that being a child of God means obeying your Father's wise instructions and being sustained by the faith it evokes. Jesus sees that real life is about so much more than bread, and that our sustenance comes on God's demand, not on ours. And so, even when Jesus was at his hungriest, even when Jesus was most tempted to break his fast, Jesus chose to defer to his Father, who would say the word on when and how Jesus would have his hunger satisfied, his bodily needs addressed.

And that's exactly what happened. In the end, Israel left the desert and their sparse manna diet behind, moving into a promised land where they could “eat and be full” (Deuteronomy 8:10), to “eat bread without scarcity” (Deuteronomy 8:9). And in the end, when the devil departed and Jesus' forty days and forty nights were fully concluded, and when Jesus had passed the test that Israel failed, it was God who sent angels to minister to him – and that included satisfying his hunger and restoring his body to health (Matthew 4:11). The devil told Jesus not to deny his cravings, but Jesus overrode them with a higher craving, and as a result, his other cravings were all answered in God's time. Jesus just chose to trust his Father to provide in the time, place, and way of God's choosing. Jesus chose to live by God's word, and not to try to wring life out of bread alone.

So whose vision do we agree with? Because make no mistake: if you're saved, if you're a believer, then you are a son or a daughter of God, for “to all who did receive [Jesus], who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). You gathered here this morning, if you really have received him and really do believe now in his name, are God's children – right here, right now, you are sons and daughters of God. But what does that mean to you? How do you live out being a child of God? Do you live for instant gratification? Do you live to consume? Do you quest after prosperity? Do you insist on the easy road? Do you reach for bread? Then you live out the devil's vision for being a child of God.

Or will you instead follow Jesus? He says to you, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). If that's what you're aiming to do, then learn to accept God's discipline. Learn to trust your Father God to provide for you, in his time and in his way. Listen to his every word; study and meditate on his word, enough so you'll have those words ready to sustain you when the tempter comes your way. Listen to your Father's word, obey his commandments, to walk by faith in his guidance.

Even when it feels like starving, even when it's sweltering, even when all things are dry and the thunder inside is crashing and booming and the other voices whisper, trust and listen to your Father, who will feed and sustain you on things you never could have expected. It may not be what you crave in the moment, it may not meet your “felt needs,” it may not amuse or entertain you, it may even make your body feel empty, but it will fill and grow and stretch your soul in due time. Then, and only then, will we be ready to appreciate God's feast after the fast. That's the life of a child of God. Hallelujah! Amen.

Where the Spirit Leads: Sermon for Matthew 3:13--4:2

It was so hot in the day. It was so cold in the night. Nothing but sand for miles. No food. Precious little water. Scorpions and snakes hiding around every corner. Enemies lurking in their path. Is it any wonder Israel grumbled and complained as they made their way through the wilderness, over three thousand years ago? They started complaining, truth be told, before they'd even fully escaped Egypt. As they stood against the sea and saw the Egyptian army dashing in their direction, they were terrified. They cried out to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you've taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Exodus 14:11). But when they stood on the other side, “the people feared the LORD, and they had faith in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (Exodus 14:31). Through the waters and into the desert, they found their faith.

That lasted a few days, at least. “They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they couldn't drink the water of Marah, because it was bitter; that's why they called it Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, 'What shall we drink?'” (Exodus 15:22-24). Leaving the Bitter Place once the water was made sweet for them, they camped at an oasis called Elim, but then they left there, too, and came to a new wilderness place (Exodus 16:1). And soon they were hungry, saying to Moses, “If only we'd died by the hand of the LORD in Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Exodus 16:3). So God began feeding them with manna from heaven.

By the time they came to Rephidim, “there was no water for the people to drink, so the people quarreled with Moses … The people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, 'Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and out children and our livestock with thirst?'” (Exodus 17:1-3). And so that place was named Testing and Quarreling (Exodus 17:7). Soon after they had water, they had to fight the armies of Amalek (Exodus 17:8-13). All this before they ever made it to Sinai and pledged God their full trust and obedience (Exodus 23:7).

But just as they broke the Law at Sinai (Exodus 32), they didn't do much better after they left it. They continued to suffer; they continued to have hard times. “And the people complained in the hearing of the LORD about their misfortunes” (Numbers 11:1). They got hungry and nostalgic for slavery (Numbers 11:4), saying things like, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost us nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there's nothing at all but manna to look at” (Numbers 11:5-6). Soon after they got some meat from the windfall of quail, they tangled with disease (Numbers 11:33).

As they drew near to their destination, they were filled with fear-mongering and backsliding (Numbers 13:32-33), and the people again cried out, “If only we'd died in the land of Egypt! If only we'd died in this wilderness! … Wouldn't it be better for us to go back to Egypt? … Let's choose a leader and go back to Egypt” (Numbers 14:2-4). They didn't go back, but they got their death-wish (Numbers 14:21-23).

And soon some were disobedient and picked a fight with locals which they badly lost (Numbers 14:44-45). They kept disobeying (Numbers 15:32), and finally there was a great rebellion by hundreds of leaders (Numbers 16:1-2), people who said that Moses had “brought [them] up out of a land of milk and honey to kill us in the wilderness” (Numbers 16:13). More died in the plague that followed (Numbers 16:49).

In time, they came to a place without water, and so the people “assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron” (Numbers 20:2), and they said, “If only we'd perished when our brothers perished against the LORD! Why have you brought the assembly of the LORD into this wilderness, that we should die here, both we and our cattle? And why have you made us come up out of Egypt to bring us to this evil place? It's no place for grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, and there's no water to drink” (Numbers 20:3-5). So that place, too, got named Quarreling (Numbers 20:13).

And their trials went on. Opposition from Edomites, Amorites, Moabites, Midianites. It wasn't long before the people got impatient again (Numbers 21:4), and they said, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there's no food and no water, and we hate this worthless food” (Numbers 21:5). And then the snakes came, full of venom (Numbers 21:6). And after being tempted by the delights of the Midianite women and surrendering to them (Numbers 25:1-2), there was a greater plague than either of the first two (Numbers 25:9).

And so they lived forty years in the wilderness – a hot place with no food, no water, plenty of opposition, disease, and danger. It was, they said, “an evil place.” But it wasn't Moses who led them there. The whole way, from before they'd even left Egypt, it was the presence of God going before them: “The LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by a pillar of fire by night to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night” (Exodus 13:21). Wherever they went, “the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys” (Exodus 40:38). “And whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, after that the people of Israel set out, and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the people of Israel camped” (Numbers 9:17). In other words, both into and through the wilderness, it wasn't Moses leading them or dictating their path; it was God. They were being led into and through the desert by the Spirit.

That was the life of Israel in the wilderness. It's where, as Paul said, Israel was “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink” (1 Corinthians 10:2-3). Reflecting on that trip years later, God remarked, “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11:1). Because that's where God takes his children: to the wilderness. That's where the child of God faces the test, in the desert of temptation. In their case, “with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness,” Paul writes (1 Corinthians 10:5).

And centuries later, that's where their story intersects with where we've been. It seems like forever that we've been exploring the ministry of John the Baptist, the desert preacher. But it was all to get us here. Because what Israel did wrong, Jesus came to do right. Israel had been baptized in the sea as God's son, and so Jesus came to be baptized in the river as God's Son (Matthew 3:13). So when Jesus emerged from the water, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased'” (Matthew 3:16-17).

Israel was called the son of God, and so God led them through baptism and into the wilderness. And Jesus was called the Son of God, so where else would he go next? You can guess the next line yourself: “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1). The goal here is pretty obvious, isn't it? I mean, that's what Jesus meant when he said it was “necessary to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). Jesus passed from baptism to the wilderness, the desert of temptation, so that he could be what Israel had failed to be there: a faithful Son of God in the face of temptation. Israel had tried in the days of Moses, but fell to temptation and tumbled to destruction. Even Moses never set foot in the Promised Land. But Jesus would be pushed to all human limits and yet live according to who he was: God's Child.

That was his mission in that moment. But Jesus didn't just make it up. He didn't just get up one day and decide he was going out to the wilderness, to a harsh and lonely place. When he went into the wilderness, he was “led up by the Spirit,” the Gospel says (Matthew 4:1), just like Israel had been led by the Spirit via the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

That might strike you as odd. If you're like most people, it should. Isn't following the Spirit supposed to lead you to a better life? Isn't the Spirit supposed to take you to nice places, where you can be happy and tell everyone you're fine and it's all good? Isn't the Spirit supposed to steer you away from trouble and keep you safe? Don't things go well when you're following the Spirit? Why else would we follow the Spirit?

That's what we're so prone to think – and yet the Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness. And if following the Spirit will take Jesus to the wilderness, why would it be different for any of God's adopted kids, whom Jesus isn't ashamed to call his brothers and sisters (Hebrews 2:11)?

Because we're on a journey, too, between the waters of baptism and the place God is taking us. And as we wander along on that desert journey in ancient Israel's footsteps, we might find ourselves in some awfully difficult places – places we're prone to call 'Bitter' or 'Quarreling.' Places where we don't have enough to get by. Places with whole armies standing in our way. Places where we're infected by disease, afflicted by hardship, bitten by things that won't let go. Places where death invades our households and steals those we love. Places where our prayers seem to echo and fade in a vast expanse. Places where everything just disgusts us, and we look at our lives and we say, “I don't have any of this, and I don't have any of that, and what I do have, I loathe as worthless.” Places where we're all dried out and feel lost forever. Places where we lose control and say we hate ourselves. Places where our feet quiver like jelly and there are miles left to go. Places where we can't hear anything but the sounds of the brokenness and yearning within. Places where we just don't know how to cope. The kinds of places Jesus went before us, but where we think we oughtn't have to be.

And when we get to those places, we feel the question burning on our lips and smoldering in our soul: “Why have you brought us out to this evil place? Why have you taken me to this desert, through this dark valley? What am I doing here?” That's the wilderness – a harsh and lonely place, devoid of all the things we're accustomed to falling back on. And when we get to the harsher spots of the wilderness and find ourselves panting and aching, lost and afraid, we have a lot of questions how and why we got there.

Truth is, sometimes we take ourselves there, to misfortunes we don't need. Sometimes the blame falls squarely on our own mismanagement of our life, when we've ignored wisdom and dug our own ditch. We're good at getting ourselves into trouble. But then sometimes it isn't anything you've done wrong. Sometimes you're living your life, you're trying to follow God, and then you look around and it's just sand for miles, too hot by day, too cold by night. And you wonder how you could possibly have gotten there if you were following God! Isn't he supposed to make you lie down in green pastures and lead you beside still waters (Psalm 23:2)?

Well, sometimes, yes. But then sometimes, there's a valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). Sometimes, the wilderness is exactly where following God will put you. Just like Israel, just like Jesus, sometimes it's the Spirit himself who leads you there, on purpose. Sometimes it's the Spirit of God who'll lead you deeper into the desert, far from the cucumbers and leeks of Egypt behind you (Numbers 11:5), but still far from the milk and honey of the Promised Land yet to be seen (Exodus 33:3; Numbers 13:27).

Let me tell you, if you're following a spirit who never leads you into the desert, never calls you to embrace self-denial and hunger and thirst, well, you may be following some spirit not-so-holy! “Don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they're from God” (1 John 4:1). Because the Spirit of God will teach you the truth – and sometimes that'll comfort, but sometimes that'll afflict. Sometimes he'll take you to an oasis and give you what you need, but there are certainly times he'll lead you deeper into the desert, to the desolate wastelands of the wilderness.

Because we need to go there. That's what it means to be a child of God. If you call God 'Father,' expect to camp in the wilderness with your Father. Don't expect the camping trips to be empty of hardships or even of the presence of death and danger. Certainly don't expect them to be free from temptation. We can't grow otherwise: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. … He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees...” (Hebrews 12:6-12).

We need that time in the desert. I hate to say it, but we need to be deprived, need to be disciplined, need to be tested. For it's by being tested beyond your limits, at the direction of a Spirit who knows better than you where those limits are, that you're made pure and strong and healthy. The desert, the wilderness, is where God always sends his children – be that child Israel, or Jesus, or those newest of newcomers to the family: us.

So yes, the wilderness is, perhaps more often than we'd like, where the Spirit of God leads. There's no way around it. Following the Spirit will lead you deeper into the desert. Following the Spirit will take you to harsh places. Following the Spirit may steer you away from the nourishment you've always known and the allegiance you've always had and the ways you always learned it before. Following the Spirit may lead you to the midst of death and danger. Following the Spirit may take you somewhere you'd call a bitter and evil place, a place that's no good for what you long for and doesn't have what you most want or crave. Following the Spirit will take you past your limits to a place where you can't cope.

And when that happens, you'll be tempted. You'll be tempted to turn back. You'll be tempted to despair and grieve and lament. You'll be tempted to grasp for any fleeting pleasure within your reach, anything to numb the pain or console yourself, anything to appease the hunger and thirst growing inside you. You'll be tempted to just give up all hope and cry out for all things to meet their final end. You'll be tempted to question God's wisdom, doubt his goodness, raise your fist toward heaven and call him your enemy! You'll be tempted to lash out against the nearest scapegoat, like the Israelites did with Moses.

But remember, Paul writes, that “these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did” (1 Corinthians 10:6). “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble, as some of them did and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come” (1 Corinthians 10:9-11). Keep following the Spirit. Follow the Spirit even when that path through life swerves deeper into the desert. Don't be surprised to find yourself there, there in the desert of temptation. But don't give in. In the wilderness, where the Spirit leads, is precisely where God calls us to come and seek him.

Our position isn't so unlike theirs. Like them, we're called children of God. Like them, we've passed through a baptism in the sea. Like them, we have the offering of spiritual food and drink from the Lord – first, at the Lord's Table; and second, in the nourishment of his word (like the prophet said, “Your words were found, and I ate them,” [Jeremiah 15:16]); and third, in the pursuit of the Father's will (like the Messiah said, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” [John 4:34]). Like Israel of old and like Jesus turning their wrongs into rights, we as well must be led into the wilderness – sometimes finding an oasis, but sometimes wandering over endless dunes to a cracked and dry place where nothing grows. And like them, there we face tests that will make or break us.

And in that day, there's only one question. As children of God, whom do we resemble more: Israel, who failed their test in the days of Moses, or Jesus, who used the arsenal of God's word to stay true to who he was and who endured his temptations without being caught by them? When the Spirit leads you to the wilderness – and I'm sure he has before, and I'm sure he will again – which example will you follow? Because we have a real choice, because we have a great advantage – the risen Christ who overcomes and invites us into his victory.

In this season of Lent, for these forty days, we remember the forty days that ensued when Jesus was led into the wilderness to fast and face temptation; and those forty days remembered the forty years when Israel was led into the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-2). During the course of our forty days and for all the times in life when the Spirit takes us deeper into the desert, persevere. Having seen the great power that the Lord used in your great deliverance, trust in the Father and in his Son Jesus (cf. Exodus 14:31), and in their Spirit who leads you – one God, world without end.

May we as a church follow the Spirit as Jesus did and endure our trials as Jesus did, without sin. “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1), for“if we confess our sins” and turn away from them and follow his Spirit, “he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). Thanks be to God. Amen.

Fork and Furnace: Sermon on Matthew 3:11-12

The day was a warm one. It was near the end of May or the start of June, and Araunah the Jebusite sat with his sons on a set of wooden threshing sledges that the oxen were pulling 'round and 'round in an indentation carved in the rock atop Mount Moriah. He gazed down toward the south at the walled city. Jerusalem. Araunah used to be a big kahuna there, in the old days. Before David and his Israelites came crashing in and took the city by force. Still, as years had passed, Araunah minded less and less. The Israelites had been kinder to the Jebusites than expected. And Araunah still had space all his own. So here he was, at his threshing floor on the mount on a warm day, his four sons helping him grind down the wheat.

The wheat crackled as the threshing sledge, coated with sharp teeth on the bottom, dragged over it, ripping the grains and the straw, loosening the connections. And so it went for a long time. Araunah and his sons talked about the old days. They talked about the troubles in the land. The plague, mostly. It had just started, but a few thousand Israelites had died, and the epidemic seemed to be spreading their way. Take every precaution. When the threshing seemed at its end, Araunah figured the day was yet young, and they might as well turn to the next job: winnowing. So as his sons led the oxen and the sledges off to the side, Araunah grabbed his winnowing fork, a nice implement perfectly designed to hoist and toss the damaged wheat. Which is exactly what Araunah did. His sons grabbed a few spare winnowing forks and did the same.

They tossed wheat into the air, and being atop a mountain, the wind above was stiff and strong. It carried the lighter bits – the protective outer coating of the wheat stalk – off to the side. But the heavier grains themselves, they mostly just landed back on the bare rock of the threshing floor. Fine way to separate the parts you could eat from the parts you really oughtn't. Separate the wheat grain from the useless chaff. And so, beneath the gleaming sun, they tossed their wheat and let the wind do its job.

Until Araunah heard one of his sons yell. “Dad! Dad! Look!” You see, they were hard at work beneath the gleaming sun. But which sun was suddenly the question. For it looked like there were two, almost in alignment – but the closer one, on further squinting inspection, had the shape of an angry swordsman, looming right over them. A warrior from the sky-realms, poised between heaven and earth, massive beyond compare, with sword drawn and flaring and pointed south toward Jerusalem, waiting to strike – and its feet were so nearly overhead! Araunah's sons, as they saw it through the falling grains from their winnowing, began to scream and dive for the nearest outcroppings, little nooks in the rock. Araunah stood, mesmerized, yet fearing to look lest he go blind.

But he tore his sight away when he heard an approaching ruckus from the south. He looked, and up the hill marched another surprising figure, clad in rough sackcloth, and in his train a line of elders and linen-clad priests. It was David, the king of Israel, the one normally arrayed in gold and fine robes – but not this day. And Araunah was no less flummoxed by a royal visitation than he was by the divine one. For Araunah knew from experience: a king in his power didn't come out to you; he sent word for you to come to him. But here David walked, right toward Araunah's threshing floor. So, disregarding what loomed just above, he ran southward off the rock and fell to his knees, his arms, his face at David's feet.

David, for his part, was distracted. Partly by memories. He was headed, after all, to a threshing floor. As a boy, he used to run around his family's threshing floor near Bethlehem. The same one where his Great-Grandpa Boaz got a marriage proposal from Great-Grandma Ruth. He knew the story of the threshing floor well. But now on his mind was also the present angelic menace looming above. He never should have given the order to recount the available military men in Israel without running it by God first. But this – this he could not bear. The plague had been upon the land, weapon in the hands of a destroying angel. And now the angel was standing in the sky, sword ready to exterminate all Jerusalem in a fell swoop. David had begged God to let the punishment fall on him alone – to make David sick unto death, but Israel healthy. He was ready to die for his people. No sooner had he said that than his prophet chaplain had come with a word – a word to go out to the threshing floor below the angel's feet and worship Yahweh there. So off he went, and other leaders followed.

Araunah was perplexed by the reason for David's visit, but David explained. “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be averted from the people.” Araunah was scared, too. If this meant a financial loss to stay healthy, so be it. So he offered David the threshing floor for his own – said he'd even give David his oxen, and the wooden yoke between them, and the threshing sledges, too, so that David had wood to burn and meat to offer. A gift, one blue-blood to another, for the greater good. But David said no. No, his was the sin – his had to be the price. It'd do no good to make a play at religion that cost David nothing. So he hinted he'd be back for the whole mountain later, but for now, he offered fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and its contents. Sold. Araunah hoped David's God would be satisfied.

There, in the very spot where Araunah and his sons had been threshing and winnowing their grain, David piled up an altar. He wasted no time. The priests butchered the oxen before their eyes, hauling hunks of meat over to the altar. And they offered it up, a sacrifice, pleading for peace as a messenger of heaven's war loomed ready to strike. Araunah watched, Araunah listened, as there on the edge of the threshing floor, David knelt on the grain and straw and prayed, begging his God to make clear whether it was enough. Araunah's eyes squinted aloft, as the swordsman in the sky took a step back. He readied his sword. But then, a flash! Fire, like a molten liquid, poured down, seemingly from the sun. It streamed through the sky, piercing and enveloping the staunch wind, and landed on the altar, cooking, no, incinerating the meat of the cattle. Offering accepted. Above, Araunah and David watched together as the angel sheathed its sword – and vanished. Araunah's sons and a few elders couldn't help but yell and cheer. For their parts, the two men in the heart of the action breathed sighs of relief in synchronicity. Instinctively, Araunah helped David gather grain off the rock bed – grain roasted already by the intensity of the nearby flames – and carry it to the altar, where the priests added oil, salt, and frankincense. A grain offering. A thank-you to David's God, who turned away his wrath and gave health to the city. Signaled by fire to consume at the threshing floor where Araunah once winnowed, separating the wheat from the chaff.

That's the last story tacked onto the end of Second Samuel. You can read it there, 2 Samuel 24, and its parallel in 1 Chronicles 21. Chronicles makes clear the important detail we might otherwise miss. Later on, David's son Solomon went back to Araunah's old threshing floor, where David's altar still stood. And Solomon made the place bigger. And on that spot, on the threshing floor, that's where Solomon built something great. The Temple of the LORD. Over nine centuries later, an angel came back to Araunah's threshing floor, and passed along a message to a priest named Zechariah. The message was about Zechariah's future son, a boy named John who'd grow up baptizing people in the River Jordan. It was on Araunah's threshing floor that word of his life first came to his papa.

And when John preached to the crowds one day, the crowds were impressed. John seemed the greatest thing around – “among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11) – but John told them that, no matter how impressive he might seem, he was only the opening act before Another who was on his way. John was the messenger, the herald; but the real deal was coming. The Stronger One – that's who John hinted was on his way. “I baptize you with water for repentance,” John told the crowd, “but he who is following me is stronger than I, whose sandals I'm not worthy to carry” (Matthew 3:11a). John wasn't even worthy enough, he said, to be the Stronger One's disciple. Disciples often served their teachers in many ways, but the one limit was, disciples never had to stoop so low as to carry their rabbi's dirty sandals. That was the job of a slave. But John said that even carrying the sandals of the One on his way was a privilege too high for John to aspire to. The gulf between John's greatness and the Stronger One's greatness was bigger than the gap between disciple and teacher, or even slave and master. This Stronger One would be the main event.

And for this Stronger One, the entire world was a threshing floor. That's what John said. Araunah's threshing floor, or one just like it, was going global. And everything and everybody would be like wheat being threshed. Which explains a lot, really. In life, we get threshed. And I don't think the wheat enjoys it. See, when wheat gets threshed, it gets run down, scraped over and over by the sharp-toothed threshing sledge as the oxen pull it 'round and 'round and 'round. To be threshed means to be run down. And that's a pretty good description of life some days – many days. We're wheat being threshed, produce getting run down beneath the sledge. But that is no bug. It's a feature. We get threshed.

But threshing is only to make us collectively ready for the winnowing. And John tells us that this Stronger One comes with “his winnowing fork … in his hand” (Matthew 3:12a). That's the tool with which he'll throw every bit of threshed wheat high up into the wind. And then comes the separation. Once things are loosened, the wind can rip apart what's useful from what isn't – the wheat from the chaff. And then the Stronger One will “clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12b).

For a long time, prophets had used the image of wheat being threshed to describe the separation of right from wrong, good from bad, chosen from discarded. And in Jewish thought, usually, Israel was the good wheat that got kept, and all the world's other nations were just the chaff that would blow away. In Daniel's vision, after the statue of the world empires crumbles to dust after being walloped with God's kingdom, what happens to those empires? They “became like chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away” (Daniel 2:35). Isaiah tells Judah, “I make of you a threshing sledge – new, sharp, having teeth: You shall thresh the mountains and crush them, and you shall make the hills like chaff; you shall winnow them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the tempest shall scatter them” (Isaiah 44:15-16). And he says that “the nations … will flee far away, chased like chaff on the mountains before the wind” (Isaiah 17:3). For, as the psalm has it, “the wicked … are like chaff that the wind drives away” (Psalm 1:4).

So, leaning on that, the rabbis told a story. They imagined that the wheat-grain and the straw and the stubble were all having an argument about why the world was made, why the field of global human society had ever been sown in the first place. And the straw says, “For my sake has the field been sown.” And the stubble says, no, “for my sake was the field sown.” But the wheat-grain just says, “When the hour comes, you will see.” So, sure enough, after the harvest, the farmer burned up the stubble – only good as fuel, after all – and in the process of winnowing, he scattered the straw as chaff; but in the parable, he “piled up the wheat into a stack, and everybody kissed it.” And so, the rabbis said, it was with the argument between Israel and the Gentile nations. The nations would all claim that they were the meaning of history. But Israel would just say, “The hour will come in the Messiah's future, and you will see.” For when the Messiah came, he'd winnow and separate Israel from the nations, showing that the nations were expendable and useless, but Israel was of lasting importance. That's what some rabbis thought (Genesis Rabbah 83:5).

But they ignored a couple other words from the prophets. God through Jeremiah was speaking to unrepentant sons and daughters of Israel when he said, “I will scatter you like chaff driven by the wind from the desert..., because you have forgotten me and trusted in lies. … Woe to you, O Jerusalem!” (Jeremiah 13:24-27). God through Hosea was speaking about idolatrous Israelites when he said that “they shall be like … the chaff that swirls from the threshing floor” (Hosea 13:3). And given everything John's been saying, that's what he wants to make clear to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all the Jewish crowds gathered around him: the line between good wheat and bad chaff runs through Israel and through the nations. Plenty from Israel won't make the cut; they'll be counted as chaff. And, John maybe hints, some from the Gentile nations will turn out to be worthy wheat that the Winnower will include on equal terms. Which we know to be true.

Which leaves us with the overall picture. When the Stronger One comes, he'll have a winnowing fork at the ready (Matthew 3:12a). And he'll toss everyone and everything to the wind. Which produces a separation. And there are only two possible outcomes. A neat disjunction will emerge: either wheat or chaff. One or the other. And that leads to two destinations. The good wheat will be “gather[ed] … into the barn.” And that's good. That's a safe place to be. But the chaff – what happens to it? It isn't edible. So it was usually used as fuel for heating. And, John says, that's what will happen to those with no other usefulness to God's kingdom: “the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Matthew 3:12b). It all comes down to what's useful, what's fruitful, for like John said in another picture, “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree, therefore, that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:10).

And that's the work of the Stronger One to whom John's been pointing. John could only baptize with water – a signal, a symbolic action, resetting people on the right path. But the Stronger One is capable of doing so much more. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Matthew 3:11b). At his disposal is the very Wind of God, the Holy Spirit. Prophets had long looked forward to God pouring out the Holy Spirit on Israel. Israel would be broken, Isaiah said, “until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is deemed a forest” (Isaiah 32:15). God promised through Ezekiel to “have mercy on the whole house of Israel … and I will not hide my face anymore from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord GOD” (Ezekiel 39:25,29). But through Joel, he pledged, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (Joel 2:28). That was what Israel was waiting for – that was the sign of their redemption. And who was the one who would pour out the Spirit? God Almighty. Yahweh. The Spirit of God is at no one else's disposal.

And then John comes along and says that the Stronger One will baptize people in the Holy Spirit. He'll be the One who pours out the Spirit. He'll be the One who does what only Yahweh God, the LORD Almighty, could ever do. Which means that must be who he is, for the very Wind of God is at this Stronger One's beck and call. And so he pours out his Spirit, baptizes in his Spirit, does a divine act for God's people – but Israel and the nations alike must repent and be included: This Spirit baptism is available to 'all flesh,' not just one nation. And the Stronger One comes to baptize Israel's remnant and the redeemed of the nations with his Holy Spirit.

But the Stronger One will baptize also with fire. All the world's a threshing floor, and at Araunah's threshing floor long ago, fire fell from heaven and destroyed the sacrifice on the altar. So the Stronger One will also pour out fire from heaven. And it will do what the avenging angel didn't dare. The Stronger One to come will say what Isaiah hears Yahweh saying: “Now I will arise, now I will lift myself up, now I will be exalted. You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you. … Hear, you who are far off, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my strength. The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: 'Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?'” (Isaiah 33:10-11,13). The Stronger One pours out a baptism of the Holy Spirit, but he also baptizes in fire – those who surrender to the Spirit and are fruitful will be purified by the flames, but those who ignore the Spirit and remain unfruitful will be devoured by 'everlasting burnings.'

It's a hard truth. I know it is. In our comfortable middle-class American existence, as in every time and place in history, we don't like to admit that judgment is real. We like it in the abstract, when we assume the sword can't be pointed our way. But when it comes close, we get really uncomfortable. We get uncomfortable especially with the language of 'consuming fire,' 'unquenchable fire,' 'everlasting burnings.' Hellfire. But we cannot afford to deny it, or too quickly gloss over it, in an effort to make our message more palatable. The Stronger One will bring a destructive judgment, baptizing the world in flame. And for some, that fire will prove infernal – unquenchable and everlasting, to their continual destruction. That is hell. And such a hell is a real prospect for chaff at the winnowing.

So the only hope is to be fruitful grain. “Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings? He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, who despises the gain of oppressions, who shakes his hands lest he holds a bribe, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking on evil – he will dwell on the heights, his place of defense will be the fortress of rocks, his bread will be given him, his water will be sure” (Isaiah 33:14-16). So said God through Isaiah. The Stronger One comes offering a baptism in the Holy Spirit. And “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). Baptism in the Holy Spirit leads to fruitfulness; and being fruitful for God's kingdom enables one to endure through any global baptism in fire. Fruitfulness for God's kingdom leads to the other destination: the barn into which the Stronger One gathers his good wheat, the heights on which the righteously fruitful one will dwell (cf. Matthew 3:11; Isaiah 33:16). Baptism in the Holy Spirit, which only the Stronger One can give us, is the only hope. It's the difference between wheat and chaff. It's the make-or-break issue.

As believers, we regularly cry out the Stronger One's name. We carry it around with us. For John the Baptist paved the way for the Stronger One whom we know as Jesus Christ. And as followers of Jesus the Stronger One, we profess to have received his baptism – a baptism, not merely in water (though there is that), but in the Holy Spirit. That isn't for a special subset of Christians. It's what being a Christian means. As Paul wrote, “In one Spirit, we were all baptized into one Body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:13). If you have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, you are a Christian, and vice versa. That is the definition. Otherwise – no dice. And being baptized in the Spirit is necessary because it's the only path to fruitfulness, which is the key distinction between wheat that must be saved and chaff that won't be.

So, if we claim to be baptized by Jesus the Stronger One by his baptism in the Spirit, fruitfulness should be the norm, shouldn't it? Fruitfulness should be the norm. The fruit of the Spirit should be everywhere in our church life, our family life, our social life. And we should be the kind of people Isaiah described as able to withstand everlasting burnings and dwell on the heights. Such righteousness, such fruitfulness, should be the norm. And perhaps one reason why we as the apparent church are sometimes so reticent to be honest – perhaps one reason why we shy away from forthright talk about baptism in the Spirit and baptism in fire – is out of a sense of unease with our own fruitless presence in the land. Perhaps we shy away from topics of eternal significance, and promise mere pittances like a 'best life now' or a warm inclusivity or a decent moral code or what-have-you – perhaps we avoid the stark disjunctions of judgment – because we recognize instinctively that our credibility is undermined by our own fruit-starved living. So we paper it over. We don't bring it up. We pretend there is no harvest, no threshing, no winnowing – no barn and no furnace, no Spirit and no Fire.

But there's a Stronger One – stronger than John, stronger than us, stronger than all the world and its pretended powers and privileges. And the Stronger One is never far from his fork and his furnace. So I ask you, if Jesus were to appear visibly in our midst with his winnowing fork in hand today – if he were to toss us into his winds of spiritual discernment – where would you land? Would there be enough weight to you, enough substance to your lived profession of faith, to have you land back down on the threshing floor? Or would your claims to faith be exposed as insubstantial, so that you're “carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14), and so “like straw before the wind and like chaff that the storm carries away” (Job 21:18)? Would you be like a tree worth conserving for fruit-bearing, like wheat-grain worth storing safely in the barn? If so, then submit to the Spirit, lean in to the Spirit, be baptized in the Spirit through faith in the Stronger One who was crucified and lives again, and be fruitful through his Spirit!

Because I promise you. The furnace of “unquenchable fire” points to something real – to judgment that leads to a hellish half-existence, the path to destruction. And so does the barn for the good wheat point to something real – to vindication that leads to a heavenly fullness and, through there, to a redeemed new creation, where our fruitfulness will reap its full rewards a hundredfold. These things are real. And so is the winnowing that makes clear whose faith is fruitful through the Spirit and whose unbelief is fruitless unto fire. All these things are real – every bit as real as the angel and his sword and the plague in the days of David and Araunah. We cannot deny it. We cannot escape it. But there is hope. The Stronger One, Jesus Christ, is ready and eager to save, ready and eager to baptize in his Spirit, ready and eager to see his fruitful wheat flourishing to no end. Trust him. Receive of his Spirit more and more, and be more and more fruitful as the final stage of winnowing draws near. To the Stronger One, to Jesus the Messiah of Israel and the Hope of All Nations, be all glory and honor through his baptizing Spirit – may all the world be a field filled with his fruitfulness, starting here and now! Amen.

Secondhand Holiness? Sermon on Matthew 3:9-10

Haðubrand felt his bones creak as he stood and knelt, stood and knelt, listening to the priest drone on in Latin in the little wooden church. He didn't want to be there. But he knew he had to reconcile himself to it. It was the dawn of the year 786, and Haðubrand was a Saxon tribesman, living in what today we'd call northern Germany. He hadn't grown up in church – unless you count ones he'd torched. So how had he found himself in one now?

If you'd asked Haðubrand, he might have started the story in his teen years, when Pope Gregory III wrote to his Saxon people. Thanks to the efforts of the missionary Boniface, who in southern Saxony had chopped down a sacred oak after challenging their god Thunær to a fight, some Saxons had already forsaken the religion of their ancestors for this Christianity. Pope Gregory wanted them to “walk in him, rooted and grounded and confirmed in the faith, abounding in the works of grace.” He called on them to “depart … from the service of idols, and come, worship the Lord our God who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and you shall not be ashamed.” Five or six years after the letter, the Frankish king Pepin invaded Saxony and brought some missionaries behind him. Some Saxons had gotten baptized, mainly out of fear. They didn't think much of it.

Almost a decade passed. Haðubrand and his people had gotten fed up. They'd crossed into Frankish territory and burned over thirty wooden chapels. Haðubrand remembered the flames, the smoke, the plunder. It had satisfied him. But Pepin certainly wasn't happy. With bishops and soldiers, he came into Saxony to wreak revenge, taking prisoners and not leaving until the Saxons took oaths of peace with him – and with his God. So many were baptized. Yet, for a while, for much of Haðubrand's adult life, things kept on as they always had been. He lived the life of a Saxon, served the gods of the Saxons, same as before.

Then came one January, fourteen years ago. Some Saxons had traveled north on an expedition, to help burn down a church built by the English missionary Lebuinus four years earlier, around the time the Frankish king Pepin had died. They had no idea what wrath they were unleashing. For Pepin had left the Frankish kingdom to his aggressive son Charles – we know him today as Charlemagne – and Charles retaliated by invading Saxony that year and burning down their shrine, the Irminsul, the great tree trunk that linked heaven and earth. Haðubrand felt crushed. During the coming years, his late forties, when he could still do some fighting, he tried his hand at raiding Frankish turf and defending against Frankish invaders. But they kept losing to King Charles' armies. In 775, one by one, the Saxon tribes sued for peace. The next year, of course, they all turned back to that old-time religion, and tried to retake all their forts and castles. But they failed, and in terror they surrendered and promised to do what the king said – and be baptized into his religion. And many, motivated by political security, went through the motions and did exactly that.

So it went, year by year. But Haðubrand put more of his faith in Widukind, a great Saxon warrior who urged them to fight on, to resist both the politics and the religion of the Franks. Although Widukind had fled for safety to the Danes, still he inspired his people to fight against Charles and the Franks. The Saxons plundered their way onto Frankish land, they burned churches and monasteries – all they could find. The year after that, the Franks returned to Saxony. Charles recruited missionaries to come convert the Saxons. But in 782, when Widukind came back and riled up all Saxony with him, they fled the land.

Still, Haðubrand had little more fight in him; he laid aside his sword and sæx. His people fought hard, but Charles counterattacked and beheaded thousands of prisoners, and Widukind barely escaped. Three more years they fought. Finally, Charles broke them. And Widukind entered negotiations. Which ended with Widukind, the prophet-hero of the Saxon pagans, being baptized on Christmas Day in 785.

So what choice did that leave the other Saxons? As missionaries flooded in and built churches all over Saxony, Charles passed laws saying that any Saxon who refused to be baptized and attend to Christian rituals would be put to death. So Haðubrand surrendered. That same cold day, a missionary priest submerged him in the nearest river, after he'd sworn the vow: “I forsake all the devil's works and words, Thunær, Wōden, and Saxnōt, and all those fiends that are their companions.” And so Haðubrand was baptized and resentfully began to attend the Mass. In his eyes, and in King Charles' eyes, that made Haðubrand – and all Saxony – Christian now.

But what should we say about Haðubrand and those other Saxons baptized by force of law in those days? Was his heart in it? In being dipped in the river, was he truly placing his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Did it begin, for him, a life of discipleship? And if our answer is no, what might that have meant for his soul?

You see, all Saxony was brought to baptism by terror of the Frankish armies during the war or by terror of the Frankish laws after the war. And some, to be sure, had been taught and persuaded by missionaries either before or since. But in the summer of 792, many Saxons, testing the political winds, abandoned their professions of Christian faith and again tried to rebel. One chronicle tells us, “They demolished or burned down all the churches in their land; they chased out the bishops and priests set over them, attacking some and murdering others; and they altogether reverted to idolatry.” Four years later, one of King Charles' top priests, an advisor named Alcuin of York, wrote a letter to a friend and saw what had gone wrong. And here's what Alcuin said:

The miserable race of the Saxons so many times wasted the sacrament of baptism because they never had a foundation of faith in their heart. … Man is able to be forced to baptism, but not to faith.

And so it was. A couple decades later, there was still a need to convince Saxon nobles to really commit their hearts to Christ, to be captivated by him and desire him. So one poet wrote the Heliand: a collection of songs in the Saxon language, retelling the story of the Gospels in a fresh Saxon way, urging them to live 'with a clear mind' free from divided loyalties. But, of course, one of the first characters we meet in those songs is a man named John, who introduces that message. And here's how the Saxons heard John's story:

There in the wasteland, the word of God, the divine voice of God, came to him powerfully and told John that he was to announce Christ's coming and powerful strength throughout this middle world. He was to say truthfully in words that the heaven-kingdom, the greatest of delights, had come to those heroes' sons, to people, to the soil of that country....

“Become clean,” he said. “The heaven-kingdom is approaching the sons of men. Now in your hearts, regret your own sins, the loathsome things you did in this light, and listen to my teaching, turn around in accordance with my words! I will gladly dip you in water, but I do not have the power to take away your sinful deeds so that by the work of my hands you could be washed of your evil accomplishments. … Your minds will long be merry when you forsake the power of Hel and the company of the loathsome ones, and seek for yourselves God's light, the home up above, the eternal realm, the high meadows of heaven! Do not let your minds doubt!”                                                                              

(The Heliand, Song 11, trans. G. Roland Murphy)

Don't let your minds doubt. For the past several weeks, we – like those Saxons, perhaps some of our ancestors, hearing those words twelve hundred years ago – have been trying to grapple with John the Baptist's preaching and example. And it hasn't always been easy. John was a challenging sort of man. He doesn't just tell us what to do. He does more than that for us, better than that for us: He raises questions we have to answer; and in the wrestling, in the answering, we learn what to do in a way that doesn't just pass in one ear and out the other. Because we have to come to it ourselves.

Nowhere is that clearer than in his confrontations with the Pharisees and Sadducees. We heard last week, if you were with us, about how this was probably an official delegation, coming from the Jewish Supreme Court, to inspect John's ministry and decide if any action needed to be taken to crack down on him. These Pharisees and Sadducees assumed that they had no personal need of his baptism, no personal need of what it represented – that they were there to offer a solution to Israel's problem. But we heard, last week, John tell them that they were the heart of Israel's problem – and they needed to radically convert, turn to God as fresh people, and let God begin growing a life of fruitful gratitude out of their hearts (Matthew 3:8). Nothing less would do.

For John told them they were “a brood of vipers” (Matthew 3:7) – a poisonous presence in the bosom of Mother Jerusalem, and imitating their venomous father, the devil (cf. John 8:44). And, needless to say, that did not resonate with the Pharisees and Sadducees. Their first instinct is to answer back that they have an honorable father – no one less than Abraham is their father (cf. Matthew 3:9). And in the Pharisees' and Sadducees' eyes, that makes all the difference – and it means they must be safe.

It might at first be a bit hard to follow their reasoning. Why does it matter if they're descended from Abraham? But it helps to know that there were strains of Jewish thought where the merits of Abraham – the goodness and blessing he acquired – was passed on to his Jewish descendants, and served as sort of a buffer for Israel to make God overlook some of their personal unworthiness. So, for instance, one rabbi is recorded as saying that, because Abraham was so faithful that he cut the wood to sacrifice Isaac, God rewarded his faith by one day cutting the sea so that Israel could escape from Egypt. Abraham's faith became merit passed down to the nation. Another rabbi said that, because Abraham was so faithful that he saddled up his donkey to fulfill God's will in taking Isaac to be sacrificed, it counteracted the time centuries later when Balaam the pagan prophet saddled up his donkey to try to go and curse Israel. Again, Abraham's faithful obedience became merit that, when passed down to Israel, became a buffer to keep them safe and in God's good graces (Genesis Rabbah 55.8). Some Jewish traditions held that Israel would have their sins ignored by God out of love for their father Abraham, and one rabbi even said: “Notwithstanding all the follies that Israel commits and the lies that they utter in this world, Abraham is of sufficient merit to win expiation for all of Israel's deeds when they are scrutinized” (Pesiqta de Rav Kahana 23.8).

So that's what John is calling out in the Pharisees and Sadducees – that line of thought, that attitude. They were thinking, in effect, that what John was saying to them didn't matter. Israel didn't need his new fresh start; God's people weren't in any real danger of destruction. Abraham was their shield. And so Pharisee and Sadducee alike didn't feel they had to sweat it so much. In effect, what they were saying to John was that they could get away with outsourcing the faith business to Father Abraham – that, because Abraham was so faithful and they had Abraham as their father, they would be the heirs of his faith, they would reap the benefits of all the merits he earned, and so they could safely skate into salvation on Father Abraham's coat-tails, as it were. “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug – look to Abraham your father and Sarah who bore you...” (Isaiah 55:1-2).

But the problem, as John sees it, is that these Pharisees and Sadducees aren't exactly chips off the old block. If “Abraham [their] father” is “the rock from which [they] were hewn,” nonetheless they don't look different from your run-of-the-mill pebbles you could find anywhere in the world. “If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did” (John 8:39). “Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matthew 3:9). A link to Abraham – the very thing the Pharisees and Sadducees were hanging their whole hat on – was something commonplace. And so the Pharisees and Sadducees vastly overestimate their bargaining power; they think they have more to bank on than they do. Isaiah's words on looking to the rock were for Israelites who sought the Lord – but these Pharisees and Sadducees were so convinced he'd been found for them, that they themselves were not seeking. See, they can't get away with outsourcing their faith.

And neither can we. Not any more than the Pharisees and Sadducees refusing John's baptism. Not any more than defeated Saxons reluctantly accepting baptism out of fear. Like Alcuin said, it's all pointless without “a foundation of faith in [our] heart.” Personal faith – faith that links my heart to God, your heart to God – cannot be substituted for trying to tie something else to God and outsourcing the faith business to that thing. And yet 'nominal Christianity' – that is, Christianity 'in name only' – is exactly what we get when we try to outsource the faith business. And it is the greatest plague in the churches of our land today, and maybe – though God forbid it – a danger for some of us here. “Even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees” (Matthew 3:10).

Because, like the Pharisees and Sadducees, some of us might try to outsource faith to our ancestry or heritage or upbringing. “I must be a Christian, because my mama was a Christian and my papa was a Christian; grandpa was a Christian and grandma was a Christian. So that must make me a Christian. I was raised that way, so that must be what I am.” Don't you know people who think that way? That they were born into a Christian family, so that makes them Christians; their parents believed, so they assume they themselves believe? I've met plenty. But it just doesn't work like that. Because my dad's faith can't save me, and my mom's faith can't save me, and my upbringing can't save me, and yours can't save you, either. God is able from these stones to raise up kids of good Christian families. There's no safety in that for you. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”

But then, we might try to outsource our faith to our environment, to our nationality. “I must be a Christian, because I'm a citizen of these United States of America, and America is a Christian nation, and so as an American, I must be a Christian, and since I belong to 'one nation under God,' I must be safe, I must be okay.” That was the way it was sometimes in the Middle Ages – “I belong to such and such a people-group, like the Franks or Saxons; that people-group is Christian; therefore, I am Christian, and I must be safe, I must be okay.” And you'd think we'd know better, but we still sometimes go around assuming that being an American makes us better Christians than if we were Russian or Venezuelan or French or Liberian. We still hang our hats on America and all its assorted mythologies, as if they were what saves us. But you cannot safely outsource your faith to your country – belonging to a 'Christian nation' (if there were such a thing) would carry no weight in God's sight. He is able from these stones to raise up American citizens. There's no safety in that. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”

But then, we might try to outsource our faith to our words and propositions. “I must be a Christian, because I agree with the sorts of things good Christian teachers say. They tell me that God exists, and I agree with that; they tell me that Jesus was the Son of God who died on the cross and rose from the dead, and I agree with that; they tell me that the Bible is from God, and I agree with that. So because I agree with all those sentences, I must be a Christian; and since I agree with those sentences, I must be safe, I must be okay.” That has so often been what we think it means to be a Christian – acknowledging some facts. And, to be fair, you couldn't claim to be a Christian without seeing those truths. But they aren't enough. If you believe those things, “you do well. Even the demons believe – and tremble” (James 2:19). God is able from these stones to raise up people who nod at all the right strings of letters and spaces and punctuation marks. There's no safety in that. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”

But then, we might try to outsource our faith to our membership status. “I must be a Christian, because I got wet that one time. I must be a Christian, because I said a prayer one time. I must be a Christian, because my name is on the church records as a member of this congregation. I pay my dues, my name is on the list, I went through the necessary actions to join, so I must be a Christian. And since my name is on the list, I must be safe, I must be okay.” As long as we can truthfully put in our obituaries, 'So-and-so was a member of this church,' we might figure that's what will decide our eternity. But the church record books have no particular standing in God's court – they're pale imitations at best of “the Lamb's book of life” (Revelation 22:17). God is able from these stones to put names on our church's membership rolls. There's no safety in that. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”

But then, we might try to outsource our faith to our attendance or our activity. “I must be a Christian, because here it is, Sunday morning, and I'm in a pew, just like most Sundays. I must be a Christian, because I try to treat other people well, I try to be nice and follow all the rules. I must be a Christian, because I want to be told how to be a better person, and then I try to do it, I try to be a good person. And since I'm here in the pew and I try to do nice things in life for my country and my family and my neighbors, I must be safe, I must be okay.” And that's what we do. We put in our hour on Sunday morning, we lead a nice and conventional middle-class American life, and we figure we're good, because why wouldn't we be? It's not like we're sinners in need of a real Savior, right? Or so we think. But attending Sunday worship services can only help you grow when there's something alive in you to grow. And too often, we're prone to assume there's life in us without checking. We assume that activity means life. But it doesn't. The Pharisees had loads of religious activity, but inside were full of dead men's bones (cf. Matthew 23:27). The Saxons submitted to going through the motions of religious activity, but inside nursed paganism and rebellion. And for all our attendance, for all our religious activity, for all our moral contributions to the community, we may be full of nothing but death if we do not personally have Jesus Christ alive in us. If he's alive in us, he'll be active, no doubt. But we can attend and be active and yet have no safety. “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees.”

For here's the thing: Not one of those is a substitute for personally having “a foundation of faith in [your] heart” – not one of them. Not your upbringing. Not your environment. Not your agreement. Not your membership. Not your attendance. Not your activities. You can have all those things and not be okay. Not if the center of who you are isn't linked to Jesus. Not if your trust isn't in him and your loyalty isn't with him. Because what saves us? Nothing and no one but Jesus Christ – “there is salvation in no one else” (Acts 4:12). And if each of us is not personally united with him by faith in the heart of who we are, faith that leaches out into all areas of our lives, then what makes our condition any different from the refusing Pharisees or the reluctant Saxons?

For, as Paul the Pharisee came to realize, Abraham is the father precisely of those who imitate his faith – he is “the father of all who believe” (Romans 4:11). So we must have Abraham-style faith: trust in the God who speaks life where only death was possible, trust in a God of resurrection. On such a God, each of us must lean; in such a God, each of us must hope; to such a God, each of us must turn. We must stand in personal union with Jesus Christ through a foundation of faith in my heart and your heart. We cannot outsource it. There is no other way than faith that unites us personally with Jesus and all he's done and all he is. And nothing less will do, for there is no such thing as secondhand holiness, no such thing as safely outsourced faith.

So I ask you, church, each of you: Where is your heart? Do you “seek for yourself God's light,” as the Saxon Gospel poem said? Is it “in your heart” that you take action, and not just in outward motions or outsourced functions? Are you yourself personally committed to Christ – to “walk in him, rooted and grounded and confirmed in the faith, abounding in the works of grace”? Is faith a personal thing to you – not privatized, but involving an encounter between Christ and you, rather than Christ and something else?

I hope that none of us here are outsourcing our faith, like some Pharisees did. I hope that none of us here are reluctantly going through the motions, like some Saxons (and Franks) did. I hope that each of us here is a disciple, personally invested in Jesus Christ from the core of our hearts. Because if you trust in him with all your heart, if you live from a faithful heart as his disciple, then you are safe – and more than safe. So let us be true heirs of Abraham, the Father of the Faithful, and live out our salvation – for “the righteous shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). Amen.