Sermon at St Peter’s Church,
Pitton -
Morning Worship – Sunday 1st
March 2020
(Adaptation of Sermon 92)
Genesis
2:15-17; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew
4:1-11
Let the words of my mouth, and the
meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord. Amen
We are all
familiar, I hope with the words of the Lord’s Prayer – that prayer which Jesus
gave to his disciples and followers and which we recite every week and contains
the well know lines:
“Forgive give us our sins (or
trespasses as the old version has it) as we forgive others and lead us not into temptation”.
I emphasise
the “and” because despite what many
may think, temptation and sin are two different sides of the same coin.
As we now
enter into that great period of reflection in the Christian calendar, Lent, we
may hear a lot about sin and temptation.
Many of us may have decided to give up something for Lent as a way of
expressing our commitment to our Faith – following Jesus into the wilderness
before he began his earthly ministry leading to his eventual death of the
Cross. As Jesus himself says, if you
want to follow me you must take up your own Cross – and that, to some extent,
is what we do during these six weeks of Lent – contemplate upon our own life’s
commitment to Christ and the nature of the Cross we have to bear to truly
follow him.
To be
tempted, is not in itself a sin, only if we accept that temptation, which is to
disobey God, is the sin committed. In the Lord’s Prayer we ask not to be
tempted for if temptation does not come our way then, ergo, we cannot be led to
sin. A removal of the temptation is an
act of prevention which is always the best outcome – ask any doctor, police officer or fire
officer - yet we are very fortunate as Christians because we know that if we
are tempted and we do sin there is still a cure. In the words of the same prayer, we can ask
for forgiveness but, in the same breath, only if we forgive others too. That is, what Desmond Tutu, calls the cycle
of forgiveness.
This
morning, in our readings, we are dealing with some extremely deep theological
issues – issues which have taxed and been debated by eminent theologians for
centuries.
Our first
reading, from Genesis, is well known to us as well as many outside of the
church. Having created the world and
populated it with animals and humans, and having seen that all was good, God
rested on the seventh day we are told; but it wasn’t long before things started
to go wrong (as they always seem to do when humans are involved) and the first
great temptation appears – that wonderful tree bearing such tempting fruit –
made even more tempting by the Serpent, appealing to the curiosity of Eve by
saying that eating the fruit will make Eve as knowledgeable as God. What a great temptation and humans, being
what they are, who wouldn’t be tempted.
How many of you, when confronted with a sign chalked on the pavement by
a street lamp standard, or close to a doorway or fence with the words “Wet
Paint” or “Wet Cement” haven’t been tempted to just test the truthfulness of
that statement with a finger? I know I
have and invariably I have discovered the accuracy of the statement by
acquiring horribly sticky fingers or hands. The sign is there to warn with an
implied request not to touch. By
touching we may have discovered the truth but we have also been
disobedient. Our temptation has turned
to sin. The serpent or snake represents
all those who would seek to deceive us – in our modern language to seek to
mirepresent a situation through “fake news”.
“You will not die”, says the serpent, “go on eat”. We must all pray for
the gift of discernment to know what is true and what is false to prevent us
falling into sin.
Adam and Eve
were given very strict instructions, we read, not to touch or eat the fruit of
this tree yet in doing just this they were being disobedient to God and
therefore sinned – resulting in the punishment meted out by the Fall. They fell for the snake’s trick.
In our
epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, the apostle is comparing the
sin of one man, Adam, “his trespass” to use words familiar to many in the
Lord’s Prayer, to the action of one man, Jesus, in his “act of righteousness”
as Paul calls it, leading to justification (salvation) for all through our
belief that Jesus died on the Cross to save us from our sins. In other words, the situation is put right,
the Fall is reversed and humans, through Faith, can be restored in God’s grace
to being what God always intended them to be. But it is important that they do
have Faith – something beyond simple belief but a commitment to the teachings
of Christ and to follow him unreserved and unconditionally.
Romans 5 is
not easy to read in isolation from the whole Letter to the Romans and Paul’s
way of speaking or writing can, at times, be quite difficult to follow and it
does require some study beyond just listening to snippets being read out on a
Sunday morning. The twelve earlier
verses of Romans 5 set the scene for us a little better in that Paul reminds
his reader that it was only through the suffering of Jesus upon the Cross, an
act of the deepest humiliation for a human being to suffer at that time, can we
share in the glory of God together with a belief that Jesus died for our
salvation. That is the fundamental cornerstone of our Faith.
Paul says “we know that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not
disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit that has been given to us”. (Romans 5:4-5)
Wow, what a
wonderful explanation of our Faith. God’s glory, God’s love has been poured
into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
I particularly love the passage “hope
does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit.” If you get
nothing further from this sermon this morning please do take away that one line
– “hope does not disappoint us because
God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”.
But, as
Christians, that does not mean that we are now immune from temptation, from
fake news in fact, why else would we need continually to pray that we should
not be led into that very thing we seek to avoid. I am a great believer in
spiritual warfare – good versus evil – the subject of so many books and films –
even the Harry Potter series has this as its main overriding theme. I believe in this context, the greatest and
most disobedient temptation is therefore a moving away from God by indulging in
our own fantasies and ambitions as opposed to those plans and desires which God
has for us and by worshipping other gods – today they might be money, cars, a
hedonistic life without thought or empathy for others, a forgetfulness and lack
of appreciation of God. We have no
greater example of the spiritual warfare which we can be up against than the
account of Christ himself being tempted by the Devil in the wilderness which
formed the text of our gospel Reading today.
Here the
Devil is testing God through the temptations of Jesus. Three things Jesus is tempted with – things
which any of us could probably equate to temptations which we have faced or
have to face – first, tempting Jesus to turn stones into bread. We know, from the first miracle that Jesus
can do such things – he turned water into wine at a wedding – but the
difference here is that the Devil is asking him to prove that he is the Son of
God by this action not, as previously, as an act of love for his mother and the
hosts at the wedding; second, by again proving he is the Son of God by testing
God himself to save him from a fatal death by jumping from the temple roof –
this would be not only putting God to the test but disobeying his Father who
would, in due course, see his Son die of the Cross when similar jibes were
exclaimed and finally, an attempt to make Jesus fall down and worship the Devil
– a direct disobedience to God’s First Commandment which Jesus himself later
proclaimed to be the first of two of the greatest Commandments.
So, we can
take comfort and courage that though we may be tempted, so too was Christ. It is how we deal with those temptations
which will make us stronger and able, more closely, to follow Christ and the
will of God. We have the Holy Spirit to
guide us and it is ever more important that we continue to have a strong
dialogue with God through prayer and reflection.
In front of
you there are some small pieces of paper and hopefully a pen. If you wish to, and there is absolutely no
compulsion to do so, I invite you to write down, anonymously, any temptations
which you feel you need to avoid, especially during this period of Lent, it
might be eating chocolate, drinking wine, having that second helping of bread
and butter pudding, gossiping, not reading your bible, watching Love Island or
Naked Attraction, anything at all and place the folded paper in the basket here
at the front. After the services we will
take them away and destroy them after we have prayed the Lord’s Prayer over them.
As you do
that let us pray:
Father we thank you that you gave
your Son, Jesus Christ
To die on the Cross to save us from
our sins
We ask you to lead us not into
temptation so that we are not tempted to sin against the Holy Spirit and be led
away from your saving grace.
Knowing that faith leads to salvation
and hope will not disappoint us, we ask that we may always live our lives
founded on the three great principles of Faith, Hope and Love.
Amen
92A/28022020
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