God does not test you to find out who you are.
He tests you after he's already told you who
you are. Hey, grab your imagination and come
with me for a moment. You are standing on the
banks of the Jordan River and the water still
moving where he has now come up out of it. And
the sky, it didn't open politely. It tore apart.
And the voice said what nobody expected to hear
out loud. This is my beloved son and whom I am
well pleased. And you'd think the next step is
crowds and miracles and movement. But the spirit
turns not towards applause, but towards the desert.
40 days, hunger, silence, testing, beloved first,
wilderness next. And now it's Sunday morning
in a small brick church in Cushing. The coffee's
percolating in the foyer. Someone's flipping
through a Bible that they have owned since 1987.
You walked in carrying something, maybe hunger,
maybe fatigue, maybe a question you can't name
yet. We are beginning Lent today, not as spectators,
but as people willing to be formed. So settle
in, breathe. The Spirit still leads even here.
And friend, I will see you on the other side.
Hey, before we get into the deep water this morning,
I want to say something to the folks that are
new with us. If you've just kind of been joining
us recently and you find that we're now in a
new season and what we're doing is we're walking
together through the church year or the liturgical
year. That's why we have the different colored
banners, pyramids, souls, because it's marking
time. The way that the church sees the year,
not the way the world sees the year. The liturgy,
the liturgical year is the church's way of living
inside the story that's in the Bible. Not just
reading about it. Not just studying it from a
distance like a museum exhibit under glass. We
actually move through it. Season by season. We
mark time the way people who believe something
move through time. Intentionally. With our whole
bodies. And with this week, we have started that
new season, Lent. 40 days, not counting Sundays,
40 days of something the church calls preparation.
And if that word doesn't feel thick yet, give
it a few Sundays and it will. This morning, I
want to show you where we get those 40 days because
it didn't come from some church committee. It
didn't come from a denominational calendar in
somebody's office somewhere. It actually came
to us from a riverbank in Judea. And the wilderness?
The man who was hungry. So, let me set the scene.
You are standing on the banks of the Jordan River.
The water... Is still dripping off of his shoulders.
You can see the surface of the river. Starting
to settle back to calm. Like the river itself
is catching its breath. After what just happened.
And you know what? You are too. Because you heard
it. The sky tore. Not parted. Not. gently opened,
tore, like something on the other side had been
waiting a long time and finally couldn't wait
anymore. And the voice that came through the
tear said something you didn't know that anybody
needed to hear said out loud. This is my beloved
son, whom I am well pleased. And you think this
is it. Jesus' ministry starts now. Crowds are
about to gather. This is the moment where the
world changes. You start doing the math. Galilee
in the north, Jerusalem in the south. There are
synagogues. There are sick people. There are
fishing villages full of regular old ordinary
folks who've never once been told that God thinks
they're worth something. The work is right there.
The work is now everywhere. The voice already
spoke. The beloved already got named. What else
is there to wait for? And you stand there on
the edge of the river with water still squishing
cold in your sandals. And you wait for that movement
to start moving. And the spirit does move. But
it doesn't move towards Jerusalem. It doesn't
move towards all of those synagogues or the hillsides
full of hungry people. It turns and it walks
straight into the desert. And he follows. This
is where we get lent. Not from a committee, from
a riverbank and a wilderness. And a man who was
hungry for 40 days because the spirit led him
there on purpose. I want you for a second to
feel what 40 days does to a body. Day one is
hard, but sharp. There's a kind of resolve comes
with beginning something hard. You know what
you're doing and why. But by day five, the body
starts sending polite memos. By day 10, those
memos start to have a sharp edge. By day 30,
you're not quoting scripture for inspiration.
You're quoting it because it is the only thing
left in the room with you. And by day 40, Matthew
doesn't give us some poetic line. He doesn't
dress it up for us. He says he was hungry. Of
course he was. And that, that is when the tempter
comes. Because that's when the tempter always
comes. Not when you're rested and certain. But
when your resolve is worn thin and the simplest
solution looks less now like temptation and more
like a plan that makes plain sense. Friends,
tune your ears to the reading of the Holy Scripture.
Scripture this morning comes to us from the Gospel
account according to Levi, later Matthew, beginning
in the fourth chapter of his Gospel account.
Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When he
had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, scripture says,
he was hungry. The tempter came and said to him,
if you are the son of God, command these stones
to become bread. But he answered, it is written.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every
word that proceeds out of God's mouth. Then the
devil took him into the holy city. He sat him
on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him,
If you are the son of God, throw yourself down.
For it is written, he will command his angels
concerning you. And on their hands, they will
bear you up so that you don't dash your foot
against the stone. And Jesus said to him again,
it is written, you shall not test the Lord your
God. And the devil took him to an exceedingly
high mountain. and showed him all of the kingdoms
of the world and their glory. He said to him,
I will give you all of these things if you will
fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to
him, get behind me, Satan, for it is written,
you shall worship the Lord your God and him only.
Shall you serve? Then the devil left him and
behold, angels came and served him. Thus ends
reading God's word this morning. Angels come
after obedience, not before. Relief follows endurance,
not avoidance. And that is the rhythm. And here's
what I want some of the folks who are new with
us to know. The ones walking through the liturgical
year with us maybe for the first time, the church
didn't invent Lent to make February harder. The
church looked at this story and said, If the
son of God needed 40 days of formation before
he could do what he had been sent to do. If the
beloved needed wilderness before the ministry,
then maybe we do too. Maybe 40 days of intentional
practice is worth something. Maybe rehearsal
is holy. Lent is not punishment for the human.
Lent is rehearsal for the beloved. And here is
what the counterfeit version looks like, the
one we all carry around without knowing it. We
want resurrection without wilderness. We want
Easter Sunday without the 40 -day walk that makes
Easter mean something more than just a nice dress
and a ham dinner. We want the authority without
the formation that makes the authority a thing
in the first place. We want to skip from beloved
to victorious because that part in the middle
makes us uncomfortable. We are a people who have
been taught that discomfort means something must
be wrong. But the spirit doesn't skip over things.
The same spirit that descended at the Jordan
turned and walked straight into the hard place.
Not a detour. And on purpose. And here's the
thing most of us won't say out loud. We have
been moving so fast for so long that slow feels
like failure. We have confused velocity for faithfulness.
We don't even know we are sprinting until we're
winded. And by then we have already convinced
ourselves. That the breathlessness is just what
devotion feels like. You know what good barbecued
cooks know. That impatient cooks never truly
get right. You cannot rush the braise. Low heat,
long time. That's where the tough cut becomes
the thing everybody is asking the recipe for.
The spirit brazes 40 days, not to break him,
to clarify him and not to break you either. In
scripture, 40 is never just some random number.
It's a covenant number. 40 days of flood, cleansing
and renewal. 40 years in the wilderness, a whole
generation formed into a people, Who could finally,
after those 40 years, actually enter into the
promised land. 40 days on Sinai. Moses receiving
the word that will hold everything together.
40 is not arbitrary suffering. It is a number
that means something. It means something is real
and it's happening right in front of us. Something
that takes time. Something that can't be microwaved.
And what Jesus does in this desert is something
that Matthew wants us to see clearly. Because
what is happening here is he is walking back
through Israel's failures. He reenacts the story
with the devil, only he gets it right each time.
Israel was hungry in the wilderness and lost
faithfulness and demanded bread. Jesus is in
the wilderness and trusts. Israel tested God
at Meribah, demanding proof again and again.
Jesus refuses to test God. Unfortunately, Israel
bowed to lesser gods at Sinai, at Baal Peor,
in the hills of Canaan. Jesus draws a line and
does not negotiate it. This is faithful Israel,
summed up in one body, succeeding where the nation
had stumbled. This is recapitulation. The do
-over that makes all the difference. That's why
the temptations come in three. Bread, proof,
power. Body, identity, dominion. The whole sweep
of what makes us human and what we actually reach
for when we're depleted. And he answers every
single one of those questions with the word.
Not with argument. Not with theology. With scripture.
Because 40 days in the desert teaches you that
what's left when everything else gets stripped
down is still enough. Some of you wore ashes
this week. Some of you heard those words out
loud, maybe for the first time. Remember that
you are dust and to dust you shall return. It's
not an insult. It's a gift. Because knowing you
are dust, finite, dependent, not holding the
world up on your own. That is what makes trust
possible. You can't hand over something if you
first have to admit you're holding it. But I
want to add something to those ashes this morning.
You're also beloved. The voice spoke before the
wilderness, before the testing, before the 40
days. This is my beloved son in whom I am well
pleased. Before he had earned a single thing,
before he healed anybody or fed anybody or raised
anybody, he was beloved first. Beloved people
still go into the wilderness. The wilderness
of our lives does not revoke the belovedness.
If the spirit is leading you into 40 days of
restraint or silence or hunger, something you
didn't choose and wouldn't have, that's not abandonment.
That's formation. That's the same spirit that
was in the water at that Jordan River and in
the desert at the temptation. The question of
Lent is not, can I escape the wilderness? Question
is, can I trust God in it? And we don't aim for
drama. We shouldn't perform Lent for an audience.
But, but, pick one place. Think about your life.
Pick. There are plenty. Pick one place where
efficiency in your life has replaced trust in
God. One place in your life where you've been
performing your identity for other people instead
of resting in who you say and who God says you
are. And square your feet in that. And then,
just stay with it for a minute. Don't rush to
fix it yet. Don't make a plan for it. Lent doesn't
ask you to fix anything today. It just asks you
to stop pretending that that place isn't there
in the first place. And let the 40 days do what
the 40 days do. You don't have to understand
it yet. You don't have to theologize yourself
through it. You just have to be willing to be
in it. And when Easter comes, and it will come,
it always comes. It won't feel like a spectacle.
It'll feel like resurrection. Which is the only
thing it was ever supposed to feel like in the
first place. So, go now into whatever wilderness
is already waiting for you. You didn't choose
it. You don't have to love it. But you go into
it as the beloved. And the spirit goes ahead
of you. And the voice spoke over the river. Jordan
that day will speak over whatever comes next
in your life. And you're not being punished.
You're being formed. Forty days from now, my
dear friends, Easter will mean something it has
never quite meant before. So go in peace and
let the Spirit lead even when it leads to the
hard places. Amen. Amen. If the wilderness feels
closer than you'd like right now, hear this again.
You're not being punished. You're being formed.
The voice spoke, beloved, before the desert ever
showed up, before the hunger, before the testing,
before you got it right or wrong, beloved, first.
Spirit may lead towards hard places. It should
never lead you alone. Same God who allowed the
hunger is the God who sends the angels. Same
word. Steady Jesus in the wilderness is steadying
you right now. So don't rush the 40 days. Don't
sprint past the slow work. Stay where your feet
are. Trust the forming. Easter will come, not
as spectacle, but as resurrection. And if something
landed today, if you heard something new, or
maybe an old truth sounded different, or the
wilderness suddenly made more sense to you, Go
ahead and throw that old like in the offering
plate. That little click helps this digital church
bell keep ringing. And if you'd like to keep
walking with us towards Jerusalem through these
40 days, tie your subscribe. That way you'll
know when we're meeting for church again. We'll
keep the door open, the word steady, and the
caveat. And as always, friend, be blessed.