Lent 1
Gen. 2:15-17, 3:1-7; Matt. 4:1-11
2/13/05
“The Devil Didn’t Make Me Do It”
Ok, I confess.
I succumbed to temptation. I
had an engagement Friday evening (early!) and there just wasn’t enough time to
complete my sermon before I left, so I guess there’s no sermon today.
What can I say, “The devil made me do it.”
(sit down
while Ginny starts into hymn, then go back into the pulpit)
Sorry!
What the devil actually made me do was deceive you into thinking you were
going to get out earlier today because I had only a ten second message.
Ha! No way!
In fact, if you
read your bulletin carefully you may have noticed that my title is “The Devil
Didn’t Make Me Do It.”
We spend much of
our lives trying to blame someone else for our wrong doings.
I could give you all kinds of psychological explanations that would make
us all feel a bit better, but the truth is, trying to blame someone else is just
part of our sinful nature. We
inherited it from our ancestors, Adam and Eve.
Let me read a few more verses related to our first lesson.
GE
3:8 Then the man and his wife
heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of
the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9
But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?"
GE
3:10 He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid
because I was naked; so I hid."
GE
3:11 And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten
from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?"
GE
3:12 The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some
fruit from the tree, and I ate it."
GE 3:13 Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?"
The
woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
Thus,
we see the first instance of the blame game when Adam claimed Eve caused him to
eat the forbidden fruit and even lays some blame on God for creating her in the
first place – now that’s playing with fire.
Eve then says the serpent (the devil) tricked her.
Thus, God become the first marriage counselor.
Yes, the devil
may have tricked poor Eve, but he didn’t make her take the fruit.
It seems hard to believe from a human perspective, but the devil can
not *make* people do anything. The
devil is smart and tricky. He uses
every possible advantage.
With Eve he first played dumb, “Did God say, ‘You
shall not eat from *any* tree?’”
This gets her to talk to him. The
devil doesn’t mind letting Eve play teacher for a moment, trying to correct
his understanding. Can’t you just
sense how proud she much have felt as she correctly recited what God had said to
them, “We may eat fruit from
the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, `You must not eat fruit
from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or
you will die.'”
Now, here is where the devil sinks his fangs into poor Eve.
"You will not surely die," the serpent
said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your
eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Ohhh, the devil just loves to plant doubt.
Then he goes in for the kill, appealing to Eve’s budding ego with the
idea that she will be like God if she disobeys.
By the way, the feminist in me must note that the devil had to *work* on
Eve to tempt her, but Adam just takes what she gives him.
And so is set in motion the story of how sin came into the world and how
we are now in the position where we feel we can say, “The devil made me do
it.”.
But, as I said before, the devil can’t *make* us do anything.
The devil can’t force or coerce humans.
The devil can’t take away our will.
The devil can though try to change our will. He
whispers in my ear as I look from my exercise mat to a Hershey bar, “Now, you
know you’ve had a long day and a rough week.
You’re too tired to exercise and you surely deserve a little comfort
food. You can work the extra
calories off tomorrow.”
The devil can also try to confuse us and make us think wrongly.
In time of trouble and stress he paints the future in troubling scenes
and makes me forget how God has helped me in the past.
Then, he plays on my insecurities to make me say and do things I don’t
really want to.
The devil can work on our human desire to avoid responsibility and
consequences also. When I have done
wrong, the devil just loves to hear me say, “But, it was that person or
situation that made me do wrong.” Just
the other day I heard a woman being interviewed in prison say, “My husband
would be alive to day if he hadn’t left that axe where I could grab it when I
was so angry with him.”
Yes, the devil can tempt. The
devil can influence. The devil will
take advantage of any weakness or opportunity.
But, the devil does not have the power to make us do anything.
So, let’s accept that the devil didn’t make us do any of it and see
how Jesus handles temptation.
There are a number of ways of looking at the three temptations that Jesus went through, but they all boil down to appeals to Jesus’ ego and human desire to please Himself – to put what He might want before what God wants.
The devil wants Jesus to show His power by turning stones into bread.
He wants Him to test God by throwing Himself off the temple pinnacle.
He wants Him to grab for power and glory by accepting the devil offer of
world rule in exchange for worshipping him.
And in fact, later Jesus will use His power to create food when he
multiplies loaves and fishes. He
will not test but rather entrust Himself to God as He allows the soldiers to
take Him captive, beat and crucify Him. He
will in the end, in God’s good time, take possession of all the kingdoms of
the earth. But, He will not do
these things at the tempting of the devil.
Jesus knows that His first allegiance is to God and He chooses to do
God’s will. He chooses to do
God’s will even when that means He will suffer and die.
It’s important to remind ourselves here that Jesus’ ability to
choose God’s will over His own human desires and His ability to resist
temptation are not products of His divinity.
Jesus is NOT drawing on His Godliness to resist the devil. Jesus is fully, 100%, absolutely human and acting from that
humanity. If He wasn’t acting
completely from His humanity and was drawing on His divinity, His fight with the
devil and ultimately His death on the cross would be useless in saving us.
The only advantage Jesus had was that He was the “New Adam”, devoid
of original sin, and free of its weakening effects.
But, he was no more immune to temptation than Adam and Eve and no more
immune than we are.
Therefore, when we say, “The devil made me do it.”, we are, in fact,
giving into temptation. In blaming
the devil (or anything else) we are failing to take responsibility for our
actions. We also leave the devil an
opening for more temptation because he can whisper, “You can take that candy
bar (or say those unkind words or spread hate and violence).
Just blame me and you can do anything you want.”
So, what are we to do? We
are after all only human. In other
words, we are weakened by that original sin we inherited from Adam and Eve.
First, we can try to take time and look closely at our thoughts before
they become words and actions. We
can’t study and pray for the ability to recognize when the devil is speaking.
We can do our best to seek God’s will above all else as Jesus did.
Second, we can remind ourselves regularly that the devil doesn’t have
power over us. He can’t make or
coerce us to do anything. No, the
devil can’t make us do it.
Third, we can reflect back on Jesus temptation and use the same powerful
words He used, “Away with you Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord
your God and serve only Him.’” If
we do this the devil will leave us and angels will wait upon us.
Finally, when we do fall into temptation and sin, we need to take
responsibility for our sin and ask God’s forgiveness for Jesus sake.
This both strengthens our character, making us better able to resist the
devil next time, and also strengthens our connection to Jesus.
Then, knowing that nothing can separate us from God’s love and
forgiveness, we can go forward seeking to do God’s will.
We can also proclaim, “Jesus made it possible for me to do it.” Amen