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Here are my thoughts currently, heading back to the apartment for sermon prep part II:

Thoughts-

Soteriology- Red Grace and Green Grace

Christ’s confrontation with the evil one-

Asking where is God now? Being filled with the Holy Spirit and in desolation? Is this where we are supposed to be?

Not that Christ was incapable of sinning but that Christ was able to avoid sinning although he was tempted- tempted in some really powerful ways

Testing by God is Old Testament kind of stuff- Genesis with Abraham, Exodus with the wilderness and the manna. In the New Testament used in Luke by Jesus against a lawyer and a part of a crowd

God testing someone, but satan tempting someone- temptations nowadays coming more from each other
Temptation- to try and entice someone into doing something, into wanting to do something- they don’t take away the will but they do try to change someone’s will

Knowledge versus will/conviction- many times it isn’t that we don’t know the difference between what is good and what is bad but rather what I want to do- or don’t want to do… or what I am willing to do.

A conflict of wills, a battle of wills


Who are we following? We live ‘by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord’- have we asked ourselves lately who it is we are following in our lives, in our ministry?

Satan recognizing Jesus as the Son of God-

Brian Stoffregen-
It is the responsibility of the parents and of the church not only to teach its baptized members the difference between right and wrong; but also to help motivate them to want to do the right thing. The devil (and much of society) is still around trying to make us want to do the wrong thing.


Tests:
What’s wrong with making food? Christ does it later in his ministry!
Christ is filled with the Holy Spirit, and it leads or drives him into the wilderness- what drives Christ? It is not human need because his human need is a stomach that is going on day 41 of no food- it must be by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord… what if we are being led away from the Word of God by surrounding ourselves and answering purely human needs? What if we begin to rely on answering human needs to find meaning and those people begin relying on us for support and sustenance- that can lead to laziness and anger at those who ‘have more’ or ‘want’.

Christ is the Lord of All, right? Why can’t he start a little early?
The devil has been given all of the worldly kingdoms apparently because they are his to give to whomever he chooses- either this is true or Jesus does not feel that is where the crux of the test is. Christ is offered power, and that temptation is seriously tricky- I wonder if churches fall into this same view- we seek larger and larger numbers trying to achieve as many people coming through the doors each Sunday as are possible, but what are we engaging them in when they are here? Are they numbers, statistics, or quantities, or are they people, individuals, and identities that are inherently priceless to God. Perhaps our focus on worldly success (more is better) seeps into our congregations and communities where deeper discipleship would be more fruitful? We can even go farther there however, and say that a disciple’s faith is far more important than what they do- producing great depth of faith but no fruit at all!
Serving God ties in with this understanding too- if we commit all our energy to serving God we ignore one another, but if we focus too strongly on one another we ignore God- we must balance these two services in a cruciform lifestyle.
What’s the beef with believing the Scriptures? Don’t the angels of God protect Christ?
Using the Scriptures to tempt- Call on God to prove his faithfulness! What more do we need to see the faithfulness of God made visible than Christ! It is obvious that the angels are at His command in the Passion narrative and that satan knows that Christ has this power over heaven, yet not only does Christ ignore this, he willfully submits to the outcomes of his ministry, the crucifixion… listening to a priest say that “God was preparing someone for heaven with a earthly affliction” “Enough faith will make you well”- when we are being made new and have been made well from the eternal sting that is sin and death… Faith has made us well. But that does not stop suffering in the world nor does it omit the faithful from suffering as well.
What more do we need? Do we need miracles to prove the existence of God? When we start looking for ways to prove God, we are not living for God- why do we need proof that God exists? Scientific method? God created the Scientific Method!

The challenge of ethics and our temptation to violate them