Glad I am not "That Guy" ...

Sometimes it feels like our problems are overwhelming.  We see ourselves in a state of pain and feel the weight of the world is crushing down on us.  Yet, when we look around (assuming we are able to break the gaze currently locked in the mirror), we find people worse off than us.  Does not matter how bad you think you have it, there is ALWAYS someone else who has it worse.  If there is any comfort in not being as bad off as your neighbor, then there you are.  But once this recognition is made, your problems, remain your problems.  If there is anything to be learned it might be that your problems are not as bad as they could be.  The pessimist would say “just wait” and leer at you with a look of foreboding doom.  The optimist would say “just wait” and look at you with a sympathetic gaze offering only the slightest glimmer of hope.  The Christian?  Well maybe you are the Christian in this story.  And your problems?  Well maybe your problems are not all made in sin, but sin can sure make them worse.  Disease, financial insolvency, hunger; all of these can come upon you through no fault or control of your own making – but layer the base sin of selfishness on top of them, and they all get exponentially worse, extraordinarily quickly.

So the simple question is “what is the cure?”, and we’ll get back to that.  But if the key ingredient in making any hard situation worse is sin, then the first step in making anything better would be to avoid making it worse.  Herein lies the first test.  Can we look away from self long enough to avoid stumbling into the sins self would have us commit?  Of our own strength, I would submit it is a losing battle.  But when we turn to the power of the Holy Spirit, we begin to see that glimmer of hope.  And if you think your temptations are formidable, there was One who had it worse.  Yup an order of magnitude worse.  So bad, His story would leave you scratching your head saying to yourself, at least I am not “that Guy”.  Who springs to mind for you?  Is it Abraham who nearly lost the love of his life to the Pharaoh from lying to him that his wife was his sister?  Or perhaps David, who literally killed his neighbor to take his wife from him, well after being caught pregnant from the adultery that preceded this worse crime?  Those guys had it rough from sins that made selfishness a hard road to travel.  But no, I am not talking about them.  I am talking about Jesus.  Yup, in this case, Jesus was “that Guy”.

Now I know and you know, that Jesus had not committed any sins at all.  And Jesus was the Son of God, that is, God was His literally daddy.  So how bad could He have had it anyway.  As tests go, wouldn’t He have just passed any of them with flying colors?  Luke relates His story picking up in his gospel in the beginning of the fourth chapter in verse 1 saying … “And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,”  We don’t know too many stories of the life of Jesus between his time in the temple as a 12 year old man teaching the doctors of the scripture what real Truth was, and the time Jesus asks to be baptized by John in the river Jordan.  We could assume it was a life of ease.  But then, it was a time of Roman oppression.  It is likely during this time that His earthly caretaking father Joseph died.  Jesus would have been the eldest son.  It would have been His responsibility to help His mother Mary raise the brothers and sisters that would have come along during the years of Joseph and Mary being a normal husband and wife.  It would have been Jesus’ responsibility to teach his younger brothers a trade like carpentry that He was taught.  To keep a business going that would feed the entire family and one day allow Him to resume a ministry without sending his mother and siblings into destitution or poverty.  That is a lot of responsibility for an elder Son, and we have no idea when it came upon Him.

But there is another wrinkle in all of this.  Jesus had the power to heal and resurrect.  Yet He never used it upon Himself, that is, to His own selfish benefit.  For others, He poured it out like water.  But for Himself, nothing.  I would imagine that undoing the illness of a sick father, or undoing an untimely death, would have been the greatest temptation our young Lord would ever face.  You see, if Joseph remained in his position as head of the family, Jesus would be free to do as He liked, or as He believed was needed.  He could have started younger, and perhaps ministered longer.  But this may not have been the will of His Father in heaven.  A good idea from a human perspective, but not as good from a heavenly one.  So when Joseph is sick, or dies suddenly, Jesus does nothing to undo it.  He lets it stand.  Though it breaks His heart, and further breaks it again watching the pain it brings to Mary and the others who cannot see past the death of this world.  He lets it stand.  When we ask why God lets our grief stand, perhaps it is because He sees past the death of this world and knows that will only ever be temporary, a sleep, a nap we will surely rise from as He calls us forth in a resurrection yet to come.  But for those who remain it is hard to see that, and so grief remains.  And Jesus would have had an up close personal encounter with grief from those He had come to love most.

Now however, on the great day of starting His ministry, FINALLY after all this time and patience.  The first place He is driven to go under the heavy influence of the Holy Spirit is to the desert, to the wilderness.  Going here will put Jesus in human isolation.  There are not many to encounter in the wilderness, if any.  Man does not ordinarily choose to go to a place where nothing of value is.  If Jesus was like any of us up to this point, He might have been used to at least the minimum creature comforts of home.  To meals prepared by a loving mother and sisters, to a bed he built and his family helped make soft, with blankets knit by hand for Him to sleep under.  We have no reason to assume Jesus had nothing before this point in time.  But His first act is to shed everything.  Comfort will be the first casualty of a ministry He is called into action to begin.  So the wilderness is to be the first place of a ministry where no one else will hear what He has come to say.  And it was not Satan who drove Him here, it was God.  His first test, is to be a test of self-denial, and loneliness.

Already my problems start looking inconsequential and not as severe as perhaps I had imagined.  Luke continues in verse 2 saying … “Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.”  Here Luke corrects a few of our bad assumptions about this time.  Jesus is not left alone for 40 days and “then” tempted of Satan.  No, no, no.  He is tempted for the full forty days.  And during this time of testing.  He is not eating.  He is fasting like no fast any human will ever pass (and live).  He is moving from place to place.  He has no constructed shelter.  He sleeps on the dirt and has only stones for pillows.  And each day He is progressively more hungry than the last.  Each day, he burns calories, and takes none in to replenish them.  He grows skinny.  Then He grows emaciated.  He begins to look so bad He will be hard to recognize by any who knew Him only weeks ago.  Each day, perhaps each hour relentlessly tempted, to use that power to fix His predicament.  But instead He lets His conditions and His hardship, stand.  It is at the conclusion of His decay, Luke uses the gentle words “He hungered”.  That is quite an understatement from the doctor.  Luke might have better said, He was so emaciated He was now on the very verge of death itself from hunger He could no longer physically bear.

My problems look very slight now.  As I stare down at an ample stomach I realize I have missed no meals as yet, in fasting, or for any other purpose.  Luke continues in verse 3 saying … “And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. [verse 4] And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.”  Imagine the self-denial it takes to continue to refuse food in this condition.  Jesus is near death and still He obeys.  There could not be a worse test than this for self-preservation vs. obedience that Jesus or anyone could envision.  Jesus passes.  But that does nothing to fill His belly.  He remains as hungry after He says no, then before He rebukes Satan in this regard.  Satan is the one amazed now.  This makes no common sense.  This is like choosing to die rather than choosing to live.  Why would God let Him say no?  It makes no sense.  He has the power to fix his, but He refuses to fix it.  And how do the words of scripture fill that belly so small from the hunger He has endured?  They are words on a page, Satan is talking about taking care of a bodily need, His human half needs to survive.  He is in literal pain.  How do figurative words fix that?  No one understands.  But His refusal to spend power on Himself remains.

Luke continues in verse 5 saying … “And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. [verse 6] And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. [verse 7] If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. [verse 8] And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.”  Here is where the rubber meets the road for us.  To save us Jesus must pay our price, He must die in our stead.  We are every one of us guilty.  Therefore each of us have earned death, and to avoid it, Jesus our perfect God, our perfect creator, must take on our punishment and die in our stead.  That is “how” we can be saved.  That is “how” justice from a just God can be satisfied.  Not by denying our death we have earned, but by substituting our death for His.  But here is Satan offering a different plan, a MUCH MUCH easier plan.  Here is Satan saying he will just give us all to Jesus without any death, just with a momentary acknowledgement that Satan has won this round.  Bow to Satan, and Satan will give back dominion of earth to Jesus for free.  No death required.  But therein is the trick, no salvation either.  Our death is still our death.  With no substitution we cannot be saved.  So Jesus passes, for this, and for the primary reason, that only God should ever be worshipped.  There will be no easy way out.  And the hunger remains.  Jesus is inching closer to a natural death by starvation.  It is in this condition He refuses the easy way out.

Luke concludes these enumerated temptations picking up in verse 9 saying … “And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: [verse10] For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: [verse 11] And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. [verse 12] And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. [verse 13] And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.”  Here Satan tempts Jesus with protection God is supposed to guarantee.  Jesus refuses.  Why?  That protection is there, it is guaranteed.  But it was not meant to be used to “prove” Jesus is God, that would do nothing but satisfy a non-existent ego in Jesus.  Jesus would not prove Himself as the Son of God by forcing God to protect Him when it was not needed.  Jesus would allow God to protect Him as God sees fit, according to the will of God, even when protection does not come.

And still Jesus is starving.  His mental capacity must have given its all in these tests.  At this point the flood gates of heaven open, and the angels who long to serve Him burst to earth with food He needs.  Satan is driven away for a season.  And His body is given emergency care by the Holy Spirit to restore Him enough to resume a ministry His starvation nearly robbed Him of.  He was obedient unto death.  It was the will of God for Jesus to die, but not like this.  So Jesus was preserved.  For mankind still needed to know how great the love of Jesus was.  We needed a personal encounter with Him.  And that was not to be denied to us from Him dying alone of starvation in the desert wilderness of the country.  And Jesus was restored.  Luke offers only two texts that summarize a great number of events that occur in the other gospels.  He encapsulates the time between this and His return to Nazareth in only these two verses saying in verse 14 … “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. [verse 15] And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.”

The story ends better here.  But the conditions could not have been worse up until it.  It is hard to imagine that when I look around at the problems of others compared to my own, I find it was Jesus who had it so much worse than me.  Then I remember, He did all this – for me.  Jesus was “that Guy” for me, so that I would never have to experience anything like He did.  My obedience does not require my starvation, because the love of my Jesus chooses to see me eat, meal after meal, for more than 50 years and counting.  That is His kind of love for me, even when I have no memory of if, or now even if my memory fades of it.  His love is still there.  When I ask, what are the cure for my problems, I remember that serving others even while in the worst problems of my life, tends only to make them better, or of no effect.  It may be hard to take the focus off of me, when I believe I am suffering, but that may be just what the doctor ordered – a chance to benefit someone else, and lift my heart in the process.  When you think about it like that, it is not so hard after all.  And when you experience what submission to Jesus can do, how you think, and how you love, are the first things that change and improve, by a landslide.  I did not have to be that Guy, because He was there for me during His worst problems.  He was “that Guy” for me.