Introduction

This talk was given at St. Peter’s Church on 9 March 2025. Revd. Mark Fletcher explores trusting God daily, examining how Jesus’ wilderness temptations reveal our foundational struggles with dependence, testing, and idolatry. Discover how Lent invites us to strip away distractions and build practical, day-by-day faith in God’s faithfulness.

What are the temptations that you face? I don’t want you to answer that question, but I know the sort of thing you’re thinking of, but my suspicion is that we often answer that question in the wrong way. Our society thinks of temptations in quite a sort of narrow way, and I think that those are often only the symptoms and not the root of the struggles we have.

And we miss the really foundational temptations, and that’s what this really fascinating passage is about. So this is the start of Lent started this week and I think I always used to find Lent a little bit grim. You know, just get it over with, get onto the joy of Easter. But in recent years I’ve started to discover some of the joy of it, and I think that’s come from understanding it more.

You know, you know that Lent is the fast before the Feast of Easter. It’s a series of, it’s a time of anticipation and preparation for what’s to come, and it specifically mirrors Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness. And we are invited to follow Jesus there too. And it’s easy to think of Jesus’ time in the wilderness as a hardship.

And we think of Lent in the same way. I think, and it certainly was serious, but one of the things I loved about that video was it also captured some of the simplicity and the joy of that experience. If you’ve ever been on a retreat, you’ll know that it can be so joyful to simply, well live a little bit more simply.

To appreciate the simple blessings of life, to see the beauty of creation and the peace of solitude and the presence of God. I think there’s a real joy to be found in this lenten season. So Jesus, enter the wilderness. After his baptism and he spends these 40 days in prayer and fasting and in the midst of nature and in contemplation on scripture.

And we’re invited to have that same experience. So this lent my encouragement to you is to just do what it takes to make a little bit of time to switch off some of the distractions, to spend more time with God in prayer and in scripture. It’s a time to deepen your walk with God and to refine your faith, and I’m serious about that final part because that is part of what happens here.

I think Lent is like a kind of spiritual MRI scan that kind of looks deep within us and sees those kind of dark spots in our faith. At the end of his 40 days, Jesus faced testing. And if we are serious about the pursuit of God in Lent, then we will have the same experience. So that brings us to our passage.

I think I’ve heard a lot of sermons on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and I feel like people have often not really got to the heart of what’s going on. It’s a complicated passage, but I think if you are to really understand what’s going on here, you need to listen very carefully to the words of Jesus.

I know that’s a really simple thing to say, but it’s actually great advice for life. Don’t listen to the noise, don’t see the description, don’t listen to the distractions, but look carefully at what it is that Jesus says. And if you take nothing else away from this sermon, that’s the thing to take. Because Jesus is so profoundly rooted in the scriptures.

He’s so intimately part of them that when he is tempted and he really is tempted. He finds his way back into those great stories of the Bible and the things that he says aren’t just kind of appropriate quotes, but they are a key, a doorway into some of the great stories of the Old Testament.

Those three temptations are matched as you see, with three quotes from the Old Testament. And each of those quotes is linked to a story where the Israelites were tempted and usually failed. But in these cases, Jesus is faithful. Do you see that’s the fascinating thing that’s going on here.

Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness is retreading the steps of Israel after they were rescued from slavery in Egypt as they traveled through the wilderness. So these temptations are common to the Israelites, to Jesus, and to us. Let’s look at them in turn. The first is probably the most familiar and also the most pervasive.

I think we fail this one all the time. It’s a reference, I think quite obviously, to the story of manna in the desert. Do you remember this story? After they got out of slavery in Egypt through the Red Sea, they’re wandering through the desert and God provides for them, and he does so in the form of this strange seed-like substance, which appears on the ground each morning and they have to go out and collect it.

It’s called Manna and it’s a sort of bread from heaven. But I don’t know if you remember, one of the keys to the story is if they try and collect more of it than they need, if they try and store it up for the next day or for the future, can you remember what happens to it? It goes moldy, it goes rotten really quickly.

And when we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, give us this day our daily bread, it’s a reference to that story, isn’t it? So this is a really foundational thing and when the evil one tempts Jesus to turn these rocks into bread. It’s connected to that story. And Jesus quotes from a story in Deuteronomy and he says these words, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So that whole manna thing is an expression of our humble dependence on God day by day, and the temptation that we face is to replace that humble dependence on God with dependence on ourselves. That we desire to be in control to secure our future, and we use what power we have to hoard resources to give ourselves control and not need to depend on God.

It is in many ways, just old fashioned pride. I want to be in control. I don’t want God to be in control. But the irony is, of course, that as we hold up our resources, just like the manna. They go rotten. They only bring worry and unhappiness, and they rob us of the ability to see the day by day blessings of God, to know his love.

And this is the temptation that we face to learn once again, to receive each day as a gift from God and to receive it with joy. Jesus says, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. And by that he’s saying only God can provide what you really need to live joyfully and fully.

And that cannot be found by the accumulation of wealth or stuff. It can only be found by a day-to-day prayerful dependence on God. The Israelites were tempted by that. Jesus was tempted by that, and we are all tempted by that. Man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So that’s really good, isn’t it? Really interesting. The second is about testing God. So once again, the key to this is to look at what Jesus says and find the story that it comes from. And this is a quote from Exodus 17, and it’s a story about when the Israelites are in the wilderness and everything kind of goes wrong.

So they’re a bit lost, they can’t find any water, and very quickly they panic and they doubt God’s care for them, and they start to question God’s faithfulness. So this is from Exodus 17, the Israelites quarreled and tested God saying, is the Lord amongst us or not? You see, faced with an apparent crisis, they so easily, their faith falls to pieces and it’s the same for us when it goes wrong.

We so easily doubt God, forgetting all of the ways that he’s been faithful to us in the past, and of course forgetting the most important blessing of all. Because ultimately the proof that we are loved by God isn’t the little blessings that we’ve experienced in our lives, though there are many of those.

It is the greatest gift of all. It’s the gift of Jesus. It’s his death and his resurrection. Ultimately, the proof that we are loved is the cross, and if we are gonna fall into crisis every time things go wrong, if we’re gonna fail to trust in God even in the hard times, then life is going to be very difficult.

When Jesus talks about putting God to the test, it’s that it’s wanting God to prove his love to us over and over again. No. By contrast, we need to trust that God is good, that he will come to our aid, he will make a way. We were reflecting on this a little bit and talking about the fact that, you know, very often when God provides for us, it’s at the last possible minute.

Yeah, and it is always a slightly surprising thing, but there’s like this whole process of waiting and praying and then God comes through for us. And I think that that might be connected to this whole thing that God is saying, you need to trust me if you’re going to live freely and well. You need to trust me.

You need to trust in my faithfulness. And so it’s in that waiting that we are actually having to learn to trust God. He is good. But the test of faith is to hold onto that even when the times are hard. We need to trust. Jesus says, do not put the Lord your God to the test.

So the first is, man shall not live by bread alone. The second is do not put God to the test. The third is old fashioned idolatry. Now, we don’t talk about this very much, but the quote that Jesus has here in verse 10, when Jesus said it is written, worship the Lord your God, and serve him only is a quote from Deuteronomy. And the context of it is a warning from God.

So the Israelites are on the cusp of entering the promised land. They’ve traveled through the wilderness and God is saying, now you are ready to enter. And you’re gonna receive all of the things that I promised. And when you get there in that land flowing with milk and honey, when you are living in houses that you didn’t build and farming vines that you didn’t plant, don’t forget me.

Don’t forget all that I have done for you. In the midst of the wilderness when it’s really obvious that you need to depend on God. Well, there’s little else you can do, but trust in him. But the challenge to faith is when we get comfortable, when we are surrounded by stuff and we look at it all, and we are tempted to think that somehow we are responsible for all that we have, and we forget that all of it is a gift from God.

And pride creeps in. And once again, you start to put your trust in things that are not God and money and possessions and status. We think that they offer us security and we trust in them, and of course they don’t, they cannot last. But in doing so, we turn our backs on God and we worship things which are not God.

Jesus answered them. Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. Did you notice that all three of those temptations are about faithfulness? They are three ways that the Israelites struggled to practically put their trust in God. They were three ways that Jesus proved himself to be faithful, and they are three challenges to our faith.

And they’re all quite practical. You know, we sometimes think of faith as a kind of abstract belief in God, but it’s not abstract at all. It’s about literally building our lives on God day by day. It’s about putting our trust in him day by day. So this is what we enter into at Lent, not simply self-denial, but a self-discovery an examination of our hearts and the ways that they go astray.

A process of revealing or shining a light onto the black spots of our faith. And in doing so, we are challenged to learn to trust God day by day. To live in the light of his truth and discover the joy that can only be found in his presence to live lives as he intended us to. You are invited to follow Jesus into the wilderness this lent.

To strip back some of the clutter, to simplify our lives, to make time for God and his word, to give up some of the comforts that distract us to take up a new spiritual discipline. So Jesus says, come away to a quiet place and allow your faith to be refined and deepened and tested because that faith is the most precious thing you have.

It is more precious than gold. Amen.