Hold on to one of these.  Hopefully you got it as you came in this morning.  If not they are available at the exits to pick up as you leave.  It says “Journey with Jesus in Your Daily Life” because this is the beginning of our time of Lent actually starting last Wednesday evening.  The Wednesday evening Ash Service stressed that we are starting our journey toward Easter, our journey with Jesus.  I will begin today with a Scripture which is not where most people would like to start.  Just prior to this Scripture in Matthew, Jesus was baptized.  Last week we looked at the passage that follows this particular set of versus and it was about Jesus calling disciples to follow Him.  But today we deal with temptation.  I chose the term “Rumble Strips” for a title; I’ll explain that in a little bit because I have a story that supports it.  But before I do so, I want to read the Scripture and I want to interject the quotes that Jesus uses.  It’s very important when you read what Jesus says and what He does; there is message in the very words but also in the structure of how Matthew has put it together.  And it is found, this temptation passage, in all four gospels and each of them builds the basis because Jesus shows us how to deal with temptation in just the telling of the story.  It’s a familiar one but listen to it, hopefully, with some fresh ears if you hear it for the first time. 

            In Matthew, Chapter 4, Verse 1-11, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the Devil.  After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry.  The Tempter came to Him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’  Jesus answered, ‘It is written:  Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”  Let us stop right there.  That’s a quote from Deuteronomy, Chapter 8, Verse 3.  Almost word for word it says, “To teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”  That’s one quote.  Moving on with Verse 5, “Then the Devil took Him to the Holy City and had him stand on the highest point of the Temple.  ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down.’”  Now notice, Satan now quotes Scripture himself because he quotes Psalm 91:11-12, ‘He will command His angels concerning you.  They will lift up their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone for he will command his angels.’  That’s Satan’s answer.  But Jesus answers in Verse 7, “It is also written, ‘Do not put your Lord to the test.’”  Which is a quote from Deuteronomy Chapter 6, Verse 16, almost word for word, so we have a battle of Scripture now.  Jesus and Satan are quoting it.  Again in Verse 8, ‘The Devil took Him to a very high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their splendor.  ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’  But Jesus said to him, ‘Away from me, Satan!  For it is written:  Worship the Lord, your God and serve Him only.”  Again, from Deuteronomy, Chapter 6, Verse 13, “Fear the Lord, serve Him only and take your oaths in His name,” it says in Deuteronomy.  “Do not follow other Gods, the Gods of the peoples around you, for the Lord your God, who is among you, is a jealous God and His anger will burn against you and it will destroy you from the face of the land.”  With that quote, then in Verse 11, “The devil left Him and the angels came and attended Him.” 

            The world tends to take either an “ignoring the facts before them” approach or “to make fun of”.  And even sometimes we, as Christians, make fun of Satan or the devil.  There was a comedian out of the 70’s, Flip /Wilson, some of you will remember him.  And he had a favorite line; he said, “The devil made me do it.”  And it became a catch phrase by many people.  But his most, for me, endearing quality was when he became Geraldine.  Now Geraldine, he put on women’s clothes and he was a woman for that time.  And he talked about he went into a woman’s shop and was shopping for a dress.  And he saw this dress and it was so beautiful and it was so wonderful.  But he thought the Lord would say to him, “Don’t be tempted”.  So he said, quoting Scripture, “Satan, get behind me.”  And you know Satan got behind him and said he looked pretty good from the back side too. 

            And maybe a little laughter helps us to know what is truly important.  But Jesus knows he has this temptation before Him.  The miracle of incarnation is that God comes in a human body to experience what we experience.  And that means he goes through the valleys and temptations just like we go through.  And so when the Lord says, “I know what you are experiencing,” it is a truthful statement.  It’s an awareness that He is our savior, yes!  He is one who has met the test, who has been tempted, and has stood his firm ground even after forty days and nights of hunger.  That alone would weaken anyone.  But here he is present in this setting with the understanding that he is beginning his journey for us and he starts, yes, with the baptism as a glorious statement, but the first real test is to come before those things that he could do, but he knows he must not do for they are not the right time or the place.  Scripture can be used both ways.  It can be used as a stepping stone to keep us in line or it can be used as Satan does in this passage to lead us astray.   

I chose a term for the title from a story that happened truthfully to us—to myself and my two daughters.  Sixteen years ago, Joyce was in Cedar Falls, Iowa at her father’s bedside where he was in failing health.  And our two girls and I were waiting till we could get away around Thanksgiving time.  So we started to drive out together, and that was a 500 mile trip with Dad and the two daughters together.  That was a challenge in itself.  Everything went smoothly until we got in to Iowa and they got one of their quick snow storms actually turning in to a blizzard.  Here we are driving along and it’s a whiteout between Iowa City and Cedar Falls along the Interstate.  So what do I do?  I’m in charge; I’m the Dad.  The girls say, “What are we going to do?”  I said, “We’ll be fine.”  Yeah, always, we’ll be fine—Dad’s say that.  But I knew it wasn’t fine; I couldn’t see the edge of the road and it was dark.  Headlights maybe went 40-50 feet in front of me, the snow was so thick.  Until I saw ahead of me, fortunately, the tail lights of a semi.  And I could see on the back door it said “UPS”.  I knew there was a terminal on the south side of Cedar Falls, Iowa, where the terminal was for UPS.  And I said to myself, I said more to the girls out loud, “That’s a UPS truck.  It’s going to go to Cedar Falls.  We’ll follow it; we’ll be okay.”  Well, that’s good; they were comfortable with that.  Now I still was not comfortable, but at least I kept as close as I could to that semi.  But that wasn’t enough.  I thanked the highway department. Now, I would follow that truck.  And by the way, our oldest girl, Krista said, “What happens if the truck goes off the road?”  I said, “Oh, he’s a good driver’ he’ll do well.”  But we did start to veer although we didn’t know we were veering until all of a sudden you heard the brbrbrbr, not of the truck, but of the tires on the rumble strip on the right side of the road.  Couldn’t see the road, couldn’t see the markings in any way, barely could see the signs, but we could hear the rumble strip.  It was a life saver.  Although I wonder why we don’t have rumble strips on the left side of the road?   

That’s a thought to keep us, as the Scripture did for Jesus, centered on His journey.  That’s what we need in our lives—rumble strips—to keep us from going too far astray.  That’s what Scripture can do for us.  You know, it’s when we look at Lent we have, some of us in an old tradition of giving something up for Lent.  Well, in this case, Jesus rejects the temptations, the temptations to keep care of his personal needs by turning stone into bread. He has the power to do so.  He has the power to call forth the angels to protect him as he would jump off the precipice.  He has the power to change who he worships from God to Satan.  It is the choice that Jesus has as surely as we do.  We may not have the power to turn stone in to bread or to jump off buildings and be protected by angels, but in a sense the temptations are the same.  It’s whether we stay on course with God or we go some other place.   

Lent means giving something up, but it also means replacing that which we give up with something else. So it’s not just saying “no” to temptation; it’s saying “yes” to that which is right.  Most of the time commercials tell us something very different.  It says, “Immediate gratification—get what you want now, do it the way you want to do it, fulfill your fantasies, meet your indulgences, and on and on.”  You’ve seen them if you watch TV at all or you listen to radio.  The difficulty comes, I think as a culture, we set ourselves up for our particular financial problems.  Now this is a quick analysis, but the prime mortgage debacle is basically out of greed and a false image that everybody ought to have this much when maybe they can’t afford it.  But we tell them, “You can live there if you want because it’s your American dream.”  But what God says to us, “You have what I’ve given you.  Live with that.  Be content.”   

Most commercials tend to lead us the wrong way.  But occasionally there is a good one. Now I don’t remember even, interestingly enough, the product.  And it’s, for me, not the important point.  It’s the one commercial where a pizza delivery guy is getting ready to step off into a street and a lady puts her hand in front of him to stop him from being hit by a car.  And someone else watches that and then their next step is to help somebody in another setting.  And someone else watches that second event, and then they go and help someone else to lift a piano or move a sofa or something.  And it’s passed and paid forward to follow that movie.  And it was a gift that made a complete circle.  What it said was, “We need to step forward and do what is right.”   

And I think that’s a great message.  It should be the height of the Christian message.  That when God sets the rumble strips of life to the commandments and say, “Do not do this” or “You shall do this”, the purpose is to keep us on the road that is the right road to be on.  It’s a powerful message because too often we claim what Jesus did not—to be strong enough to do it ourselves.  For you see Christianity is not just another set up technique of getting what we want to indulge ourselves by saying, “Oh, the Lord loves me and all I have to do is pray and he will fill me with all the bounties and desires of my heart.”  And that’s quoting Scripture.  See that’s the problem.  At one point we need to know Scripture well enough to call it to our mind when we need it but to not be led astray when someone else misuses it.  We have to read the whole of the Scripture and to do so by encouraging each other.   The only damage that we want to hit upon ourselves is our self esteem we say.  You need to take care of yourself.   You need to be the fulfilling of the American dream, put your desires and your hopes and dreams first.  But in truth, Jesus had to do it just the opposite.  And when we follow and go on the journey with Jesus that is where we are to go also. 

I read a story from Tom White about a woman, in this case, who was running for a public office.  Jennifer was her name.  And she had the challenge of going through that campaign as we see happening publicly now on the national level.  I really don’t know why anybody chooses to get in to that but they do.  But even at a slower and lower level, Jennifer had worked hard and campaigned well.  And, yes, she ended up winning and not just by a few votes but a deciding large margin. So she had the headiness of the victory, the joy of the celebration, and the sense of pride that she had now.  And people began to say, “You know, this is just the first step.  You’ve done this; now think of all the other things you can get.  You’re going to be on the inside crowd now.  This is not just your election but you’ve got your future for you now.  You’ll be able to have influence with lobbyist and you’ll be able to get gifts.”  And she was told directly in that way, “You’ll have power that you didn’t imagine.  And if you have enemies, you’ll be in a position where you can get rid of them.”  And all of a sudden, that’s not what she campaigned for.  So she took a long walk in the woods.  Fortunately a woman of faith, she struggled like Jesus struggled in the desert and in the wilderness.  She struggled with what she was tempted to go this way. So easy to do because every one says, “Now that you are here, you can do this.  You have the power.  It is in your hands.”  He whispered to her, “You have a real chance now to become important.  If you play your cards well, maybe a cabinet position.”  It was very tempting.  She had to get her priorities back.  She began to recognize that these were warning strips, the rumble strips along the edge of the road.  And so she got her spirit and her purpose back and won so she could keep looking forward where she knew she needed to go not where others were leading to her. 

Now not everyone is strong enough.  Some politicians fall that way; some go another way.  And it’s not the politicians alone though; it’s each of us.  And it happens on a daily basis.  A little bit here where we tend to veer off; it’s not so bad at first.  We get encouragement from someone else who says, “Oh, it’s wonderful”.  As I have so many times say, “You deserve what you have.”  And I always respond and say, “Well, I hope at least I’m thankful for what I have.”  And I do that not for a good response from that person but to help keep my heart and mind straight.  Because I’m not here because people are to do nice things for me, I’m here to represent Jesus Christ as we all are, as we all are called.   

So I want to give you something to take with you today.  Three little steps basically, but foundational.  You might want to write them on the back of that card because truly this is not dated; this isn’t just a journey with Jesus in the next 40 days of Lent.  This is a journey with Jesus in your daily life.  I want to give you one rumble strip first.  And it’s simple.  It is the word of God.  You can’t remember it if you don’t know it.  We do need to study and read the word of God.  To teach each of us that we live not just by the bread of this world but by the bread of God, the word of God that comes from the Lord.  So we need to read that which says the Lord is giving us a way and remember it.  Carry simple words and remembrances and let them be a foundation for you as a rumble strip.  So you might write just back there “the word of God” to read it daily, regularly in your life.  This is nothing profound or brand new.  It’s ancient and sacred.

The second rumble strip is as God, in Jesus Christ helped him to do, let God be God in your lives.  Don’t follow other small gods of this world.  Don’t push God with your own agenda.  Don’t make God into your own puppet.  Don’t try to be God in your own life.  Let God be God in your life.  Do what is right in the eyes of the Lord whenever possible.  That’s a rumble strip to remind us there is only one God, one God of all the creation of who is. 

So reading the word of God, letting God be God in your life, and the third is to void those other Gods, the ones that will lead us astray.  Fear the Lord your God, not with fear of trembling, of punishment, but as we spoke last week of awe and deep respect.  Serve God only.  Take no other oath but to accept Him as your Father.  Steer away from, stay on the middle course, do not follow other Gods in your life. 

Three rumble strips—the word of God, God being center, and staying away from others.  Again, nothing really new but just as important and foundational as any.  And also, by the way, we made it to Cedar Falls, Iowa following that UPS truck because the other piece is as you are on the journey is to keep your eyes upon the Christ.  Bowing to Christ is the first step in the journey and following God’s way helps us to keep in that pathway.  Let’s join together for a word of prayer, “Gracious God, you are firm in your laws for us, you are clear about that which we are not to do and that which we are to do.  Sometimes we avoid the simplicity of what you tell us because it seems hard at first.  But help us to see clearly that we are on a journey for all of our life and we take a step at a time keeping our eyes upon Jesus, the perfector of our faith, the one who has gone before us to show us the way, the one whose spirit is with us to strengthen and guide us.  And we thank you for the rumble strips that keep us on course not veering away from you. Lord, we are on the journey with you.  Keep us strong by your Holy Spirit.  In His name we pray, Amen.”

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