My friends, today is Palm Sunday. It is the day we have shouted Hosanna’s with the crowd. It is the beginning of the Holiest Week of the year for us. But it is also the day we remember that the crowd FORGOT. It is my hope and prayer for you that you will not give into that same temptation…so that the highs of your experiences with the ever-living Christ will not be confined to once a week or once a year or even a few times in your life but will rather become a constant in your life.
First Christian Church, Grand Junction – Praising God, Changing Lives!
First Christian Church, Grand Junction – Praising God, Changing Lives!
Lent 2015 - Temptation
Folks, all around us, as in the time of Moses, people are dying. Literally, everyone dies. Metaphorically, people are dying to the ways of this world long before their earthly bodies give out. Just as the people of Moses’ time had to gaze upon the serpent if they wanted to live, people of our time must gaze upon Christ, must look up to Him and experience Him and make a decision to follow Him, in order that they might have the new life God offers through Him. Will you give them a chance to see Christ? Will you help them look up?
It’s time to get rid of the metaphorical sellers and money changers in your life – whatever is tempting you to choose values that aren’t God’s values – and to replace them with people and things that reinforce God’s values in your life.
I suppose we could all lament that God’s ways are not our ways. After all, it feels like human nature to want our way, doesn’t it? But Jesus reminds us that something else is true. Life, real life, is found not in seeking our will but in seeking God’s will, God’s ways. And if God’s words through the prophet Isaiah are true, God’s ways – for the most part – will NOT be your ways, so you’re going to have to work with the tools God has provided to resist the temptation of your own way and instead give over to God’s ways. What’s it going to be? Will you try so hard to save your life that you will lose it, or are you willing to give up your way to God – to lose your life for Jesus’ sake – so you may gain REAL life?
Fast forward to the present time, to YOUR life. When you are tempted, when you are abut to give into temptation and do something every bit as against God’s desires, every bit as evil or wicked as the people of the earth in Genesis 6, aren’t you happy that something has changed with God? Isn’t it great that God now KNOWS what it’s like to be experience temptation…that God wants so badly for us to not give IN to temptation but wants something BETTER for us…isn’t it wonderful that God now KNOWS even what we NEED to RESIST temptation because, thanks to Jesus, thanks to Emanuel, God in the flesh, has BEEN there. Folks, just like God desired more for humanity than for us to be wiped out completely so long ago, God NOW desires more for us than to allow us to give in to the temptations of society and culture. SO God offers us EXACTLY what we need.