Not By Bread Alone
a sermon based on Matthew 4:1,11
by Rev. Dr. David Rogne

In an insightful comic strip, "Frank 'N' Ernest," the cartoonist has Frank say to Ernest, "I don't mind fleeing temptation, so long as I can leave a forwarding address." That hits home, doesn't it? In our continuing struggle with temptation we often leave the door open a crack for a return visit

Admittedly, there are some sins we like better than others. While we know they should be resisted, we don't cut off our fantasies about them completely, just in case we want to entertain them some other day when we feel that life needs some added spice. A teenager went to confession at his church and proceeded through a list of very tame sins to a wise old priest. Experience told the priest that the young man was not being completely candid, so he decided to probe a little. "Are you sure that's all, son?" the priest asked. "Yes, Fa­ther," said the boy. "Are you sure you haven't been entertaining any impure thoughts lately?" the priest inquired.   "Oh, no Father," the youth replied," but they sure have been entertaining me!" We may flee temptation today, but as Frank said to Ernest, we like to leave a forwarding address, and that is what gets us into trouble.

In the scripture passage which we read earlier, Jesus deals with several temptations which, in one form or another, beckon each of us. Each of the temptations is, in itself, attractive. That is the problem for each of us. If sin were not attractive to us, we would have little trouble avoiding it. But some sins get a grip on us, and we have a hard time closing the door. The devil follows us and entraps us because we keep in touch--we leave that forwarding address. Jesus, on the other hand, was successful in resisting temptation be­cause he told the devil he wasn't interested. He slammed the door and, we read, Satan left him. Look with me at how Jesus handled the situation.

The first temptation deals with the tendency in each of us to let our spiritual aspirations be eroded by physical considerations.

Satan says, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." Jesus was highly vulnerable to this suggestion. He had been wandering in the wilderness for forty days. It is not surprising that after such a long fast, Jesus would be thinking about food. In this circumstance, the devil suggests that Jesus must take care of himself, that he'll die if he doesn't eat It seems to be the cry of good sense: "Look out for number one." "If you don't take of yourself no one else will."

Certainly, it is appropriate to take care of oneself. The problem arises when taking "care of ourselves" becomes our principal preoccupation. We need to provide for ourselves. So we seek bread, and then a little butter to make it better and then cake with a little frosting, and then a stove in which to bake, and a house to put the stove in; then a second house to get away from the one with the stove in it, and a car to get between the houses, and then two cars, a station wagon, a truck and a camper so we have something to stay in while remodeling the second house. At each stage the increase feels like a necessity, and it becomes harder and harder to distinguish between need and desire. The better the job we do of caring for ourselves, the more difficult we find it is to share. The more devoted we become to meeting our own needs, the less we trust that God can or will meet them.

Jesus resists this temptation to concentrate on his own needs. Quoting from the Old Testament, he counters the voice of temptation by calling to mind that humans do to live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from God. We cannot live without bread, but we do not really live if our concern is only bread, or those things which content us only physically. Our physical needs are so immediate that they often overshadow our spiritual aspirations. Indeed, they may cause us to lose sight of our spiritual natures altogether. Jesus is saying that we will never find the life of which we are capable in physical things alone. To maximize our capacities there is always the need to discipline our physical appetites.

Some years ago my family and I spent part of our vacation at a very remote Christian camp on the edge of the Cascade Mountains in Washington. While we were there, some young people came wandering out of the mountains, one at a time, over a period of several days. When I engaged them in conversation, they told me that they were involved in survival training through an organization called Outward Bound. When I inquired about it, they told me that the organization was started after the Second World War by some people who became convinced that many had died in the war because they were not ready for privation. When people had lost their material support, they just gave up. The purpose of the organization was to acquaint people with how much they could do without. They were trained for a couple of weeks and then turned loose in the wilderness with no food or water or tent.

When I suggested facetiously that they must have had their knapsacks filled with candy bars, they looked at me disapprovingly and said that they wouldn't have learned much from that. When I said that they must have been taught how to live off the land, they said no. The purpose was not to learn what you could eat, but how long you could go without eating and still survive. For them it had been a spiritual experience to be released from domination by their physical requirements. When we learn that we do not live by bread alone, we are freed up from slavery to our possessions and enabled to become the spiritually sensitive people God intended. We need bread but not bread alone.

The second test Jesus dealt with is the temptation that we humans have to think of ourselves as special.

In his mind's eye, Jesus was transported to the pinnacle of the temple. The temple stood on a leveled plateau on the top of Mt. Zion, in Jerusalem. At one corner there was a 450 foot drop from the top of the temple to the Kedron Valley below. If Jesus wanted to attract attention so that people would follow him, it would certainly be a dazzling trick to jump from there and land on his feet unhurt. Certainly, the Son of God should be able to bring it off. And Satan made it seem so right. He quoted Bible verses suggesting that God would take care of his own. He would send his angels to intervene. "They will know you are destiny's darling," he was saying. "Everyone will see that you are God's favorite and they will flock to you."

We are similarly tempted. We like to think that we are God's pet; that if we put ourselves out for God or devote ourselves to him, there should be some special protection; that if we get ourselves into a fix by trying to do what is right, we ought not to have to suffer for it. God ought to intercede in our behalf. A ministerial colleague tells of a time when he had to go to a Bible book store to pick up Bibles to be given to the children of his church. He parked on the street in front of the store, but he had no coins to put in the parking meter.

"No matter", he thought, "he was on an assignment for God." When he purchased the Bibles he returned to his car, only to find a parking enforcement person writing him a ticket. "But I was buying Bibles," he said, "for the church." "I don't care what you were buying," said the officer. "Everybody who parks here has to put money in the meter." As the preacher told the story later, he still couldn't believe that his good intentions didn't make any difference. He should have reflected on the fact that in spite of all Jesus' goodwill, he was still sent to the cross!

To the devil's suggestion that God is obliged to give protection to people who do things in God's service, Jesus quotes words from the Old Testament which remind us that we are not to put God to the test. Yet, there are people today who handle venomous snakes or even drink poison in order to show that they live under God's special protection. Jesus suggests that to do that is to put God on the spot. It is to try to force God to intervene and, he says, it is not a demonstration of faith, it is an attempt to be special, to be exempt from the consequences of our actions, and let God bear the blame when things go wrong.

I heard recently about an overweight businessman who decided that it was time to shed some excess pounds. He took his new diet seriously, even changing his driving route to avoid his favorite bakery. One morning, however, he arrived at work carrying a gigantic coffee cake. Everyone in the office scolded him but his smile remained cherubic. "This is a very special coffee cake," he explained. "I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning and there in the window were a host of goodies. I felt this was no accident, so I prayed, 'Lord, if you want me to have one of those delicious coffee cakes, let me find a parking place directly in front of the bakery. And sure enough," he continued, "the eighth time around the block, there it was."  He had learned all too well to put the blame on God for his own flirtation with temptation.

The third test Jesus faced is the temptation to take the easy way.

"Just fall down and worship me", says the tempter, "and I will give you the very things you are seeking to gain. Compromise a little bit, Jesus, and you can have everything. The ends justify the means. If your ambition is a worthy one, it's okay to break the rules. It is so hard to do things the right way. Make it easy on yourself. Satan is a good old boy. If you would just be agreeable to a little coexistence there is no limit to the things that could be accomplished."

The same voice speaks to us. Oh, I know we are not tempted to fall down on our knees and worship Satan. But we are often tempted to think that we are a special case, that we don't have to follow the rules, that we can do what others are not supposed to do, and that we can get away with it. But that way leads to destruction.

Jesus answers the argument of the tempter by shutting the door on him, saying in effect, "Get out of here, Satan! It is written that you shall worship the Lord your God and serve only him.”  Stephen Crane, the author of the classic Civil War story, The Red Badge of Courage, was one of America's gifted young writers by the age of 25. But, before he reached 30, he was dead. Born into a religious New Jersey family of preachers, he died, probably from a mix of malaria and tuberculosis, in a house which he shared with the madam of a Florida brothel. His fraternity brothers remembered how he would sit smok­ing his Turkish water pipe and regaling them with stories of his exploits with gamblers and prostitutes. "When you go to a new town," he counseled them," go straight to the bawdy houses and let the devil know you're in town." Giving his forwarding address to the devil certainly contributed to his early and sordid end. 

Out of the Civil War about which Crane wrote there comes a very different story. The Union forces were blockading Southern ports to keep goods from flowing to the Confederacy. The officer in charge of one of the blockades was offered a bribe to be some place else when blockade runners slipped their loaded ship through. He refused. They upped their offer, and again he refused. They upped their offer again, and this time sweetened it with the offer of the favors of a young woman, all the while pointing out that others were doing it and that no one would know or care if he did it. Rising to his feet the officer cried, "Get out and don't come back!" When his adjutant asked him why he had shouted, he responded: "I had to. They were getting to close to my price." It is a mistake to entertain temptation, The teaching of Jesus is clear. Get away from it and slam the door!

There is a story about a storekeeper who was concerned about a boy lingering too long near

a tempting display of fruit "What are you doing?" he said. "Are you trying to steal one of those apples?" "No, sir" said the boy, "I'm trying not to steal one." In such a circumstance it is a good thing for boy or adult to remove the temptation by removing himself. There are times and circumstances when it is altogether the brave and sensible thing to run away from temptation. The obvious and practical way of escape is the use of our two legs, to take to our heels and run for our lives. And when we leave, let's be sure that we slam the door. Tight. With no forwarding.