Lent: Jesus is Our Substitute

Well, good morning.

So we are breaking from our journey through the book of Ecclesiastes.

We've been doing that for the past couple of months, just working our way through different passages in the Book of Ecclesiastes.

But the season of Lent began this past week with Ash Wednesday.

And the season of Lent, Lent means springtime, is what it means.

Not really a you know special word, but it's about the 40 or so days leading up to Easter.

And it's designed for us in church history to lead up to Easter.

And a lot of times, maybe you've been in a church and uh people gave up coffee for Lent or chocolate, you know, like real sacrificial things or wine or Netflix or something.

And all of that is designed for maybe you gave something up, maybe you gave up those things.

That's good.

I'm not saying don't do it, good, like great.

And it's designed to help you remember during the season a measure of sacrifice so that when we get to Easter, you remember that it is it is God's grace in Jesus that we feast on.

And so the season of Lent is just this preparation.

So we're gonna use the passages in the lectionary, which is this set aside of this book of scriptures set for different Sundays throughout the calendar year.

We're just gonna follow different passages set for different Sundays leading up to Easter.

So this morning, the the passage set aside in the lectionary, this historic document, is Matthew 4.

And so that's what we're gonna be digging into.

So Ash Wednesday begins, uh begins Lent, and Ash Wednesday is about us remembering what we really just we so badly want to forget, and that is that we're imperfect, and we're going to one day die.

That all of us will one day die.

So, you know, happy Sunday.

Hey, welcome, welcome to Christ the Redeemer.

Uh, but this will be incredibly healthy for our souls.

Last Sunday I spent in the afternoon, I went to a hospice remembrance service with my mom for my grandmother.

So the hospice service that served us and served my grandmother in her closing months, uh, her last months at the end of last year.

We went to this hospice remembrance service that they were holding, and it was for all the all the people that they cared for and their families.

For 2016, we all gathered together and we remembered them.

And we went to thank these people.

We went to thank these volunteers who sat with my granny in her closing months and cared for her and talked to her and loved her and wheeled her out of her assisted living place and down by the pond for you know an hour of sunshine, and they did this.

And so we went to thank these people for that.

And there's about a hundred people or so in this room, and it was a Jewish organization, hospice service was a Jewish service, and this lady gets up who's running the service, and she sings the psalm in Hebrew, and it is unbelievable.

And so, you know, Sam's working on his Hebrew because I mean that's something we're gonna be incorporating as seeing the Psalms.

I mean, it was it was awesome, it was incredible, it was so good.

And then after that, they just they start reading out loud the names of everybody that they had served and everybody who had passed away in 2016.

It's just name after name after name after name after name, and it's a lot of names.

And it's just every single one, these people cared for and helped die.

And it hit me like while the rest of us are trying to ignore this reality, that's before all of us, we're trying to ignore this reality and eat enough kale and run enough miles to escape it.

These people are doing this.

Like this group of people are giving their lives to this.

And they're up there talking about what an honor it is to do this.

It's like they know something that we don't.

Right?

And I think it has to do with the same thing that the historic church knew when they said, you know what, we're gonna set aside about 40 or something days leading up to Easter, and we're just gonna think about sin and death is what we're gonna think about.

Because death is not a drag.

That's kind of what I want you to grab hold of, and what last Sunday I was learning sitting in that service.

Death is not a drag.

To be in touch with that is not a drag.

It actually brings life.

Because it means that thing that we fear the most and ignore, if we actually face it and deal with it and embrace it, it means you can actually live right now rather than just trying to constantly escape the one great reality we will all go through.

So, Matthew 4, 1 through 3, we'll reread some of these verses as we make a few points.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Devil means liar, it's the personal force of lying and evil in the world.

So the liar, every time I hear devil, I think liar, and after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

And the tempter, the liar, came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, right?

That's how always how it starts.

Like, hey, if if you if you're this, hey, if command these stones to become loaves of bread.

So this liar comes along and says to Jesus, hey, Jesus, you can be the provider.

You can provide for yourself, you can take control.

You can have control.

Provide for yourself.

Provide for your own soul.

And this is where we get our first point.

And that's this we live with the temptation to provide for our own souls.

What does your soul crave and feed on to feel redeemed?

What does I love what Rob said.

We all have our systems, right?

In middle school it's one system to self-save, in high school, it's another system to self-save at age 30, age 60, age 80.

We all have our systems of self-saving, which is sin.

That's what sin is.

It's us trying to self-save apart from God's work in Jesus.

What does your soul feed on to feel redeemed and valued and whole?

On a daily basis, do we feed ourselves via merit and performance and achievement, or do we feed on God's grace to us in Jesus?

And Jesus responds to this liar in verse 3, but he answered, it is written, Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

And this is sort of a nod to the Old Testament when God fed the Israelites in the desert, the wandering around the desert, and God feeds them with manna, and we go, oh, what a great story.

And in the New Testament, that story gets even bigger and more profound because in the New Testament it's used as a metaphor to say, hey, God feeds us.

It's God that feeds our souls, it's not us that feeds our souls.

Jumping back in in verse 5.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple.

Jesus up on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you.

And on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

He said, Hey, you can do this.

Test God, you can do this.

And Jesus said to him, again, it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

So the liar comes to him.

Second temptation here.

Says, you can be the overcomer, Jesus.

You can control your future apart from the Father, apart from God the Father, you can control your future.

Just reach for more power, reach for more control, because that will be the thing that will help you.

That will be the thing that saves you, is you having control.

And this is point number two.

We live with the temptation to control our futures.

We want to make that thing happen when we want it to happen, right?

Maybe you know the feeling of constantly wanting to control your situation or your environment or that person, and you exhaust yourself in making sure everyone is happy or everything is safe or that bad thing is turning to good quicker than it really is going to.

Or maybe you're like me and you want to control things to the point of like you hear that a friend is hurting and you just want to fix it.

You're like, how can I fix it?

Maybe money can fix it.

Maybe I can step in, I'll I'll fix it, I'll be the fixer.

Right?

And we reach for more and more control rather than sort of a measure of passivity to go like, oh, I actually can't.

I actually can't fix everything.

I actually can't control everything.

I actually need God Himself to be involved in these situations, environments, and peoples and families and groups.

Because it turns out you don't have control over everything.

And isn't that freeing to come to grips with that?

Right?

Right rather than exhausting yourself trying to control everything.

Verse 8, again the devil took him to a very high mountain.

So this is a third temptation coming, a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

Are you noticing yet?

These are all things that Jesus could rightly do.

And all things that at other points in time he did.

And the liar said to him, All these I will give to you, all these kingdoms I'll give to you if you fall down and worship me.

Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

So the liar says, Hey, bow to me.

Bow to me.

Right?

And this is point number three.

We live with the temptation to bow to something other than God Himself.

Every night, Christy and I, we we put our girls to bed and we crawl up in their bunks and we, you know, you tuck them in, you whisper sweet things to them, and you pray for them, and we try to escape out of those rooms before they ask for something else.

We make it back to the den.

We make it back to the den and we talk for a few minutes, and then I I reach, you know, I reach for the the remote control.

And I reach for the remote control.

Now, every once in a while she gets back to the den before me.

And she's already there and she's established.

So if you're married or you have a roommate, you know these how this stuff works.

You've been here.

Now, here's the amazing thing about my wife.

She does this amazing, amazingly selfless thing in that moment.

She doesn't say anything.

She just puts the remote on the ottoman.

That's all she does.

She stays laying on the couch, she puts the remote on the ottoman, I walk by and I pick it up.

And I tell myself this is because I have great clicker intuition.

I'm very good.

I have a lot of practice.

I also tell myself this is because I sit closer to the hallway, and if you know that little four-year-old, little six-year-old comes around that corner, I'm quick.

I'm really quick to turn that TV off just in case you never watching 60 Minutes and there's children buried under bomb buildings or something.

Like we're gonna hit that off before they turn that corner.

And so I'm on it, right?

And I tell myself, this is why.

This is why she's giving it to me.

But actually, it's not.

The reason why she's giving it to me is the same reason why I demand to drive the entire way when we go on vacation, every time, no matter how tired I am.

I love control.

I love it.

I don't know what to do when I'm not in control.

Sam and I went to lunch this week.

We get out to the parking lot, and I forget why, but Sam said, Oh, I needed gas.

I need gas in my car.

And he says, Well, I can drive.

And I just, I don't know if he picked up on it.

Literally, I stood there for a second, like, what is that gonna be like?

So I'm riding with like with him.

And I like sit down and over in that seat over there, there's nothing to do over there.

But I love control.

And I sort of hate the fact, and maybe just on some level, that I can't control the provision of redemption for my soul.

And I really fight it.

Because I use, like Rob said, lots of different systems to just, alright, I accepted Christ as Savior, but today I'll remove him and I'll put in a new system to feel redeemed, to feel valued before God.

I'm not sure if you watched the Oscars uh or the news in the last like two weeks.

There's a little mistake made.

Are you aware about this?

I'll fill you in.

So uh a PwC employee who runs the Oscars uh hands the wrong envelope to the to the right person at the wrong time.

The right is the right envelope, nothing wrong with the envelope itself.

Just went to the at the wrong time he handed it.

So the wrong movie is called out for like film movie of the year, kind of a big moment in the in the night.

Uh it's been all over the news.

This poor PWC employee, and he's getting killed in the media.

I mean, really, I mean, it's just, you know what?

It was his fault.

It was.

Like, there's no there really is nobody else to blame.

Like, like it really was he handed this his job.

He didn't have to make a speech, not to dance like JT.

Like, all he has to do is stand there and hand the right envelope to the person.

This is it.

24 envelopes.

Just get it right.

This is it.

This is the job.

And he he doesn't get it right.

He meant he failed.

He couldn't pull it off.

And it doesn't help that he was told, hey, like, no social media.

And then he tweeted a picture of Emma Stone.

But you know what?

Like, can you blame him?

He's an accountant, right?

He's an accountant on the side of a stage, and Emma Stone is there.

Of course he tweeted a picture, right?

They shouldn't have allowed him to have his phone.

I mean, clearly the people running this thing don't believe in the doctrine of the bondage of the will because they would have known he would have tweeted the picture.

And that's just a big theological term to say if Emma Stone is there, you will tweet a picture or you'll want to tweet a picture.

That's what bondage of the will is.

Is that right there?

That sentence.

Now this guy's probably, he's in his, you know, he's in a closet with 20 boxes of tag-alongs, is what he's doing now.

And here's what he's wishing.

Because we're this guy, by the way, if you haven't picked up on it.

He's wishing he had been perfect that day.

Or he's wishing he had had a substitute.

One or the other.

And this is where Matthew 4 is so good for us.

Because I'm just constantly trying to put myself into Matthew 4.

Instead of Jesus living this out and being righteousness for me, I'm trying to wake up and be my own righteousness.

Living by merit and not grace.

And you know how it's seen?

It's seen in my exhaustion, it's seen in my self-righteousness.

It's seen when I'm surprised by my own sin.

Like I say something, I do something, I'm kind of like, I can't believe, and I beat myself up for a while.

Because how dare, how could I?

How could I do that?

It's seen in judgment towards others, it's seen in a lack of compassion towards anybody, including yourself.

And I guarantee you, this PWC guy this week is about one of the most compassionate people on the planet earth this week.

Because he's in touch with the fact that he's not perfect.

And we're this guy.

And God goes into our failure.

That's what this passage is about.

It's not about that Jesus couldn't turn a stone into bread or you know, of course he could.

He did.

He fed 5,000 people, right?

I mean, he had performed this type of thing before, but that's not what this is about.

This is about God stepping into our failure to live out that which we cannot.

It's substitutionary righteousness for us.

And so we are forgiven and righteous.

That's what happened at the cross.

He dies on the cross.

Our sin is put upon him, and his righteousness is put upon us.

It is double imputation.

Our sin imputated to him, his righteousness imputated to us, and what that means for us is he's not just our example, he's our substitute.

And this is incredibly, incredibly freeing because it's not about merit with God.

It's about confession.

It's about living in confession.

It's about living and receiving and in the response of that position.

So it's not depressing.

It's not depressing to say I'm a sinner.

Not depressing to be in a church that says we're all a bunch of sinners.

You're a sinner.

That's not depressing.

No, it's depressing if you're in church that shames you with it.

But for it just to for it to be the correct term for the condition of humanity, that's not depressing.

Here's what's depressing for you to spend your entire life to avoid the fact that you're a sinner and try to pull something off that you have no ability to pull off.

And that is justification of yourself and your value and your righteousness.

And it is vanity to try to do this over and over and over again apart from Jesus.

This is point number four, what's going on in Matthew chapter four?

Jesus is denying his authority, living out perfectly what we are incapable to live out on our own.

So after I awkwardly sat in Sam's car, panic attack the entire time, didn't let him know.

Um, I couldn't hit the brake pedal.

He was in charge of the brake pedal, also, right?

And you're like on the expressway and full control.

Sam's in full control, didn't know what to do with that, and we're driving, and we go to lunch, and then we go to an Ash Wednesday service.

And at the service, the minister tells us, from dust you are born, and to dust you will return.

And I walk forward, and my friend Marty, who's the minister, he takes ashes on his thumb and he marks my forehead as a symbol.

As a symbol that I'm a sinner, as a symbol that I will die.

And it wasn't shaming at all.

It was freeing.

Because you know what?

It explained it.

It explained a lot about me.

It explained a lot about you, it explained a lot about the world.

You know what it did?

It put me in confession and it put me in repentance, and it put me in unbelievable gratitude for what Jesus did in his life and death and resurrection.

So, my brothers and sisters, from dust, you were born, and to dust you will return.

May you spend your life resting in God's great work for you, Jesus.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that while we are imperfect and sinners and rebel against you and what you have called us to, you gave us a substitute, yourself.

May we rest greater in Christ finish work for us that we might live free and might live in the fruit of the spirit that is born within us.

God, so many of us need to confess this morning those systems of self-saving.

Maybe within the secular realm, maybe within worldly, maybe religious, where we just rely on ourselves and not Jesus' righteousness.

Would you increase our trust in Jesus that our lives might honor you?

In Christ's name.

Amen.