If You Are Good Enough

I was watching the TV the other day and a commercial popped on about a rejuvenating face cream. There were several women in the commercial, but I remember the older woman talking about how the cream really made her skin feel soft and when she looked in the mirror there was a soft warm and smooth glow to her skin. That sense of glow and smoothness made her realize how special this cream was and how it had changed her life. Now I will admit that I was definitely not the target audience for that product, but it really got me to thinking about many of the commercials we see on TV.

I am sure that it is not new to advertising, but advertisers do an incredible job at convincing us that we need something that we don’t have. Or more to the point of the beauty commercial, that we do not look good enough, are not beautiful enough without this product or that product. If you want to look 20 years younger then use this product or get this surgery. If you want to make a lot of money then buy this book or attend this seminar and the person will then teach you everything you need to know. If you listen to these radio talk show hosts about how to invest your money then you can be like these other people who listened to their advice and now have all this money. It all boils down to…if you do this, then you will get that.

Which is exactly what the devil does in our text today. Our reading today has the devil say “since you are God’s son” and other translations phrase it “If you are the Son of God”. Either way, the devil is suggesting to Jesus that since he is supposed to be God’s son, or if he really is God’s son then these next things should just come naturally to him. Since he’s God’s son he can turn stones to bread to break his fast, or if he falls no harm will come to him. Or in his final temptation he still uses the if language but shifts it from God to himself as the devil when it comes to worship. Perhaps he does that because Jesus has refused to do the things that the Son of God should be able to do. Since you didn’t produce bread from stones and since you didn’t have the angels come and rescue you, then perhaps you aren’t the Son of God you say you are, so if you worship me instead I can give you all the things that you will ever want for in this life.

Do you see how the devil is using the same tactics that this world uses? The devil is attempting to make Jesus question who he is and whether or not he is good enough. If you are who you claim you are then you should be able to do these things. If you can’t do these things then perhaps you need to change who you are or change who you pay attention to in this world. In other words the devil is telling Jesus that he’s not good enough. And I don’t mean as in he’s not powerful enough or strong enough as the Son of God, but that even as the Son of God he is not good enough as he is. The devil is attempting to change the focus and the view of Jesus so that he doubts and questions the very things that make him who he is.

What is so crazy about that is this story comes right on the heels of Jesus’ baptism where we just heard last week, and is literally the verses just before this one, where God tells Jesus that he is dearly loved and that God finds happiness in him. Now Jesus has been in the wilderness for forty days, but the last encounter we know of is God telling Jesus that he in fact good enough. Now we have the devil telling him he is not good enough, that he needs to do things differently if the devil and the world are going to believe that he is in fact the Son of God.

So what voice does Jesus listen to? He listens to the voice of God who tells him that he is in fact good enough just the way he is. To reinforce that idea he also quotes from scripture. What is fascinating is that every scripture that Jesus quotes is from the book of Deuteronomy. What that tells me is that the fact that Jesus was grounded in scripture and was told in his baptism that he was loved and God was happy with him are the foundations for his ability to resist the devil.

I’m not saying that advertising and the devil are the same thing, but the one thing they do have in common is that they try to convince us that as people we are not good enough the way we are. They want us to think that we have to change or pay attention to someone else or something else in order for the world to see us, love us or accept us. They want us to believe that happiness is achieved by changing the way we look, act, or use what we have. They want us to believe that we are not enough the way we are.

I want you all to know that God loves you the way you are. God finds happiness in who you are. God wants you to know that skin cream isn’t what defines you. Your wealth does not make God love you more than if you had less money. God does not care what clothes brand you are wearing, or whether you are an Apple or Android person. God doesn’t care if you eat steak every night for dinner or if you are on that new Keto diet that everyone seems to be obsessed with.

What I believe God does care about is whether or not you have a relationship with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. God cares about your true happiness and how you share that happiness with others. The way that we know those things and hold onto them is to look at the Bible and see God’s word right there for us. We know those things by coming together in worship and surrounding ourselves with other people who will lift us up and remind us that we are good enough, and that the powers of this world cannot tear us down if we do not let them. God cares that you know that you are dearly loved and that God finds happiness in you each and every day of your life. So don’t let anything in this world, whether a commercial, a person, the devil, or your own voice tell you anything other than that. You are always and forever will be a child of God and God will always and forever love you for who God created you to be. Amen.