We Believe in Jesus, Who Suffered Under Pontius Pilate

HOOK - I love dark chocolate. It’s my favorite. I’m not talking about milk or white chocolate, or the 50% cacao that you find in stores. I love the dark, bitter stuff. I must have a very bitter heart or something.  

Years ago, I would have one of the Dove dark chocolates each day, the ones with the little messages inside. One day I opened it and the message read: “Temptation is good. Give into it!” Well I threw the whole thing across the room, chocolate, paper and all. Get behind me Satan!

You might not be tempted by chocolate, but by something! If there is one thing that every human has a shared experience in, it is temptation. And temptation is the most common form of suffering.

Suffering itself, is a very difficult topic. It is very real and very personal. It is the most common objection to the Christian faith and the experience of suffering is the most painful obstacle to receiving the gospel.

This past year has been so hard for everyone due to the range of suffering: from disease to death, from loneliness to loss. I know many of your own stories at the beginning of this year and know how many of you are walking through your own suffering; job loss, miscarriage, family strife, unmet expectations, singleness. Suffering is hard. And when suffering comes, temptation seems to always be right alongside it.

What makes everything even more difficult is that no matter how much work and time and planning we put into making a good life, with good health, and comfortable finances, and a secure career and happy family…. Something will ultimately come along and ruin it all. That’s the dread we all have.  In fact, in the secular view of life, suffering is the most horrible thing to occur to us, as it can never be meaningful. I mean, if this life is all there is, then of course anything disturbing my happiness and threatening my life, is the greatest enemy. Thus the surrounding culture wars against suffering. And the culture says that if a loving powerful God exists, He would not allow evil. And because evil exists, there must be no God.

But missing in that equation is the very reality of God and His purposes, even in suffering. I think of Joni Eareckson Tada, an architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act,  who has suffered immensely as a quadripelgic for over 50 year. She tells of her own story: “On a hot July afternoon in 1967… I went to a beach on the Chesapeake Bay for a swim… I dove in and instantly felt my head hit something hard — my neck snapped and I felt a strange electric shock…. I knew then that something awful had happened. Later, at the hospital, I learned I had severed my spinal cord and would be left a quadriplegic for the rest of my life. I was devastated…. Many days afterward, I would sit in front of a Bible, holding a mouth-stick between my teeth and flipping the pages, praying that God would help me put together the puzzle pieces of my suffering…  I’m convinced a believer can endure any amount of suffering as long as he’s convinced that God is with him in it. And we have the Man of Sorrows, the most God-forsaken man who ever lived, so that, in turn, He might say to us, “I will never leave you; I will never forsake you.” God wrote the book on suffering and He called it Jesus. This means God understands. He knows. He’s with me. My diving accident really was an answer to that prayer to be drawn closer to Him.``

And that is a very different take on the reality of suffering in face of a good God. It is so rich and powerful and sobering and different from any other explanation. That’s why in the hallmark explanation of the Christian gospel, the Apostles Creed states: We believe in Jesus... who suffered under Pontius Pilate. 

Those few words are utterly shocking because it claims that God suffered and then put Jesus’ suffering at the hands of a real, historic man: Pontius Pilate.  Just think about that, the only other name in the creed beside Jesus and Mary, is Pilate. Not Jospeh or John… but Pilate, the Roman politician who presided over Jesus’ torture and execution.  This was no myth, this provides no sentimentality. This is history!

In fact, all of Jesus’ life was suffering. From the ignoble birth in a germ-ridden stable to rejection by friends to excruciating  death. And one of the most profound areas that Jesus suffered was in our reading today: outside in the desert wilderness, with no food or water, for 40 whole days, and then facing the most intense demonic temptation known to man. Jesus suffered.

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But He didn't suffer without encouragement. This event took place after Jesus was baptized and the Holy Spirit came on him to empower him and guide him. But even more, the Father had just spoken words to assure Him, that the fire of pain He was about to walk into was NOT due to his Father's displeasure. Then Jesus was “led by the Spirit in the wilderness  for forty days, being tempted by the devil.”

Catch 3 things from that: wilderness, the number 40, and temptation. There is so much richness in this text that I hope we know Jesus better through it! 

The Wilderness is an Israeli desert full of suffering. The biggest event that took place in the Wilderness was when the nation of Israel was delivered from Egypt then journeyed into this wilderness. They disobeyed God’s command to enter the land, out of fear. And thus were condemned to wander in that dry baking dessert for guess what… 40 years!

And at the end of those 40 years, Moses told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8:2–3 : “You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.”

And in the same exact manner, Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, was there forty days where he was "tested" or tempted and was made hungry by his fasting!   Jesus here is the true and better Israel. He’s spending his forty days in the wilderness.   He fasted the whole time and became quite hungry. The forty days remind us of the forty-day fast of both Moses and Elijah in the Old Testament. Jesus is the true and better prophet!

And at the very end, Satan appeared to tempt Him. The biggest event that took place where Satan directly tempted someone else was in Genesis 3, at the temptation of Adam and Eve. They both enjoyed a paradise, not a wilderness. They had a feast, not a fast. When Satan came to them and tempted them, they gave in to that temptation and were kicked out of the garden into the wilderness. And in Luke 3, right before the account of Jesus’ Temptation, the author traces the genealogy of Jesus all the way back to Adam. the And so, Jesus picks up where Adam leaves off, in the wilderness facing the exact same tempter. Jesus is the true and better Adam who goes back to the battlefield where Adam failed.

And Satan urged Him to take three actions: 1.) turn stones into bread; 2.) leap from the Temple and be caught by angels; and 3.) worship Satan himself in exchange for world control. All three temptations involved things that were not bad in themselves: things like bread, the ministry of angels, and government. And we must ask, could Jesus have been tempted unto sin by these things? Could Jesus have turned stones into bread? Would Satan give Jesus the kingdoms of the earth? Would the Father have protected Him if He had taken the leap? Of course He had the power to do those, but He never used His power for Himself! Were they all that alluring, so as to make Him gain them for Himself at that moment?  I don’t think so. He was perfectly loyal to His Father. What temptation does however is  test you, to know what was in your heart. These temptations were testing, suffering, to expose what was in Jesus. 

And Jesus revealed what was truly in Him. He dismissed each of Satan's proposals, saying that bread was inferior to the word of God, that one must not design tests for God, and that only God was worthy of worship. And you know how He did this? He quoted Scripture, directly from Deuteronomy, which was Moses’ speech at the end of Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness!

You see, temptation to sin and suffering is as old as the Garden of Eden, but unlike Adam and Eve, Jesus did not succumb to the devil's temptations. For every single person, temptation is a trial, a time of proving and suffering. But unlike children of Israel who died in the wilderness, Jesus, proved Himself righteous in the wilderness! See, He would fully trust His Father and the Spirit to provide for Him. He never used His power for His own self or sake. He multiplied bread for others, but not for Himself. He gave His power away, trusting God to protect Him. 

And this extraordinary season of suffering, with the temptations along with it, proved what Jesus was truly made of! Jesus suffered. And that suffering exposed who Jesus was!

LOOK - Suffering and temptation examples

And that is exactly what suffering, temptation and testing does: it proves what is in us.  Now it’s important to differentiate between those 3 things: Suffering, Temptation and Testing.  Suffering is the external or internal situations and events that come against us, most of which we have no control over. Temptation  is the evil conspiracy against us in the midst of the suffering, initiated by our own hearts or real evil spirits. In fact James 1:13-14 says, “Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.”

Now where does Testing come into this, if God doesn't tempt us? James 1:2-3 states: “ Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” Awh, so God is orchestrating the entire situation, suffering and allowing the temptation, in order to prove something about us and work something into us!

You and I are very much like a water bottle. If I take this water bottle and hit it, water will come out of it. Suffering is the impact of my hand on the bottle. Temptation is what the enemy or myself use to justify a reaction to the impact. Testing is me orchestrating the entire event to reveal what is in the bottle. There are situations in our life that will come at us and hit us, that is suffering. What will come out of us is the focus. At that moment, we will be tempted. We aren’t responsible for the situation or suffering, but we are responsible for how we handle the temptation. How will we respond? What will come out of us?

And usually all of these things are occurring simultaneously. I had a friend this week say, “when it rains, it pours'' as he was describing all of the areas of his life he is suffering at right now. They all came at one moment, in one day. His health, his marriage, his family, his life, and even the loss of his savings. And his own heart is tempted heavily at this time to return to old sins. He wants to escape it all and run away. And add to it, he is pessimistic about the future, just expecting things to get worse.

In times of suffering, the traps of temptation are ever present. That’s what makes suffering so dangerous and painful. Suffering exposes our hearts to temptations like never before. When suffering comes, there are a variety of temptations that greet us. In a recent survey of American’s, the top 5 self-reported temptations are: Anxiety or Worry, Procrastination, Eating too much, Overuse of electronics and social media, and Laziness.  Those are the real things of life that we run to for comfort, to please ourselves and not God. We have no idea how dangerous this is.

It’s in the midst of the suffering that the tempter comes to us and has a very precise plan to bring destruction to us. The temptation moment is also very much like butchering a cow. In today’s high-tech and humanitarian age, instead of yelling and prodding cattle, cows are led in silence to a ramp. They are led through a ‘squeeze chute’ with gentle pressure that mimics a mother’s nuzzling touch. Everything feels normal and like going home. As they mosey down the path, a conveyor belt slowly and gently lifts them up, without them even noticing. Then, in a sudden moment, a blunt instrument surgical strikes them right between the eyes. They are now meat and they had no idea what was coming.

You and I are being cultivated in ways we don’t even know. There are evil forces and people that want to destroy us. There are intensified temptations coming at us, we don’t know when or where or by whom. There will be suffering in your life, coming your way. And my job as an Elder is to prepare for such suffering.

Just think through the variety of situations that you will face: opportunities and options, hardships, troubles, limitations, lies, differences, sinning against and being wronged, sufferings, shortcomings, Satan and demons, but also blessings and prosperity. All of these are sources of trial and testing and suffering that are coming your way. Today... Right now.

In fact if you can boil all of them down, the Bible says there are 3 common temptations to us all. 1 John 2:16 calls them “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life.”  Just think about those. These three are the exact same temptations that faced Adam and Eve in the Garden and Jesus in the Wilderness.

First, they were tempted by the lust of the flesh and ate the fruit. Second, they were tempted by the lust of the eye desiring that which was harmful because it looked pleasurable. Third, they were tempted by the pride of life to be their own god in listening to the serpent say they would be like God if they ate the fruit.

Yet Jesus faced those exact same temptations and came out victorious!  First, He was tempted by  the lust of the flesh, to turn the stones into bread. Second, Jesus was tempted by the lust of the eyes to do something spectacular by throwing Himself off the temple and having His angels rescue Him in front of everyone. Third, Jesus was tempted by the pride of life to receive all the kingdoms of the world if He worshiped Satan.

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You and I stand at the exact same  crossroads of temptation everyday. What will we do when the suffering comes? What will you choose? Will you seek to please yourself or to please God.

What do you do in that situation? Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 26:41 “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

In the face of a storm of suffering, where demonic activity is heightened, your lusts are aroused, and the circumstances are optimal for sin, you need to pray for the Lord to lead you away and out of temptation.

You desperately need to ask God to keep you from falling into the power  of temptations. You are not strong enough to handle these on your own. When you’re faced with an enticement to sin, look for the way out. God is faithful and will not leave you to face your temptations alone. Jesus said He is the Way! Pray for His protection and keep your guard up. 

Jesus said to pray “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” in Matthew 6:1.  You need to pray this right now, even prior to any temptation. You are defenseless and needy. Do you want the Lord to help in advance and remove or diminish the power of temptation? Well pray even before the temptation comes. Acknowledge your weakness and confess to God that you are utterly dependent on His strength to protect. 

If you think you are strong, you will fall. You can never obtain a false confidence in your ability without praying and asking for help and protection.  We have to keep our relationship and communion with God strong by constantly leaning into His strength, not our own. Through our weakness, He is shown strong!

And one of the most striking ways to demonstrate that weakness and desperation is through fasting.  That sounds weird because fasting is a form of suffering, self-imposed, voluntary suffering. Why in the world, when your life is in turmoil, would you fast? Well sometimes, it is automatic. There are times in life where the pain is so traumatic, that we don’t even remember to eat.  It’s as if the body automatically embraces its weakness and cries out for help.

Then there are the other times, when fasting is a voluntary weakness we embrace to express our prayer and desperation for God.  Fasting also reveals the things in your own heart. I mean, if you spend a day not eating food, you will  feel everything: anger, prickliness, impatience, frustrations, etc. You see, the things already in you are being exposed! This is really powerful because it takes a total knockout punch to the desires of the flesh, lust of the eyes and pride of life.  And the aim of fasting is that we come to rely less on food and pleasure and life and more on God Himself. That's the meaning of Jesus' response to all the temptations in Luke 4:4, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.,  in Luke 4:8 “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” and in Luke  4:12, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” Every single  time we fast, we are saying those words of Jesus, "Not bread alone, but you, Lord. I will worship you alone Lord.  I will not test but trust  you, Lord.!”

So what are you suffering right now? What is it in your life that you are being tempted by right now? Are you in a place of weakness? Do you feel desperate?  Maybe just thinking about that gives you an idea of some things you need to fast from. I invite you to let God prove and test your heart with fasting. Just see if He does not reveal some deep things to you, and also give Himself more to you for food. And that’s the goal. That’s why in John Piper’s book, Hunger for God he says, “Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God… Fasting proves the presence, and fans the flame, of that hunger. It is an intensifier of spiritual desire. It is a faithful enemy of fatal bondage to innocent things. It is the physical exclamation point at the end of the sentence: “This much, O God, I long for you and for the manifestation of your glory in the world!” Fasting is a hunger for God!

CHRIST-CENTERED CLOSING

There is one more important thing to remember in all of this.    When it comes to fasting, we fast, not to obtain God’s favor, but because we have it already. Some fast with the wrong motivations. They try to earn God’s favor. They try to get attention from other people to show how dedicated they are. That will mess you up. You don’t want to go in that direction. We don’t fast to receive God’s favor; we fast because we already have it freely because of Jesus.

That’s a true thing, not just when it comes to fasting, but in the suffering, temptation and trial. It's during hardships that we can be tempted like Job to “curse God and die”. Suffering will be unbearable if we aren’t certain that God is for us and with us. And if you aren’t a Christian, I’m sure you feel the void of suffering. We all seem to  think that suffering is a punishment. We think temptation means we have done something wrong. We think fasting is a way to get God to approve of us again.  Nothing can be further from the truth!

The truth is that suffering is the very heart of the Christian gospel. You see this in verse 13 “And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.” He kept after Jesus. You see, Christ’s entire life was a journey of suffering. Isaiah 53 prophesied of Him: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.”

Jesus lost all of his glory and radiance, so that we could be clothed in it. He was tempted, so that He could provide us a way out. He was rejected, so we could be accepted. He was chained and nailed to a cross, so that we could be liberated and free. He was cast out so we could be brought near. Jesus suffered immensely so that we would never face the worst kind of suffering: being cast away into hell. He was the one who suffered such merciless agony, so that any suffering that comes into your life will only form you into something wonderful. Jesus is the suffering lump of coal under pressure, that turns you and I into a gorgeous diamond. Jesus is the ultimate Job, the only One who is a truly innocent sufferer. And He took your sufferings, if you believe and trust in Him.

That is why, and only why, Joni Eareckson Tada can say: “I sure hope I can bring this wheelchair to heaven... I’ll say, “Thank you, Jesus,” and he will know that I mean it, because he knows me. He’ll recognize me from the fellowship we’re now sharing in his sufferings. And I will say, ”Jesus, do you see that wheelchair? You were right when you said that in this world we would have trouble, because that thing was a lot of trouble. But the weaker I was in that thing, the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair… So thank you for what you did in my life through that wheelchair. And now,” I always say jokingly, “you can send that wheelchair to hell, if you want.”

Jesus , He and He alone, makes sense of suffering. He is the architect of our trials. His cross is the reference point for all our pain. He sympathizes with our agony. He is the way of escape from temptation. And His loud cry of dereliction on the cross is the only promise we hold on to: “It is finished.” Amen!