What Have We Lost?
Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness… the Spirit of God drove him there. Why? When you examine at the Bible closely, there are patterns that you can see in the text. As we talked about last Wednesday during our Ash Wednesday service, the number forty comes up a lot. It rained for forty days and forty nights to flood the earth and kill all living things except those that were in the Ark. The purpose of the Great Flood was to purify the earth of all the evil in it. Moses spent forty days and forty nights on a mountaintop with God, when he received the Ten Commandments. During those forty days and forty nights, God spelled out for Moses all of his instructions for the children of Israel… how they were to live, how they were to worship, and so on. Now Jesus, at the beginning of his ministry…in fact, immediately after his baptism… goes into the wilderness and, once again, we assume that this was a time of purification… and time of instruction… a time set apart for God… forty days and forty nights.
Satan did not come to Jesus until the end of the forty days… the end of forty days of fasting as a human being… with all the discomfort and weakness that accompanies such activity… and Satan tempts him with three different things: 1) making stones into bread to feed himself; 2) jumping down from the pinnacle of the temple, to prove that he was the son of God; and 3) worshipping the devil, so that all of the kingdoms of the world would acknowledge him as Lord. Tempation? Yes. Sin? Yes. Each of these was sin… each of them self-serving… just in a different form. But before we look at those things, I think it is important for us to gain a better understanding of what sin is… and what impact it has on us.
What is sin? And who is a sinner? You and I are human beings created in God’s image. As such, we should be a reflection of the perfection of the Divine. That is what we were created to be. But we were also created human… with all the frailty that comes with being human. And we were given freedom by our God… freedom to be and freedom to choose. And sometimes… perhaps, often… we make poor choices… and we choose to be less than what we were created to be… something less than a reflection of perfection… something less than the image of God.
I want to talk to the fishermen who are here this morning… for I know that they have seen the image that I want to share with you now. When I was in eighth grade, a man came to my school in Thailand… a man who was a gifted and very talented painter. He brought many of his works of art with him. Most of them were landscapes… beautiful scenes of the Cascade Mountains. But imagine our amazement, when he put on a blindfold and, before our eyes, created a stunning oil painting of the Cascade Mountains reflected in a lake. The lake was in the foreground, surrounded by tall evergreen trees and the mountains rose tall, steep and snow-covered in the background against a crystal-clear blue sky. The painting itself was beautiful, but what was even more incredible to us was that he had painted a perfect reflection of that scene in the crystal-clear waters of the lake upside down… a mirror-image of the trees, the mountains, and the sky… blindfolded. More recently, I remember sitting on a terrace at the Oasis Restaurant overlooking Lake Travis in Austin and seeing a spectacular Texas sunset reflected in the waters of the lake … all the brilliant fiery colors perfectly reproduced in the still, clear water. Can you remember a time when you have seen a reflection of a beautiful scene in the water of a lake?
We were created in the image of God… to be a reflection of our Creator… just as a lake reflects the image before it. But if one fish breaks the surface… or one small stone skips across the water… the reflected image in the water becomes distorted… and what we see reflected is no longer an accurate portrait of the real thing. Sin is whatever distorts … twists… corrupts… or contradicts the image of God we were created to be. And a sinner is a human being in whom the image of God has been distorted… twisted… or corrupted. Whether it is a tiny ripple on the surface of the water… or a disturbance so strong that the mud of the lake bottom is pulled to the top… it does not matter. Either way, the image of God no longer exists as a perfect reflection of the Creator.
If the reflection of our Creator’s image is distorted by something in our lives, what have we lost? To answer that, let me take you back to story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden that Joe read to us this morning. Created in the image of God, Adam and Eve are put in Paradise… the Garden of Eden… and given free reign over everything that God created. Think about it… a paradise that even we cannot imagine to live in… the perfect partner to be with forever… a loving, benevolent God who comes each day in the cool of the evening to walk with … and talk with… a perfect relationship with that Creator… and perfect relationships with all of God’s creatures… and dominion over everything that lives and breathes… What more can one ask for? O.K. There was one exception... one tree… one little tree. One tree in the middle of the garden…only one tree out of thousands … that they were not to touch. Of all the animals… plants… birds… insects… oceans… mountains… stars… planets… only one thing they could not touch… could not eat. What happened?
Well, the answer is simple: They couldn’t NOT touch it. They did want to be like God. They did want to know good from evil. So, they touched it… they ate of its fruit. And yes, they gained knowledge of good and evil that the serpent promised they would, but what did they lose? That answer, too, is simple: They lost the most important relationship that they had. It was gone… destroyed in an instant… by one simple … seemingly harmless act. How many of us have lost a precious relationship… with a friend… a spouse… a family member… because of one simple… seemingly harmless word or action? How many of us have known the pain of losing something infinitely precious to us because of a careless… or thoughtless… word or action? How many of us have wished that we could take back something that we said… or undo something that we did… recapture it… swallow it… bury it? How many of us have cried over the agony of that separation… the pain of the disintegration of that relationship? How many of us have lain awake at night, wishing we could change the past? How many of us would like to put that egg back in its shell… to put Humpty Dumpty together again?
Relationships are built on mutual trust and respect. What was lost in the instant that Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of that tree was the trust and respect that was an integral part of their relationship with God. If there is no trust…and no respect…then there is no relationship. Trust takes a long time to build… and a split-second to destroy. And lack of trust usually leads to a loss of respect. In one act of disobedience, Adam and Eve lost everything they had... and the most important relationship in their lives. That one act distorted the image of God that was in them… just as one small pebble can distort the image in the waters of a lake… and that one act put an insurmountable barrier between them and their Creator… a barrier that only the blood of Jesus could remove.
Satan presented three temptations to Jesus in the wilderness… each of them seemingly harmless… each of them simple acts for Jesus to perform… but each of them deadly in the same way… for the self-centered nature of each of them could destroy the perfection of the relationship between Father and Son… a relationship that was holy and perfect. “Turn these stones to bread.” Jesus could do that. In fact, not long after that he did turn water into wine… and feed thousands of people with bread … through miracles of his own. Why not feed himself in the same way? “Jump from the pinnacle of the temple.” Jesus could do that. Satan was right… the angels would protect him… and it would prove to everyone that he was the Son of God. For a man who later walked on water…and was raised from the dead… this was nothing. “Worship Satan.” Well, who would see him do it anyway? He was in the wilderness, for Pete’s sake. That’s right. Only God. But then, that was the only relationship that really mattered, wasn’t it?
Isn’t that also true of us? As children of God, isn’t the most important relationship in our lives our relationship with our Creator? And yet, every day we allow something in our lives to distort… twist… corrupt… or contradict the beautiful image of God that exists within us… the image in which we were created. Every day, we allow something to talk us into doing or saying things that destroy our relationship with God… and our relationships with those around us. Every day, we fall prey to that same serpent… that lying, deceitful, slimy mass of evil that promises to change us into God… to make us beautiful… to make us perfect… and give us wisdom … when all we truly need to do is to trust God… and to demonstrate our respect for God by living a life worthy of the One in whose image we were created.
Jesus passed the test. Jesus understood how important his relationship with God was. He knew that God would provide anything he wanted… or needed on this earth. Yet, he was tempted… even as we are… but he did not sin. He did not allow anything to create a barrier between himself and his God.
We are frail… we are dust… we make mistakes. In our weakness, we allow sin to enter our lives and to distort… twist… corrupt… and contradict the image of perfection within us. Like Adam and Eve, we, too, have lost the most important relationship in our lives. And yet… there is One who can restore us to perfection… One who can bring us… spotless… to the throne of grace… One who can redeem us by his blood… One who can reconcile us to our God… and that is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we follow the path that he walked to the cross during this Lenten season, let us remember what we once had… what we have lost… and what we have to gain… through the blood of the Lamb. Amen.