The temptation of our Ford.

Why can't I have nice things?

That's a question that dogs us, isn't it?  Most of us have things that look nice, but aren't.  What I talked about at great length on Sunday was the fact that it's easy enough to get things that look okay from a distance, but up close, they're cheap and nasty.  Furniture is a good one.  Most furniture looks okay, it looks alright from a distance, but up close, well, things get a bit more disastrous.  Most furniture today is composed of compressed sawdust and faux leather.  It looks the same as real good furniture.  It doesn't have the same weight or heft, it chips a lot easier, it falls apart a lot faster, but it looks the same as the expensive stuff.

Now, this is an issue for each of us, because we all, almost by nature, want to upgrade our stuff.  Why do you think DIY network and HGTV do so well?  They do well because we all want something a little better than what we have. We all want to get one step ahead of what we're currently looking at.  All our stuff is almost by definition going to be middle of the road.  Because we're middle class.


Yup, if you're reading this on a computer, you're middle class, pretty much.  You have enough to get by.  But you don't have nice things.  Now, here's the deal.  Your middle of the road lifestyle, where the nice stuff in creation is just a little out of reach, that's a lot like the second of the twelve days of Christmas.

You know that song, right, the 12 days of Christmas?  The one that has a partridge in a pear tree?  Well, the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtle doves.  But what you may not know about turtle doves is that they were what Jesus' family offered up for his purification at the prescribed day.

22 And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” 

Luke 2:22-24

Now, what you may not know about turtle doves is that they were not the only thing prescribed for the purification.  The book of Leviticus informs new mothers as to what they are to bring forth for their purification - a lamb, or if they can't afford a lamb, a turtledove.  Now, do you see why this is important?

It's important because the family of Jesus, they didn't have everything.  They weren't in luxury.  They weren't given to wealth and excess.  They instead had enough to get by, but not the nicest stuff.  Now, you and I, we're like that too.  We're not starving, we're not living moment to moment, we have enough to keep the wolf from the door.  But we don't have the nicest stuff.  We don't have the best of the best.  We buy cheap vodka, we buy compressed sawdust for furniture, we buy the mugs that chip, the plumbing that leaks, the entry-level cars, and we make do.  And we live in a world in near constant temptation, where the stuff that is genuinely nice, it's just out of reach.  Juuuust out of reach.  We can afford entry level things, but not the nice things.  And so we are in a state of near constant temptation, perpeturally staring at what is nice and high quality, and not being able to afford any of it.

This is the life of Christ, in which he had mid range stuff, but he didn't have the nice stuff.  He had enough to get by, he wasn't starving, but he wasn't living in pronounced luxury.

Now we think about the temptation of Jesus in pretty narrow terms.  We think about his temptation in

terms only of the temptation in the wilderness.  We think about his time with Satan in the wilderness, where Satan told him to turn stones into bread, and Jesus rebuffed him, and would not be tempted into it.  But the temptation of Jesus didn't end there.  If he did work in his father's shop, if he was a carpenter, then he would have been tempted just like you are, with nice things that are just outside of reach.  He would have lived an entire lifetime, his whole professional career, not being able to afford nice things.  And every day would have been a temptation in that regard, especially at the start of his ministry.  You forget, as I do, that he went from being middle class, able to afford some things, but not everything, to being unemployed.  He was engaged in full time ministry, he roamed around from place to place, he promised his disciples that the son of man had no place to lay his head, he was leaving behind any and all comfort that could have existed, and the nice things of this world went from being just out of reach, to being forever out of reach.  And as his ministry wore on, it wasn't about having nice things, it was about losing what little he had.  It went from him being reasonably middle class, or at the very least working poor, to losing his carpentry practice, his friends, his clothes, his life.

All of it.

He knew what it was like to be tempted by nice things.  He knew what it was like to want and to not have, he knew what it was like to desire, and be unable to fulfill that desire.  In other words, he knew

what it was like to be you.  He knew what it was like to be young and powerless, he knew what it was like to care for aging parents, he knew what it was like to work for a living, to have friends die, to have a parent die, everything.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— 15 and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. 16 For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham’s descendants. 17 For this reason he had to be made like them,[k] fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. 18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 2:14-18

You know that your savior was like you in terms of having arms and legs and a head, but you forget that he was like his brothers in every respect, including economically.  He went through scarcity, and at the time in his life when he should have been expanding his business and getting more comfortable, that was when he walked away from it all.  Not that he wasn't tempted to go back to it, either.  In fact, some of his greatest temptations must have come from the promise of returning back to his family and his hometown, which he did after his ministry began.  However, he never stayed.  All the temptations of comfort, of acquisition, of expansion and ease, those were temptations that he left behind.  He left it all because he was like us in every respect but one.



He had no sin.

So all your temptations, all the times when you have craved nice things, all the times when you have looked at what is good and pleasant to the eye, all those times that you've caved and lived well outside your means, those are things that Jesus died for.  He knew temptation but did not go for it.  You know temptation and go for it. And it is the work of Christ, his resistance to temptation, that gives you salvation.

PJ.