I want to tell you a story of an old woman and one of a young woman; a story of relationship and temptation.
2 Samuel 5:7 Nevertheless David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David.
Scene I is in Jerusalem, about a thousand years or ten centuries after this record of Samuel from scripture.
Luke 2: 36 And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, 37 and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.
The woman was married as a young virgin to a man named Phanuel (which means: the face of God). After seven years her husband dies and she has lived several decades as a widow. She was known to be a prophetess. She would not have been allowed at the Temple in the City of David as a Jewish widow had her prophecies not been shown to have been from God. As a Priest might speak at the bidding of God and as a male Prophet might obediently convey God’s words to God’s people, Anna spoke prophesy.
The Lord had spoken through the Prophets of old during the time of the 1000 years (these 10 centuries before Christ), but God had kept silent while a captured people (conquered this time by the Romans) awaited God’s long-sought redemption once more.
Jesus is brought to the Temple and Anna also confirms the identity of the Redeemer of God.
Scene II is in Jerusalem at the same Temple not centuries later, but just three decades, only 30 years.
Luke 4: And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness 2 for forty days, being tempted by the devil…
9 And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, 10 for it is written,
“‘He will command his angels concerning you,
to guard you,’
11 and
“‘On their hands they will bear you up,
lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”
Again, this is thirty years after the Prophetess Anna had thanked God for this same Son of Man, Jesus.
Satan took Jesus, a man, human like you or me; born to Mary, descendant of David, to the pinnacle of the Temple and said (in effect), “Jump. God will protect you.”
Jesus is hungry and has already refused to turn stones into bread as Satan tempted him to do as the Son of God, not just a righteous son of man. Satan had already asked this Son of Man to bow down to him and promised Jesus power over the Kingdoms of the world IF only he, Jesus, the Son of Man would worship the fallen angel of God. Again, Jesus did not seek the power of this world, as many of us do.
We will return to Jesus’ answer to Satan (which you may know); but first we fast forward beyond the Cross of the Hill of Calvary and the grave and the Resurrection and the Ascension back to the glory of God the Father and the early days of the church and His several appearances to many sons of men to the present.
Scene III takes place in Mount Zion National Park, USA, twenty centuries later, 8 February, in the year of our Lord 2014.
The young woman tempted at the pinnacle is just two years younger that the Son of Man of our earlier scene. Her relationship to her new husband is not one of a virgin to a man of God’s leading, but rather a relationship of sharing in his sport of tempting God for the temporal experiences of living life to its fullest.
She jumped from the pinnacle of Mount Zion. Her parachute did not open. Angels did not catch her. Her body and life were broken on the cold stone below. Her husband witnessed her choice to tempt God, as he so dearly loved to do; and now he is a widower.
On this very day (10 Feb. 1999) fifteen years ago, I, too, became a widower; yet not by my choice or by intentional choice of my godly wife. As God tears many a wife from her husband and many a husband from his wife, I became a widower when the Lord took my wife after a many month struggle against cancer to hold onto this precious life.
Though God has joined many a man to his beloved help-mate, his wife; in almost every instance one will die before the other. A wife will become a widow, as had Anna; or a husband will become a widower, as has the poor husband who just witnessed the death of his wife.
What does it mean that this man who did not jump would later willingly allow Himself to be lifted up on the Cross to die for you and for me?
Jesus Christ, in fulfillment of the scripture (by which He would answer Satan, Pharisees and those who would manipulate God’s word to their own ends) became our redemption. What does that mean to you personally? What does it mean when Satan has lead you to the pinnacle of the choice of your action of life or your action of death?
It is a question of slavery.
God chose Abraham. God chose Isaac (and not Ishmael). God chose Jacob, who He named Israel.
Jacob had twelve sons, sons (tribes or families) of inheritance of the land of the promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. However they betrayed their own brother, Joseph, and sold him into slavery for a price.
Joseph was bought and sold into Egypt, where the Lord saved him and lifted him into the office of Prime Minister only under Pharaoh. Yet Joseph remained faithful to God. He asked his father Jacob’s blessing on his two Egyptian-born sons for his share of the promise of Abraham in a land now ruled by Pharaoh.
Joseph’s land, given to the Israelites in Egypt, was not paid for or an inheritance. In fact, the price of redemption for Joseph had never been paid and by the generation of Moses, sons of Abraham; and the sons of Joseph (descendants of God’s promise) were once again slaves in the land of Egypt with no man to pay the price of their freedom.
God saved them and forced Pharaoh to let His people go. Moses did not save them, but spoke for God, obeyed God, and gave God’s own people God’s own Law to obey; as they had once had to obey every law of Pharaoh. Still, even in the time of David and Solomon centuries later, God’s Chosen People had not had the price of their slavery paid. God’s Chosen were not yet redeemed in any way.
Psalm 49 speaks of the sons of Korah (of the rebellion against God and Moses) stating:
5 Why should I fear in the days of evil,
When the iniquity at my heels surrounds me?
6 Those who trust in their wealth
And boast in the multitude of their riches,
7 None of them can by any means redeem his brother,
Nor give to God a ransom for him—
8 For the redemption of their souls is costly,
And it shall cease forever—
9 That he should continue to live eternally,
And not see the Pit.
To rescue a sinner
You must pay the price.
Who can redeem the sinner? (And we are all sinners, you and me and all sons of men of every time and place.)
If you stand at the pinnacle of choice between life and death, what is the answer?
Scene IV Returning to the Pinnacle of the Temple and the answer of the Son of Man two hundred centuries before this year of our Lord, 2014.
Luke 4:12 And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
And Christ Jesus began His three-year mission on earth as the Son of Man, calling men and women to repentance and grace, living and breathing the love of God our Father for His chosen family of the promise and of His chosen Bride, the church.
Luke 4:
17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
And of His fulfillment of scripture, this is what Jesus said: I AM the price paid for your sin and for the sins of all who are joined to Jesus as our Lord, our Savior, and our Redeemer.
Satan will tempt you before God until the day your flesh will die.
Who will you bow down and worship? What is your answer:
I will gladly follow your worldly temptation, lord satan…
OR Jesus IS LORD?
Do NOT put the Lord your God to the test. Trust ONLY JESUS CHRIST, who paid the price of redemption for your sin and for mine. He IS the one who taught us to pray (Luke 11:2-4):
Our Father
Who IS in Heaven,
HOLY IS your Name.
Your Kingdom will come.
May Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.
Give us day by day our daily bread
And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us.
And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.
