Absolute Truth in Relative Terms

Absolute Truth in Relative Terms 

I dare to ask you what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ?

Matthew 4:1-11

Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness

4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted[a] by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’[b]”

5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,

    and they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”

7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]”

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’[e]”

11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

It is an amazing passage All of the response JESUS has taken words while HE was tempting by Satan from

Deuteronomy 8:3

3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Skeptic W.E.H. Lecky on the Influence of Jesus

The character of Jesus has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the longest incentive in its practice, and has exerted so deep an influence, that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and to soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists.

Skeptic do that comment FF Bruce made this response that is a non Christian or at least not distinctly of Christian judgment of one sense in which Jesus is not only Historical figure but is also eternal contemporary His influence lives on

If you and I do not reflect that character we will be actually betraying the the trust of our lords example and our lords call to you and me read carefully three temptations

One come from the intellectual tempter false assumption

Take a look at miracle today because the reason we find it easiest to mock the real Christ

China is a fastest growing church in the world today

Satan tempts us at the point of our physical needs, not that we might gratify them to excess, but that we might think of nothing else, and satisfy them at the expense of our usefulness in this world.

Satan tempts us at the point of our ambitions, not that we might engage in positive evil, but that we might simply accept the fact of evil, learn to live with it, come to terms with it, and maintain a quiet reverence in the presence of it.

Satan tempts us at the point of our religion, not that we might disbelieve in God, but that we might demand certainty, that type of certainty of God that leaves nothing to faith, nothing to God himself.

These are the moral struggles that have reality for people such as we are. The subtle temptation to renounce our duty in favor of what is attractive, that insidious allurement to a kind of half-goodness which is the essence of everything bad and which is more productive of suffering and hatred, war and misery in this world than all the designs of wicked and greedy people combined.

– Arthur Leonard Griffith

1st temptation is very much with us yielding material

2nd temptation 

matthew 4 :5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:

“‘He will command his angels concerning you,

    and they will lift you up in their hands,

    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’[c]”

7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’[d]”

2 Kings 5

Naaman Healed of Leprosy

13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

15 Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.”

16 The prophet answered, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.

  25 When he went in and stood before his master, Elisha asked him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?”

“Your servant didn’t go anywhere,” Gehazi answered.

26 But Elisha said to him, “Was not my spirit with you when the man got down from his chariot to meet you? Is this the time to take money or to accept clothes—or olive groves and vineyards, or flocks and herds, or male and female slaves? 27 Naaman’s leprosy will cling to you and to your descendants forever.” Then Gehazi went from Elisha’s presence and his skin was leprous—it had become as white as snow.

If you and I do not reflect that character we will be actually betraying the the trust of our lords example and our lords call to you and me read carefully three temptations

It is true when you look at your heart and my heart it is dark and dark

3rd temptation

8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’[e]”

It came to men and woman and who we are? lust of flesh lust of the eye lust of the pride

What is the basis on which you even can be forgiven Evil, justice ,love and forgiveness do you know where in the world this fall converged on a given day it was on a hill Calvary Evil justice love and forgiveness came together in that historic moment of the glass of pacific

James Stewart:

“It is a glorious phrase of the New Testament, that ‘he led captivity captive.' The very triumphs of His foes, it means, he used for their defeat. He compelled their dark achievements to subserve his end, not theirs. They nailed him to the tree, not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to his feet. They gave him a cross, not guessing that he would make it a throne. They flung him outside the gates to die, not knowing that in that very moment they were lifting up all the gates of the universe, to let the King of Glory come in. They thought to root out his doctrines, not understanding that they were implanting imperishably in the hearts of men the very name they intended to destroy. They thought they had defeated God with His back the wall, pinned and helpless and defeated: they did not know that it was God Himself who had tracked them down. He did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it.”

We look back upon history and what do we see?  Malcom Muggeridge

Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counterrevolutions, wealth accumulating and and then disbursed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of the “rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.”

In one lifetime I have seen my own countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that “God who’s made them mighty would make them mightier yet.”

I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian proclaim to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last for a thousand years; an Italian clown announce he would restart the calendar to begin with his own assumption of power; a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the western world as wiser than Solomon, more enlightened than Asoka, more humane than Marcus Aurelius.

I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of military weaponry more powerful than all the rest of the world put together, so that Americans, had they so wished, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

All in one little lifetime. All gone with the wind.

England now part of an island off the coast of Europe and threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy.

Hitler and Mussolini dead and remembered only in infamy.

Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped to found and dominate for some three decades.

America haunted by fears of running out of the precious fluid that keeps the motorways roaring and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam and of the great victories of the Don Quixotes of the media when they charged the windmills of Watergate. All in one lifetime, all in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

God bless you

Yours in His service

Newton