March 9, 2025, There Is Only One Story, Luke 4:1-13 – Carroll Boswell, guest speaker

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ March 9, 2025 ♦ Leave a comment

To listen to this sermon, click the link above. The text is below.

I intend to focus on the last of the three temptations, but as usual I will seem to wander around before I get to it. I want to start with the story of how Kathryn and I got to New York. Once upon a time we lived in St. Louis, and we both felt God’s calling to move to a land we didn’t know, that he would show us. And so we had a big yard sale and sold our house and bought an old school bus and loaded the kids and a few possessions, and we drove up here to Canton. There was a family living near Canton, the Lees, whom we didn’t know but who offered to let us camp in their orchard until we found a place to buy. And so we bought what had been an Amish farm in Plumbrook. And the rest is history

That is one part of our story. As most of you know, I do a lot of reading and of course a lot of fiction, stories. I am told, by those who know, that there are essentially only four basic plot lines for every story ever written. The difference between a good story and a poor story is in the details. The devil’s in the details but also there angels are in the details. Some authors, the poor ones, take a perfectly good plot and manage to ruin it as they write, so you end up either quitting the book or wishing you hadn’t read it. Other authors, the good ones, take a perfectly good plot and make it sparkle with astonishing character and details that transcend what they started with. Those are the books that are unforgettable and enlightening, that make you see and understand the world and people in ways you never did before. Even though the characters are made up and the details are made up made up and none of it is “true”, there is something about the book that is truer than your ordinary day to day life. These are the books you want to find, that make reading worthwhile. I am very fortunate to have found many of those excellent books and they have enriched me greatly. They make me more human.

And so we can draw closer to the subject of today’s sermon: the stories in the Bible. I don’t know if it is true that there are only four plots in all of literature, but it is true that there some plots that get loosely repeated in the stories in the Bible. And the most repeated plot is this: God’s people are in big trouble and they can’t get out; then God raises up a great leader to rescue them – occasionally with miracles and signs; and then they all come out safe on the other side. In biblical language, they were lost, they were found, they are saved.

And the single most important story in all the Bible is the Exodus. The children of Israel were enslaved by a cruel king. So God sent Moses and through him worked powerful signs and miracles and brought them through the middle of the Red Sea. They wandered for a long time in the wilderness but after many adventures God brought them to the Promised Land. It is the classic story of redemption. Though the details vary, the story of redemption is repeated over and over again in the Bible.

Now consider the story today, but let’s step back and include what came before and after. Before this story, Jesus had grown, first in Egypt and then in Israel, in the Promised Land, which was imprisoned under the Law (says Paul in Galatians), both the law of the Pharisees and the law of the Romans. Jesus testified to it, that the Pharisees bound the people with heavy burdens and wouldn’t lift a finger to make their work easier. The Pharisees played the role of the Pharaoh in Egypt. Jesus grew up, born under the law as Paul said in Galatians. Then Jesus was baptized in the Jordan. Later Paul would say (I Corinthians 10:2) that the people of Israel were all baptized in the Red Sea as Moses led them out; his baptism by John played the same role as crossing the Red Sea. And as soon as Jesus was baptized, he was led into the wilderness, just as Israel was baptized in the Red Sea and was led into the wilderness. Israel wandered in the wilderness for forty years; Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days. Finally Israel was tempted in the wilderness, in ways that played the same role as the temptations Jesus encountered. Then Israel was brought into the Promised Land but here Jesus’ story veers off into a different story. The important thing is that, despite big differences in detail, the story of Jesus beginning his ministry is essentially the same as the story of Israel beginning their national ministry.

Like Jesus, Israel was also tempted in the wilderness and by comparing their temptations we can understand them better. I think the hardest temptation to understand is the third one, so let’s look at the parallel temptation Israel encountered. In Exodus 17 it says All the congregation of the people of Israel moved on from the wilderness of Sin by stages, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink.Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel.And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the quarreling of the people of Israel, and because they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

Note that Horeb, mentioned in Exodus, is the same as Mt. Sinai where Moses received the ten commandments. This is important. What does Israel complaining about their thirst have to do with the Jesus third temptation? In Luke 4:9-12, which we just read, the devil tempts Jesus to throw himself off the temple just because he can, just because the angels will keep him from getting hurt, and in return he will give the world to Jesus to rule. It seems totally unrelated to Israel’s temptation, and sometimes plot similarities can be tricky to notice. But Jesus noticed it. When he quoted Deuteronomy 6:16: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massah.” Jesus recognized that his story was the same story as Exodus 17. Israel was complaining about not having water, and how did Moses answer them? By striking a big rock with his staff so that water would pour out of that rock. Paul helps us out in I Corinthians 10:4 by telling us that the rock struck by Moses was Christ, in meaning if not physically. Jesus refused the offer to rule the world because he knew, from the story of Israel if no where else, that he would rule the world by being struck down. It was the same story, though the names and places and circumstances were the different. Jesus knew the story about Israel was the story about himself, and that he was meant to play the role of the rock at Horeb.

There is a lot more to the parallels between these two stories; it would take a book to discuss them all. For now focus on this one point: just as the story of Moses was about the rescue of God’s people from the power of an oppressor to bring them into freedom, so did Jesus rescue us from the power of a harsh master – the law of the Pharisees – in order to bring us into freedom of love. In Galatians Paul puts it all together: the cruel master was the Law, the Ten Commandments, and the freedom is the fruit of the Spirit which is love.

The point of all this is that the same one who organized and wrote all the stories about the people in the Bible is the same one who is writing the story of your life. Sometimes your story will look most like one Bible story, and sometimes like another, but it is the author that counts. God is one of the good writers, and the story of your life is guaranteed to be worth reading. But all of us are in the same basic plot as Exodus, as the life of Jesus. You were enslaved and God has set you free. You are wandering in the wilderness now, and have been ever since you first delivered out of slavery. But God is leading you to a promised land. When you read the Bible, you are reading about the great heroes of the past, but you are also reading about yourself and what God has done and is doing in you. The whole purpose of reading the Bible is to see how you and God are working out your new freedom together.

It was 39 years ago – not quite 40 – that we came up to the north country. When someone asks me now, “Do you miss St. Louis? Would you go back?” the first thought that pops into my mind is “I will never go back to Egypt.” Northern New York is not the promised land, it is the wilderness. But it is right next to the Promised Land for us. All that is left is to cross the Jordan River, as some of the old hymns say. The same is true for you, whether you have wandered a thousand miles, or just around your own backyard. All God’s journeys are the same length, and they always take your whole life to get where you are going. During Lent I would like to challenge you to read the Bible and discover how it is talking to you and about you. And rest in the knowledge that your story ends in the Promised Land. Your whole life is the way God has been bringing you to it. So don’t test him, like Israel did. Just follow, one page of your story at a time.