Additional content related to Temptation
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
Near the end of his first letter to the Christian diaspora, Peter returns to one of its main themes: suffering for the sake of the faith. But as he does so, he also both puts an eschatological “spin” on and offers a promise in regard to that Christian suffering. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson contains a…
Exodus 17:1-7
It’s the kind of thing that could become a family inside joke. Perhaps years before, the family had taken a Spring Break trip somewhere. Except that on this particular trip the weather was disastrously bad the whole week. No outdoor activities were possible. Instead the family got stuck inside a hotel room where arguments over…
Matthew 4:1-11
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” was he thinking about this time in his life? We start Lent each year with an account of how Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness where he was thoroughly tried and tested by the…
Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7
It is one of the more important questions you could ever pose. Perhaps that is also why it is one of the most-asked questions in history: Where does evil come from? As Christians, we perhaps think that surely the answer to this vital inquiry must be somewhere in the Bible. But it’s not there. Everywhere…
Hebrews 2:10-18
If Jesus had been born not in some kind of livestock shelter but a hospital, how would anyone have been able to pick him out of the other babies in the nursery? Would he have been the baby who, as we sing at Christmas, made no crying? If Jesus’ friends had been choosing sides for…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Comments, Observations, and Questions Gospel proclaimers who don’t have a strong working knowledge of the Scriptures’ original languages benefit from access to a good Greek and Hebrew-English Interlinear Bible. After all, English translations of the Scriptures sometimes obscure important points that the Holy Spirit makes through their original languages. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson provides (at…
Luke 4:1-13
Comments, Questions and Observations Couched between our text for this Sunday and the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3.21-22) is Jesus’ genealogy. The words immediately before Jesus entering the wilderness are, “the son of Adam, the son of God.” (3.38) Thus, not only can we read Jesus’ forty days of trials in the wilderness alongside the…
Luke 4:1-13
“He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them, he was hungry.” Luke 4:2 I’ll say. This curious line in verse 2 is easy to glide past en route to the real drama to come once the devil shows up to woo Jesus to his side. At best we see this as…
2 Samuel 11:1-15
When my family lived in West Germany in the early 70’s, teenagers celebrated New Year’s Eve by lighting firecrackers. Among their favorites were strings of firecrackers that they linked together. One lit fuse would eventually produce a whole string of small explosions. 2 Samuel 11 is a bit reminiscent of those firecrackers. After all, just…
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
If you’re anything like me, you ask something like “What on earth is wrong with us?!” just about every time you read a newspaper, watch the news on television or peruse a news website. There is something wrong, very wrong, with us. We naturally prefer to blame someone or something rather than accept personal responsibility…
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
If in a sermon for seminary any of my students did to the Old Testament what Paul does in 1 Corinthians 10, I would probably tell the student to start over or fail. Paul seems to be playing a bit fast and loose, a bit midrash and allegory where some key stories from Ancient Israel…
Luke 4:1-13
“He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them, he was hungry.” Luke 4:2 I’ll say. This curious line in verse 2 is easy to glide past en route to the real drama to come once the devil shows up to woo Jesus to his side. At best we see this as…
James 1:17-27
Comments and Observations The millennial generation in your church will love the Epistle of James, because it presents the Christian faith as less of a head trip than as a way of life. Indeed, James is so filled with practical instructions for Christian living that Martin Luther famously called it a “right strawy epistle… for…
Preaching Connection: Temptation