Who We Are Is the Core of Our Identity
When the devil had finished every temptation,
he departed from him for a time.
He departed for a while, for a time.
That last phrase “for a time,” has always bothered me.
The temptation of the devil, it seems so permanent.
But the truth is that the devil or the evil one, or Satan,
whatever name you want to give that dark force,
is true for not only Christ, but it is true for all of us.
That same devil is trying to tempt us in the same way
as we mirror Jesus' 40 days in the desert, by our 40 days in Lent,
we are subject to the same temptations time and time again.
These are the three ancient temptations of the devil
and they occur for us in similar fashion.
It may not be in the desert the way Jesus was,
but the same ways: what we have,
what we are and what other people say we are.
Let’s walk through these and what Jesus does.
These are three temptations of identity,
the Evil One trying to buy a false identity,
trying to challenge Jesus’ true identity.
First of all, there is this key phrase that headlines his statements.
The devil says, “If you are the son of God…”
and then comes a temptation.
So if you are the Son of God, turn this stone into a bread.
He does not offer him bread.
He says, “You are what you do. You are powerful.
Do what I ask you to do.”
Is not that true for all of us too?
How easily we get tempted by what we do?
“What do you do?” is the first question out of our mouths
when we ask and we greet one another:
“Oh, I am executive vice president of sales and marketing.
Oh really? Oh, oh, I am CEO.
Oh, I am just a janitor.”
The second temptation brings him up to Jerusalem
and shows him all the kingdoms
“Look, you will have all these kingdoms
if you just worship me because they have been given to me.
And so if you do that then.”
But Jesus says, “Nope, you are not what you have.”
He knows who he is, and he is the son of God.
That was the truth.
And he knows “whose he is?”
He belongs to God.
Is that not true in our own lives, too,
that we are being tempted time and time again?
We are what we have?
Do not we find this at every single turn, almost all the time?
This is our constant struggle that we get tempted.
Oh, you need a bigger house.
Oh, you need a nicer car,
or you need the latest iPhone or this or that.
Somehow thinking that we are defined,
that our identity is what we have.
That is a lie. It is a famous ancient lie of the devil.
“We are what we have?”
But rather we are the sons and daughters of God.
That is our true identity.
And Jesus leads the way.
And then the third one, the devil brings him up
to the parapet of the temple and says,
“Throw yourself down and I will make you glorious.
You are what other people say you are.”
Are not we in the age of that? My Lord.
The whole of social media is built upon likes.
How many friends do you have?
Oh yeah, I have 5,000 friends.
How many do you have?
I do not have 5,000!
I do not know how many I have truth to be told.
I do not use social media because I know what that does to us.
We constantly spend our time
measuring ourselves up by what other people say we are.
See what the Lord is saying to us at the beginning of this lesson.
We are called to remember who we are
We are daughters and sons of God, the Father.
That is our true identity.
And whose are we, we are God the Father.
That is who we belong to.
The question is then how do we manage to fight these temptations?
We look to what Jesus does.
Jesus makes this really simple. He does.
These are not really temptations for him at all.
They are temptations, but he just blinks at them. Why?
Because he knows exactly who he is.
He knows his identity.
He does not in any way deviate from that
because he knows he is the son of God and that God is his father.
Let me give you just a quick example of this.
If I took one of the children here
and I placed his mother right beside him,
and then another woman over here.
And say his name is Johnny.
The mother calls, “Johnny. Johnny, Johnny, come here.”
The child is going to come.
If the other woman over this side says,
“Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, come on over here.”
Do you think he is gonna be tempted
to go to the other woman as a mother?
No, he is not.
He is not gonna be tempted to say:
“Who will I pick as my mother today?
Oh, well, I kinda like her.”
There is no real temptation
because he knows who his mother is.
He knows the sound of his mother’s voice.
He knows exactly which is his mother
and he knows that if he does not do what his mother says.
It is very clear about who he knows he is, right?
He is not tempted.
If any other woman or five other women come and say,
“Oh, come here, I am your mother.”
There is no temptation because he knows who he is.
That is what we have to do.
This is what our call for Lent is all about.
To shed all those other voices
and remember who we are and whose we are.
We are a child of God.
That is our true identity.
The challenge is that we all know that inside our head.
We get that when we are all coming to church here.
But when we all walk out of here,
all of a sudden those temptations start coming again.
And we start looking and then all of a sudden
we get tempted by what other people say about us.
We are tempted to get absorbed in
what we get till we have more.
The church gives us a protocol, if you would,
or a way in which to pull all that back every year.
We do it once a year to reset ourselves on the path
to recapture our identity, to own that identity again
for the whole year ahead.
And it is called Lent.
We have this prayer, fasting and almsgiving.
And it works.
It has worked for hundreds and hundreds of years
and that is why we do it every year.
To remind ourself who we are and whose we are.
Now, here is the interesting thing,
only recently do we have a little data science
about how some of this behavior shifted
and it is actually pretty powerful there.
I will be doing this in the retreat.
There is an author, scientist, and a professor
at Stanford called B.J Fogg.
He wrote a book called “Tiny Habits”
and he explains how our behavior works.
To understand how to change your behavior,
you have to understand how your behavior becomes about.
So if you want to change your behavior,
you have to know what it is that you do and why.
And if you are really interested in changing your behavior,
it is all about identity.
That the easiest thing to change
if you decide to do something new,
then you know how to change it.
So the example goes like this.
The example is given, and this comes
in another book called Atomic Habits.
But it works like this,
that if you take 10 people and you offer them a cigarette,
eight of those people will refuse.
Two will try it, one will like it
and one will not like it and they will never smoke again.
Only one out of 10 might be tempted to smoke.
The science experiment has been repeated over and over again.
But why do the eight say immediately “no,”
and not even tempted at all?
All eight say “No, I do not smoke.”
It is about identity.
There is no temptation.
There is no exercise of the will.
They are not a better person.
They just know who they are.
They know that they are not smokers, my friends.
That is how we refocus ourselves this Lent
and it is not about our will.
It is not us trying to will ourselves back
and pushing away the devil in some dramatic fashion.
Just come back to who we are.
Come back to the fact that we are children of God
and that God is our father.
Then there is no temptation.
It is not an exercise of our will.
We do not have to make any effort.
It will not be a temptation to get consumed
in buying more,
or doing more
or waiting for more likes.
Why?
Because in our heart, we know exactly who we are.
We are children of God.
And nothing will take us away from the father’s voice.
We know it.
And he knows us, my friends.
That is what we are doing in this Lent, for this next 40 days.
May we commit to it.
May we remember who we are and whose we are.
We are the sons and daughters of God.
He is our father.
When the devil had finished every temptation,
he departed from him for a time.