“Frodo Was a Wimp”

Matthew 4:1-11

A question you might be asking, “Who’s Frodo and why is he a wimp?” Frodo is a character from The Lord of the Rings, trilogy that was made into three very popular movies in recent years. It is Frodo’s destiny to carry an evil ring back to the place of its forging before it fell back into the hands of an evil being that threatened his world.

Bravely but reluctantly Frodo agrees to carry the ring and destroy it. His intentions were good. For the most part he fulfilled them. But the ring had the evil power to seduce whoever carried it. The seduction was the promise of unimagined power, power that Frodo and others fantasized about using for the good of the world. The harsh reality was that anyone who gave into that temptation became an agent of an evil master.

The ring is a heavy burden, physically and spiritually. In spite of some failures in resisting the ring’s call, Frodo eventually arrives at the place where the ring is to be destroyed. But once there he surrenders to the ring’s seductive call and refuses to destroy it. In the end it is an unlikely character who rips it from Frodo’s hand, finger and all, and falls into a seething volcano where the ring is finally destroyed.

Frodo was one of the good guys, one of the best of the good guys. He was faithful and honorable, more immune to the ring’s temptation than many others, but in the end he lacked the courage and faithfulness to finish his mission. He surrendered to the siren call of evil.

If you read the books or see the movies it’s obvious that Frodo isn’t a wimp in earthly terms. He was more faithful than anyone could have realistically been expected to be. But he wasn’t perfect.

Jesus was. Unlike Frodo Jesus was and is real, not the creation of some writer’s imagination. Unlike Frodo Jesus never gave into powerful temptations to take the easy way out. In contrast to the divine perfection of Jesus in resisting temptation Frodo was a wimp. He surrendered to evil. Jesus did not.

In the wilderness, tired, hungry, and worn down, Jesus was assumed by the Devil to be vulnerable to his temptations. Jesus was the Suffering Servant Messiah foretold by Isaiah. His mission as God made flesh was to suffer and die on a cross for the salvation of the world. He was to be the ultimate sacrifice that would atone for humankind’s sinfulness and thus reconcile us with the God from whom we were utterly alienated. His life, death, and resurrection would defeat sin, death, and evil forever.

But the Devil tried to lure him into taking the easy way out, to be the popular Messiah that many were expecting. The Devil tempted him to turn stones into bread not just so that he could feed himself, but so that he could win over the poor and hungry masses by feeding them and thus become a heroic and beneficent leader who could trick people into following him. Jesus’ response was to tell the Devil, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

The Devil being the Devil he didn’t give up. He tried to attack Jesus’ faithfulness on another front, daring him to throw himself from the top of the temple. Surely God wouldn’t let him die but would send his angels to rescue Jesus from certain death. That would have gotten Jesus some attention. The people of Jerusalem would have been oohing and ahing over this great miracle. Jesus would have become the ultimate magician, attracting crowds to watch him perform the greatest magic tricks in history. Jesus didn’t buy that one either. Once again he spoke to the Devil, this time telling him, “It is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’.”

Before moving on to temptation number three, I need to say that Jesus not only resisted temptation, he resisted the time honored politically cheap and easy style of leadership. As the Roman Empire entered into its ultimate decline and fall, the Emperors distracted the Roman citizens with bread and circuses, with free food and entertainment. By way of such cheap and easy bribery the citizen’s were made deaf, dumb, and blind to blatant corruption, gross immorality, a failing economy, and the empire’s waning political and military might. Jesus absolutely refused to sell his soul for cheap and easy popularity and power.

Finally the Devil played his trump card. He offered to give Jesus the world, to give him absolute rule over every nation and every person on earth. Well, almost absolute rule. All Jesus had to do was bow down and worship him. All Jesus had to do was become the Devil’s second-in-command. Jesus told him thanks but no thanks, saying, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

The soul of Jesus was not for sell. He couldn’t be bought cheaply or expensively. The Devil had nothing that Jesus wanted or needed. As it is written in Luke, Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem and walked steadily in the way of the cross. He couldn’t be bought off. He couldn’t be scared off. He couldn’t be swayed by the rational arguments of conventional wisdom.

One of the things we need to remember is that the temptations didn’t end in the wilderness. The Devil played the family card, hoping that Jesus would give into to social and familial pressure to go home and forget all this Suffering Servant nonsense. The Devil played the patriotism card, hoping that Jesus would listen to his more Rambo-like followers and lead a rebellion against Rome. The Devil played the loyal disciple card, hoping that Jesus would listen to Peter’s protestations against that nasty cross business. The Devil played the fear card. In the garden on the night of his betrayal, when Jesus prayed that his Father take the cup of crucifixion away, the Devil was attacking Jesus’ humanity with all its normal human fears of suffering and death.

Over a three year period the Devil played all those cards and a few more but Jesus never turned back from his mission of preaching, teaching, healing, servanthood, and sacrifice. Nothing deterred Jesus from his appointment with a cross. Even the physical pain and absolute spiritual and emotional loneliness of the crucifixion itself did not prevent Jesus from dying his atoning death. Even though the people who were telling him to ask God to come and rescue him were mocking him, they were still agents of the Devil’s last ditch effort to stop Jesus. Jesus didn’t listen to them either.

His resistance to temptation is best summarized in that early hymn of the church that Paul quoted in his letter to the Philippians. “… though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”

Thus he truly was the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah 53: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed… and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

I’m aware that I quote those two passages a lot. But they describe a Messiah who was the epitome of obedience, who was the antithesis of everything the Devil tempted him to be. Those two passages are the easiest way for me to grasp and then share the life, person, and mission of Christ. Those two passages summarize the incarnation of God in human flesh. They describe and explain his atoning death on a cross.

There would be resurrection, and thank God for that, for without resurrection the incarnation and atonement would have neither meaning nor effect. There was a crown beyond the cross but not one that could be obtained cheaply. The Devil offered Jesus short-term fortune and fame, the empty popularity of cheap tricks and bribery. But Jesus turned away from such empty promises. Because he was obedient, “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

Jesus didn’t wimp out. He refused to trade his eternal glory for the Devil’s cheap substitute. He would not bow to the Devil, therefore there is a day surely coming when the Devil will bow to him. He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The earth shall be his footstool.

And when that day comes, if we have believed, confessed, and lived the truth of the Gospel, we will share in his eternal Kingdom. Between now and then the Devil will do his best, or more appropriately his worst, to tempt us from the way of the cross. He will offer us cheap substitutes for the real thing that can only be found in Christ. He will ask us to bow down to him. That’s when we have to echo and obey those words quoted by Jesus in the wilderness: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Amen.