Lent 1: Temptation

Check out what's going on at Second Presbyterian Church!  Read along with Matthew 4:1-11.

 

Sermon excerpt: 

Blaise Pascal, a 17th century French philosopher once rather famously said that in our sinful human condition, we each have a God-shaped hole in our hearts.[1]

And the tempter knows we will go to tremendous lengths to fill up that hole, to gain what we lack, with anything we think of—a new car or the latest gadget; a better house or a better job; a bottle or a needle or another race at the track; a perfect spouse or a perfect life. Adam and Eve concluded in a heartbeat that the hole in their hearts is shaped just like that fruit they weren’t supposed to eat.[2]

We live our lives occupied, obsessed even, with finding something, ANYTHING, to fill the hole in our hearts, to find that which we lack to fill up the emptiness. It’s our greatest human weakness, and the tempter knows exactly how to take advantage of our insecurity.

 

[1] 17th century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself." [Pascal, Pensees #425]

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=902