Today's passage is Matthew 3:12-4:11.
Jesus is baptized by a reluctant John.
The heavens open and Jesus sees the Spirit descending on him and hears the Father say he is pleased with his Son.
The Spirit leads Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil, who comes to him after Jesus has fasted for 40 days.
The three temptations are all if-then conditional statements. The first two say if your are the Son of God, then turn stones to bread and jump off the temple roof.
The third says if you worship the devil then he will give you the world.
Jesus defends himself with Scripture. The devil leaves and angels take care of Jesus.
Indonesia is hardly a desert.
In fact, it often looks like a kind of paradise of papaya, guava, mango, coconut, cocoa, coffee, corn, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, fruits I have no name for and towering volcanoes.
But it was here that God allowed me to be "humiliated in my own eyes" (2 Samuel 6:22), as David said in the passage from yesterday's sermon.
I went to Indonesia as a member of our church's mission team. Within our group we had four basic teams: taekwondo, worship song and dance, skit drama, and children's games.
Taekwondo, worship and skit drama were all performances. I was in the taekwondo and skit drama teams. The performances proved to be my temptation.
God intervened, however, and saved me from myself and gave me an understanding of what my role is.
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First, taekwondo. I stopped taekwondo training 13 years ago, when I was 50.
I had no real business being on the team but I wanted to perform with the young guys.
Pride. At first I could, but the high kicks aggravated my back problem so much that I had to quit the team and go to a chiropractor.
I went from being a performer to a spectator, cheerleader and commentator for the Indonesians who spoke English.
In the skit drama, I played one of the two major roles.
It was fun but dangerous for me because of the undue attention I got.
Pride once again.
The major role in the skit drama was played by a talented woman who was on the three performance teams.
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During the first taekwondo performance she seriously injured her knee.
This meant she couldn't perform the lead in the worship team or in the skit drama.
The worship team was able to go on but we had no replacement for her in the skit drama, so the skit drama had to be cancelled.
Suddenly, I was no longer a performer on centre stage.
Injury had relegated me to the sidelines.
My pride wanted me on stage showing off, but the opportunity was taken away.
I was humbled.
Because we had to drive long distances every day in Indonesia to visit villages and churches, I had a lot of time to reflect on events and my suddenly unclear role.
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With nothing special to do, I did ordinary things.
I helped the taekwondo team prepare their boards for breaking,
I cheered the worship team and encouraged them in the absence of their team leader,
I shared some of my experience with the English speaking team members on some of our trips,
I helped with children's games, I participated in our morning QT sharing, I let the young men lift heavy cases.
I talked about the similarities between India and Indonesia.
I gave praise wherever I could. It was all just ordinary.
And as the days went by, the ordinary became peaceful. God's gift.
Yesterday in the meeting of mokjas, my cho-won decided to let the other mokjas ask me questions because they were curious about me.
What was a foreigner who didn't understand Korean doing at Wooridle?
One of them asked me what major point I got from Pastor Kim's teaching.
No special life, I said.
My trip to Indonesia showed me the truth of that lesson. No special life.
In the midst of worshipping God, I tried to be special and God humbled me in the gentlest of ways, and he showed me there is no peace in trying to be special.
Peace comes through the ordinary.
Being ordinary is my application.
