How will it end? Life, faith, eternity. How will all that end? But more than that. Right now I bet you are facing some challenges – trials, temptations. What decisions will you make? Will you be proud of yourself when you reach your conclusions and act out your decisions? Or, not? How will all this end – life, death and the future, and the things that are very much present with you right now?

Maybe it ends like the words that Paul pens to Timothy, “The time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing.” (II Timothy 4:6b-8) Now that is how to end this. Life doesn’t just end – it is completed and fulfilled. It is like those great words spoken in the Parable of the Talents, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness.” (Matthew 25:21) Those concluding words are the gracious words we long for.

But for too many the end of life is not such a good end. For too many the trials are too hard and the temptations too severe. Choices and decisions that were made took the wrong turn. The path that was traveled led us into terrible places. You may know the account of two brothers in the Old Testament – Jacob and Esau. (It seems that brothers had a lot of trouble getting along in the pages of Scripture.) Jacob was making some of the best stew known to man. And Esau was out hunting. He had come back home and was hungry and wanted to have some of the stew. And Jacob said he would share his meal, but at a cost!! He would feed Esau in exchange for his birthright and his inheritance. And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die, what good is my birthright to me?” (See Genesis 25:27-34) So he gave everything away to get some of that stew. It must have been pretty good stew. The ending wasn’t good. The decision was poor. He gave up something of great value to feed his belly. Two other brothers, Cain and Abel, met a terrible end. As Cain considered his hatred and his planned murder of his brother, God asks for a change in how this will all end. “Sin is crouching at your door, it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:7) But the end was terrible. Murder, and then expulsion. Adam and Eve had to grieve that such an action would take place in their own family!!

How will it end? “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” (Luke 4:1-2) I know that you know how this ended. He didn’t cave in to temptation. He didn’t sin. His sinless life was still intact. But they were real temptations. Jesus, as Divine as they come – you know ‘God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God’, was also fully man, 100% human. He hadn’t eaten for 40 days and the Bible in an understatement said, “He was hungry.” (Luke 4:2) And so the devil, the tempter, makes an easy proposition, “Tell this stone to become bread.” He could do it. If He can change water into wine and dead people into live people He can make stones into bread. So, how would it end?

And then He was asked to compromise and give a moment of worship to the devil and then He was tempted to show His splendor by jumping off the height of the temple and letting the angels do their saving work. But He didn’t end poorly. He knew who was tempting Him. Later Jesus described the devil like this, “He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

How did it end for Jesus, there? Wonderfully and powerfully. He didn’t let us down. Some say that the temptations represent pleasure, power and possessions. Others say you can see security, power and prestige in these temptations. I see the real temptations of meeting the immediate need, the call to compromise and the desire for glory in those three. And he said “NO!” to the devil and said “YES” to His Father. Of His temptations the writer to the Hebrews says, “Because He Himself was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.” (2:18) “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (4:15-16)

Have you seen the Olympics? They should check the brains of those guys who sit in that little rocket ship and go around a track at 100 miles an hour, or those who go straight down a mountain on skies or on a snowboard or who try to do triple or quadruple jumps and land on the point of a skate!! Sometimes they make it all the way down or make the perfect landing, and sometimes they don’t. The ones who didn’t win, who didn’t get a medal are really asked the question, “What next?” Many of them end in strength and confidence, not in failure.

How will it end for us? Sometimes, and sometimes too often, we don’t live up to our calling as one of the baptized of God’s people. Sometimes when temptation and trial come to us we fall and we stay down!! Don’t let the devil succeed with the same temptations that he brought to Jesus. To Jesus he said, “If you are the Son of God…” and to us he may question our identity as well – “You’re really not a child of God, are you – look at what you did!”

How will it end for us? In grace. By His promises. In forgiveness. By the power of God’s Holy Spirit. The Proverbs say, “Thou a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again.” (24:16) We sin, too often, and we fall, but through the blood of Christ who has atoned for every sin and who graciously paid the price for those sins in His death, we rise again.

Earlier this week our son David called. David is the kid who is a Pastor in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. (He must have done something very bad in life for God to send him there!!) David is doing a sermon series about “real life faith” and he called to get permission to tell the congregation about some of the hard times that we faced and he faced in childhood. For quite a few years his mom, my wife, struggled with mental illness and severe depression. Those hard times made quite an impact on the whole family. David got to talk about that in his sermon on Wednesday. Sometimes I don’t know how she made it or how we made it, or how our marriage survived or how the kids are o.k. There were certainly some questions in all of that – How will it end? And we’re not all done with life – there is much for us to do – but I see God’s great mercy that held us to Him. Into your life, probably scarred like ours, I hope you can see a wonderful end because you see the wonderful hand of God.

It says in our text “when the devil had finished all this tempting, he left Him until an opportune time.” (Luke 4:13) The devil was not done with Jesus on one go-round. Didn’t he show himself when the people requested Jesus to show His deity by coming down from the cross. They would believe in Him if He simply removed Himself from the cross!! If the devil looked for an opportune time for Jesus he will also look for an opportune time with us.

We make a good ending to the challenges that are ours today. And we do so equipped with His word which allows us to stand strong. This last week we buried Mary Lawrence and sent her out with some exuberance – to the beat of the Queen City Jazz Band!! Her kids were telling me about Mary and said that their mother had a huge collection of cook books, but she seldom used them. She would order them, buy them, but she always used her old favorite recipes.

I think many of us are like Mary in that way – we have a book, maybe a few of them but we don’t use them. I’m talking about the Bible. When Jesus was tempted He went right to God’s Word and gave a response, “It is written: Man does not live on bread alone.” To the second temptation - “It is written: Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” To the final temptation: “It says: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” (Luke 4:4,8,12) The reason that we make youth memorize Bible passages in Confirmation classes, (other than we were forced to do it, and by gosh, you’re going to have to do the same), is that this is how we make it to the end. This is how we battle the devil and stand strong and know the will of God. And the study of the Bible doesn’t end in the eighth grade!! If you don’t know the Bible come to a study, have devotions, read it every day – this will help you and I to make it to the end!!

How will it end? How will the trials or difficulties that are part of life now find their resolve? How will the conclusion of life here be like? By God’s grace in Jesus and through the strength of His word, the end for our struggles now, and the fulfillment of life forever, will be glorious and strong!! Amen!!