LOC 014: Life of Christ:
The
Temptations of Jesus
Before we look at the temptations of the Lord Jesus Christ, let me
remind you that there is a great difference between temptation and sin. Yet, temptation may lead to sin and before
any sin is committed there is also a temptation manifest. Temptations are warnings to escape from sin.
It is always better to suffer any temptation, or affliction than
it is to sin. The greatest suffering is
infinitely better than the slightest sin.
Yet in our experience we often dwell on temptations allowing them to
lead us to sin.
Jesus taught his disciples to pray, in part, Matt 6:13a And do not
lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.
Temptation is a necessary part of our life here upon the
earth. We must be ever on guard against
the deceitfulness of our hearts and the lure of sin via the path of enticing
temptations. In all three synoptic
Gospels, Jesus instructs his disciples to watch and pray, lest they fall into temptation.
Temptations also come in two different ways: there are individual temptations like those
to keep the extra dollar of change at the convenience store or to roll through
the red light, or to go down Airlie Street the wrong way. But there are also times of temptations
wherein the people of God experience a time of a season of a particular
temptation, or many temptations. God
uses this for his god that his own would cling more tightly to him and to learn
to be less presumptuous of his grace.
John Owen summarizes the second in this way:
A. Every Christian must
constantly be on guard against temptation.
B. To “Fall into
temptation” is to experience temptation in its most powerful and dangerous
form.
C. To avoid being harmed by
such an experience of temptation the believer must learn to “watch and pray.”
Remember that there is a difference between temptation and
sin. With that it is a great comfort to
us that... In the words of Hebrews 4:15
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but
was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin.
What a glorious savior! He
can sympathize with our plight due to his righteous life and he can e the
perfect mediator we need to plead our case.
It is just one little episode in the Life of Christ that we will look at
today. His temptations.
Last week we looked at the baptism of Jesus to see how it was an
identification with the people he came to seek and to save. Jesus was a friend of sinners, he was
numbered among the transgressors. He
submitted to the baptism of John in order to “fulfill all righteousness.”
Immediately after his baptism where the Father and the Spirit were
present showing their approval, Jesus went out into the wilderness for forty
days and nights.
Mark 1:12-13 gives us the short “just the facts” version once
again. It is a great introduction for
initial information. Listen to his short
summary of this important event. Starting at verse 11 for background, we read:
11 Then a voice came
from heaven, "You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."
12 Immediately the
Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. 13 And He was there in the wilderness
forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels
ministered to Him.
Without any lapse of time, Jesus went out into the wilderness for
a period of forty days. Mark gives us
very little of the details for those days, except to say, that Jesus was
tempted by Satan, was exposed to the wild beasts and that God’s fierce warrior
messengers attended him.
Matthew and Luke give fuller versions of the event. Listen to Luke’s account under ????
headings.
1. Led by the Spirit
2. Temptation #1
3. Reply #1
4. Temptation #2
5. Reply #2
6. Temptation #3
7. Reply #3
8. The Devil’s Departure
Let’s take a closer look at
the text.
The Spirit has just descended upon Jesus after his baptism. It is reported that Jesus was filled with the
Spirit. The spirit continues to work in
the life of Christ.
1. Led by the Spirit
Luke 4:1 Then Jesus,
being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the
Spirit into the wilderness,
There is a lot of misunderstanding in our day and age about what
it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Most people look at it as some sort of subsequent experience to salvation
wherein the believer is ushered onto some higher plain of existence. It is commonly perceived that to be filled
with the Spirit is unusual and makes one some sort of super-saint. This thinking is wrong. These ideas have caused many folks to shy
away from what the Bible teaches about the Holy Spirit in the life of the
Christian. Being filled with the Spirit
ought to be the norm for all of Jesus’ disciples. Let me show you why.
Turn over to Ephesians 5 IN this passage the Apostle Paul is sorting
out a needed contrast between the works of unrighteous men who do not know God
and the godly conduct expected of Christians.
He instructs the church:
5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather expose them. 12 For it is
shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret.
13 But all things
that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is
light.
14 Therefore He says:
"Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you
light."
15 See then that you
walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, 16 redeeming the time, because
the days are evil.
17 Therefore do not
be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. 18 And do not be drunk
with wine, in which is in excess; but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to
one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody
in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the
Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ 21 submitting to one another in the
fear of God.
Paul commands the Church to be filled with the Spirit. But to understand the command we need to see
the contrast. The contrast is between
the intoxicating effects of too much wine and the work of the Holy Spirit. It is about to whom one submits himself and
who will be given control--God or something else. In the context this is about proving what the
will of the Lord is (vs 17). Or, rather,
what it is that God requires of all who profess to be his. This is another way of stating what we said
from Romans six and baptism last Sunday morning. There we saw how God desires his people to
live as servants of righteousness. Here
the same idea is expressed with the thought, what will be the controlling agent
in your life? Jesus was led in this way
by one with whom he had intimate fellowship for all eternity--the third person
of the eternal Trinity--the Holy Spirit.
To be led by the Holy Spirit is to be intoxicatingly under his
control. Jesus, the Spirit and the
Father always did things in agreement.
Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Spirit. What imagery would the wilderness and the
number forty have evoked from the Jews who knew their Scriptures? Moses and the wilderness wanderings of the
Children of Israel. What did the
Children of Israel do when they were tempted?
Interesting imagery isn’t it?
2 being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He
ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry.
These three temptations may be only a representative sampling of
the temptations brought to Jesus by the devil for forty days. Some commentators believe these were the last
of the temptations during those days because Luke adds the phrase, and
afterward, when they had ended he was hungry.
One of the temptations had to do with the offering of food. Jesus was fasting as he prepared himself for
the mission ahead.
Satan must have known of Jesus baptism, he surely knew of Herod’s
plan some 28 years before. His plans
were overruled at many turns and know he senses that the Lord Jesus Christ is
going to take on his kingdom directly.
Knowing Jesus hunger, he offers Jesus what he humanly needed in the
......
2. Temptation #1
3 And the devil said
to Him, "If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become
bread."
After his baptism the Father said, This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well-pleased. Now Satan tempts
Jesus with that title, If you are who
your Father in heaven says that you are, make this rock become bread.
Notice the malicious nature of the Devil. He doesn’t understand who Jesus really is, or
if he did, he was just plain stupid, but maliciously so. He is out to get Jesus to stumble. Perhaps he knew the Law and the
Prophets. He would have known about the
Messiah and all he would do. Here he
starts an all out assault to trip up the Lord in order that Jesus would not be
a fit sacrifice for sin, but sinful and corrupt himself. The devil often comes to us with a perceived
need on our part to make us think that we really need the thing that is offered
in temptation. Here he entices Jesus
with just a little miracle for himself.
He wanted Jesus to do just one little self-centered wonder. The devil parading as the Serpent had already
made man fall once in God’s paradise.
The prince of this world attacks the true prince of peace on the devil’s
own turf. What a pompous and arrogant
thing to do. Perhaps, the devil knew he
was already ruined. He was cast out of
heaven for his sin and was determined to take as many as he could take with
him. If the Lord Jesus was to fall like
Adam, nobody would ever be delivered up to the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Devil this was his biggest
chance.
3. Reply #1
4 But Jesus answered
him, saying, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by
every word of God.'"
Jesus confronts the devil with the Scriptures. He quotes the last half of Deut 8:3 as if
Satan himself would be familiar with the text
...[M]an shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the
LORD. The context is telling. The earlier part of the verse has Moses
talking about God’s humbling of a sinful Israel, saying, “"So He humbled
you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor
did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by
bread alone; but man lives by every word that
proceeds from the mouth of the LORD.
Satan tempts Jesus to take his care into his own hands, to no longer
trust his father and his angels to watch over him. Just one little loaf of bread out of a petty
rock deserved the rebuke of our Lord. A
rebuke based on a principle of Scripture.
Bread is affirmed as important, but it is not the most important
things. Living by every word that
proceeds from the mouth of God is what is more important than the seeming
prosperity in an abundance of food. In
this first salvo of spiritual warfare, Jesus uses the ....the sword of the
Spirit, which is the word of God; (EPH 6:17).
The weapon of the one who led him to this place. The authority of the Scriptures it can shut
the force of the Devil’s temptation.
What a wonderful weapon to keep at the ready.
It should be no surprise to read, Heb. 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than
any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and
spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and
intents of the heart.
The Devil would not give up this easily. The test continues:
4. Temptation #2
5 Then the devil,
taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a
moment of time. 6 And the devil said to Him, "All this authority I will
give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever
I wish. 7 "Therefore, if You will worship before me, all will be
Yours."
The devil offers Jesus all the kingdoms of this earth if he would
only engage in a little act of treason and idolatry. He has the audacity to offer to Jesus what
God had already purposed to give him.
The ancient rabbis believed a moment to be the briefest of time
periods. They believed a moment was
58,888ths of an hour. The word denotes a
very short span of time although we don’t know the exact duration. In a flash, the devil was able to make Jesus
perceive all of the kingdoms of the earth, all the authority that was their’s
and all the glory and pomp that would attend one who was the King of the
World. If only Jesus could coronate
Jesus instead of God the Father, that would make him more powerful than the one
who ruled. The devil appeals to Jesus
with a temptation of covetousness. He
was sure Jesus would see all of this splendor and glory and them want it for
himself without being numbered among the transgressors and without the stripes
by which we are healed.
Covetousness is one of the most
powerful temptations.
A pastor friend of mine wanted to teach the children of his church
about the power of covetousness. I think
it was during a service that he called all of the children to the front. Each was given a little sack with a coin in
it. He asked everyone to not tell others
what they had gotten. They were asked
how they felt and they all felt wonderful with smiles on their faces. All of the kids got Canadian pennies except
for two. One of those got a Canadian
$1.00 coin and the other a $2.00 coin.
One of those is called a loony because it bears a picture of a
loon.
When these two were asked to tell what they had gotten, the rest
of the children changed their countenance and got physically angry. Whenever they heard that the one child got
200 times what they got, they were enraged.
They were content until they saw something another had. Then they filled with rage brought on through
covetousness. Now, we may not think it
is wise to make children sin, and I would never do this illustration publicly
myself, but we can all see ourselves in the reaction of the Children. We see something that has an appeal and we
want it. I like my car, but after seeing
so-and-so’s, I want an upgrade. Jesus
was perfectly content to wait for God’s good timing. And once again, he rebukes the Devil with the
authoritative Word of God.
Jesus was not going to give into the temptation of covetousness,
nor the idolatry it required. ....
5. Reply #2
8 And Jesus answered
and said to him, "Get behind Me, Satan! For it is written, 'You shall
worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'"
This was a constant and recurring theme in the book of the Law:
DEU 6:13 "You shall
fear the LORD your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name.
DEU 8:19 "Then it
shall be, if you by any means forget the LORD your God, and follow other gods,
and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day
that you shall surely perish.
DEU 11:16 "Take
heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve
other gods and worship them,
DEU 30:17 "But if
your heart turns away so that you do not hear, and are drawn away, and worship
other gods and serve them,
Jesus would not be drawn away to worship and serve the devil as if
he were God. He rebukes him, puts him in
his place with the Scriptures. But the
devil continued the attack.
6. Temptation #3
9 Then he brought Him
to Jerusalem, set Him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to Him, "If
You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here. 10 "For it is
written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you,' 11 "and,
'In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a
stone.'"
Jesus, make a grand display here at the Temple so all may see who
you are. Throw yourself off of the
temple’s highest point. It sounds
strange, but, Aha! The devil adapts his methodology. The Devil is a pragmatist. He adapts to the need in order to trap the
hunted. If the devil comes to tempt the
Holy one of Israel, the eternal son of God, we had always been on guard against
him. The Devil quotes the Words of God
back to the Son of God as his authority as if to say, “Jesus, I’m just asking
you to do what it says here in the Bible.
He represents God’s ways to Jesus by using the Scriptures from Psalm 91
while omitting the conditions of protection.
Cast yourself down, God will send his angels. He tried this ploy before
with another perfect and sinless man and it worked. He asked in the Garden, “Hath God Said?”
Jesus answers this temptation immediately and directly by pointing
the devil to another more relevant Scripture.
7. Reply #3
12 And Jesus answered
and said to him, "It has been said, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your
God.'"
Deut 6:16 expressly forbids the tempting of God. Luke is telling us that Jesus believed
himself to be God. And, if the devil is
rebuked for tempting God when he tempted Jesus, it follows that Jesus is
God. He is not ashamed to use God’s Word
because it is his Word and will. If
Jesus had given in to this, it would have been an alteration of the plan that
was already breathed out in the Scriptures.
As God, Jesus could not allow this to happen.
The temptations were real to his humanity, but blessed be God the
Jesus had to stand fast against all temptations in order to execute the eternal
plan of which he was one of the planners.
It ended for now....
8. The Devil’s Departure
13 Now when the devil
had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.
The Devil is defeated and withdraws to do battle another day.
We face the same foe. We
need to realize some important factors.
1. The Word of God tells us
in 1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks
about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
The devil is still active.
He is seeking to make a meal of professed believers. We need to take him seriously.
2. Nothing can happen to us
without God’s knowledge and approval.
The devil is active, but he can only do what God allows. He is not equal to God in authority or
might. This is an error in the way many
well-meaning Christians conceive of the devil.
His authority is a derived authority.
He is able to bruise the heel, the savior with crush his head.
3. We need to know the Scriptures for the hour of temptation so
that we may face it and be filled with the words of the Spirit. The Psalmist wrote the great comfort we find
in PSA 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might
not sin against You!
Yet, this is not mere memorization, it is the effects of
consistent mediation where the principles and precepts of the Word are buried
deep within us so that they become a part of us. The Psalmist says the words are settled in
the deepest resources of his seat of emotions.
The Word is known to the point where it defines who the Psalmist desires
to be. That I might not sin in my heart,
I have diligently hidden your word in my heart.
This is akin to the words of Jeremiah 15:16 Your words were
found, and I ate them, And Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of
my heart; For I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.
The Word of God is authoritative, sufficient and eminently
practical for spiritual warfare, even with the devil himself. We need to give ourselves to ingesting it in
order to be transformed by it. This is
why God gives his Word. Deut 30:14 "But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in
your heart, that you may do it.
This is also more explicit in the promise of the New Covenant in
Ezekiel. This is what God will do for
his people, this is what God, by the Spirit represented in Christ Jesus,
Ezekiel 11:19 "Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new
spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them
a heart of flesh, 20 "that they may walk in My statutes and keep My
judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God.
This isn’t somehow an option within Christianity. It is not a take it or leave it
proposition. Those who will be the
actual people of God will be find themselves walking in God’s statutes and
judgments. He will preserve his people
through times of temptation by the Word of God, breathed out by the Spirit,
used by Christ, and become a part of his professing people. To not do this finds these tragic words...
21 "But as for
those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their
abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads," says the
Lord GOD.
We need God’s grace. We who
often flirt with our darling temptations, ought to cry out daily the words of
our savior, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is
the power and the glory forever, AMEN.
We are not strong on our own, we must rely upon God and his Word to
deliver us. It is our hope to resist and
flee from all temptation.
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