Transcript

Back in 1958, a small community in northeastern Pennsylvania built a little red brick building that was to be their police department, their fire department, and their city hall. They were proud of that building.

It was the result of sacrificial giving and careful planning. When the building was completed, they had a ribbon-cutting ceremony, and more than 6000 people were there—nearly all the town’s residents. It was the biggest event of the year.

Within less than two months, however, they began to notice some ominous cracks on the side of this red brick building. Sometime later, it was noticed that the windows would not shut all the way. Then it was discovered that the doors wouldn’t close correctly.

Eventually, the floor shifted and left ugly gaps in the floor covering and corners. The roof began to leak. Within a few more months, it had to be evacuated, to the embarrassment of the builder and the disgust of the taxpayers.

A firm did an analysis shortly thereafter and found that the blasts from a nearby mining area were slowly but effectively destroying the building.

Imperceptibly, down beneath the foundation, there were small shifts and changes taking place that caused the whole foundation to crack. You couldn’t feel it or even see it from the surface, but quietly and down deep there was a weakening.

A city official finally had to write across the door of the building, “Condemned. Not fit for public use.” Ultimately, the building had to be demolished.

There is a moral there. Erosion goes unnoticed when you play with temptation until your character is permanently damaged, and our lives can be destroyed. Temptation and sin are serious issues which affect our lives, character and testimony for Christ.

But we also have the spiritual resources the Lord had to turn from temptation and sin: the power of the Spirit, and the power of the Word of God.

Luke 4:1-2: “And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days He did eat nothing: and when they were ended, He afterward hungered.”

More certain than death, taxes, and hunger is the reality of temptation. It’s the universal affliction of being a human. And it’s been said, “Temptations are like stray cats—treat one nicely, and before you can blink, it’ll be back with a dozen of its friends!”

We all face temptation. There are principles here in the Lord’s temptation by Satan that can help us combat and have the strength to turn from temptation in our lives.

The Lord here is engaged in conflict with the devil. It is not a conflict that comes about because Christ inadvertently finds Himself involved somehow with the devil by accident. He enters into conflict with Satan “led” and prompted by the Holy Spirit.

It is not as if Satan came after Him, it is rather that Christ came after Satan.

Mark 1:12 says that the Holy Spirit “[drove] Him into the wilderness.” The Holy Spirit drove the Lord into this conflict because it was absolutely critical at the outset of His ministry that He be given this test of the power of Satan against Him.

So here at the launch point of the Lord’s ministry, there is this concerted work of temptation by the devil himself, intending to destroy Him as Messiah. But from God’s viewpoint this temptation was intended to validate Christ as the Messiah and God’s Son because Satan would not and could never succeed in any way in drawing Him into sin.

As He did here, Christ would do the same throughout His entire earthly ministry: He overpowered the kingdom of darkness.

This conflict demonstrates Christ’s power over Satan and His power over sin. And defeating Satan and sin here also was a foretaste of when He would conquer Satan and sin for us by the Cross and His resurrection.

Satan had conquered the sinless Adam. The question here is: Could Satan conquer the sinless Christ? But he could not. Where the first Adam failed, the last Adam succeeded. It teaches us that in the first Adam, we all die, in the last Adam, we all live.

The Lord is filled with the fullness of the Spirit and after His baptism in the Jordan River, He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

At the baptism the Father said from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The Son had never done anything, thought anything, or said anything that didn’t please Him. That testimony is then proven to be true in the temptation, and the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness to show this. (Teaches: Not sin to be tempted)

The Judean wilderness was an isolated, hot, rocky, barren, dry, desolate area, a place of scorpions and snakes. Mark 1:13 says the Lord there “was with the wild beasts.”

The Lord is there for forty days and for all those forty days He is in a conflict with the devil. It’s not that just at the end of the 40 days the devil tempted Him.

It was an intense 40-day battle, so intense that Christ doesn’t eat anything for forty days. During those forty days He was not even conscious of being hungry.

It says in v. 2, “when they were ended, He AFTERWARD hungered.” Now I don’t know about you but I get hungry if I miss one meal.

Forty days without food and not being hungry till afterward speaks to the intensity of the conflict. The Lord was so totally focused on the will of the Father, the enemy, and on doing what is right that there is no thought of anything else, not even hunger.

For forty days the onslaught went on. But Satan was unsuccessful. There was nothing in Christ’s nature as the God-Man to which the devil could hook a temptation and make it successful. So every response to temptation was immediate.

Every response to temptation was precise. He never winced, budged or moved. As Hebrews 4:15 says, He “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”

After that forty days of struggle is over, Christ who is fully man, feels hungry. Satan senses in that hunger in what he thinks as a possible vulnerability.

He moves in for what he thinks might be the kill. What happens next is 3 temptations that Satan devises that are the most brash, ruthless and the most clever.

Luke 4:3-4: “And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

“The devil said unto Him.” When the devil speaks to the Lord, he does so with a measure of truth. Deception works most effectively if it has partial truth in it. And so when the devil speaks, he starts from a point of truth.

The devil said to Him, “If Thou be the Son of God.” “If” is not a supposition but an affirmation. It has the idea of: “Since.” “Since You are the Son of God.” Or “In view of the fact that you are the Son of God.” The devil has known the Son of God since his creation and before he fell. And he admits here that Jesus is God.

Satan tells the Lord “Command this stone that it be made bread.” Another truth the devil uses subtly was that Christ as God and Creator could create bread from those stones.

Later from 5 loaves and 2 fishes the Lord created and multiplied enough bread and fish to feed 20,000 people.

But at first glance you look at that and say: Is this a temptation? It doesn’t seem like a temptation to make bread. Bread isn’t sinful. It doesn’t seem wrong to eat bread if you haven’t eaten in forty days. This wasn’t gluttony.

It wouldn’t cause anyone any harm, and would only satisfy normal physical needs. This wasn’t being done to show off something to a crowd of people.

There was nobody there but Christ and the devil. It was a personal, private temptation. Often we are tempted by the devil when we are alone, with a private temptation.

The devil tempts the Lord here to break His fast and make bread from stones. And the implication in the temptation here is to say, look, if the Father really loved You, You wouldn’t be hungry. The “Since you are the Son of God” suggests that Christ had a right to something the Father had withheld.

In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve fell when they doubted the goodness of God, that perhaps God was withholding something, and wasn’t as kind as they thought.

And so the devil questions God’s goodness, that the Father hadn’t provided food for Him. He’s asking the Lord to question whether He could trust the Father’s love?

“You’re the Son of God, why are you hungry?” is the idea. “I don’t think the Father is as good to You as You might have thought, or You wouldn’t be in this situation.”

There must be something wrong with the Father’s love since His “beloved Son” was hungry. And since He was the Son of God, the devil suggests to Him that it was time to use His own prerogatives, for Him to act independently of the Father.

This has monumental, eternal implications. Satan wants to destroy Christ. But what Satan wants also to do is get the Son of God to resist the Father’s will and the Spirit’s power and grab satisfaction and act on His own, and therefore put a breach in the Trinity.

This is not some small thing happening here. This is a battle directed not only at the deity and the perfection of Jesus Christ, but right at the essence and the unity of the Trinity.

The force of the temptation then was to rend the Trinity, to fracture the Trinity, to create rebellion and disobedience and create a breach in the Godhead. This is huge!

The Lord was being tempted to take it on to Himself to decide when the food would come and how the food would come, to use His power to serve Himself. And he wants Him to distrust the Father, to forsake dependence on Him.

When Christ answers, He says, “It is written.” Every time He answers, He quotes Scripture. That’s our strength to overcome temptation too. “It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word of God,” the Lord says.

This was a quote from Deuteronomy 8:3. It was made in reference to Israel’s wandering in the wilderness 40 years. The Lord was in the wilderness 40 days.

In their wandering, Israel often distrusted God’s love when they became hungry and murmured and wanted the garlic and leeks from Egypt.

In contrast, Christ trusts the Father implicitly and passes the test. He refuses to doubt God’s love and care. His quote shows that getting bread is not the most important thing in life. Obedience to every Word of God is what’s most important.

In John 4:34 the Lord says, “My meat [food] is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.” Since Christ had received no instructions from the Father to turn stones into bread, though He could turn stones to bread, He would not act on His own, and He would never obey Satan, no matter how intense His hunger.

He wasn’t concerned about personal sacrifices; His desire in His perfect union with the Father was to exalt the Word and the will of God. The Son affirms His absolute confidence in the Father. He knows the Father loves Him and will meet every need.

As the Union Pacific Railroad was being constructed, an elaborate trestle bridge was built across a large canyon in the West. Wanting to test the bridge, the builder loaded a train with enough extra cars and equipment to double its normal payload.

The train was then driven to the middle of the bridge, where it stayed an entire day. One worker asked, “Are you trying to break this bridge?” “No,” the builder replied, “I’m trying to prove that the bridge won’t break.”

In the same way, the temptations Christ faced weren’t designed by God to see if Christ would sin, but to prove that He wouldn’t and couldn’t as God Almighty.

Luke 4:5-8: “And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

And the devil said unto Him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be Thine.

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind Me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”

In the second temptation, the devil supernaturally showed Christ all the kingdoms of the world in a sweeping vision in a moment of time. From their high vantage point, Greece and Rome and Egypt and all the nations of the world were seen.

Ultimately God is in control. But there is a sense in which Satan does have authority over the kingdoms of this world. And it’s because of man’s sin and rebellion against God.

Thus, Satan is called “the prince of this world” (John 12:31) and “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). And the Lord doesn’t correct Satan here when he says that these kingdoms were his to offer.

We definitely see Satan’s sway over this world in that state that it is in, with its wickedness, false worship, deception, terror, murders, and the destruction of people’s lives.

The temptation was about power and glory. Rev. 11:15 says, God has purposed that “the kingdoms of this world” will one day “become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ.” So Satan was offering to Christ what would eventually be His anyway.

But Satan was again trying to separate the Son from the Father, to drive a wedge within the Trinity. Satan tempted Him on his own corrupt terms, with immediate power, glory, and authority from his hand rather than waiting on the Father and His will and plan.

Satan offered all this to the Son in exchange for His unrighteous disobedience, rather than righteous obedience to the Father’s plan and will.

The Father’s will was for Christ to die the death of the Cross. It was suffering first and then the glory of the kingdom when Christ will rule over all the world.

The temptation was “Here you are in this terrible barren place, You’re absolutely alone, You have no possessions, You’re hungry, You have no food.

“Here You are the Son of God. The Father said ‘This is my beloved Son’ and He hasn’t given you anything. But I’ll give all this, I’ll give all this power to You now.”

But there was one condition, “If Thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be Thine.” He suggested a simple, momentary act, but one with eternal consequences: bow down before me. He wanted to be worshiped by the Son of God. That would be the ultimate for him.

Satan still wants to be worshiped. He concocts false religions all over the face of the earth that ultimately are forms of worshiping him. And like this Satan still tempts us to sacrifice the eternal for the temporal and the immediate.

But Christ would make no deal with the devil. Christ again quotes Deuteronomy, 6:13 this time: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”

Christ responds by saying, “God alone is worthy of worship, service, and allegiance, I will not worship you, I will worship God alone because that’s what God’s Word and His perfect will demands and that’s what I will do.”

One day, Satan will again offer all the kingdoms of this world and their power and glory to a man, but he will accept the offer, and willingly worship Satan: the Anti-Christ.

Luke 4:9-13: “And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set Him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto Him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:

“For it is written, He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep Thee: And in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash Thy foot against a stone.

“And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from Him for a season.”

Now again, supernaturally, Christ and Satan move out of the wilderness to the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, a place of great significance for the Messiah.

Satan takes the Lord to the top and highest part of the Temple and taunts and tells Him to “cast Thyself down from thence,” or to dive off.

The temptation is done again on the basis that “if” or “since” Christ was the Son of God that this entirely possible to do without any harm coming to Him.

And Satan quotes Scripture as a basis for asking Him to do this. He quotes Psalm 91:11,12.

And since the Lord kept saying, Satan then says, “For it is written.” If Christ lived only by the Word of God, the devil confronts Him with something from the Word.

And if Christ wouldn’t use His own divine power to help Himself, He provides this opportunity for the Father to use His divine power to help Him.

That’s a scary thought that Satan says, “For it is written” when he is tempting to sin. The devil knows the Bible very well and he misuses it to tempt and deceive.

The devil quotes Psalm 91:11,12: “He shall give His angels charge over Thee, to keep Thee: And in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash thy foot against a stone.” This is a messianic Psalm and it pledges protection for the Messiah.

So Satan uses this Scripture to tempt the Lord to throw Himself down and thus give God an opportunity to have His Word proven as true and that God keeps His promises.

Satan was saying that this was an opportunity for God to put His power on display and at the same time give Christ the opportunity to prove that He is the Messiah and the Son of God by Him falling down from the top of the temple and at some point the angels coming along and gathering Him in their arms so that He’d come down to a nice, soft landing.

Then by this sensational stunt in this public place in Jerusalem, everybody would know He is the Son of God and the Messiah, and He would gain the amazement of the world.

Satan tempts Christ to present Himself as Messiah by this spectacular demon-stration at the temple. This was an opportunity for Christ to obtain fame and notoriety before men.

By leaping into the busy courtyard of the temple it would have been an entrance worthy of the Messiah and the Son of God.

This was not the way of the Messiah, who came humbly to this world to save sinners, only seeking to do the Father’s will, and not the will of Satan, and not gain fame or notoriety.

He would demonstrate fully and finally and eternally He is the Messiah and the Son of God by God’s will after He had paid for sin at the Cross, and arose victorious over death.

Christ’s response in v. 12 was “It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” The Lord quotes Deuteronomy 6:16. To test God is to doubt God, and to doubt God is to not trust Him.

To have tested the Father in this way would have been to question the Father’s love, not prove it, and would have been for the Son to put His will above the Father’s.

Christ would have no part of cheap faithless sensationalism. He would not become some kind of a flying hero on the suggestion of the devil. He would only do the Father’s will.

Christ did not need to prove to Himself or others that His Father cared and protected Him. He knew the Father’s care and love perfectly.

After this, the devil left in defeat. But he only left only for a season, or temporarily, v. 13 says. He came back after Christ later and often in His earthly ministry (Luke 22:28; Matt. 16:23), to tempt the Savior away from the Father’s will, but the Savior never broke.

He defeated Him every time. Christ defeated Satan here, throughout His earthly ministry, and ultimately He defeated and crushed him by the cross and His resurrection.

Satan’s temptation revolved around 3 of mankind’s strongest drives: physical appetite, desire for power and possessions, and desire for public recognition.

How we defeat temptation and sin is the same way Christ did: in the power of the Spirit and by the power of the Word. Three times, Christ quoted Scripture.

It shows how to overcome temptation we need to live by Psalm 119:11, “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee.”

We must remain committed to God’s Word, growing in our knowledge of it, knowing it, obeying it and living it out. It’s our anchor for our lives, our strength against temptation.

George Sweeting said: “Every temptation is an opportunity for us to draw nearer to God.” That’s where power is against sin.

And as we draw nearer to God and live in the strength of His Word and the Holy Spirit, our lives will be transformed by grace.

Join us next time when we’ll look at the example of Joseph for how we can overcome temptation.