June 25, 2000

• Luke 4:1-13 Temptation of Christ

   

  The Invincibility of the Messiah

  Luke 4:1-2

  The first thirteen verses of this chapter describe the conflict between Jesus and the devil, the final event before Jesus actually begins His public ministry.  This conflict is the capstone on His preparation, the final exam in the process of preparation for His ministry.  By now, having read Luke's gospel, we have no doubt that Jesus is the Son of God, the Savior of the world and the promised Messiah. 

  Luke for three chapters has been massing all the proof to indicate who Jesus is.  But if one is to be the Savior of the world, there is one formidable credential that one must possess.  Since the problem in the world is a sin problem, and since it is sin that has damned all humanity, since it is sin that has produced death, since it is sin that brings about the death that catapults sinners into eternal hell, since sin is under the aegis of the prince of this world, the ruler of this world, namely the devil, if one is to come and break the power of sin and conquer evil and defeat Satan, He must be able to combat the devil and come out the victor.

  Messiah's credentials would be incomplete without this battle.  If Jesus cannot defeat Satan head on, one on one, then He is not adequate to redeem sinners.  If He Himself is not impervious to sin, if He is not impeccable, if He is not invulnerable to sin, if He does not come out pure and spotless in the midst of the most violent conflict with the devil, then He cannot be the Savior.  If He is to save sinners from their sin, if He is to save them from the devil, if He is to save them from death and hell, then He must conquer sin and Satan himself. 

  This is the capstone on messianic credentials.  If we are to trust our time and eternity to Christ, if we are to trust Him as our Savior and the forgiver of our sins, if we are to trust Him to overpower sin and overpower death and overpower the devil and overpower hell and set us free and bring us to heaven, then we need to know that He has the ability to conquer Satan in the most intense confrontation.

  There once was a man who was perfect and who was without sin, undefiled.  There once was a man who lived in a perfect environment, a perfect place, a perfect world, and who had everything that could possibly be given him by God and that man the first time he was ever assaulted with temptation fell, both he and his wife, and catapulted all of humanity into condemnation.  Is Jesus like Adam?  Is this another Adam who though perfect at the start, can't sustain that in the battle with the enemy?  We need to know that. 

  Luke knows we need to know that and the Holy Spirit knows we need to know that.  We cannot have a victim for our Savior, only have a victor.  We cannot have someone who is as susceptible to sin as we are, as susceptible to death and hell and the devil as we are.  We have to have someone who can conquer sin, conquer death, conquer Satan, conquer hell. 

  The Jews knew about the devil.  In the Old Testament he was called Satan, which means adversary, or enemy.  He first appears by name, of course, in Job, then again in Zechariah, then again in 1 Chronicles, but he appears, first of all, as a serpent in the third chapter of Genesis.  The Jews knew about the enemy, the adversary.  They knew about the personification of evil.  They knew Satan as the source of evil.  They knew that he had brought down the whole human race in Eden.  And the question was, if Jesus is the Messiah, can He overturn this?  Can He bring back the paradise lost?  Can He conquer the enemy of God and the enemy of our souls?

  Look at chapter 4 verse 1.  "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.  And He ate nothing during those days and when they had ended He became hungry.  And the devil said to Him, 'If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.'  And Jesus answered him and said, 'It is written man shall not live on bread alone.'  He led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and the devil said to Him, 'I'll give You all this domain and its glory for it's been handed over to me and I can give it to whomever I wish, therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be yours.'  And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is written you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'  And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, 'If you are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here, for it is written He will give His angels charge concerning to guard You and on their hands they will bear You up lest You strike Your foot against a stone.'  And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is said you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'  And when the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time."

  Obviously Jesus triumphs over Satan.  That is absolutely critical.  This is the final exam that Jesus passes to qualify as the Savior of sinners.  He is not like Adam and yet He is like Adam.  He is a son of Adam, but He is far beyond Adam.  Though He like Adam is truly human, He unlike Adam cannot sin.  Let me kind of help you a little bit to see deeper into that contrast because I think it really elucidates this account.

  It is important to know that Jesus was a man, an actual son of Adam.  He goes back to Adam, all the way back and that is clear from verse 38 of chapter 3.  All the way back, son of Adam, Son of God, that is to say Jesus is truly human, He is truly and fully human.  He is not like a man.  He doesn't look like a man or act like a man, He is a man.  He is 100 percent fully human.  Hebrews 2:17 puts it this way, "He had to be made like His brethren in all things."  There is no area in Jesus' existence that is not fully human.  He is fully human.  He is truly a Son of Adam.  He was born as a human.  He was a babe in the womb of His mother.  He lived as an infant, as a toddler, as a child, as a young person, as a teen-ager, as a young adult, as a mature adult, and according to chapter 2 verse 40 and verse 52, He grew in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man.

  Jesus is God, but He voluntarily set aside the independent exercise of His deity.  He didn't cease to be God, He is fully God and fully man, but He voluntarily set aside the independent exercise of His deity and submitted Himself to the Father's will and the Spirit's power.  He did what the Father wanted Him to do and He did it by the power of the Holy Spirit.  So He set aside the use of His divine powers and submitted Himself to true humanness and allowed the Spirit of God to work His work through Him. 

  By the age of twelve, He knew who He was and why He had come.  That's why He lingered in Jerusalem, in the temple. And when His parents finally found Him, He said, "I had to be in My Father's place doing My Father's work."  He knew He was the Son of God.  He knew why He had come.  He grew like any person grows, like any human being grows.  And as He grew as a real man, the Spirit of God gave to Him more and more of the truth of His personhood.  And as He grew He was exposed to temptation.  When the writer of Hebrews said He was in all points tempted like as we are, it means in all points in the chronology of His life.  He was tempted as an infant, the way infants are tempted.  He was tempted as a child the way children are tempted.  He was tempted as a young adult the way young adults were tempted and so forth and so forth.  All through His life He was tempted, with one great distinction...and you must understand this...all the temptations, all the solicitations to evil that ever came to Jesus stayed on the outside.  This is why it's impossible for us to grasp that because we don't understand temptation in that sense.  Why?  Because for us temptation takes place predominantly on the inside.  But for Jesus, there was nothing in Him that could internalize that temptation and work it toward evil.

  James 1 says, "Sin happens when lust conceives and brings forth sin."  But there was no lust in Jesus, no lust for those things which He could see...the lust of the eyes, the things He could feel, the lust of the flesh, there was nothing in Him in His perfect, holy person that could internalize the temptation. So it came to Him on the outside.  It hammered Him relentlessly on the outside and He was without capacity to conceive that thing by some evil motive or intent in His heart into an actual sin. 

  He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin, because He had no capacity to internalize it.  But nonetheless the onslaught came and He heard it and He heard all the cleverness of it and He saw it in the world around Him and in people and the demons that orchestrated it and here Satan himself who orchestrates it.  He could see the temptation.  He could understand the temptation, but He could not internalize it, mixing it with some evil intent because it didn't exist in Him.  He was true humanity, He was holy, He was unfallen and He was perfect, but different than Adam in that Adam apparently did have the capacity to internalize temptation and turn it into sin, Jesus did not.  That's why I love the statement Jesus made in John 14:30, He said, "The ruler of the world, Satan, is after Me but he has nothing in Me, he has nothing in Me, he has nothing on Me, he can lay no claim on Me, he can make no justifiable charge of sin."  Now the devil, as he is called here in verse 2, is the Greek word diabolos and it means "accuser," and it means "slanderer."  And that's what Satan does.  That's what he is.  He's the accuser of the brethren.  He's the slanderer.  And, of course, he would love to bring an accusation against God's elect, and the Lord, of course, defends us from that, according to Romans 8, because we belong to Him and Jesus has already paid the penalty for our sins.  It is also true that he would want to bring an accusation against Jesus Himself, but he had none he could bring legitimately.  He has no claim on Me, he has nothing in Me.  There was no justifiable charge of sin that ever could be leveled at the Son of God.

  Some people question the deity of Jesus, lots of people question the deity of Jesus.  Mormons deny the deity of Jesus.  Jehovah's Witnesses deny the deity of Jesus.  Liberals deny the deity of Jesus.  But I'll tell you one group who don't, demons.  Demons do not deny the deity of Jesus and the devil never denies the deity of Jesus, he always assumes it.  Repeatedly he says to Him, "If...or since You are the Son of God..." verse 3.  It never was a question...never.  They know who they are dealing with and Satan knew exactly who he was dealing with and he knew exactly what he wanted to accomplish and that was somehow to put so much subtle, powerful, clever pressure on Jesus as to overturn His holiness and force Him into sin so that he could literally destroy Jesus' ability to save sinners...and to destroy him, the devil.

  Jesus obviously was tempted in all points like as we are.  Yet when you come to this passage there are specific temptations the likes of which we could never have because they relate particularly and only to Jesus' unique person and work. And we'll see that as it unfolds.  But nonetheless, we will learn from Jesus the path of triumph in the midst of temptation.

  This is a monumental moment.  This is the second Adam being confronted with a massive assault like the first Adam.  The first Adam was also sinless, like the second Adam.  But the first Adam fell, the second Adam did not, cannot and will not.  Adam then puts the whole race into sin and damnation, and Jesus lifts sinners to heaven.  It all comes down to the issue of defeating sin.  He was a true Son of Adam then, truly human, and as a man His Father could say of Him, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.  Thirty years He's lived, He's never thought, said, or done anything that didn't please Me.  That is His perfection."  He is then going to be attacked, as it were, by Satan and where the first Adam fell, He triumphs.

  Here is Jesus Christ, the second Adam, the head of a new humanity who will rise to glory rather than fall to hell like the old humanity led by the first Adam.  It tells us that He has infinitely greater power in Himself than Adam ever had.  Adam was just a man, this is the God/Man and His humanity is protected from sin by His deity.

  Think about the circumstances that make the distinction between Jesus and Adam so obvious.  Adam was in a garden, the best imaginable place.  He was in Eden, he was in paradise.  Jesus was in an anti-Eden, the most desolate, forsaken and dangerous place in the Judean desert, barren and empty. 

  Adam lived in a sinless world, a sinless environment.  Jesus lived in a sinful world.  Adam never had known any temptation.  Adam fell at the first temptation, which means there was no prior assault to try to break down his resistance.  Jesus has had 30 years of temptation and then 40 days of temptation before the final three come.  All that attempting to break down His resistance.

  Adam had perfect human strength.  Adam was delightfully and wonderfully fed by all the lush provisions of the Garden.  Jesus was weakened by 40 days with no food.  Adam had all conceivable things to enjoy, never knowing hunger.  Jesus was hungry, well He was starving.  Adam needed nothing, he needed nothing.  He had everything.  He ruled everything.  Jesus had nothing, no food, no authority, nothing, no kingdom, no sphere of rule.  He's all alone.

  Adam certainly had no need to test God to see if God really cared, to see if God really loved him, since he had ample evidence that God loved him and God cared while he was wandering around in the lavishness of Eden.  Jesus deprived of all of that and everything else with nothing but a desolate desert and Satan trying to push Him to test God to see if God really does love Him.

  Jesus with a right to eat as the creator has no food.  Jesus with the right to rule as King has no kingdom.  Jesus with the right to divine care and divine protection and divine blessing is exposed to the severest dangers.  And the point should be clear, Jesus didn't fall, Adam did.  And that tells you what a vast difference there is between Jesus and Adam.  In the best of circumstances, Adam fell.  In the worst imaginable circumstances, Jesus did not.  This is our Savior.  This is our Messiah.  And this is the proof of it.  Adam, innocent, perfect, rich, lacking nothing fell under the first assault.  Jesus did not...poor, alone, weary, hungry and He is triumphant.

  I can't tell you other than to say this is absolutely critical to the issue of salvation.  It's not just an interesting incident, it's the heart and soul of everything.  Jesus can't save us from sin and death and hell if He Himself cannot conquer it.  So where the first man failed, in Adam we all died, the second man succeeds, in Christ we all live.

  Could He have sinned?  This is called the debate about the impeccability of Jesus, and you can read all kinds of material on this.  Could Jesus have sinned?  And there have been theologians through the years who have said yes He could have sinned.

  They're wrong clearly, I don't even know why anybody would discuss it, of course He couldn't sin, can God sin?  God can't sin, "He's of purer eyes than behold evil, can't look upon iniquity."  He has no capacity to sin.  Jesus had no capacity within Him to turn anything into a sin, He couldn't conceive anything in such a way, mixing it with lust and evil intent as to produce a sin.  It was impossible because there was nothing in His nature to do that...nothing.

  In Luke 1 verse 35 when a child was to be born, the child is called "that holy offspring...that holy offspring."  This is not a child like any other child.  And by the age, as I said, of 30 the Father can say, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."  Thirty years He had never sinned.  If He could have, He would have.  He didn't because He couldn't.  Second Corinthians 5:21, God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us," right?  He knew no sin.  He knew no sin.  He had no capacity to internalize temptation and transport it into sin.  He committed no sin, 1 Peter 2:22.  Hebrews 7:26, "He is holy...He is undefiled, He is separate from sinners."  He did not sin, He could not sin.  That is obvious.

  Some theologians would say, "Well if He couldn't sin then temptation wasn't real."  That's not true.  You don't always sin when you're tempted which means you could be tempted and not sin.  You could be hit with some strong temptation and you can be victorious and walk away and not sin and thank God and praise God and be triumphant.  As Christians we do that.  That doesn't mean it wasn't a temptation.  The fact that Jesus couldn't sin doesn't mean He couldn't be tempted.  Look, Satan tempted Him, he tempted Him personally.  The devil came and tempted Him personally.  Demons came and tempted Him personally.  Demons working in the wicked leaders of Israel and others came after Jesus, He was exposed to sin all around Him as the system of Satan worked its way through human depravity.  It came at Him on the outside, He saw it all.  He understood it in His mind but He had no internal capacity to turn that into a sin.  But it doesn't mean that He didn't feel or experience the reality of that temptation. 

  Every temptation that came to Jesus was a temptation from the outside, no solicitation of evil ever came up in the inside because there was nothing there to generate that.  Now in that sense He's not like us.  He is fully human but you can be fully human and perfect, as Adam was.  In the case of Jesus, He's fully human and perfect and His perfection as a man is protected by His deity which is infinitely holy.  It doesn't mean the temptations weren't real, what it really means is the temptations were stronger and stronger because He never caved in.  I mean, if you're standing there and somebody is trying to push you over and you brace yourself and you keep standing and they keep pushing and keep pushing, at some point you fall over, you're never going to know where their full strength was.  But if you never get in...if you never give in, if you stand there you will get the full fury of everything they have to offer until they finally run out of energy and back away.  That's exactly what happens in the case of Jesus.  He is tempted and the temptation goes to its maximum capacity every time because He never budges.  So it isn't that He didn't feel the temptation, it is that He felt it in its fullest. 

  Westcott(?) says, "Sympathy with the sinner in his trial does not depend on the experience of sin, but on the experience of the strength of the temptation to sin which only the sinless can know in its full intensity," end quote.  That's exactly right.  Only the sinless one knows how intense the temptation can be, every temptation, because he never gives in and finally the temptation having exhausted itself departs.

  Jesus never gave in so at the end He experienced the full force of every temptation to its maximum level, but never internalized sin.  So here we find in our text the Son of God being tested and His perfect holy righteousness which the angel said was true, "That holy offspring," which the Father said was true, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," is here proven to be true in a battle with sin and the devil.  And the conclusion of this is that Jesus is qualified to be our Satan conqueror.  Through the temptations He demonstrates His qualification.

  Let's look at the preparation for the battle.  This is not just a distant sort of historical look or crystalogical look.  There is so much here that is practical and you're going to see by the time we get to the end of this a pattern for triumph in your own life as you battle with temptation.  Verses 1 and 2, the stage is set.  "And Jesus, the perfect God/Man affirmed by the Father to be sinless, full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.  And He ate nothing during those days.  When they had ended, He became hungry."

  There's a lot of theology in that statement "full of the Holy Spirit," but I want to confine a large subject to its specific purpose here.  "Full" is simply a word that means to be saturated with, or it means to be permeated thoroughly with.  This is something that is true of Jesus at all times.  When the Holy Spirit came upon Him at His baptism, descended as a dove and settled upon Him, that isn't the first time the Holy Spirit arrived in the life of Jesus.  It is simply a symbol of the fact that the Spirit of God was resting on Him through His whole life.  Jesus in Matthew 12 said, "If you say, as you have...to the Jewish leaders...that what I do I do by the power of Satan, you blaspheme the Holy Spirit."  Why?  Because if you attribute the work of Jesus to the devil, you blaspheme the Spirit because it's really being done by the Spirit through Him.  So it was the Spirit through Him all the way along, from the time that He was born it was the Spirit of God that permeated His being, it was the Spirit of God that dwelt within Him in personal presence and fullness there. 

  The Spirit of God was always there giving Him victory over every situation as He matured and grew up.  He is in the fullness of manhood now, having had His baptism and His public proclamation, He has been announced, He has been presented by the prophet John, He is on the launch pad for going into His ministry which was planned by the Father before creation.  All this time has gone by, all these 30 years of His life on top of that, finally He reaches this moment and He is described as being saturated with the Spirit of God.  And this is something Jesus experienced through His entire life.

  We talk about being filled with the Spirit, we read about it, Ephesians 5, be being filled with the Spirit.  That's something we desire, isn't it?  We desire to be controlled by the Holy Spirit, we desire to be permeated, to be saturated with the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  We desire to do only the Spirit's will, only through the Spirit's power, only that which the Spirit of God desires for us.  We desire that.  We pursue that.  We long for that.  We hunger for that.  And on occasion there are people in the Bible times who experienced it.  There was John the Baptist who was filled with the Holy Spirit in his mother's womb and consequently began to move in the womb of Elizabeth which was a confirmation of the coming of the Messiah.  So God filled John the Baptist before he was born with the Holy Spirit in such a way as to manifest indication of the Messiah's coming.  Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was filled with the Holy Spirit, chapter 1, I think it's verse 67, and began to speak the very words of God.  So totally saturated by the Spirit of God that what he said was not at all human, it wasn't at all his, it was right exactly what God wanted him to say.

  On the day of Pentecost, Luke records that the 120 were in the upper room and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other languages the wonderful works of God in a miraculous way.  And then the apostles were filled with the Spirit of God in chapter 4.  And then in chapter 6 there were some deacons in the church who were filled with the Spirit of God in their ministry.  And you find the filling of the Holy Spirit referred to by Luke a number of times in the book of Acts, chapter 7, chapter 9, chapter 11, chapter 13.  That's something that happened occasionally in the life of an apostle when the Spirit of God literally saturated, permeated, took over control of an individual for a time.  But for fallen people like us, it's not something that is a constant way of life from the cradle to the grave, as it was for Jesus.  For us, we desire to be filled with the Spirit, we desire that, we long for that and that's why Paul says, "Be being kept filled with the Spirit, letting the Word of Christ dwell in you richly," it's the same thing, it's something we pursue, we want to be controlled and saturated by the presence and power of the Spirit.  But for Jesus that was a constant reality.  That's how He lived His entire life.  He as a man setting aside the independent use of His own attributes, submitting Himself to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit who through Him does the Father's will.

  He's ready.  He's in the fullness of the Spirit.  That means to say He hasn't done anything here that's jeopardized Himself.  He's not going to be tempted of the devil because somehow He's wandered out of the way of the Father or He's wandered off the path of the Holy Spirit, or He's done something independent of the Spirit and so He's gotten Himself into a difficult situation.  No, He's under the full control of the Holy Spirit when He returns from the Jordan.  Now the Jordan, that's where He's been because that's where He was baptized in chapter 3, that's where John the Baptized was preaching, that's where John presented Him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, as John 1:29 says.  So that's all done.  He's been baptized.  He's been presented.  Now it's time to go and do His ministry.

  He leaves the Jordan valley and He starts west and west from the Jordan valley is the steep slope or the plateau on which Jerusalem sits, about a mile up.  The Dead Sea, the end of the Jordan River is 1500 miles below sea level, so it's a tremendous climb up that area.  And the Spirit of God is leading Him.  He is not somehow falling into the devil's clutches, He's not making bad choices and ending up in a vulnerable situation.  He is in total control of the Holy Spirit and it says in verse 1 He was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness.  So the Spirit takes Him right into the wilderness, right from the Jordan where there was plenty of water and there were plenty of people listening to John preach into absolute isolation.  But it's the Spirit of God who is doing everything to bring about the purposes of God.  He is thoroughly saturated with the Spirit.  Remember John 3:34  God says, "He gives not the Spirit by measure."  When God gave Jesus the Spirit, He didn't give it to Him in doses, He didn't give Him little bits of the Holy Spirit, He gave Him the fullness of the Spirit, John 3:34 and 35, not measured out increments.  So He is fully led by the Spirit of God, fully empowered by the presence of the Spirit of God and He moves toward the wilderness.

  Mark 1:12, Mark also records His temptation in chapter 1, and Matthew does in chapter 4.  Mark 1:12, "The Holy Spirit drove Him into the wilderness."  And the idea here is that it was the Spirit of God moving Him that way.  And this is how it would always be in Jesus life, the Spirit of God would move the God/Man where He wanted to be to do the Father's will.  So the Spirit drives Him into the wilderness.

  Let me talk about the wilderness a little bit.  I've been there.  I've stood in that place.  Some of you have done it as well.  The last time I went to Israel we took a group of people and we gave them an experience, the likes of which they're not likely to forget, and that is we took them into this wilderness on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, not the main road, not the road everybody travels, but the old road that runs along the area called "the devastation."  This is a frightening and terrifying kind of experience.  And that is where the Holy Spirit leads Jesus.

  Isn't it interesting how sometimes our highest moments are followed by our deepest trials?  Jesus has been waiting since all eternity for this and waiting 30 years in the obscurity of Nazareth for the baptism and the launch of His ministry. 

  The high point, the Father commends Him, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."  Visibly the Spirit of God affirms Him.  John the Baptist, the great forerunner, the greatest man who had ever lived up until his time announces Him as the Lamb of God.  He is full of the Holy Spirit.  He is in full consciousness of His divine nature.  He is in full consciousness of His divine mission.  His sacred humanity is filled with the Spirit's power.  His soul is charged with joy and contemplation of His privilege and purpose.  Finally after all this time and eternity and all these 30 years He is ready to begin His ministry and He's reached the peak of this great statement of the Father, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," and it's immediately after that that the Spirit of God drives Him from the highest point in His life to the lowest point, into mortal combat with the devil.  And it's not as if the devil came looking for Jesus, it's that Jesus came looking under the power of the Holy Spirit for the devil. 

  He found him in the wilderness, the area between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and Jerusalem.  It is an area in the Old Testament called Jeshimon, which could be translated "the devastation."  It's a really terrifying place.  To take a ride in a vehicle up that road is frankly very frightening.  Many people have been frightened by that.  It is a precipitous area, loose rock, it is rock, rock, rock and more rock, jagged, ragged, craggy peaks with severe ravines that go down hundreds of feet.  It is dry.  It is barren.  It is inhabited by wild animals, snakes, scorpions and all of that.  It is barren.  It is the worst part of the Judean desert.  It is certainly a place where Jesus would be more alone than any other place in Palestine.  And the fact of the matter is, the only reason we even know what happened there is because Jesus allowed it to be recorded because He was the only one there.  It's about a 35 by 15 mile area, be very hard to move around in that area.  I have felt the rocks sliding under my feet.  I remember standing on a little knoll and feeling the rocks sliding under my feet as I was trying to get closer to the edge and seeing the sheer drop down to a bottom I couldn't even see.  It's that kind of an area.  Very difficult area to traverse, almost unthinkable experience to spend 40 days there, six weeks. 

  Deuteronomy 8:15 says, "The terrible and great wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water."  It is not a garden, it is not a place where a garden grows, this place.  It's the worst of places.  It's not even a place you could hike, you just stay by the safety of the road you're on.  He was there 40 days, six weeks, wandering in the dangerous, dry, desolate area.  And all the while, it says in verse 2, "being tempted by the devil."  All the time the devil's after Him in that environment.  He's all alone.  And this is very important, there's no one there to aide Him, there's no one there to deflect some of the temptation, there's no one there to offer counsel.  It is critically important that Jesus be able all alone, one-to-one to defeat the devil.  If He needs help, we're in some trouble. 

  Luke has already made us aware that there's evil in the world.  He hasn't really specifically said that in the three chapters we've studied, but he's indicated as much because he said in verse 16 of chapter 1 that John the Baptist would turn back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God and he would turn the hearts of the fathers back to the children and the disobedient to the attitude of the righteous.  So we already know there's sin in the world.  There's disobedience in the world.  And there needs to be repentance in the world.  We also know there's darkness.  Chapter 1 verse 79, people sit in darkness.  We also know there's the shadow of death.  Chapter 2 verse 34 we know that the child is appointed for the fall and rise of many and a sign to be opposed and a sword will pierce even your own soul.  So we know there's suffering and pain and a heart-piercing experience in the world.  Chapter 3 verse 19 there are terribly wicked people like Herod, Herodias, his brother's wife, who locked up John in prison and then cut his head off.  So Luke isn't hiding evil from us.  But he gives evil a face here.  And for the first time in his gospel we come to meet the devil.

  He's a player in the whole story, always has been since Genesis 3, this diabolos, this slanderer, this accuser, this Satan.  He's been before God in Job accusing.  He's been before God in Zechariah 3, 1 Chronicles 21, accusing, accusing, slandering, slandering.  He is the enemy of God.  He is the hater of God.  But we don't meet him until here.

  Who is this devil?  Well I won't go over a lot of detail because we've done that in our series in Genesis.  But suffice it to say he was originally created by God as a holy angel, right?  His name was Lucifer.  Jesus said He saw Lucifer fall from heaven like lightning.  He was the anointed cherub.  If you read Ezekiel 28:11 to 15, Isaiah 14:12 to 14, you read about him.  He was the anointed cherub which probably means he was the praise and worship leader of heaven.  He was heaven's chief musician.  He was the one who led all the angelic praise.  He was THE anointed cherub, he was the main, holy angel in charge of praise.

  For some incomprehensible reason he decided that wasn't enough, that he wanted to be equal with God.  And so the prophets tell us, Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, that he said, "I will...I will...I will...I will...I will..." five times he sought to usurp God's throne, dethrone God and take over heave.  He was in Eden in all his beauty.  He had everything.  But pride was lifted up in his heart and he thought to dethrone God and God threw him out of heaven.  Revelation 12 says when He threw him out, He threw a third of the angels with him because they joined in the rebellion.  There was mutiny in heaven.  One third of the angels were thrown out.  They became the demons so now that is the devil and his demons.  They are outnumbered by the two thirds of holy angels who still remain and always will.

  This fallen angel, this adversary, this archenemy of God who once was heaven's praise leader then decided that he wanted to take the whole human race into his rebellion, and he succeeded with Adam and Eve and plunged all humanity into sin.  Now he comes after Jesus, the incarnate God/Man Himself.  And he must destroy Jesus because Jesus is the second Adam, and He has come to bring life back to the dead.  He has come to rescue people from hell.  He has come to conquer sin and to destroy the devil.  So the devil knows he's fighting for his life here, as well as destroying Jesus as the Savior, he's fighting for his own life because if he loses, then he loses eternally and he's going to end up in the Lake of Fire. 

  So into the wilderness comes Jesus, all alone, led by the Spirit of God who has filled Him, permeated Him to find the devil for the confrontation.  This loneliest of all places, this anti-Eden, this most cursed piece of land where no garden grows and for 40 days the devil throws everything he's got at Him.  Interestingly enough, those 40 days pass in silence.  Satan came to Eve in Eden and seduced her to distrust God and to think God wasn't really good and to think God really didn't care.  She fell.  And that's why Satan is called in Revelation 9:11 "the destroyer."  He's also the liar, John 8:44.  He's a liar from the beginning and the father of lies and the murderer or the killer, as 1 John 5:9 says, "The whole world lies in his lap."  And 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, "He's blinded the minds of the entire human race."

  Here comes the blinder, the liar, the murderer, the destroyer who wanted Jesus dead from the time He was born and he's coming after Jesus and he's going to try to get Him to sin.  And if he can't get Him to sin, he's going to try to kill Him.  And for 40 days the onslaught goes on without success.  For 40 days the enemy tries to break the resistance of Jesus to evil.  For 40 days Jesus concentrates His mind on the conquest of evil, fully dependent on the Holy Spirit in proving that He is impeccable, invincible, impervious to iniquity.  For 40 days Satan gains not one inch of ground and the devil gives up after 40 days, but only for a moment. 

  "And when they had ended, He became hungry."  He had eaten nothing for 40 days.  Let's just assume that that means what it says, He has eaten nothing.  I read a commentary, he said, "Well, He probably ate some things."  Why do people do that?  Even I'm smart enough to know what "He ate nothing" means.  He ate nothing.  He's in a serious condition.  The devil has been pushing against this immovable object the whole time, and He's felt the full fury of all of Satan's energies, the maximum power of every temptation until the devil was so exhausted he had to come back and regroup and come with another one.  And finally the devil backs away and for the first time in 40 days it tells us, "When they had ended, He became hungry."  He wasn't hungry during the 40 days, the thing was too intense, it was too strong. 

  He feels the hunger for the first time and as Jesus begins to feel that hunger, the devil senses a new opportunity.  He smells blood, he senses vulnerability and he moves in for what he hopes will be the kill.  And so starting in verse 3 comes the three final temptations, the big guns.  Satan pulls out the big guns to fire at what he perceives to be a now vulnerable Jesus.  He's found an angle in Jesus' hunger, in Jesus being starved and weak and he's going to exploit that to the max and see if he can't crush the Son of God under the power of his assault.  That's when the battle really begins. 

  ---

   

  

  The Temptation of the Messiah, Part 1

  Luke 4:3-8

  In addition to the testimony of angels, the testimony of men, the testimony of the trinity, you have the testimony of genealogy.  All of this in three chapters is a summation of the evidence to indicate that Jesus and no other is the Savior of the world, the Son of God, the Messiah.  There is one other issue, however, in order to validate His Messiahship and that is His ability to conquer the devil and sin.  It's fine to have all of these evidences, all of these proofs, all of these credentials in place.  But the ultimate question is...can He save sinners from sin?  Can He save sinners from the destroyer?  From death and hell?  That's the compelling question.  Can He overturn the curse?  Can He get us paradise regained?  Can He undo what the destroyer did with the first Adam?  Can He conquer Satan?  Can He conquer sin and therefore conquer death and conquer hell not only for Himself but for us?  And if He can't for Himself, then it's for sure He can't do it for us.  And so the compelling question that is answered in the fourth chapter of Luke is the question, can Jesus conquer the devil and sin?  And there is a ringing yes to that question. 

  Here He is engaged in conflict with the devil.  It is not a conflict that comes about because Jesus inadvertently finds Himself involved somehow with the devil rather by accident.  It is not a conflict that comes about because Jesus made some mistake or made a bad choice and ended up in a compromising situation where He was somewhat vulnerable to Satan.  He enters into conflict with Satan prompted by the Holy Spirit.  It is not as if Satan came after Him, it is rather as if He came after Satan.  The Spirit of God literally driving Him, says one of the gospel writers, into the wilderness, into this conflict because it was absolutely critical at the outset of His ministry that He be given the ultimate test of the power of Satan against Him to see if He could stand that, essential to His messianic credentials. 

  He had been being tempted as all people are tempted throughout the 30 years of His life up until this point.  The writer of Hebrews says, "He was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin."  He was tempted as an infant, He was tempted as a small child, tempted as a young child, tempted as a teen ager, tempted as a young adult, tempted as an adult the way everybody's tempted.  He never sinned.  But here at the launch point as He engages in His ministry, there is a concerted work of temptation not just by the system around Him but by the devil himself, intending to, of course, destroy Him as Messiah.  But from God's viewpoint, intending to validate Him as the Messiah because Satan cannot succeed in any way in drawing Him into sin. 

  Messiah's credentials then must include His ability to demonstrate power over Satan.  This isn't the only time He did it, He did it for 30 years up until this time.  He does it here in a monumental conflict.  He will do it through His entire ministry as He overpowers the kingdom of darkness and casts out demons anytime He wants in any volume He wants, and can send them to the pit, as we see indicated in His actions.  He also demonstrates great power over the force of temptation in the garden and greater power yet as He conquers Satan even in death as He hangs on the cross, and then comes three days later out of the tomb.  This is not the only time that He enters into conflict, and, of course, verse 13 says, "The devil departed from Him, only till an opportune time."  He was back and he was back on numerous occasions.  But this is an initial and monumental conflict that starts His ministry which adds to His credentials as the Messiah by demonstrating His power over Satan and His power over sin.  If He is not adequate to conquer sin and Satan himself, He certainly can't do it for us.  If He is defeated by Satan, then we all lose, there is no salvation, and we are damned.

  The Jews knew that Satan had conquered the sinless Adam.  The question was, could Satan conquer the sinless Jesus?  And the Jews knew that Adam was in a perfect environment.  Here we find Jesus in the most imperfect of all environments.  If Adam was in Eden, Jesus is in anti-Eden.  He is out in the devastation, as George Adam Smith calls it, the rocky precipitous dangerous area in the Judean wilderness that is in the crevices and the cracks, and the canyons between Jericho in the Jordan valley and Jerusalem up on the plateau.  It is a very dangerous area.  It is an isolated area.  It is a barren, dry, desolate area where Jesus finds Himself engaged in conflict with Satan.  If Adam had everything, Adam had all that he ever needed to eat, Adam had a kingdom that spread across the whole world, the pinnacle of which was expressed in the magnificence of the Garden of Eden, Jesus was in the opposite situation, He had no food at all and He had no kingdom and possessed absolutely nothing. 

  We find Him at the very opposite end in terms of circumstances from Adam.  Adam had everything.  Jesus had nothing.  If Adam was vulnerable, certainly Jesus is more vulnerable if the first Adam collapsed at the first temptation, maybe the second Adam will collapse at this temptation, though He has succeeded in many before this.  Maybe the circumstances finally are enough to crush Him and there is no Savior. That's the question that needs to be answered.  The answer is that Jesus conquered Satan and He conquered him in very triumphant ways, as we shall see.

  Luke tells us here that we have a Savior who can overturn the curse.  We have a Savior who is not like the first Adam.  We have a Savior who can take all of the fury of the devil and all of the onslaught of temptation and never wince and never budge and never move and never ever even internalize a solicitation to evil.  He comes out triumphant and with that Luke consummates, caps off the credentials that identify Jesus as the One and only Messiah and Savior.

  "And Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan, was led about by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil.  And He ate nothing during those days and when they had ended, He became hungry.  And the devil said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, tell the stone to become bread.'  And Jesus answered him, 'It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone.'  And he led Him up and he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and the devil said to Him, 'I'll give You all this domain and its glory, for it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish.  Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be yours.'  And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'  And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here, for it is written, He will give His angels charge concerning You to guard You and on their hands they will bear You up lest You strike Your foot against the stone.'  And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'  And when the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time."

  If Jesus had fallen to the temptations of Satan, salvation would be impossible and we would all be damned.  He is the only substitute.  He is the only Lamb.  He is the only sacrifice.  He is the only one perfect.  He's the only one suited to die for sinners.  It is absolutely crucial that He win this battle with the enemy, this consummate battle, this pinnacle of all battles, and as the text indicates, He did.  The question asked certainly by anyone who understands the process of redemption is...is there someone...is there someone who can conquer sin?  Is there someone who can conquer Satan?  Is there someone who can reverse the curse?  And the answer is, there is, it is Jesus and He has demonstrated His power here.  Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded.  In the first Adam we all died, in the second Adam we all live. 

  The Son of God is tested as to His ability to resist temptation.  He's tested as to His impeccability and He is found to be impervious to all temptation.  He did only what the Father wanted Him to do.  He did always what the Father wanted Him to do.  And when God said of Him after 30 years of life, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," God was saying, "He's never done anything, never thought anything, or said anything that didn't please Me."  The Father having given that testimony, that testimony is then put to the test in this temptation.  It is a temptation which God Himself inaugurates by the Spirit driving Him into conflict with Satan, rather than Satan approaching Him.  Because He is triumphant, we can say He is in fact the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  He has been and continued to be from this point on until His death tempted in all points like we are, yet without sin. 

  This is such an incredibly important account in the life of Jesus that it is recorded also by Mark in chapter 1 and by Matthew in chapter 4.  And you will see varying details when you compare those passages.

  Last time we looked at the preparation for battle, the first two verses.  Jesus prepared for battle by being full of the Holy Spirit.  That is He was permeated or saturated with the presence of the Holy Spirit. Remember now, He is God, He is also man...fully man, fully God.  But He as the God/Man set aside the independent use of His deity.  He set aside the independent use of His deity and submitted Himself to the work of the Holy Spirit.  God's will would be done in His life by means of the power of the Holy Spirit, as we've seen in the past.  So the Spirit of God literally permeates Him.  The Spirit of God fills Him.  You remember God didn't give Him the Spirit by measure, He didn't give out a limited dose or amount of the Spirit but an immeasurable amount.  The fullness of the Spirit belongs to Jesus so He moves into His ministry from the Jordan River where He has been baptized and confirmed and commended by God and the Holy Spirit.  He moves into His ministry in the fullest measure of the Holy Spirit, the third member of the trinity completely empowering Jesus to do the will of the first member of the trinity who is God the Father.

  The Spirit leads Him into the wilderness, into the devastation, into a 35 by 15 square mile area of precipitous cliffs and ravines and rocks, a place of scorpions and snakes and wild animals, a place uninhabited, a place where nothing grows, a desolate part of the Judean desert that rises from the Dead Sea 1500 feet or so below sea level to Jerusalem up on the plateau, about a mile distance.  It is a precipitous and dangerous area.  And Jesus is there for 40 days and for all those 40 days He is in a conflict with the devil.  It is an intense battle, so intense that Jesus doesn't eat anything for 40 days.  And during that 40 days He is not even conscious of being hungry because in verse 2 it says that "When they had ended, He became hungry."  He has no sense of His hunger.  Some of us get hungry if we miss lunch.  Some of you are hungry already and you had breakfast.  It is hard to imagine someone being 40 days and not being hungry unless you understand the intensity of that struggle that is going on.  He is so totally focused on the conflict, so focused on the enemy, so focused on the will of the Father, so focus on doing what is right that there is no thought of anything human or mundane.  It is the conflict and the conflict alone that engages Him.

  The Father has commended Him.  The Spirit has descended on Him to mark out the fact that He is under the full power of the Holy Spirit.  The prophet has proclaimed Him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  The people of Jerusalem and Judea have been prepared by a baptism unto repentance for His coming.  He is aware of His divine nature, fully aware of it.  He is fully aware of His divine mission.  His sacred humanity is under the full power of the Holy Spirit.  He is filled with joy because now since all of this was planned before time began, He has waited all this time, He has waited for 30 years in the obscurity of Nazareth.  He has now had His official launch at the Jordan.  He is at the highest point of anticipation, ready to enter in to His ministry and in that Spirit He engages in the devil...in the conflict with the devil to demonstrate one final great essential credential, and that is His ability to conquer sin and Satan.  This is the moment in which He will verify His holy perfection.

  For 40 days the onslaught goes on.  It is a preparation, in a sense, for the final battle.  But for 40 days it goes on and Satan is unsuccessful in the 40 days because, as John 14:30 says, "Satan has nothing in Me."  There was nothing in Jesus, there was nothing in His nature as the God/Man to which the devil could hook a temptation and make it successful.  Jesus had no capacity to internalize a temptation.  All temptation that came at Jesus came from the outside, none of it came from the inside.  There was no internal solicitation for evil.  There was nothing in Him that could respond in that fashion.  So every response to temptation was immediate.  Every response to temptation was precise.  And you never ever read about any kind of internal battle going on as if Jesus is fighting off some tendency within Him for iniquity.  Satan has nothing in Me, John 14:30. 

  But after that 40 days of struggle is over, Jesus who is a man, fully man, feels hungry.  Satan senses in that hunger a new vulnerability.  He senses that in the fact that Jesus is feeling hunger, that Jesus is beginning to feel His mortality, he moves in for what he thinks might be the kill.  What happens is three temptations that Satan devises that are the most brash, the most ruthless and the most clever.  He keeps them until he finds in Christ this moment of vulnerability.

  That takes us from the preparation for battle to the pattern of battle in verses 3 to 12.  We'll look at the postmortem when we finish next time.  But the pattern of battle is very important.  The temptations directed at Jesus Christ are unique to Him.  What the devil tempts Jesus to do here would not be a temptation to us.  We could not be successfully tempted to turn stones into bread.  We could not be successfully tempted to imagine that somehow we could rule the kingdoms of the world, nor could we take a dive off of a 450 foot precipice and expect a safe landing.  These are not specifically temptations that could come to us but they are temptations that could come to Him.

  However, though specifically they couldn't come to us, categorically they could, and I'll show you that as we go.  These temptations come not only with specificity, but they come in a category.  The specificity doesn't connect to us, the category does.

  The first temptation is a temptation to distrust God's love.  Now when I say that you can understand that categorically.  Not only can you understand it, you've been tempted to do it, to distrust God's love.  You've been tempted to say things aren't going the way I think they ought to go, if God really loved me, I never would have wound up marrying this man.  If God really loved me, if God really loved me I wouldn't have wound up in this circumstance.  If God really loved me I wouldn't have this illness.  If God really loved me my kids wouldn't turn out this way.  If God really loved me I wouldn't be living with so much disappointment.  If God really loved me He wouldn't have plopped me in this community where things are so difficult.  If God really loved me, it wouldn't be the way it is.  I wouldn't have gone down the path I went down that is sort of locked me in for a career that I really don't like.  If God really loved me I wouldn't be missing the things I think are so important to a fulfilled life.  If God really loved me, He'd enable me to do things for my family that I'm unable to do.  If God really loved me, I wouldn't be bearing so many burdens.  If God really loved me I wouldn't be asking why do the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper? 

  We can understand that categorically, can't we?  I can't turn stones into bread but I can be tempted to distrust God's love for me.  And the question...why it is that I don't have the things that I think would be given to me would be measures in some way of God's love for me.  And that's precisely the category, but the temptation is specific.

  Verse 3, "The devil said to Him," all the way through the devil speaks, by the way, with a measure of truth.  Deception only works if it somehow has partial truth in it.  And so when the devil speaks, he starts from a point of truth. That's the subtlety of his deception.  So the devil said to Him, "If...or probably better translated...since," this is a first class conditional with a particle a which is ei in the Greek, and a first class conditional does not presume doubt, it does not presume doubt.  So he's really saying..."Since You are the Son of God."  This is true and this is the measure of truth with which Satan launches the deception.

  That is the purpose of the first three chapters, to prove He is the Son of God, that He is that holy offspring that the angel described to Mary, that He is the Son of God.  And that's what's been going on for three chapters.  We've been learning that indeed He is the Son of God.  That's not questioned.  And I would just remind you, by the way, that the devil never questions the deity of Jesus, demons don't even question the deity of Jesus, only the liberals question the deity of Jesus.

  That is patently obvious in the Bible that Jesus is God.  And it is patently obvious to the demons.  They've known Jesus as God before they fell. They were holy angels before they enjoined into Satan's rebellion.  They knew Jesus to be God, they still know He is God.  There is never a denial of that at any time by any demonic power.  No demon has ever recorded to have denied the deity of Jesus Christ, they know He is God and it is always assumed in all their conversations.  That's why in Matthew 8:29 the demons say, "What do we have to do with You, Son of God?"  They know who He is.  You see the same in Luke 4:34 and Luke 8:28.

  Satan comes to Him, the devil comes to Him, diabolos as we saw last time, the slanderer, the accuser, "Since You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."  Or as Matthew puts it, "Tell these stones to become bread," putting together maybe Satan said something like...Tell these stones to become bread, in fact, tell that stone to become a loaf right there.  That is the first solicitation to evil.

  Is this a temptation?  What's a temptation?  It is certainly not a temptation to make bread, bread isn't sinful.  Certainly not wrong to eat bread if you haven't eaten in 40 days.  In fact, I think bread is a very reasonable thing to eat after a fast of that length.  It certainly isn't wrong in itself to create bread if you have the power to create it.  Eating bread is not sinful. This is certainly not gluttony.  This is not overeating.  Satisfying your hunger is not sinful.  Hunger is what God gave us in order that we would eat and supply the necessary fuel for our bodies.  This is not a temptation either to show off because there isn't anybody there to show off to, this isn't some kind of grandstand play to demonstrate something to a crowd of people because there's absolutely nobody there but Jesus and the devil.  This is not some temptation to excessive self-indulgence or satisfaction.  And it isn't a sin to meet your own basic human need for food. 

  What's the problem?  The implication here is to distrust God's love.  The implication here is based upon the fact that Satan knew that Jesus had restricted His independent use of His own deity to do only the will of the Father through the power of the Spirit, and that He wasn't to do anything that the Father didn't will and the Spirit empower.  In fact, Jesus said, John 4:34, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me."  Numerous times in the gospel of John Jesus says that one way or another, "I only do what the Father tells Me to do, I only do what the Father shows Me to do.  I've come to do the Father's will, that's it."

  Part of the self-emptying, the kenosis as theologians call it, part of Jesus' humiliation was to set aside the independent use of His own deity and operate only under the Father's will in perfect submission and by the Spirit's power in effecting that will.

  So the implication here is to say...Look, if God really loved You, You wouldn't be hungry.  How much does God really love You?  You've waited all this time in Nazareth, You had Your moment in the sun down there at the Jordan River at Your baptism, and now for 40 days You've been out here in this God-forsaken place and You've been in conflict with the devil and You've had nothing to eat for 40 days and now You're very hungry and God hasn't provided anything for You.  So You think You can trust God's love?   Do You think that's an evidence that God really loves You?  Maybe God doesn't love You as much as You think He loves You.

  This is exactly the formula that Satan used with Eve, isn't it?  What Satan was saying to Eve in the Garden is, "You mean to tell me there's a tree that has fruit on it and God doesn't want you to have it?  Well if God really loved you, why would He restrict you?  God probably isn't as loving as you think He is, He's probably not as kind as you think He is.  He's probably not as good as you think He is or He wouldn't restrict you from eating that tree.  Don't you think that?  Maybe God isn't quite as good as you think He is, or as loving as you think He is.  In fact, you know I'll tell you why He doesn't want you to eat that, because if you eat that you'll be like Him and He hates competition at that level.  And that will tell you He's really not good at all because the reason He doesn't want you to eat of that is you'll be like Him and He doesn't want that kind of competition."

  Eve bought into the lie that God wasn't as good as she thought He was, He wasn't as kind as she thought He was.  He wasn't as loving as she thought He was.  And so she ate.  That's the same scenario here.  You think God is loving?  You're the Son of God, how come You're hungry?  You think God is loving?  Didn't You just hear God out of heaven down at the Jordan River say, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," so is this how He demonstrates it?  Forty days in the wilderness, 40 days in here in conflict with Satan in this precipitous, dangerous, God-forsaken place, 40 days with nothing to eat, this is love?  Since You're the Son of God, let me suggest to You it's time to use Your own prerogatives.  What Satan wants to do is to set Jesus against the Father and the Spirit, acting independently on His own.  And he can't appeal to Him in His deity so he appeals to Him as the God/Man through His humanity.  You shouldn't be hungry, You shouldn't be suffering this.  You shouldn't be going through this.  You're the Son of God.

  The implication is...my goodness, didn't God even feed those cantankerous, doubtful, sinful idolaters complaining people wandering in the wilderness with manna?  And here You are, the Son of God, the perfect, sinless, Son of God and You're hungry.  I don't get it.

  You could even say that Satan could have used the argument, "How come the wicked prospered in the wilderness, and You're suffering and You're the righteous?  Didn't God say He'd rain down bread miraculously on His people and didn't He do it for them in the wilderness?  And didn't Isaiah say that God's people would never hunger and thirst?  And didn't the psalmist say God always fills the hungry with what is good, Psalm 107, and doesn't the psalmist say he'd never seen God's people begging for bread?  I would suggest to You, says Satan, that it's time for You to act on Your own because I don't think God is as good to You as You might have thought He is, or You wouldn't be in this situation.  I think You better grab some satisfaction.    And by the way, too, as a footnote, even Moses was able to pull bread out of heaven for his people, do You think You're his equal?"

  There's no question that Jesus could make bread, He made enough bread and enough fish to feed several thousands of people, didn't He?  He could do that, there was not a question of power.  And really it wasn't a question of whether He had a right to eat, He had to eat, He was a man, He had to eat or He would die.  The only issue here was He was...He was being tempted to take it on to Himself to decide when the food would come and how the food would come.  And the temptation was to distrust God's love.  Great bread, grab some satisfaction, You deserve it, God isn't nearly as loving towards You as You think He is or You wouldn't be in this situation.

  Satan would have been saying, "It's inconceivable to me that You could be the Son of God, that You could be the one who fully pleased God and here You are starving, it doesn't make sense.  There are all kinds of people who hate God, there are all kinds of enemies of God who are full and fat.  It doesn't make sense.  You're God's Son, You have a right to it."

  He's never denying the deity of Jesus.  He's never denying He's the Son of God.  He just wants to get Him through this clever manipulation to act independently of the Father, therefore express disobedience which is sin, and that's the idea.  Distrust God.  God must be disinterested.  He must be somewhat indifferent. 

  The Son of God responded this way in verse 4, "Jesus answered him," immediately, I think, I don't think He sat there and said, "Oh boy, where am I going to come down on this one?"  "Jesus answered, 'It is written...I love this, every time He answers He quotes Scripture...takes out the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God...It is written man shall not live on bread alone," and Matthew adds the rest of that verse, "but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."

  He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3.  Now Deuteronomy is the second law, it's the law by which man lives.  It's a reiteration of the Mosaic Law that God gave.  And in Deuteronomy 8, let me just kind of read you what God says here.  "All the commandments that I'm commanding you today you shall be careful to do."  God says, "Okay, I've given you all these commandments, I've reiterated My law, now I'm giving them to you and I'm telling you you need to be careful to do these things, to obey them, and if you do you will live and multiply and you'll go in to possess the land which the Lord swore to give to your fathers."  So He says to them, the key to life, the key to a future, the key to the land is not bread, not military power, but obedience, right?  You obey My law and I'll make sure you have everything you need.  I'll make sure you're fed.  I'll get you to the land, I'll give you the kingdom. 

  "And remember all the way which the Lord your God led you in the wilderness for 40 years that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not."  And remember, He says the people of Israel were tested in the wilderness for 40 years whether they would obey God and they failed the test, right?  Well, in an interesting parallel, Jesus was tested in the wilderness not 40 years but 40 days and He passed the test.  You see, what happened in the wilderness in the 40 days (means years) was they began to distrust God's love, didn't they?  And what did they do?  They murmured and they murmured because God hadn't given them the food they wanted.  They hankered after the leeks and the garlics and the stuff they had had in Egypt. 

  It wasn't enough that they had manna and the things that God provided for them.  So again this food issue comes up.  Forty years in the wilderness they were tested and they failed the test and they all died in the wilderness.  And now He says you're going to go into the land, let me tell you, folks, you're coming in the land now and I'm just telling you, you just saw what happened to people who don't trust Me, who don't trust My love and don't trust my provision.  I'm telling you, if you want to live and you want to multiply, that's have children and grow a nation, you want to go in and have a prosperous life, then worry not about the bread and worry not about the diet, in the words of the Sermon on the Mount, "Don't take any thought for what you're going to eat, or what you're going to drink, seek first the kingdom, you obey Me."

  He says in verse 3, "You have to understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of God."  If you want to live your life, you obey My Word and I'll take care of your bread. 

  That's what Jesus tells the devil...that's the right answer.  I'll tell you, folks, you do not eat...you do not live because you eat, you live because God is determined to give you life and provide your meal.  As soon as God determines you're not going to live anymore, you're not going to live anymore.  God determined that you were born and when and God determines that you shall die and when.  You don't live because you eat, you eat because God determined you live.

  Lots of people who have lots of food, die.  That's what Jesus is saying.  Life isn't a matter of what you eat, life is a matter of the purposes of God, isn't it?  That's all in God's hand.  If God wants me to live, He'll feed me.  I trust Him for that.  So Jesus transcends this personal thing.  You know, you hear all this preaching today about felt needs.  Satan is coming to Jesus and saying, "Yeah, I know about obeying the Word of God, I know about obeying the Word of God, but You're hungry, You're hungry, You're hungry, why don't you grab something and satisfy Your felt need?"  That kind of approach is devilish, not divine.  You don't approach people on the basis of felt need, you approach people on the basis of obeying God, believing the gospel is a command...so is everything else that God lays out for us.

  And Jesus we expect to answer the way He answers, He just really...He says, "I don't live because of bread, I live because God has determined My life."  I'm not concerned about personal sacrifices, I will exalt the Word and the will of God, I will do exactly what the Father tells Me to do, I will obey His Word because that's how every person lives.  You live because God gives you life and God will give you life if you obey Him.

  In the New Testament, He even talks about people whose life is shortened because of disobedience, right?  "Sin unto death," things like that.  I mean, the broad principle of life is you live because God lets you live.  Man doesn't live by bread alone.  Israel, 40 years in the wilderness, guess what?  They had manna, they had bread, bread, bread, bread, bread.  What happened to them?  They died.  They all died.  What happened to Moses?  He died and never entered the promised land.  Plenty of bread, no life.  You don't live because of bread, that's why He quotes from Deuteronomy cause it fits the scene so well, parallels the people of Israel wandering for 40 years and Jesus 40 days.  They failed the test, they died.  Jesus passes the test of trust in God, He lives.

  In contrast to Israel who is in the wilderness saying, "Oh, we don't like this bread, we're not happy with this bread," disobeying God and making an idol and worshiping an idol and complaining and murmuring and sinning every which way and they all die in the wilderness.  Bread couldn't keep them alive, even bread from heaven couldn't keep them alive.  Even God sending down quail they could just pick out of the air and eat didn't keep them alive because sin brought their life to an end.  That's all in God's hand.

  In contrast to Israel, Jesus says, "I'll trust God, I'll obey God, I'll obey God in every way and I'll trust God to do for Me what He needs to do.  Keep Me alive.  All I'm concerned about is seeking the Kingdom."  You understand that parallel with Matthew?  My food, John 4:44, is to do the will of Him who sent Me.

  When this was over, Matthew said the angels came and ministered to Him.  I think they brought bread.  Just because you don't think they just came and sang songs, He's hungry.  When it says the angels came and served Him, they served Him bread.  Songs are nice but there are times when you need bread.  

  What Jesus is doing here, is affirming His absolute confidence in God.  He's affirming what Paul says, "My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."  He knows God will meet every need.  He has no question about that, He has no doubt about that.  He will obey God and in the terms of Deuteronomy 28 He will obey God and enjoy the blessing that comes from obedience.  And you remember Deuteronomy 28, God said to Israel, you remember He was contrasting cursing and blessing in Deuteronomy 28, the first 14 verses, He says, "You do this...you do this...you do this...you obey Me...you obey Me...I'll bless you...I'll bless you...I'll bless you...I'll bless you.  I'll provide everything you need."  And Jesus is saying that's how you live, you live by obeying God and God provides everything you need.  I'm not going to distrust God for that because I know my God.

  He says to Satan, "Satan, you are presuming that a man needs bread to live, I'll tell you what you need to live, you need to be obedient to God and then you will live the full life that God grants to His obedient children.  It's not the bread that keeps you alive, it's the creative energizing sustaining power of God that keeps you alive."  If He wants Me to live, Jesus is saying, He'll give Me bread, I trust Him...I trust Him. 

  In Matthew 4:11, the angels came, I think they probably brought the best bread ever.  Then came the next temptation.  Verse 5, "He led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time."  Matthew adds, "He led Him up on a high mountain."  We don't know what this means, it all happened in a moment of time.  So I don't think they took a long hike.  Maybe they went to the point of the peaks there, maybe this was some kind of supernatural vision.  After all, Satan can go from earth to heaven to the presence of God, he's a supernatural being, he can move in dimensions that we don't know and so could Jesus, and perhaps did. But anyway, they went somewhere from which there was a vantage point where you could see Greece and you could see Rome and you could see Egypt and you could see the sweeping kingdoms of the world and maybe you could see all the kingdoms of the world, maybe there was some way in which this became a supernatural vision because it says he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

  This is the second temptation, not to distrust God's love, but distrust God's plan.  He didn't succeed on the first one, so here's another subtle one.  He leads Him up to a high mountain, according to Matthew 4:8, to a high place and shows Him either they're looking out across that area, or probably most likely there's some vision element to this, some way in which supernaturally they can perceive the world, the whole of the kingdoms of the world all in a moment of time pass before them. 

  "And the devil said to Him," in verse 6, "I will give you all this domain and its glory..."  Wow, I'll give it to You.  What's he saying?  "Ah, You know, look at You, Jesus, look at You, here You are in this terrible barren place, this devastation, this rocky, craggy, lifeless place.  Here You are, You possess nothing.  You've got the clothes on Your back, You have no food, You have nothing.  Here You are and You are the Son of God."  That's the implication, Matthew indicates that, again is reiterated to him.  And it may have reminded him of Psalm 2:8 which says, "Ask of Me and I'll give the nations as Your inheritance and the very ends of the earth as Your possessions."

  He's saying, "Oh really, this is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased and He has nothing and I haven't given Him anything, how does that work?"  He could have perhaps even reminded Jesus of some pretty powerful words in the seventh chapter of Daniel in which there is a vision and it says in Daniel 7:13, "I kept looking in the night visions, behold with the clouds of heaven, one like a Son of Man was coming, came up to the Ancient of Days."  The Son of Man, the Lord Jesus, comes up to God, "And it was presented before Him and to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom that all the peoples, nations and men of every language may serve Him.  His dominion is an everlasting dominion which will not pass away.  His Kingdom is one which will not be destroyed."  There's a vision of the Father giving the Son the kingdoms of the world.  So Psalm 2:8, Daniel 7:13-14, so where are the kingdoms?  "Here You are, Jesus, here You are in this destitute place, You're hungry, You're absolutely alone, You have no possessions, You have nothing.  I'll tell you what, I'll give it to You...I'll give it all to You. 

  You can bypass any more humiliation, You've had 30 years living in that obscure place called Nazareth, that out-of-the-way town, that hick town up there.  You've had 30 years of making tables and chairs and putting in beams in a roof, building a wall.  You've had 30 years of absolute obscurity working with Your father in the construction business.  And now You've had 40 days wandering around in this horrible place.  You've had enough humiliation, don't You think it's time for You to take hold of what is really rightfully Yours?  I mean, wasn't this promised to You?  Shouldn't You have it?  I'm willing to give it to You."

  Satan makes this serious overstatement in verse 6, "For it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish."  Oh really?  Boy, did he have an inflated opinion of himself in his power.  There is some truth in that and Satan always likes to deal in half-truth.  He is called in John 12:31, John 14:30, John 16:11 "the ruler of this world."  That's true.  In 1 John 5:19 it says, "The whole world lies in his lap."  In 2 Corinthians 4:4 he's called "the god of this age."  It does not mean that he literally possesses the nations of the world.  What it means is that he rules the system of evil that dominates the nations of the world. 

  According to Acts 17 it is God who sets the boundaries of the nations, isn't it?  Paul on Mars Hill.  It's God in whom we live and move and have our being and it's God who is the one who designs and turns the boundaries and times and seasons of nations.  And furthermore, you remember old Nebuchadnezzar.  Nebuchadnezzar thought he was higher than God.  He thought he was king of the whole universe.  And when he elevated himself to that point, the Lord knocked him down and he became for seven years like a wild animal.  He fingernails grew like bird's claws and his hair grew like feathers and he was wandering around outside with the dew on his bag eating, grazing like an animal for seven years.  This is Nebuchadnezzar, for seven years eating like an animal.  At the end of the seven years he comes to his senses, in Daniel 4:17 he says, "Thee Most High God is ruler over the realm of mankind and bestows it on whomever He wishes." 

  Satan can't give it to anybody.  He simply rules the system of evil.  He does not determine the nations and who rules the nations.  In fact, Romans 13 says the hours that be are ordained by God.  But Satan is a liar.  Not only did he not have the power to give it, it wasn't his to begin with anyway.  He doesn't...I like what Luther says, "The devil is God's devil."  It's an interesting statement, isn't it?  He can't move one inch in any direction outside God's permission and purpose.  But he says to Jesus, "I can make life easier for You, You deserve it, You're the Son of God, You've just heard, 'This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,' and You're supposed to have the kingdoms of the world for Your own, You're supposed to be the ruler, You're supposed to have all.  And I can tell You right now, it's been given to me and I will gladly give it to You.  Certainly will, and You can just go right to the crown, You can forget the cross, You've had enough suffering, You don't need the next three years of agony, You don't need to be going up there to Nazareth again and have them try to throw You off a cliff.  You don't need to go down to Jerusalem and have everybody hate You, try to plot Your death.  You certainly don't need to be scourged and whipped near death.  You don't need to be put on a cross, nailed up there have thorns crammed in You.  You don't need to go through all of that terrible, horrible death.  Just hey...I'm willing to give You the whole thing, it's mine, I can give it to whomever I wish and I would like to give it to You.  However, there's one condition...verse 7...therefore if You worship before me it shall all be Yours."

  Now Satan has a problem with this.  It's what got him kicked out of heaven to start with, he wanted to be worshiped.  "I will be like the Most High God," that was his thing.  "I want to be worshiped."  That's what he sought to do and that's how he rebelled and that's why he was hastily placed out of heaven and that's why a lake of fire was prepared for him and all those who were in his rebellion.  And he hasn't changed at all.  He still wants to be worshiped.  He concocts religions all over the face of the earth that ultimately are forms of worshiping him, all the idols are demons, the Bible says.  So you're worshiping a false god and a false religion, you're worshiping the devil. 

  But that's not enough.  Now he wants to be worshiped by the Son of God.  In fact, that would be the ultimate for him.  Could you imagine if he could get the Son of God to start worshiping him instead of God?  That would almost be like accomplishing his original rebellion where he sought to be as high as God.  If he could get the second member of the trinity to worship him, he's achieved what he wanted in the first place. 

  What marks Lucifer is the lust for worship.  You read Ezekiel 28 and you read Isaiah 14 and you read about that lust for worship.  He says, proskunesis enopion, which means "bow down before me as Your lord and I'll give it all to You."

  That was a lie.  Do you think he would if he could have?  You think he would have done that?  You think if Jesus would have bowed down to him he would have done that?  Not on your life.  He's a liar and the father of lies.  This is egomaniacal, just worship me, this is brash, astounding evil pride.  But he's saying to Jesus...bypass the cross, come on I'll just give You the crown.  What he really wants Jesus to do is sin against the Father by distrusting the Father's plan which involved the cross before the crown, suffering before glory, humiliation before exaltation.  And he's saying...I'll give You a painless path.

  We can identify with that kind of temptation, to distrust God's plan.  You can say in your life...I don't like the way things are going, why did it have to be like this?  This isn't the way I would want it.  God, You know, this is taking a long time to unfold, I hear about being a Christian, being blessed.  I see lots of sorrow, lots of problems, lots of pain.  I've got illness, I've got this, I've got that.  You know, the suffering part, I don't know how long I can take this.  Is there a shortcut to the...to the glory?  Is there a quick path to the crown?  I'm not sure I want to do it Your way anymore, I think I'm going to grab some satisfaction for myself.

  And off you go into a path of sin you think will bring satisfaction.  But Jesus gives the right answer.  In verse 8 He quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, out of Deuteronomy again, "Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is written you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'" 

  Jesus immediately and instantaneously, without a capacity to sin, responds by saying, "God alone is worthy of loyal worship and allegiance, I will not worship you, I will worship God alone because that's what Scripture demands of Me and that's what I will do.  It is God's will that He be worshiped and He alone and that is what I will do."  Here is obedience in its perfection. 

  Here are the children of Israel 40 years in the wilderness, they're supposed to be worshiping the true God.  Along comes Satan and tells them to worship an idol, and what do they do?  Worship an idol.  They failed the test.

  Here is Jesus 40 days in the wilderness.  He's told to worship an idol, if you will, Satan and He will not.  He will worship God.  He makes no deals with the devil.  There is no shortcut to glory.  He will follow the plan, whatever the plan has, however painful the plan might be, however deep the suffering, however far down He has to go, even to death, to death on the cross.  If that's where the Father plans for Him to go, that's where He's going to go because He's going to worship God and glorify God and God alone and make no compromise with the devil.

  Worship is a great word here, so is the word serve.  It's the word latreuo, it means religious service, spiritual service.  Whatever the cost, whatever the sacrifice, He will serve the only God and the only one worthy of worship. 

  When the Lord gives this answer, He really helps us.  He shows us that we can be strong against temptation to distrust the love of God, strong against temptation to distrust the plan of God.  We face those kinds of things.  We can't make stones into bread and we can't assume to take over the world, but we can certainly be disloyal and disobedient.  We can certainly question God's love and question God's plan, that is sin.  It would have been sin for Jesus, it is sin for us.  My God will supply all your needs.  You seek the Kingdom, He'll provide everything you need.  He has a plan and it's a plan for good and it's a plan for glory and it's a plan for a crown, but the path is the path of suffering, right?  That's the plan.  Don't make bargains with the devil to avoid the suffering.

  So you have some trouble in your life.  So it isn't all you would like it to be.  The testing of your faith builds strength, doesn't it?  Makes you trust God more, love God more, depend on God more, hope more for the glory to come.  Stay obedient, trust His love, trust His plan.

  ---

   

  The Temptation of the Messiah, Part 2

  Luke 4:9-13

  The most compelling thing about Scripture is the person of Jesus Christ.  Every character devised by the human mind is somehow flawed.  Somehow every thing we touch comes out like us to one degree or another.  It is beyond possibility that mankind could invent a person like Jesus Christ as He is portrayed on the pages of Scripture. 

  His person is so perfect.  His wisdom is so profound.  His response to every single event so perfectly consistent with divine nature that it is inconceivable that a man or men could invent Jesus Christ.  Far less possible that demons should invent Him and pull some monumental deception on the human race in the form of Scripture.  Jesus Christ as a person is so compelling, so profound, so perfect as to be beyond the possibility of human invention.

  His perfection shows up everywhere.  We've seen it again and again and again in every point in the gospel of Luke.  And we come now to the section on the temptation where His perfection reaches a new level, as He engages Himself in conflict with His archenemy, the enemy of God Himself, the fallen anointed cherub by the name of Lucifer who has become the devil and Satan and who engages in conflict with Jesus with the purpose of destroying Him.  Jesus having initiated that conflict with the purpose of validating His Sonship.  The revelation of Jesus Christ on the pages of Scripture is the most compelling argument for its authenticity.

  In John Milton's famous Paradise Regained, the author expresses the purpose of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and he does so in the following words, as though spoken by God His Father.  Milton writes as if God is speaking, "But first I mean to exercise Him in the wilderness.  There He shall first lay down the rudiments of His great warfare, ere I send Him forth to conquer sin and death, the two grand foes by humiliation and strong suffering," end quote.

  The wisdom of John Milton is obviously legendary and Milton had it right.  When he penned those words it was God sending forth His Son for His exercise in the wilderness in which He would defeat the devil and then demonstrate there the power for the great warfare in which He would on the cross conquer sin and at the grave conquer death.  If Jesus would triumph in the wilderness, then He would triumph at Calvary and He would triumph in the garden.  He would triumph at the cross and triumph at the tomb.  And if Jesus could conquer Satan, then we can be assured of that triumph and that there will be paradise regained.  And as we are learning from Luke chapter 4, He did triumph in the wilderness and later He triumphed at the cross where He bruised Satan's head with a fatal wound, where He destroyed sin, where He provided escape from hell for all who believe.  And then we know He conquered death, rising the third day, now ascended to heaven He continues to conquer all sin and all accusation laid against His people because He ever lives to make intercession for us.  So that in His securing love, in His conquering grace we are more than conquerors for whom nothing can ever separate us from His eternal love.

  His ability to conquer is first demonstrated right here.  We understand that for 30 years He was tempted in all points like as we are, but we never had an insight into any of those experiences.  Now for the first time we see His conquering power in a most formidable conflict with the enemy and it sets in motion all the rest of His conquerings, at the cross, at the tomb and now in heaven where He conquers by grace and mercy extended toward His own, all sin and all accusations so that we are more than conquerors in His eternal love. 

  In the future He will come as King of kings and Lord of lords, returning to earth at which point He will conquer all ungodliness.  He will conquer all the ungodly.  He will destroy all unredeemed sinners.  He will send them to the Lake of Fire.  He will send all demons to the Lake of Fire.  He will send the beast and the false prophet, the Antichrist and his henchmen to the Lake of Fire.  He will send the devil himself to the Lake of Fire.  He will then destroy the sin-stained universe.  It will literally go up in an atomic holocaust, the elements will melt with fervent heat and in its place He will recreate a new heaven and a new earth of holiness and righteousness alone which will last forever.  That will be His final great conquering of evil.

  What happens here in the temptation is a foretaste of what is to come through all of the great events of the life and ministry of the King, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.  We believe that He will conquer in the future because He conquered in the past, and this is where it all began.  It's as if the guarantee of His future conquerings was established in the event of His temptation in the wilderness when Satan came and hit him with the full fury of his best assaults.  Jesus withstood them all triumphantly.

  "And Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil.  And He ate nothing during those days and when they had ended He became hungry.  And the devil said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.'  And Jesus answered him, 'It is written man shall not live on bread alone.'  And he led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and the devil said to Him, 'I will give You all this domain and its glory for it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish.  Therefore if You worship before me, it shall all be Yours.'  And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is written you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.'  And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here, for it is written He will give His angels charge concerning You to guard You and on their hands they will bear You up lest You strike Your foot against a stone.'  And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is said that you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'  And when the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time."

  Not only is this proof and a guarantee of Jesus' power, it is also the evidence that He is in fact the Son of God.  You remember that in the prior event to this, which is indicated to us back in chapter 3 verses 21-22, Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River by John.  And at the time of His baptism, His Father said to Him, verse 22, "Thou art My beloved Son in Thee I am well pleased."  God had affirmed Jesus as His Son.  Now this is a monumental statement by God.  This is not a common statement, this is an uncommon statement.  This is absolutely unique.  And I have pointed out to you that already Luke has let us know that Jesus is the Son of God.  Back, of course, in chapter 1 when the angel Gabriel came to Mary, he said, "The Son whom you will bear you will name Jesus," verse 31.  And verse 32, "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, the Son of the Almighty God, the Son of God."  Verse 35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most HIgh will overshadow you, for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God."  And then in chapter 2 verse 49, Jesus affirms that He had to be in His Father's house.  And then in the baptism, "This is My beloved Son in Thee I am well pleased."

  Already we know that this is the Son of God.  Now maybe just a little bit of background.  Jesus is called the Son of God about 80 times in the New Testament.  It is a very common title for Jesus, about 80 times.  Fifty-one times in the first three gospels and over 100 times, a total of 151 times in the four gospels, Jesus speaks of God as His Father.  So this is a...this is a very, very common expression, Son of God, and Jesus referring to God as His Father.  For Jesus to claim to be the Son of God was very remarkable.  For Him to call God "My Father," was remarkable.  It expresses eternal deity, it expresses sameness of nature as we have told you in the past. 

  Two times in the Old Testament, two times in the 39 books of the entire Old Testament, God is directly addressed as Father, that's all, only two times.  Fifteen times the term "Father" is used to describe God indirectly.  But never is any of those expressions of God as Father made by an individual.  Whenever God is referred to as Father, it is as the Father of the nation Israel, never as the Father of an individual.  There is no example in existence in Jewish history of anyone addressing God as "My Father" in a personal way.  Jesus did it all the time.  Jesus had a relationship to God that no one had ever had. 

  To the Jews, to say "God is my Father," would be to say "I have the same nature as God, I share the same essence as God," just as in the human realm a son shares his father's nature genetically.  But constantly did Jesus call God His Father, 151 times such relationship is indicated in the gospels.

  Furthermore, Jesus not only called God His Father, but He used the term "Abba" which means papa, or daddy, which is a more intimate, endearing title that has less austerity to it, maybe features rather than respect and honor the intimacy of that relationship.  And to the Jews, for anybody to say God was his Father was blasphemy and they accused Jesus of being a blasphemer because when He called God His Father, He was making Himself equal with God.  That's exactly what He's doing.  And for Him to speak to God as Abba was beyond tolerance.  To the Jew, you remember now, the most formidable doctrine in Judaism is the Shema.  The most formidable doctrine in Judaism is the Deuteronomy 6, "The Lord our God is one."  This is what sets Judaism apart from the polytheism of the world.  It is theistic, it is monotheistic and that is what the Jews have always celebrated, that the Lord God is one.  And for someone to come along and say, "I am Son of God," would be to the Jew the idea that God was more than one.  Unthinkable and blasphemous and yet in John's gospel we read this in the very first verse, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God," speaking of Christ.  In the fifth chapter of John in verse 23, it says, "In order that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father."

  This is beyond imagination.  To honor the Son as you honor the Father is to say the Son is equal to the Father is to say Jesus is equal to the one true living God of Israel, and that is outside their understanding of monotheistic theology.  And so it is what set their teeth on edge against Jesus.  They could not accept that.  And yet Jesus continued to say it over and over, chapter 10 of the gospel of John, verse 30, listen to this, "I and the Father are one."  The next statement, "The Jews took up stones again to stone Him."

  They perceived that as blasphemy.  In John 14 Jesus says, "He who as seen Me has seen the Father," another of the same kinds of statements.  In John chapter 15 verse 22, "If I had not come and spoken to you, they would not have sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin.  He who hates Me, hates My Father also."  And so it goes.  John 17, He says, "Restore Me to the glory I had with You before the world began."  And the way the gospel of John comes to its culmination in the twentieth chapter and verse 28 is just as clear as it can be, John 20:28, Thomas said unto Him, to Jesus, "My Lord and my God."  And verse 31, "These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that by believing you might have life in His name."

  There is one great reality in the gospel, and that is that Jesus is the Son of God.  That is to say He is equal in nature with God.  He possesses the same divine nature as God.  When He claimed to be the Son of God, the Jews knew exactly what He was claiming, He was claiming to be equal with God and it was for that that they wanted to destroy Him.

  Satan tempted Jesus then.  He was not questioning whether Jesus was the Son of God.  When you read the text in verse 3, "If You are the Son of God," or you read it again down further in verse 9, "If You are the Son of God," I told you last time, that is a first-class conditional with a particle a that permits no doubt.  It is better translated, "Since."  The devil doesn't question whether Jesus is the Son of God, he knows who He is.  He knew Him when he was the unfallen Lucifer.  He knows him as Satan and the devil.  He knows exactly who Jesus is and so do all the demons.  And I've told you, there never is an occasion in the Bible when demons ever questioned Jesus as the Son of God.  I said last time only liberal theologians do that, demons don't do that, the devil doesn't do that.  They know the facts.

  The force of the temptations was not to make Jesus doubt His Sonship.  It was not to make Jesus prove His Sonship.  For us it proves His Sonship.  The force of the temptations was to make Jesus step out of His humiliation and act on His own, apart from the will of the Father and the power of the Spirit, therefore putting a breach in the trinity.  That was the temptation.  I've said this in past years and I'll say it again.  The devil's theology is orthodox.  He believes in the trinity.  He believes in the deity of Jesus Christ. 

  What the devil was trying to do here was not only destroy Jesus, but destroy the trinity by creating rebellion within the trinity.  Remember now, the Father sends the Son into the world to humble Himself and condescend.  The Son comes, sets aside the independent use of all of His divine powers.  He is still God, He has not diminished, He is still God, God and man at the same time, but He sets aside the independent use of those powers and He literally yields to the work of the Holy Spirit under the will of the Father.  And so He functions as a man would function, even though He is the God/Man, He limits His own use of the deity and submits only to what the Spirit does under the will of the Father.  What Satan wants to do is get Him to resist the Father's plan and the Spirit's power and grab satisfaction and act on His own, and therefore put a breach in the trinity which would throw the entire universe into chaos.  This is not some small thing happening here.  This is a battle directed right at the essence, not only of the deity and the perfection of Jesus Christ, but of 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.

  Satan couldn't do it.  The conflict was critical for the Messiah to prove His deity and it does again prove His deity.  He must be able to conquer Satan if He's God.  He must be able to conquer temptation if He's God.  And He certainly must be able to conquer sin and Satan if He's going to conquer sin and Satan for us.  How is He going to rescue sinners from sin and death and hell if He can't defeat Satan Himself?

  He can, and He did.  He must in the words of Hebrews 2:14, "Render powerless him who had the power of death," that is the devil, "and deliver those who were subject to slavery all their lives."  Jesus must to deliver us demonstrate power over Satan.  He had to conquer him in the wilderness.  He had to conquer him at the cross.  He had to conquer him at the tomb.  And He is still conquering him by ever living to make intercession for us.  He will conquer him when He comes back in destruction and casts the devil and all of his demons along with all the ungodly into the Lake of Fire, and then destroys the present universe and recreates the new one.  He will conquer him at every turn, and this is where He puts that power on display for the first time.  This is a monumental passage of Scripture.

   I remind you of the preparation for battle, verses 1 and 2.  We did this a couple of weeks ago.  Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan where He had been baptized by John, was led about by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days.  Being tempted by the devil He ate nothing during those days.  When they had ended, He became hungry.

  Mark 1:12 says, "He was expelled," it's a Greek word ek ballo, and the Spirit was purposely sending Him out into the wilderness.  It wasn't that He put Himself in a compromising position and Satan came after Him, is that He went after Satan.  The Holy Spirit literally cast Him out, literally expelled Him, ek ballo, into the wilderness.  Mark 1:13 says, "An area of wild beast," that I described for you before.  He went into that wilderness.  He had 30 years waiting for His ministry to start.  He had been announced to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  The Father had said, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."  It was time to launch his ministry but before He could start the ministry, even after 30 years, He had 40 more days, 40 days of wandering in that God-forsaken, desolate, Judean wilderness where life cannot survive.  And for 40 days He was tempted, it says, for 40 days Satan couldn't succeed because John 14:30 says, "Satan has nothing in Me." There's nothing in Jesus, there's nothing in His nature that can respond to sin.  So all the barrage comes and hits the outside and He's impervious to it because of His wondrous impeccability.  Now we saw some of those details.

  The second thing we looked at is the pattern of the battle.  Forty days of temptation very clearly were going on.  And for 40 days it says, in verse 2, Jesus didn't eat.  After the 40 days He became hungry.  Now all of a sudden, Jesus has a physical need.  For 40 days apparently He wasn't aware that He was hungry.  For 40 days He was in this battle against Satan.  Satan was hitting Him with all kinds of temptation.  We don't have the nature of it revealed to us in Scripture.  Jesus defeated it all.  He was perfect.  He was sinless all through it.  But there's a new vulnerability that Satan perceives because Jesus now feels hunger.  And so Satan in his subtlety and his deception thinks that because there is now a hunger on the part of Jesus, He can be seduced at this point in maybe ways He prior couldn't be seduced.  He's going to feel hunger and hunger is a real experience for a real man, and Jesus is a real man and Satan is going to move in to seduce Jesus to use His divine power inconsistent with His humiliation.  To not submit to the Spirit's power, to not submit to the Father's plan but grab some bread on His own, He has the power to make it, He can do it if He wants, just like at the cross.  If He wanted to He could call for a legion of angels to deliver Him, as He said.  This is the time when Satan wants Him to act independently, and that's how you breach the trinity, that's how you shatter the unity of the trinity, you set the Son against the Father and against the Spirit.

  The demons, they know He's the Son of God.  Look down in verse 31, "He came to Capernaum," we'll see this in a bit, city of Galilee, and He was teaching on the Sabbath, they were amazed at His teaching.  Verse 33, "There was a man in the synagogue possessed by the spirit of an unclean demon.  He cried out with a loud voice, 'Ha, what do we have to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have You come to destroy us?"  Listen to this, "I know who You are, the holy one of God."  Listen, the demons never questioned who He is, never. 

  Satan didn't question and he was tempting Him as the Son of God.  I mean, would he have gone to someone who wasn't the Son of God and asked him to turn stones into bread?  No, not at all.  The temptation, first of all, was to distrust God's love, look at verse 3 and 4.  "The devil said to Him, 'Since You're the Son of God, tell the stone to become bread."  What are You doing out here starving?  You've waited 30 years, You've been 30 years humiliated in Nazareth working in a carpenter's shop, 30 years You've been waiting...why all this time You've been a nobody and You're the ruler of the universe, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, You're the eternal second person of the trinity, that's enough humiliation.  Now on top of that You've got 40 years(means days) here in the desert and You've gone through all of this and now You are here and You're hungry, You don't even have food, and You're the Son of God...that's the implication...You're the Son of God.  Look, God even fed disobedient Israel in the wilderness.  God fed those people who complained and griped and all died in the wilderness and never entered the promised land because of their complaining and here You are the perfect, sinless Son of God and God doesn't even feed You.  Are You sure God really loves You?  Are You sure God really trusts You?

  That's the first category of temptation, to distrust God's love.  And that, you see, is his effort to drive that fracture into the trinity to get the Son to stop trusting the Father's love and the Father's care.  Doubt God's love, doubt God's care.  He didn't ask Him to doubt His Sonship or even prove His Sonship but to doubt His Father's love and His Father's care, to be fed up with the deprivation, fed up with humiliation, fed up with condescension.

  It just was the opposite.  The more suffering Jesus went through, the more deprivation, the more condescension, the more humiliation He went through, the stronger He became.  Hebrews 5:8, "Although He was the Son...although He was the Son of God He learned obedience from the things which He suffered."  Boy, what a great statement.  Although He was the Son of God, as a man, as He suffered through those 30 years being tempted in all points like we are, as an infant, as a child, as a young man, as an adult, all that temptation.  And then those 40 days in the wilderness, they didn't break Him down, He learned obedience through the things that He suffered.  He was a man stronger now than He had ever been.  He grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and man up until the age of twelve when He became fully aware of His mission as the Son of God and the Messiah and said He had to be in His Father's house doing His Father's work.  And then as it grew and developed through the years of suffering in His humiliation and His condescension, His strength became greater and greater and greater because it was a life of unbroken and perfect obedience and it just made Him stronger and stronger and stronger.  So here He is at the age of 30 and when Satan comes and said, "Haven't You had enough humiliation?"  The fact of the matter is that the 30 years of humiliation, the 40 days of humiliation in the desert hadn't made Him weaker, they had made Him stronger.

  Times of obedience, the hard times of deprivation taught Him to trust God...trust God.  You know, without ever internalizing the temptation, Jesus responds immediately in verse 4 and says, "It is written, man shall not live on bread alone."  He refuses to doubt God's love.  And what He's saying...He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, I told you last week, He's simply saying a man doesn't live because he eats bread, a man lives because he obeys God and God provides his bread.  And that's the principle.  I will trust God, God will let me live as long as God wants me to live.  My life is in His hands.  I am under His control.  I am under His power.  I will not act independently of God.

  The Jews who died in the wilderness died in the wilderness not because they didn't have bread, they had manna.  They died in the wilderness because God left them there and wouldn't let them enter the promised land because they disobeyed Him.  Jesus is playing off of that.  The implication of Satan is...I mean, God fed the people in the wilderness, and look what they were like and He won't even feed You.  What kind of a deal is that?

  Jesus responds by saying, in effect, the people in the wilderness didn't die because they didn't have bread, they had bread.  They died because they didn't obey God.  You obey God, you'll live as long as God wants you to live.  That's how you live.  You live obediently, you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and what happens?  Everything else gets added.

  The second temptation was to distrust God's plan.  And he comes back to Him in verse 5 and he says...he takes Him up into a high mountain, Matthew adds that, shows Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.  We don't exactly know how this happened.  They were both supernatural beings.  Jesus, of course, occasionally acted in very supernatural ways, like walking on water even before His resurrection body.  Jesus demonstrated His supernatural character on the Mount of Transfiguration when He pulled back the flesh and revealed the glory of God shining through Him.  So this may have been some way in which they were transported supernaturally, it may have been...we don't know the structure of it.  It may have been that they went to the highest mountain and a sort of simulated view of the kingdoms of the world.  That's not important. 

  But the devil said to Him in verse 6, "I'll give You all this domain and its glory for it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish."  Boy, did he have delusions of grandeur.  He had a small opportunity to rule as the king of this world for a very brief time, but the only thing he rules over is evil.  It is God who determines the boundaries of the nations, according to Acts 17.  It is God who causes nations to rise and fall.  The devil, however, tries to deceive Christ into believing that he has control of everything.  And the point again is God's got this plan, but you know what this plan is?  The plan is Your humiliation gets worse.  You know the plan, right?

  Satan knows the Old Testament.  He knows the Messiah is going to die.  He knows the Messiah is going to be a sacrifice for sin.  He understands the sacrificial system.  He knows where all the lambs are pointed to and he's saying to the Son, "You don't like being out here in the wilderness 40 days, You don't like being out here deprived, You don't like being out here without any food, wait till You see what is to come.  How do You feel about the future suffering that You're going to have to endure?  How do You feel about that, things that are yet to come that You haven't even experienced that are prophesied in the Old Testament?"

  Satan has a very accurate understanding of the Old Testament prophecy.  So he's saying You could miss the cross if You want, You can miss all that further humiliation, You can miss that Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" that's going to come, You can miss all of that, I'm telling You, You can bypass the whole thing, all You have to do is recognize that I own all the kingdoms of the world and I will give them to You, verse 7, if You worship me, just fall down and worship Me.  And you can skip the cross and go right to the crown, all You have to do is make me Your sovereign.

  First of all, Satan couldn't do that.  Second, if he could he wouldn't right?  Because what did Satan want more than anything?  He wanted to be above God, didn't he?  That's why he fell.  He wanted to be worshiped by everyone, including God, including Christ.  Jesus' response was immediate.  Jesus said to him, "It is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only," and He quotes Deuteronomy 6:13.  He has no doubt in God's plan, "I will worship God and God alone, I will trust My God's love and care.  I will worship My God unwaveringly.  I will take no shortcut to the fulfillment of His plan."

  Categorically we experience these kinds of temptations, temptation to distrust God's love.  God, if You really loved me then why is it working out this way in my life?  This doesn't look like You love me.  Or, God, I don't know about Your plan, this isn't the way I would work it out.  I mean, I know there's a crown out there somewhere but it seems like the cross is more than I can bear.  Can't I take a shortcut and skip the cross and get to the crown quicker?

  We face the same categorical struggles.  It's not that we could be tempted specifically to do what Jesus was tempted to do because we can't do that.  We're not entitled to rule the world, nor can we make stones into bread.  But categorically we can and are constantly tempted by Satan to distrust God's love.  Oh, things aren't working out in my life, you know, my kids aren't what they ought to be, life isn't what it ought to be.  I've got all kinds of trouble, illness, trouble, job trouble, whatever it might be.  And, Lord, I'm just wondering if You really care for me and really love me and, Lord, I don't know if the plan is really what I would like it to be.   And so you murmur and gripe and complain just like the children of Israel did.  "God, do You love us?  If You love us, 40 years in this desert doesn't look like love to us, and all of the trouble and all of the pain and anxiety and deprivation doesn't seem to be the plan we hoped for," etc., etc.

  That's how he came to Jesus.  And the idea was, as I said, to breach the trinity and turn Jesus against the Spirit and against the Father.  He won't move, He quotes the Scripture.  You don't live because you have bread, you live because you obey God.  And there's only one plan and that's God's plan and I'll worship God and God alone.

  One final assault, and Satan twists this one in his clever way.  Verse 9, "And he led Him to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to Him, 'If You are the Son of God...or Since You're the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here.'"  That's a strange thing, isn't it?  Now again as supernatural beings they could move out of the wilderness and they moved out of the wilderness apparently to the pinnacle of the temple. 

  I've been to the temple mount many times.  There is a point on the temple mount in Jerusalem that is the dizzying height.  You know, if you have any kind of fear of heights, you don't want to go near this corner.  It's the southeast corner.  The temple mount, of course, is a massive, massive patio kind of thing, a massive place where today is the Dome of the Rock and the Mosque of Omar, as it's called, two great Muslim places.  And up at the north end of it is where they believe the original temple was, and it's surrounded by a wall and it's up on what is really Mount Moriah, Moriah where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac.  And so it's been flattened out and you ascend it long stairs from the southern side, the gates, by the way, and the stairs there are the very ones Jesus went in and out of the temple of in His lifetime. 

  In the southeast corner there is a corner of the temple ground that sinks down into the valley, the Kedron valley where the Kedron stream goes through and it is a dead, straight drop of 450 feet to the ground.  Tradition, Eusebius, tells us that the brother of our Lord, James, who was the leader of the Jerusalem Council was thrown to his death from that corner.  They threw him alive off that 450 foot edge.  Satan says...Look, You trust God, do You?  You only want to obey His Word.  You trust His love.  You trust His care and You will only do what His Word says to do, right?  Fine, okay, let's go over to the temple, dive off. 

  Satan quotes Scripture, verse 10, "For it is written..."  He says exactly what Jesus had said, "It is written..."  Oh, You want to go by Scripture, well it is written, and he quotes Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12, "He will give His angels charge concerning You to guard You and on their hands they will bear You up lest You strike Your foot against a stone."  Oh You want to go by the Scripture, do You?

  If Jesus will not prove He is the Son of God by doing what God has not said, namely use His divine power independently to make bread, if He will not prove He is the Son of God by doing what God has said not to do, worship anyone other than Himself, maybe He will prove He is the Son of God by doing something to prove the truth of what God has said.

  Oh, You want to do only what God said, well let me quote Scripture.  Since You are the Son of God, since that is the reality of who You are, why don't You just throw Yourself down and then You will do a wonderful thing, You will demonstrate that God's Word is true, that God keeps His promises because it says in Psalm 91 that He will give His angels charge concerning You, to guard You, on their hands they will bear You up lest You strike Your foot against a stone. 

  This is a messianic Psalm, Psalm 91, and it pledges protection for the Messiah, that the Messiah will be protected.  So go up there and throw Yourself down and therefore You will give God an opportunity to have His Word proven.  Create a deadly peril.

  Jesus is a man and He cannot survive such a fall.  He couldn't survive the cross.  Once He had lost His blood, He was dead.  What Satan wants to do here, His wicked purposes, is to kill Christ, he wants Him dead.  But the deception of it is woven through...Oh, so You only want to do what the Scripture, so You're in to "what is written...it is written," well it is written that He's going to protect You and now You can give an opportunity to God to fulfill His Word, won't that be wonderful?  You can allow God to put His power on display and at the same time You can prove You're the Son of God because as You go flying down, at some point the angels are going to come along and they're just going to gather You in their arms and You're going to come down to a soft landing and then everybody will know You are the Son of God.  And then God will have demonstrated His Word is true, won't that be wonderful?  And this would be spectacular, this would gain You the amazement of the world.  And You won't have to go through any more humiliation, You do this and folks are likely to say...Yep, He is the Messiah.

  That isn't what Jesus wanted.  He didn't want popularity.  He didn't come to be popular.  He didn't come to be accepted.  He really came to be hated.  It was really essential that He be hated and rejected in order that He be...what?...killed.  And He was to die by crucifixion and no other way.  Jesus said in response in verse 12, "And Jesus answered and said to him, 'It is said you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'" 

  First there was the temptation to distrust God's love and care.  And then there was the temptation to distrust God's plan.  And then the twist, the temptation to trust God presumptuously, to literally back God into a corner.  That was the temptation. 

  Satan knew that Jesus was a man and that a fall like that would kill Him as a man.  He told Eve,  "You'll not die," but she did.  And so would Jesus.  And this would...this would mess up the whole plan because He was to die shedding His blood on the cross, to be lifted up.  He wanted Jesus dead.  He wanted Jesus dead then and there.  But he wanted Jesus to do this thinking He would show faith in God's Word.

  The devil quotes Scripture and he usually quotes it fairly accurately.  This time he quoted the Septuagint.  The devil knows the Bible, he knows it very well.  And, you know, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons and all the other isms and chisms and all the other cults and occults throw the Bible in and around all the time because the devil knows the Bible, he knows the Bible as well as you or better.  So the devil rebuffed by Scripture quotes Scripture.  Jesus doesn't move.  One thing He won't do, He won't presume on God.  He will not act independently.  This is not the plan.  This is not God's purpose.  He will not become some kind of a flying hero.  He will not force God's hand to do something presumptuous.  This is like saying...Okay, God, You promised to watch over me and protect me, so I'm going to go stand in the middle of the freeway to see You vindicate Yourself.  He won't do that.  He will only do what the Father wills Him to do.  He will follow the plan to the very letter, only as the Spirit of God empowers Him to do it for He has set aside any independent use of His attributes.  And there is no internal solicitation for Him to violate that because there was nothing in Him that had the capacity to sin. 

  Again categorically, Satan will try to tempt you to distrust God's love, to distrust God's plan and then to trust God presumptuously.  Well, God, You know, You promised to meet all my needs, so I'm going to do this and here I go...  You go wandering out on the end of some rickety branch and then it breaks and then you blame God. 

  We saw the preparation for the battle.  We saw the pattern of the battle.  And we see the postmortem of the battle in verse 13.  "And when the devil had finished every temptation, or all temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time."

  When the devil had finished this whole 40 days and then in the time of Jesus weakness the devil had hit Him with these three major ways to try to destroy the trinity, he departed.  The devil, by the way, this is a very important thing to realize, is not omnipresent.  He's not omnipresent.  He left and he left in defeat.  But he only left temporarily.  He came back and, believe me, he came back after Jesus later and often.  He came back later and often.  Listen to Luke 22:28, Jesus talking to the disciples, talking to the Father, I should say, about the disciples, "And you are those who have stood by Me in My temptations."  And here Jesus referring to the disciples, yes He's talking to the disciples there, and He says, "You have been with Me during My temptations."  You know, the whole time they were together for those three years was a time of temptation.  The devil came back again and again and again after Jesus unsuccessfully.  One time he came through Peter, remember that?  In Matthew 16:23 Peter said, "Ah, You're not going to die, Lord, that's not going to happen."  And Jesus said to Peter, "Get thee behind Me, Satan."  Again Satan trying to get Jesus to avoid the cross, that's Matthew 16:23. 

  In John chapter 13 and verse 27 Satan entered into Judas and brought about the betrayal.  I mean, Satan was coming after Jesus through many different circumstances.  But Jesus crushed him at the cross, crushed him at the tomb.  And in the end, of course, will destroy the entire world of sin.

  In conclusion, what do we learn from this about Satan's strategy?  He will tempt us to distrust the love of God.  He will tempt us to distrust the plan of God and thus to compromise with sin to get what we think we need and deserve and want.  And then he will tempt us to presume.  If we're going to say no, I trust God, no, I want to follow God, then he'll get us to presume on God and act foolishly out of pride and self-will, presuming on God's grace we do things foolishly.

  When does he come at us?  Watch out for the high points in your life because just as soon as you've had your high point and you've heard from God, "This is My beloved Son," you're liable to get hit with the biggest temptation.  Be alert when you're physically weak.  Be alert when you're in evil surroundings.  And watch for those who twist the Scripture to justify some act of presumption.

  How do you defeat Satan?  How did Jesus defeat him?  Three times, what did He do?  Quoted Scripture.  Be committed to obey God's Word.  First of all, you have to know God's Word and you have to obey God's Word.  Know the Scripture.  Not only know it in your head, know it in your heart and be committed to live it.  When Satan challenges your loyalty to God and your confidence in God's love and your confidence in God's plan, and when Satan challenges your will to act in a proper manner toward God's promises, what's going to anchor you is your knowledge of the Word of God and your devotion to obey it.

  The same thing, Jesus shows us here a pattern to follow in our own struggles.  Trust God's love.  Trust God's plan.  Don't presume on His promises and His grace.  And you do that by being anchored in His Word.

  In 1 Peter 2:21, Christ suffered, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin.  Isn't that great?  And the reason He committed no sin was because He was anchored in obedience to God and refused to presume on His goodness.

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