Welcome to The MHB Podcast. This is Michael Baun. And welcome to my 182nd episode. In this episode we are going to continue our study of the book of Matthew. We are in chapter 4. The events in this chapter take place directly after the baptism of Jesus. Up to this point the ministry of John the Baptist has been the most public – but now that Christ is beginning His own ministry we don’t hear much more from John. John’s purpose was to make way for Jesus, and now that Jesus has arrived it’s time for John’s influence to decrease. The part of this chapter we will be studying today describes the temptation of Christ. The Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness where He faced a threefold temptation from Satan. Often when we step out in faith and make the decision to follow Jesus the first thing that happens is an attack from Satan. Whether it comes in the form of temptation or arbitrary suffering, you should be aware that the adversarial powers in the spiritual world are fully opposed to you giving your life to Christ – and they will do whatever they can to make you stumble or retreat. Christ Himself was not exempt from this kind of treatment at the hand of Satan, but if we analyze how Jesus handled it I think we can get a picture of how we should handle it as well. Let’s read verses 1-11:
Mat 4:1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Mat 4:2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.
Mat 4:3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”
Mat 4:4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.'”
Mat 4:5 Then the devil *took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple,
Mat 4:6 and *said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written, ‘HE WILL COMMAND HIS ANGELS CONCERNING YOU’; and ‘ON their HANDS THEY WILL BEAR YOU UP, SO THAT YOU WILL NOT STRIKE YOUR FOOT AGAINST A STONE.'”
Mat 4:7 Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.'”
Mat 4:8 Again, the devil *took Him to a very high mountain and *showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory;
Mat 4:9 and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.”
Mat 4:10 Then Jesus *said to him, “Go, Satan! For it is written, ‘YOU SHALL WORSHIP THE LORD YOUR GOD, AND SERVE HIM ONLY.'”
Mat 4:11 Then the devil *left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.
Facing temptation from Satan himself in this manner would be a very dangerous occurrence for any one of us. But Christ faces it down virtually immediately after He is baptized and the heavens are opened to Him. He had just been declared the Son of God and the Savior of the world – but even these divine privileges didn’t shield Him against the attention of Satan. It’s not uncommon for Christians to face some kind of temptation or setback right after receiving a great honor. In addition to testing our faith, the purpose of these temptations and setbacks are to keep us humble. They remind us that all of who we are depends on God. God will not shield you from the temptations of this world but He will equip your spirit to deal with them appropriately. If you’re about to go through a seemingly insurmountable trial, you should look to God for strength, assurance, and comfort. The designs of Satan are to disquiet us and cause us to lose our faith in Jesus – that is his primary concern in all that he does. But if you remain faithful to God, His Holy Spirit will bring you assurance of your sonship to the Most High. He will extend a sense of peace to your spirit which will stabilize you against fearful doubts.
The more faithful you become and the greater you seek to be in Christ the more Satan will set himself against you. This reality shouldn’t be a source of fear for you, because the God you serve is greater than the evil which opposes Him. But it should at least be an encouragement to keep your eyes open and pay attention. Don’t allow the tricks of the devil to lull you into a spiritual sleep where you’re no longer intentional about your communion with God. The closer you are to Jesus the more effectively you’ll be able to ward off spiritual attack. If you start to drift away then you won’t notice it coming and the attacks you don’t see coming are usually the most difficult to deal with. Jesus lived His entire life in privacy prior to His baptism and He had never faced temptation quite as potent as what Satan offered Him the moment He went public. Publicly speaking out to glorify God is a sure-fire way to gain the attention of evil spirits – and that’s okay. God knows all of Satan’s manipulations and He has already given you what you need to rebuke them. You should not seek needless provocation, but Satan sending trouble into your life is evidence you are doing powerful work for the Kingdom of God.
Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. Mark’s gospel says Jesus was in the wilderness with wild beasts and with the angels of heaven ministering to Him. The presence of the wild beasts might indicate that this was the great wilderness of Sinai, where both Moses and Elijah had fasted for forty days. You might wonder why Jesus went into the wilderness after His baptism instead of going to Jerusalem to tell everyone about what happened. Often the Spirit of God speaks to us in a way that can be easily drowned out by the hustle and business of worldly endeavor. If God has recently done a work in your spirit, you should retire yourself into a quiet place to process what He’s done for you. If you jump straight into the action of making yourself busy then you run the risk of not fully comprehending what God is trying to tell you. Even the busiest of people would do well to schedule in time throughout their week for contemplation and reflection. There’s a difference between being able to publicly recite something about God versus having a true understanding of that thing and owning it yourself. Often you’ll hear people say there is no teacher like experience – I don’t think this is necessarily true if the person has mastered the practice of contemplation and meditation. It’s possible to fully understand aspects of God if you meditate on His word and reflect on what His Spirit has placed in your heart. You need to preserve your alone time with God.
Don’t overestimate the value of worldly experience. I’m not disparaging it as a bad thing, but I would always prefer a teacher who has mastered His devotional time with God over against a teacher who lacks knowledge of the Scriptures but who has more worldly experience. God is the source of all true wisdom, so you’re best off experiencing the world once you have this wisdom in place versus trying to garner this wisdom through your experience of the world. But here’s the snag when it comes to spending alone time in contemplation with God: time alone with God magnifies your ability to commune with Him but it also makes you increasingly vulnerable to spiritual attack. It’s easier to resist spiritual attack when you’re surrounded by the saints in godly community. Jesus knew this when He followed the Spirit into the wilderness anyway.
His choice to face this danger tells us a couple things. First is that He determined alone time with God was worth the risk of spiritual attack. Second is that He essentially met Satan on his own turf to make His victory over him all the more illustrious. Jesus already knew He could square off against the evil one with no help and prove victorious. Often you’ll hear Christians speak about themselves as if they can do the same thing. That’s a big mistake. Jesus is strong enough to overcome Satan but you are not strong enough. Generally speaking you don’t have what it takes to invite evil into your space and overcome it on your own merits. Your prayer should be that God would not lead you into temptation but deliver you from evil. Understanding the dangers of evil is not the same thing as being afraid of evil. You have no reason to fear evil so long as the Holy Spirit is with you – but you have every reason to respect the power of evil and be humble in your estimations of yourself.
Your desire should be for God to keep you away from temptation, but in the event that God leads you into temptation to test you, your prayer should be to depend on His strength and not your own to get you through it. The Spirit of God imparts power and boldness to followers of Jesus, so as long as you’re faithful to remain close with God you need not fear being spiritually subdued by evil. One of the differences between our own bouts with temptation and Satan’s temptation of Christ is that with us the devil uses our own lust and weakness of flesh as a tool. Jesus, being free of the corrupt nature which afflicts humanity, had to be tempted not through His flesh but directly by the devil himself. Standing toe-to-toe with Satan might seem frightening to us, but Jesus is the King of kings and the Lord of all. He stood before the devil without fear or trembling because He is Master over Satan. You should be aware the battle lines may not always be so clear with your own forms of temptation. There is evil inside of you and so when Satanic power seeks to leverage that part of you it can sometimes feel good. You must rest in your appeal to God that His Spirit will remain dominant in you over the parts of your heart which love sin and are easily deceived.
The temptation of Jesus was part of His voluntarily humbling Himself so that He could be made like us in all things. But unlike us Christ conquered Satan in this exchange. When the serpent tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden the serpent was victorious and all of us have suffered the consequences of that loss. Part of why Christ engaged Satan in the wilderness was so He could overcome Satan on our behalf. Through His victory over Satan Jesus has led captivity captive. The temptation of Jesus is also able to bring His followers peace of mind. Through His example we see that temptation by itself, when resisted, is not sinful. We also take comfort in the demonstration of Christ’s power over Satan. The devil may be like a strong man armed who presents a deadly threat to us on our own, but his power simply does not measure up to the power of the Captain of our salvation. Christ having been tempted also shows us that we have a High Priest who knows what it feels like to be tempted. This means His grace is intimately informed with our own infirmities and our lack of judgment in the midst of temptation. He remembers our frame, He knows that we are dust. Even if we suffer our own losses when it comes to temptation, the moment we turn to Jesus we can find rest in His victory.
We also notice how Christ fasted forty days and forty nights prior to His temptation. Classic examples of fasting normally involved Old Testament characters doing it with the purpose of mortifying their own sin. But Christ had no sin. The fasting of Jesus was preparative for the temptation, but its purpose may have been to show Himself as abandoned and to put Himself into a vulnerable position for the predations of Satan. Voluntary submission in this way made His victory over Satan all the more glorious. There’s also a well-demonstrated connection between fasting and prayer. Being fasted provides for the quickening of prayer and it may buttress your spiritual defenses against worldly corruption. Jesus is also showing us that it’s possible to be spiritually healthy even if you are physically unwell.
This isn’t to say you should neglect yourself physically – indeed the Scriptures admonish you to steward your body well. But it is to say your spiritual well-being takes preeminence over your physical well-being. This means if you are spiritually broken it won’t matter how physically fit you become – the maladies of your spirit will be sufficient to drag you down. Christians throughout history have found themselves in situations where physical health was forcibly neglected or destroyed. Being imprisoned or thrust into forced labor are good examples here. Even in such hopeless situations it’s possible to seek God and to receive comfort from the Holy Spirit. Some studies have been done on the physical benefits of fasting – mind you those studies are not referring to a forty day total fast. Such a fast would kill you if not cause permanent damage. But there’s been some work to suggest temporary fasting can reset certain elements of your body on a cellular level. Even so the spiritual component of fasting may be inexplicable. I think it’s something which can help you if you approach it prayerfully and with careful wisdom.
Satan’s effort to tempt Jesus was carried out as a threefold series of propositions. The purpose of the temptation was to cause Christ to sin and therefore disqualify Him from being a holy and perfect sacrifice. We’ll unpack each temptation in detail, but upon flyover we see the aim of the first temptation is to cause Christ to despair of His Father’s goodness. The second is to make Christ doubt in His Father’s power. And the third is a boldfaced targeting of God the Father’s honor as Satan seeks to receive it himself. The first two temptations are artful and subtle – they possess all the clever nuance of the grand serpent. The third temptation is eminently desirable and bears unnerving similarity to the very proposition which caused the Fall of humanity. In order to overcome the first two deceptions Christ demonstrates His infinite wisdom. His conquest of the third temptation shows us His steadfast resolution against sin. All three moments reveal Jesus keeping child-like faith in His Father and this faith itself is the ultimate tool in overcoming the lies of Satan.
When Satan approached Jesus in the wilderness he didn’t come as a terrible or frightening figure. It’s possible he showed himself as an angel of light or as someone who was seeking the best interest of Jesus. When you think about Satan try not to think about the horrifying depictions made famous by modern movies. Satan is fundamentally a tempter and a deceiver – he’s not a forcible compeller. This means when Satan attacks you his attack will seek to leverage the wickedness which is already resident in your own heart. His temptations will seem appealing and attractive. Any person who comes into your life and tempts you to sin is likely functioning (whether they know it or not) as an agent of Satan’s work. Our modern and fictitious depictions of Satan make us think convulsive demonic possession is what it looks like to be attacked by an evil spirit. But it’s actually much simpler than that. It’s just any temptation which would cause you to trust in lies rather than the truth and consequently steer you into sinning against God. These temptations often involve exploiting your desire for power or your impulse for self-preservation even if trusting that impulse means rebellion against God. We see it plain-as-day in the nature of Satan’s first temptation against Jesus.
Christ was hungry because His forty day fast had just come to end and He hadn’t eaten anything yet. Along comes the devil whose first attack targets the vulnerability of Christ’s hunger. So he’s exploiting the human instinct for self-preservation here. Satan tried to use Christ’s hunger as evidence that the Father doesn’t care about Him. Satan doesn’t abide by ethical code and it’s not below his designs to take advantage of our difficult external circumstances. He will use your privation against you by embedding his temptation to sin inside of your already existing trials.
The devil has been using poverty as a vector for implanting sin since time immemorial. The idea here is that necessity has no law and if pushed far enough into danger your defiance of God’s will in an effort to protect yourself is a perfectly justifiable transgression. Some of the worst atrocities in human history have been committed under the pretext of us versus them. Kill or be killed. Poverty and privation are terrible realities the Church should be working night and day to solve. But the tangible suffering associated with deprivation is not the only reason we should be working to solve it. We should pray and work against poverty out of the understanding that poverty represents one of Satan’s most fertile territories for tempting and producing new sinners. Christ was hungry and Satan knew He was the Son of God so he leveraged this title by telling Jesus to command the stones to become bread. The point of this temptation wasn’t the hunger or the bread itself – the real matter was Satan’s effort to cause Christ to doubt Himself as being the Son of God. The content of this temptation shows us that Satan knew who Jesus was. But even so Satan would not have dared to question the deity of Jesus had Jesus not already pulled the veil over His own divine glory and limitless power.
Satan’s most effective deceptions are often couched in a kind of feigned rationality. Jesus was hungry from His fast, so Satan suggested God must not truly be His Father or else He wouldn’t allow Him to starve. The Son of God is supposed to be the heir of all things and the cattle on a thousand hills are supposed to belong to God. How could Jesus suffer from such hunger if any of this were true? Of course there was the moment after Christ’s baptism when the voice of the Father proceeded from Heaven and claimed Jesus as His Son – but you can imagine Satan sowing the seeds of doubt with this memory as well. I’m sure you’ve had moments in your life where you’ve felt so close to God that His goodness and His promises felt unquestionable to you. Maybe as your life went on and bad things kept happening for seemingly no reason you looked back and second-guessed those times of closeness with God. If you take your eyes off Heaven and focus only on your surrounding circumstances it can become easy to feel like God isn’t there at all – and if He is there He either doesn’t care about you or is very unkind. These doubts concerning the character of God and His relation to you as a Father are the favorite deceptions of the devil.
I think it’s a mistake to imagine Satan’s fundamental goal as tempting you into sin. Temptation to sin is more or less the means by which Satan moves toward his actual goal which is to disrupt and destroy your relationship with God. The Spirit of God is here to comfort you and to assure you of your status as a child of God. These promises of comfort and assurance are impervious to the deception of Satan if you have faith. It’s not as if the spirit of evil can hijack your being and rip you away from God – this will never happen. Such a thing cannot happen without your own consent because God is good and therefore good is more powerful than evil. In terms of your spiritual condition evil can’t strong-arm good. But you can certainly give yourself away to it if you choose to harbor lies in place of the truth.
A common tactic Satan uses to draw you in is to leverage your outward afflictions as evidence that God is not good. But the truth is sometimes these very afflictions are coming directly from God and they’re actually purposed for your eternal benefit. Imagine a sick person who needs life-saving surgery. The surgery itself might be so invasive the person’s body needs weeks to recover from it. In this case awareness of the problem is the only thing which justifies the remedy. It would be cruel and unusual to perform such a surgery on a perfectly healthy person who doesn’t need it. It’s best to keep this in mind when evaluating your own afflictions. You can play the judge and determine your afflictions have no purpose – but you aren’t omniscient. As human beings we are not transparent to ourselves. We act out in all manner of ways we don’t understand. This lack of self-understanding is why we have a field of psychology to begin with. So don’t be so quick to decide what you do and don’t need from God. He knows better than you do. Instead you should consider your afflictions in the same manner as Job. You should trust in God and love Him as your friend even when He seems to present Himself as your enemy. That is how you will be preserved against the designs of Satan.
Another issue here concerns Satan’s aim to undermine your trust in the Word of God. That’s how he did it with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when he asked them if God really said the things He said. These same tactics have been leveled against the Scriptures for thousands of years. Questions concerning the divine inspiration of Scripture are the same questions which came from the mouth of the serpent. Did God really say these things? One of Satan’s titles is Father of Lies which means he is diametrically opposed to the truth. If the Bible can’t be trusted then we know nothing about God apart from what’s been revealed to us in creation. But even this concept of general revelation being apprehensible through the creation is a biblical concept. We only accept the idea as truth because the idea is explicated in the Bible. If you can’t trust the Word of God then you can’t have relationship with God at all – and the devil understands this.
Most people who attack the Scriptures are not motivated by authentic textual criticism. Often they are motivated by hatred of God. Something terrible or tragic happened to them and this experience carries more weight in their spirit than do the promises of God. It’s possible they invested everything into their relationship with God and then something happened which made them feel as if God had forsaken them. They’ve created a false reality wherein they can’t accept the Scriptures as true because if the Scriptures are true then that means God has betrayed them. For these people it’s better to disbelieve in God entirely than it is to feel forgotten by Him. These misunderstandings about the character and motivation of God are classic constructs of Satan. It is a fact that God forbade Adam and Eve from eating the fruit. Satan suggested God forbade them from eating it to deprive them of its benefits. Satan lied about God’s motivation. The truth was always that God loved Adam and Eve and He was protecting them from themselves.
Part of Satan’s effort to make Jesus doubt His sonship to the Father was to ask Him to prove it. If Jesus is really the Son of God He should be able to turn the stones into bread. It’s possible the stones were referenced here because not long ago John the Baptist declared that God could raise up children of Abraham from the stones if He wanted to. Also notice how Satan tells Christ to command the stones Himself rather than pray to the Father asking the Father to do it. Satan’s insinuation here is that the Father has already forsaken Christ and so Christ should act on His own. A proper relationship with God calls for child-like faith and dependence on Him. The lies of the evil one aim to convince you that God is not trustworthy so you can’t depend on Him. This is at bottom an effort to make you vulnerable to the predations of evil spirits. If you turn to Jesus for your security then the devil can’t touch you. But if you depend on yourself for your security then all bets are off and your fortress is compromised. The deceiver wants to leverage your instinct for self-preservation to turn you away from the safety of Jesus.
We already mentioned how the most plausible temptations are often the most dangerous ones. Would it really hurt anyone if Jesus turned the stones into bread so He could eat? He certainly had the power to do it as we witness later in the gospel. When you focus on the bread the temptation seems innocent enough. But the bread isn’t the central point of Satan’s temptation – disputing Christ’s title as the Son of God is the central point. The voice of the Father had already declared Jesus to be the Son of God. If Christ attempted to prove it now He would be expressing distrust in what the Father had already settled. Furthermore to make His own bread instead of waiting on the Father would intimate that the Father either doesn’t care about Jesus or isn’t powerful enough to help Him. And another reason Jesus refused is simply because He doesn’t need to take orders from the devil. Jesus knew who had the real authority in the exchange and He doesn’t perform miracles to gratify the doubting accusations of the evil one.
What happens next is one of the most important demonstrations Christ has given us in the gospels. His rebuke of Satan’s temptation begins with Him saying: it is written. In fact this is how Christ begins his response to all three of Satan’s efforts. Christ responds to temptation through recourse to the Word of God. In the face of Satan’s lies Jesus turns to the Scriptures. Jesus Himself is the Word made flesh so He could have perfectly represented the mind of God in this moment without saying anything about the Scriptures. Jesus resorting to the Scriptures to combat deception and temptation is meant to show us precisely how we ourselves should do it. Anytime you are tempted or feeling doubtful about God, turn first to the Bible before turning to anything else. What God has said about Himself should be your primary resting place even over what your pastor says. But merely knowing the Scriptures isn’t enough if you don’t also trust in God. As we’ll see soon, Satan also knew the Scriptures but he twisted them in service to his lies.
The Word of God is called the sword of the Spirit. When you consider the spiritual armory presented in Ephesians you’ll notice the Word of God is the only tool for offense. If you are well-versed in the Scriptures not only will you be able to defend yourself against lies and temptations, but you’ll also be able to march forward and confront the spiritual strongholds which captivate the lost. You can think of these spiritual strongholds as the ideological cults our society suffers under today. You wouldn’t want to go into battle without some kind of weapon – so don’t try going into spiritual battle without the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God.
Although the Levitical sacrifices of the Old Testament were divinely instituted, they were not sufficient to permanently drive off the designs of Satan. To overcome temptation requires power received by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit through faith in Jesus. It’s very common to see new Christians set aside all manner of sin and vice immediately after coming to faith in Jesus. Some sins are harder to get rid of than others – this is true – but many of your shackles will fall right off directly after you give your life to Christ. When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness He demonstrated the key ways in which His faith was different from the faith of the Jews. When the Jews wandered through the wilderness after escaping Egypt they cried out for lack of food and then God fed them manna from Heaven. Jesus did not raise complaint nor doubt the goodness of God even when attacked by Satan – Jesus leaned into the Scriptures and declared man shall not live by bread alone. When Israel was in dire straits they struggled with the idea that as sons of God they would be chastened by Him to learn obedience – but Christ faithfully accepted such conditions with the understanding that learning obedience is part of true sonship.
When Israel was lost in the wilderness they allowed themselves to doubt whether God was really there at all. But Jesus did not allow His condition in the wilderness to raise such doubts about the goodness of His Father. Satan tried to leverage Christ’s hunger to persuade Him not to wait on the Father. Whereas Christ was already humble, Israel was made to wait for food in order to teach them humility and patience. Israel resisted dependence on God whereas Christ entirely depended on Him. Satan’s true temptation here was to convince Jesus that without bread He will die. Jesus rebukes the devil by reminding him that man shall not live on bread alone but on every word which proceeds from the mouth of God. Just as God kept Israel alive with manna from Heaven, He will keep Christ alive even if there is no bread to be found.
The lesson here is that material provision is truly secondary to provision from God. One way we see this truth manifest in reality is when a person falls into despair for lack of meaning or purpose. Food and drink no longer satisfy such a person. Vacations, cars, wealth, and all of the trappings of a successful worldly life fail to imbue this person’s existence with meaning. We need food to sustain our physical health but we need relationship with God to sustain our spiritual health. A person’s physical health can deteriorate while their spiritual well-being remains strong. We see this kind of thing all the time with Christians who are terminally ill. But what we never see is a person stave off despair when their life lacks a sense of meaning. Not only should we consider spiritual well-being as equally important to physical health, but we should actually consider it more important. None of this is to say you shouldn’t be careful to steward your body well. It’s to say your spiritual condition should be the core of your health while your physical condition serves to buttress it. Jesus understood He didn’t need to turn the stones into bread because He had faith the Father would keep Him alive some other way if necessary.
One of the best ways to achieve this kind of steadfast faith is to remember God while you are in your abundance. Israel continually got this wrong because as soon as their societies began to flourish they chased after idols in short order. If you can build a habit of thanking God and understanding your dependence on Him during times of prosperity then it will be natural for you to turn to Him during times of privation. You must train your mind to desire whatever it is God thinks is best for you instead of what you think is best for yourself. Often you hear pastors speak of these things as if they are mutually exclusive but I think that’s a mistake. A mature Christian will truly begin to desire the same things God desires. So the more you become like Christ the less the Christian life feels like denial of self. It’s better to be poor while living within the will of God than to be rich on the products of your own sin. You need to work hard to sustain yourself in this world – that’s true – but it’s also true that you shouldn’t defy God in the name of self-preservation. You should trust in Him that He will preserve you one way or another – in this life or the next.
Immediately after Satan’s first temptation fails, he comes right back with a second one. When you’re under attack from evil spirits you should expect more than one wave. Indeed some people struggle with the exact same temptation for decades. Satan’s second temptation is another effort to foster doubt in Jesus concerning the Father’s care for Him. The first temptation was focused on nourishment and this second one is focused on safety. One thing you’ll notice about Satan is that he’s more interested in distorting your understanding of God than he is in convincing you God doesn’t exist. Something like 97% of the global population has belief in a higher power. Human beings are designed with religion in their hearts and Satan knows this. The more clever and sinister deception is not to convince you God doesn’t exist – but rather to warp what you believe about the character of God.
A good example are the Christians who misunderstand the gospel to believe Jesus justifies their sins. The truth is Jesus justifies repentant sinners but He never justifies sin itself. It’s a subtle difference in belief which carries a massive difference in outcomes. A person who believes their sin is justified by God will blind themselves to the purifying conviction of the Holy Spirit. Essentially they will stop feeling guilty when they sin. But it gets even worse than that because they can also start to think their sin (being divinely permitted) is also divinely instructed. Usually this manifests as a person claiming God designed them a certain way and therefore He desires them to sin. There are few forms of evil more dangerous than a person who believes his or her own wickedness is a divine mission.
Jesus could have stopped Satan in an instant had He wanted to – so why didn’t He? I think Christ being submissive to Satan’s temptations demonstrates two things. It shows us His true power in that He allowed Satan to bring his best attacks and then rebuked each one with ease. But it also shows us God’s awareness that we humans are not strong enough to perfectly protect ourselves from evil. If we could perfectly protect ourselves then we would never face temptation – but temptation is common to all of us. Christ allowing Himself to face the full measure of Satan’s deceit and then conquering it demonstrates for us that our Savior is infinitely more powerful than the evil one. Couple this power differential with what we know about the goodness of God and we discover that God is the one who protects us and delivers us from evil. We begin to depend on Jesus to give us the strength we need to overcome temptation rather than depending on our own strength. This dependence is the spiritual posture God wants us to be in because we ourselves are not enough to stand toe-to-toe with the devil.
Part of Satan’s second temptation was to persuade Jesus to demonstrate His status as the Son of God in front of all Jerusalem. Unlike the first temptation which took place in the wilderness with just the two of them, this second attempt was in a crowded place atop the temple. The temple was the place where all people traveled to honor God, and Satan wanted Jesus to perform an ostentatious display of power in this location as a form of effrontery against the Father. In this passage Jerusalem is called the holy city. One of the things we learn from this temptation is that no place on earth is holy enough to protect us from the schemes of the devil. Adam and Eve were tempted in the paradise of Eden, and Christ was tempted right on top of the temple in the holy city Jerusalem. Being inside a church building is not what delivers us from evil – only faithful relationship with Jesus Christ can do that. It’s one of the great tragedies that so many people have been abused and betrayed inside of darkened church buildings. You must always be watchful because there is no place in this life where you can go to be completely protected from evil.
All of Satan’s intent is essentially the polar opposite of God’s will. We see this with him bringing Christ to the pinnacle of the temple as well. God’s character is such that He casts people down into humility in order to raise them up into prominence. The reason God does this is so the person learns to glorify God with their success rather than glorifying themselves. Satan is the opposite. Satan raises people up into prominence in order to cast them down. Satan’s desire is that you leverage worldly success to honor yourself until you become so prideful that you fall into deceit. This is not to say that all successful people are malevolent. It’s simply to say the higher you climb in the world the more careful you need to be. High places are by their nature exclusionary which is why you always hear sentiments like: it’s lonely at the top. High places also represent easy targets for Satan. Receiving the honor of other people is a very slippery slope which leads to arrogant downfall. It’s also true that when you occupy a position of power the people around you are less likely to convict you when you do wrong. You can be so powerful that just being in your presence increases the worldly power of those around you. Rare is the person who’s willing to risk these worldly gains in order to tell you you’re being an idiot. They’re much more likely to affirm you in your misapprehensions and lead you further astray.
Jesus deeply desires that you know Him and come into relationship with Him. Satan tried to leverage this desire in his second temptation by expressing to Christ if He jumped from the temple and was visibly rescued in front of the people – this would prove He is the Son of God and under the special protection of Heaven. He tried to convince Christ that a simple demonstration of His power would cut short the work of salvation and persuade the Jews to follow Him. There is no tool Satan won’t use in his effort to subvert the will of God. One crucial point here is that Satan told Christ to cast Himself down from the temple – Satan didn’t cast Christ down himself. This point illustrates the fact that Satan can never force you to sin but he can only entice you. Satan’s primary interest is not to turn you into a suffering martyr – he wants you to become a willing and defiant sinner. Even if God allowed the devil to encroach on your free will such encroachment would not be profitable to Satan because forced sin is not really sin – it’s just suffering.
Satan backs up his second temptation by reciting Scripture. Satan’s knowledge of the Scriptures has made Christians uneasy for millennia. The fact that Satan is well-versed in the Scriptures is evidence that it’s possible to know your Bible cover-to-cover yet still have a heart of enmity with God. Scripture is one of the most important facets of the Christian life but even Scripture can’t help you if your spirit is postured in opposition to God. Scripture is without doubt your most powerful spiritual weapon but it doesn’t do you much good if your turn this weapon on yourself or use it to cut down your brothers and sisters. In this case Satan is not wrong about the hedge of protection God builds around the saints. Satan told the truth when he said the angels would protect Christ – and indeed this piece of Scripture was eminently fulfilled in Christ when none of His bones were broken during the crucifixion. The most powerful lies always contain some element of the truth. But just because Satan understood biblical truth doesn’t mean he was speaking in service to it. Indeed he was twisting it in his effort to achieve his own ends. Knowledgable people do this sort of thing all the time and that’s just one of the ways in which cults are formed. The Pharisees did it and not only did it cause them to miss their Savior but also to crucify Him.
One of the ways Satan twisted the truth of God’s protection was by taking it out of context. God protects the saints so long as they are walking in His ways. When a Christian decides to live in sin he or she forfeits this protection. And the protection itself is more of the spiritual persuasion anyway – it’s true that many faithful Christians have suffered at the hands of evil throughout history. Had Christ obeyed Satan and cast Himself down from the spire, He would be acting outside the will of His Father – which is something Christ never does. It’s critically important for every Christian to become well-versed in the Scriptures if they hope to defend themselves against shrewd opponents who abuse the Scriptures to spread deceit. The Bible says people who twist the Scriptures bring destruction upon themselves. For all of history humanity has been using God’s grace as a justification for wanton practice of sin. It’s a common misunderstanding for Christians to accept God’s love for sinners as encouragement to continue living a life of sin.
Just like with the first temptation Jesus resisted Satan’s second attempt by resorting to the Scriptures. You should never allow deceptive Christians or false teachers to discourage your trust in the Word of God. In this passage Jesus is demonstrating unwavering faith in God’s word even though Satan himself is misquoting it in an effort to tempt Him. When we think about the promises of God written in Scripture it is useful to interpret them as if they are spoken to us in particular as individuals. Jesus does this when He quotes, You shall not put the LORD your God to the test. The Bible is a self-interpreting document and so you should always use Scripture to interpret other portions of Scripture which you don’t yet understand. You might not be strong enough to forcibly defend yourself against the likes of Satan, but even you can see right past his lies if you’re well-versed in the Scriptures. You’ll be able to discern in short order if those around you are mishandling the text for their own interests.
Jesus refused to jump from the temple because doing so would be to put His Father’s word to the test which in this case would demonstrate a lack of faith. Christ had already been abundantly confirmed during His baptism as the Son of God so any further demonstration would serve only as offense against the Father. The Pharisees were guilty of putting God to the test when they ignored the many miracles Jesus was performing and instead insisted on a sign from Heaven. As a Christian you have God’s word that He will ultimately protect you and provide for you. But this doesn’t mean you can abandon all good sense and throw yourself into danger. Throwing yourself into danger unnecessarily because you want to see God show up is actually a sin because what you’re doing is putting God to the test. This understanding of Scripture permanently buries the notion that waiting on God means doing nothing with an expectation of God moving in your life. Sometimes passive waiting is the right answer, but it’s never the right answer if you’re doing it merely because you want to see if God moves.
It’s also important that we refrain from promising ourselves more than God has promised us. You can think of God’s promises as the maximum of your certainties. Anything above and beyond God’s promises is vulnerable to loss and liable to fail. This is why it’s dangerous for Christians to misunderstand the gospel and believe relationship with Jesus leads to health, wealth, and happiness. Jesus didn’t promise us these things and so we cannot depend on them.
Satan saved the darkest of his temptations for last. His third temptation was to offer Jesus worldly power in exchange for servitude. The fact that Satan saved his worst for last means that we should always be on guard for more difficult challenges. The deceiver will not part from us completely until we reside with God in Heaven. For the third temptation Satan took Jesus to the summit of a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world. When you read a passage like this you can’t help but wonder if Satan’s perspective is narrowed by hatred and deceit. Why did he think he could show Jesus more of the world than Jesus already knew? Jesus created the world and Jesus governs it. Nevertheless Jesus permitted Satan to deliver his best effort knowing it would serve only to further glorify God.
One of the first things we notice about this final temptation is the association with sight. It looks good to the eyes in the same way the forbidden fruit looked good to the eyes of Eve in the Garden. Vanity lacks substance but often it is very appealing at first glance. Many forms of wickedness begin with appetites for vanity – the lust of the flesh, and of the eye, and the pride of life are common domains where this occurs. Not only are Satan’s supposed rewards vacuous, but they’re also sold as better than they really are. He showed Jesus the glory of all the kingdoms in the world but he didn’t show Him the sin, suffering, and death which produced such worldly power. The same thing happened when he tempted Adam and Eve with the fruit – he lied to them and told them they would be like God if they ate from it. Meanwhile he smuggled death and destruction into the world.
It’s also true that perhaps the most enticing forms of sinful temptation in this world are predicated on power. For a person whose eyes are closed to God, worldly power appears to be the best there is. This delusion can become so convincing that authoritarians sometimes mistake themselves for gods. Judging by the final temptation it seems as though Satan counts his first two as successful. At this point it’s as if Satan views Christ as nothing more than a mere man. It’s as if the deceiver convinced himself that God the Father had in fact abandoned Christ – and that if Christ would take up his lot with Satan then Satan would give him the whole world. You can see how backwards the thinking is here.
You might think it’s a futile effort for Satan to convince Christ the Father has left Him – and it is futile – but in many cases regular human beings are continually persuaded God has abandoned them. So this is a tactic Satan uses against humanity with alarming success. If you lose your trust in God then there’s really no reason to do whatever is necessary to gain power for yourself. But all power outside of Jesus is simply an illusion. Satan’s claim to be able to give Christ the world is itself a lie. God is the source of all true power and against God all of creation – including Satan – is powerless. But it is true that Jesus is the Creator and recipient of all the universe. It is made by Him and for Him. So Satan’s suggestion that it will be given to Him has a kernel of truth in it. The lesson here is that you must be careful about receiving the promises of God when they are offered to you by the hand of Satan. Practically speaking this means not allowing sin as a means to what you think is a good end. Just because the gift is good doesn’t mean the giver is good.
Pagan worship in the ancient world was, in an ultimate sense, worship directed to the devil. That’s one of the reasons why Satan is called the god of this world. If you worship something in the world that is not God then in an indirect manner you are worshiping the devil. If you allow yourself to become resentful or bitter towards God then this kind of false worship becomes more attractive. Being resentful or bitter is not sin in and of itself, but it lays the groundwork which makes consenting to sin much easier. Notice the immediacy with which Christ rejects Satan’s offer. This is how you should also respond if anyone suggests departing from God to worship something or someone else. Even if this person is your best friend or someone you trust deeply – you must reject the offer soundly and with no hesitation. Entertaining such things can give them a foothold in your heart which warps your spirit and turns you into the kind of person more likely to choose the ways of destruction.
Once again we see Christ reference the Scriptures to support his reasoning for rejecting Satan’s offer. When it comes to sin, avoidance of doing wrong is a lot easier when you know why the thing is forbidden to begin with. In this case the Scriptures prohibit worship of anything or anyone besides God Himself. Satan may have presented himself as an angel of the light, but Jesus didn’t even need to dispute whether he was or not because He knew exactly what the Scriptures say about worship and how worship must be reserved for God alone. When rebuking this kind of temptation it’s important that you make your answer certain, concise, and without any room for debate. It’s good to allow the free discussion of ideas but certain ideas are so blasphemous and so thoroughly rejected by Scripture that they should not be entertained.
The monotheistic nature of the worship prescribed by God is further evidence of Christ’s deity and His oneness with the Father. If Jesus were not equal with the Father and fully together with Him, then the worship of Jesus would be prohibited. That’s why in other Abrahamic religions like Judaism and Islam, which teach that Jesus is not who He said He is, the worship of Christ is strictly forbidden. When Jesus manifested as both fully God and fully man, the human part of Him was in faithful submission to the Father. You understand the love of God when you see how He took humanity onto Himself so He could be subjected to the full range of human experience and demonstrate for us the proper means of worship. Churches will change and the way we do church will evolve over time but the law concerning the worship of God alone is eternal.
When the third temptation fails Satan departs from Jesus and angels come to minister to Him. If you’re facing a difficult season of challenging temptations, you can rest on God’s promise that He will protect you from temptations which go beyond your capacity to handle. And if the temptation is beyond your capacity, God will always provide a way of escape. Satan departed from Jesus because Jesus commanded him to leave. As terrifying as the evil forces of this world can be, all of them are fully subject to the sovereignty of God. Satan had saved his ace card for last, the very same temptation which had overthrown untold numbers of human beings in the past, and when he saw that it failed on Christ he had nothing left but to admit Jesus is more than a man. Because the Spirit of God is resident in you, you also have this power to stand against temptation. If you reject evil then evil will depart from you. When you stand your ground in Jesus there’s nothing even Satan can do to lead you astray.
As followers of Jesus we are able to share in the victory He had over Satan in this passage. The devil found nothing he could latch onto inside of Christ and so he had to flee. Surrendering yourself to God daily and pursuing Jesus with all your mind is how you ensure Satan will not get a foothold in your heart. The devil may be our enemy but he’s an enemy who is already defeated. All we need to do is hold fast to the Captain of our salvation.
Once Satan had fled, heaven’s angels immediately rushed in around Jesus and began to minister to Him. They held off their attendance throughout the trials because showing Christ as more than sufficient to conquer the devil on His own glorified God. Scripture reveals angels as formidable beings who are vastly powerful – but Jesus doesn’t need any angels to reign supreme. God uses His angels to honor them by their employment, not because He can’t accomplish His work on His own. Another reason why it’s important for us to see angels at work is the peace and security it brings us to know Heaven’s army is engaged in the fight against the devil and his demons. If any of us humans saw an angel in all its glory we would likely try to worship it because the sight would be so awesome. But even these powerful beings stand at the ready to obey Jesus without hesitation and to honor Him day and night. Part of their surrounding Jesus after His victory against Satan was undoubtedly celebratory. They rejoice to see their King so handily conquer the face of evil.
Even in His weakness Jesus is mighty enough to overcome all things. His body may have been weak from His fasted condition when Satan first approached Him, but His divine nature remained infinitely strong. This divine power is such that even angels attend on Him with food and humble service. The angels tending to Jesus also shows us that even when we find ourselves in dire straits – like starved and standing toe-to-toe with the devil – God is attentive to your situation and He’s prepared to care for you according to His will. Defeating the powers of Hell and witnessing the powers of Heaven come alongside Him functioned as encouragement for Jesus as He began His earthly ministry. We should be encouraged by it also.
We should be encouraged by the fact we serve a God who knows precisely what it’s like to be tempted by the devil and how desperate those conditions can seem. Jesus also knows the comfort which comes when you survive temptation and He will not withhold that comfort from you. The principle of this passage is that you should continue fighting the good fight no matter what. Keep your eyes on Heaven and march forward uphill toward the Kingdom of God. It’s going to be messy, it’s going to be difficult, and there are going to come days where you don’t think you can do it anymore. But just keep going. Because waiting for you on the other side of that battle is peace which goes beyond comprehension. And in your heart is the Spirit of Jesus who is the great Overcomer of this world. You should take heart because so long as you seek Him Jesus will never leave your side. The battle is won and your spirit can have rest in that. Now go out into the world and do all you can to share the Source of this rest with all those who need it.
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