Temptation of Christ: Jesus' Victory

And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. The devil left him and behold, the angels came and were ministering to him. [Blended Gospels]

Jesus’ victory in the desert sustained Him throughout His ministry, as Satan tempted Him again and again to achieve His aim through ungodly means, shortcuts, going out of God’s will.

Jesus would not bribe people into following Him. He would not be a sensationalist to get people to follow Him. He would not compromise with the faith and holiness He demanded. His face was set like flint to follow the way of the cross.

God's word is living and powerful to resist temptation

Every temptation can be met and overcome through God's word and the Spirit.

* What are you yielding to right now that you know is not of God?

* Are you refusing the cross and trying to figure out how to get the results of a spiritual life without paying the cost?

* How well do you know scripture? Well enough to balance what you hear with the truths that the Bible teaches? Or are you trying to figure out how to get permission for what you want by searching for a verse that seems to give it?

The real power does not come from knowing scripture and speaking it. It comes from living by faith, applying the truth of God’s word to your life by the power of the Spirit.

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Temptation of Christ: Third Temptation

Third temptation:

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in a moment of time, and he said to him, "To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. All these I will give you, if you, then, will fall down and worship me, it will all be yours." [Blended Gospels]

This last temptation had to do with compromise, avoiding the heavy cost of the cross in order to achieve God's stated aim. Jesus was at the worst part of His suffering, physically and emotionally. As awful as it was, He knew that He was going to have to suffer far, far worse, beatings and the cross, before those kingdoms would be won.

The devil was saying hey, Jesus! We could end this right now. We could end all this awful suffering you’re going through, we could just skip the cross. Think about that for a minute. Just one little shortcut, one little compromise, and look how much could be gained, a win-win for everyone.

Jesus knew that above all things God is pure and His ways are pure. Jesus refused to use anything that lacked integrity, that was not righteous. He refused to compromise His integrity and principles, even if it meant intense suffering.

Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, "'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'" [Blended Gospels]

The devil hadn’t said a word about service. But Jesus knew that who you worship is who you will also serve.

* It’s compromising with God’s integrity when you buy into a way of thinking that isn’t all completely true, but most of it is really good, so you go with it because you feel you could use it to get people interested in the Bible.

* It’s compromising with God’s purity when you tell yourself you’re going to have to sin a little bit to get involved with a group of people and be accepted by them, but you’re doing it for the Lord so you can bring them the gospel.

You say let’s not have such high standards, let’s relax a little with all this doctrine and righteous living. People would be a lot more interested in Christianity if it didn’t seem so narrow. No,

God’s work must be done God’s way.

To do something for God without keeping absolute integrity would be to lose everything.

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Temptation of Christ: Second Temptation

Second temptation:

Then the devil took him to the holy city Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here..." [Blended Gospels]

The temple was on top of Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Most people think the devil took Jesus to the top of the temple's main tower, overlooking the temple court with an 180 foot drop, where every morning a priest would blow the trumpet to greet the dawn.

What made this even a temptation is found in Malachi 3:1: “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple.” Many people expected something very like what Satan was suggesting.

If Jesus would just do this, all the Jews would see the Messiah coming in a miraculous way, lifted up by the angels, and they would all believe in Jesus.

Jesus longed for His people to accept the gospel, and to accept Him as their Savior, but He knew their hearts were hard, and that they would reject Him. Look, the devil was saying, you can jump start your ministry with this. You obviously intend to live by the scriptures. But you could fulfill scripture with this! Satan even quoted scripture to really nail it:

"...for it is written,'He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'" [Blended Gospels]

Jesus did not deny what Satan said, but instead pointed out that what Satan proposed was to test God’s goodness by stepping out of His will, to test God’s willingness to protect Him when He was choosing to be out of God’s design and purpose.

Jesus answered him [and] said to him, "Again it is written, it is said, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'" [Blended Gospels]

The second temptation dealt with presumption – Jesus knew God loved Him and was pleased with Him. Satan quoted scripture to suggest Jesus could do what He wanted and God would end up having to make it work out somehow.

* When you let yourself run late, then drive too fast, you presume on God’s grace to keep you safe and out of trouble.

* When you scrimp on sleep, good nutrition and exercise, then expect God to keep you healthy, strong and sweet tempered, you presume on His grace.

* When you do your own thing with the talents and equipping God has given you and expect Him to bless it, you presume on His grace.

Whenever you and I put ourselves into circumstances that effectively force God to work a miracle to bail us out, we are testing God. That’s sin.

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Temptation of Christ: First Temptation

First temptation:

... after fasting forty days and forty nights, [Jesus] was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." [Blended Gospels]

Satan cast doubt on Jesus’ identity. Are you really the Son of God? Then why are you on the brink of starvation in a world that is supposedly under your rule? And does your Father really love you and is He really pleased with you? He’s obviously not providing for your needs, is He?

Since God has abandoned you, and doesn’t seem to care, don’t you think you should at least do what it takes to survive? It wouldn’t help your ministry to die of hunger, what a waste! What’s it to God if you create for yourself a little bread?

Jesus had set aside His glory to become a man. He had taken on all of the limitations of being a human being. He humbled Himself completely before God, trusting God with His every need, just the way you and I are called to do now.

If Jesus had used His power to feed Himself, He would have taken Himself out of God’s provision for Him. He would have taken His glory back, and elevated Himself to become His own provider.

Again Jesus was identifying Himself with His people. God had tested the humility of the Hebrews for forty years in the wilderness when He provided the manna, bread that miraculously appeared every day among the rocks of the desert. Would they humbly receive His provision, or would they get bored and complain?

In this first temptation Jesus’ humility was tested. Would He accept God’s provision of hunger or would He act on the devil’s suggestion to use His creative power, the power of God’s word, to speak the stones into bread so He could eat.

But [Jesus] answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Physical life isn’t everything. Eternal life is everything, and that is the life that is worth preserving.

God’s word is God’s revealed purpose. God’s word went out in Genesis to create the world according to His purposes. The creative word must be connected with God’s will and design.

Think of your talents, your education and experience. God has given you innate abilities plus spiritual gifts to build up and bless people with. But there is a temptation to cash in on our gifts, isn’t there? To use our talents for our own benefit first. Jesus refused to bend God’s creative power to His own benefit.

Think of your hungers: food, sex, love, money, having a good job – you know when it is not God’s will to take that thing, but you convince yourself that you must take it because you need it and you see no relief in sight. Taking what God does not have in mind for you is sin. It will weaken your life of faith, quench the Spirit’s work in your life, and will weaken your ability to help other people.

* Do you feel like the pressure has gotten intolerable?
* Is your need so intense you feel you can’t last another hour, let alone another day?
* Do you feel you absolutely have to get out of the situation you’re in?

Take heart. The good news is you can bear it. Jesus never doubted God’s word to Him that He was God’s beloved Son. He humbly trusted God for His sustenance and refused to accept bread from any hand by His Father’s, even when He was close to starvation.

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Temptation of Christ: Deliverance From Sin

When God offers salvation, He is offering us deliverance from sin in three ways.

1) The first way is a one time act of being saved from the penalty of sin. Sin will always earn death. By believing in Jesus and having His righteousness settle our accounts with God, we are now forgiven sinners, the penalty of death is now paid for, for all time.

2) The second way God delivers us from sin has a future tense, when we will finally be made entirely clean from the presence of sin. God says that we will one day see Jesus as He is because we will be just like Him, glorified, purified from all sin.

3) The third way God delivers us from sin is in the present tense, from the power of sin. This is accomplished in every believer's life the same way it was accomplished in Jesus' life:

Through belief in God's word, trust in the power of the Holy Spirit working together with your obedience to God.

You now have the freedom, the power, to choose not to sin. Before you and I were saved, we were slaves to sin, but now we can make a choice not to sin, it is not our master any more.

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Temptation of Christ: Resisting Sin

The gospels were presenting another credential, another proof that Jesus is Messiah.

When you test something, it has to be a real test, otherwise it doesn’t prove anything. When a bridge is built, certain guarantees go with the bridge:
* It is guaranteed not to fall apart.
* It is guaranteed to hold up a certain amount of tonnage over a certain period of time.
* It is guaranteed to withstand all kinds of weather and other stressors.

All those guarantees are backed up by test after test. Every test is documented, proving the guarantees are genuine. No test, no guarantee.

The temptations God allowed Satan to test Jesus with were real, they tested Jesus to the limit of His emotions and intellect, to the limit of His physical, emotional and intellectual strength. The test was going to reveal whether Jesus, being a man, was also a sinner.

"Sin" is a Greek word, referring to an archer missing the mark with his arrow. Anything less than a bull's eye is sin. The "mark," in Biblical terms, is God's glory, and God's law. God's glory is the Spirit of His law, the beauty of His holiness. God's law expresses His righteousness and is the ultimate standard for inner and outer lives. Every human misses achieving this standard, this "mark;" every person sins. But Jesus never did. How?

Jesus was delivered from sinning by the same means you and I have access to today. He was filled with the Holy Spirit, just as believers are today, and He had studied God's word in the same way you and I are studying God’s word here today.

He memorized scripture exactly the way any other ordinary person sets about memorizing something -- He did the plain hard work of getting God's word into His mind for the Spirit to recall when He needed it.

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Temptation of Christ: Jesus is Tested

When Jesus was baptized by John, He was also anointed and filled by the Holy Spirit and He received His Father’s public affirmation as God’s beloved Son, pleasing to God.

In combining the three gospel accounts of what happens next, we find out that immediately after His baptism, full of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit literally impelled Jesus to go into the wilderness alone to fast and pray, and to be tested.

In scripture, fasting often preceded a great spiritual struggle. Elijah and Moses are both described in the Old Testament as fasting for 40 days and nights. As Jesus’ life paralleled the life of His people, all Israel was led by God into the wilderness to be tested for forty years before they entered the promised land.

The principle of fasting is simple. When you temporarily stop eating, many of the systems in your body are given a break from the hard work of digestion. The extra energy gives your body the chance to heal and restore itself, and burning stored calories gets rid of toxic substances stored in your body, which is symbolic of what happens to us spiritually. Biblical fasting always centers on spiritual purposes. We cover up what is inside our hearts with the pleasure of eating and other good experiences, but in fasting these things come to the surface.

There are side effects to fasting:
* fatigue,
* aches and pains,
* emotional duress,
* headaches,
* nausea,
* the symptoms of colds and flu,
which are all caused by the temporarily increased levels of toxins in your body which have also been inadvertently stored along with energy.

Jesus was likely experiencing all these side affects as He fasted and prayed. Jesus was slowly starving. At the end of the forty days, He was right on the brink of death by starvation.

During the entire time of His fasting and praying, Jesus endured relentless temptations from the devil.

How did He keep from sinning? The easy answer is to say, “Well, He’s God. The Bible says God can’t be tempted, so it was a slam dunk.”

But that’s not the answer.

The Greek word “peirazein,” which is translated “tempt” in English, has very different element in it’s meaning than to try to entice or persuade someone to do wrong. It means “test” far more than it means what you and I understand as “tempt.”

[Tomorrow: How Jesus withstood the test, when He was the absolute weakest, physically and emotionally, that a human being could be]

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Temptation

“We believe we have all the free will in the world. We believe we overeat if the food is good or if we're really hungry. In reality, those are two of the last things that determine how much we eat." So says a research scientist at a leading university.

In one experiment, he placed candy jars of chocolate in office workers' cubicles for a month. Then, he moved the candy six feet away. Simply having the candy closer meant the office workers ate five more candies a day. That adds up to 12 pounds of candy a year.

Jesus always obeyed, but He had to learn obedience, just like you and me, because He was a real person.

Think about how hard it is to resist temptation when you face it for the umpteenth time. Sometimes it’s easy to resist the first six or seven times. But what about the sixtieth time? It gets harder and harder not to indulge your own impulses, doesn’t it?

The research scientist concluded, “We can say no 27 times, but if it's visible, the 28th or 29th time, we start saying, 'Maybe.' By time 30, 31, we start saying, 'What the heck? I'm hungry.' "

Resisting temptation is painful, it’s suffering.

Temptation is desperately wanting something that God does not want you to have.

Jesus knew what it was to desperately want something the Father did not have in mind for Him. But He never sinned in taking it.

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Blended Gospels, The Temptation of Jesus

Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread."

But he answered, "It is written, "'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.'"

Then the devil took him to the holy city Jerusalem and set him 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 command his angels concerning you, to guard you' and "'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'"

Jesus answered him [and] said to him, "Again it is written, it is said, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in a moment of time, and he said to him, "To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. All these I will give you, if you, then, will fall down and worship me, it will all be yours."

Then Jesus said to him, "Be gone, Satan! For it is written, "'You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.'"

And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. The devil left him and behold, the angels came and were ministering to him.
[ESV translation, Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4:1-13]

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