(Text and Audio)
Title: The Tempting of Jesus by Satan, Part One
Intro:
Without question, this is one of the most fascinating accounts in all of scripture. I’m not sure we often fully grasp the significance and weight of this historical event.
What I would like for us to do over the next three weeks is break down each one of these temptations, its implications, its weight, and then look at the modern day parallels in terms of the challenges and temptations we face every day.
Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese author of the book “The Art of War” said something profoundly truthful:
“Do not know yourself? You will lose all of your battles. Know yourself? You will win half of your battles. Know yourself and your enemy? You will win all of your battles.”
My goal over the next three weeks is to get your thinking about BOTH yourself and your enemy. Knowing who you are, what you are strong with, and what you are weak with, is a good start, but seeing HOW Satan might target you will make you completely spiritually prepared to do battle against temptation.
Anyone here interested in this type of lesson? Good. Stick with me. Some of the things we will talk about may be uncomfortable. Some of them may hit close to home, but that’s okay, because I want you to be prepared, I want you to be ready.
Think about this: Satan and Jesus are going one on one in the desert. Who doesn’t want to see this? Satan is attempting to derail Jesus’ mission before it even gets started and he has quite a genius plan in place.
Consider:
If Jesus had responded any other way to the temptations offered by Satan, the universe would literally have been altered forever. In other words, if Jesus had failed this test, he never could have begun his ministry and fulfilled his passion as our savior because he would have been just like us, with sin.
(read/pray)
Opening Thoughts:
1. Jesus was led “by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.” James 1:13 tells us plainly that God tempts no one, but God can, has, and will use temptations within His sovereign plan for our lives to test us.
2. Jesus was being used as a representative of the founding of the New Israel. The 40 days and 40 nights of Jesus wandering in the desert is symbolic of Israel’s 40 years wandering in the desert after the exodus from Egypt. In fact, Jesus references that O.T. story from Duet. 8:3 in answering the first temptation by saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone.” That’s directly from the account of Israel wandering in the desert.
The First Temptation: Physical Drives
This temptation by Satan targets a need. In verse 2 the text says, “He had not eaten for 40 days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry.” So what does Satan do?
Satan simultaneously challenges Jesus’ authority over creation while testing his physical resolve.
Application: Satan will target us the same way. He will seek out a perceived “need” in our life, convince us of our own “authority”, and tempt us to sin.
Examples: (The two most appropriate examples to American Christians I can think of.)
1. Greed. Satan will exploit our “need” for more money, telling us that we have a responsibility to have a certain type of lifestyle for our families. He will tell us that good husbands give certain types of gifts to their wives, they take their wives on certain types of vacations. Good fathers are able to buy their kids certain name brand clothes. Good fathers are able to send their kids to the best colleges.
And then Satan tells us we have the authority to make decisions in our household. We can choose to work overtime. We can choose to work weekends. We can choose take the new promotion that will have us flying all over the country at the expense of time with our families and churches.
But what is the truth? Taking myself for example, the truth is that if I’m gone for the majority of the childhoods of Silas and Nevaeh, they won’t care a lick about what school I”m able to send them to, or what name is on their shirt tags. Mary won’t want these gifts or to take these vacations with a man she doesn’t know and struggles to love, because he’s neglected them.
Money and “things” are only a perceived need. They are not real. God told us he would be our supply, we are to have faith. Food wasn’t a real need for Jesus, they were a perceived need. He’d already made it by faith 40 days and nights. He didn’t give into the lie that Satan offered him. Satan said, “You have the authority to feed yourself by turning these stones into bread.” But Jesus’ sustenance wasn’t physical. What kept him going wasn’t physical, it was spiritual, it was supernatural, it was his relationship with his father.
2. Sex. Satan will exploit our need for physical intimacy by telling us that our bodies were just built a certain way and they need, they crave a certain release. Satan then tells us we have the authority to make decisions for ourselves, that no one knows us better than us, and that we can handle situations that weaker brothers or sisters could not. (But the truth is at least two people know us better than we do. Jesus, our creator, and Satan, our adversary.) So ladies will stay with boyfriends that seem to be Christian, get emotionally attached to them, and then watch all physical and moral boundaries evaporate over time.
Men will say, “I know it’s 11:30, and I should get to bed, but I really want to check some news on the internet,” and three house later they have gorged themselves on pornography. Spouses will engage in small talk with co-workers of the opposite sex for a little too long, because they are getting the attention from them that they are not getting at home. We will lower our guard in social situations because we don’t want to seem backwards or awkward, or we don’t want to “hurt our reputations for being relevant and able to witness to them” so we laugh at the off color joke, we agree to go see the questionable movie, even though we’d never do these things if Jesus was part of the group because we’d be too embarrassed.
But what is the truth? We don’t need sex. Where does scripture tell us we need sex? We’ve been told that we do, (mostly by the lost!) and we choose to buy into that lie. For some of us, sex is a wonderful gift given to us by the Father in the form of spouse. But is a spouse, and therefore sex, in God’s plan for everyone? Was it for Paul? Was it for Jesus? Just as the need for bread was nothing more than a ploy by Satan, so is this need for sex. And Jesus response to Satan about bread is the same attitude we should take concerning sex: “If, and ONLY if, God wants me to sexually involved with someone, he will provide that in due time, through the holy, Godly means of a Godly spouse, and if He doesn’t that does not give me ANY right to seek gratification in any other way.”
When Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 in saying, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” what he’s saying is that the physical can’t have dominion over the spiritual. The wold may be able to take your body, but then what? There is more to life than physically being alive, and Jesus knew that. Real life, eternal life, comes from only one source: obedience and submission to the Word of God.
Close: What is our struggle?
So who are you? I mentioned greed and sex. You want to know if you struggle with these things? I ask tell you: are you tempted by them often, or have you mastered them? Maybe you struggle with vanity, self-image, cowardice, or shame. If you find that you are tempted in a certain arena often it’s very possible that’s because it’s working, Satan’s getting you to fail in these areas.
1. Do you have accountability? REAL accountability? Someone you fear. Someone you respect. Someone who challenges you.
2. Are you serious and ruthless against sin? (Story of young man taking door off his bedroom.)
3. Have you considered that this thing that has a hold on you is only a perceived need, that you’ve been fooled into thinking it’s a real need when it is not?
4. Do you really believe that Jesus can deliver you from this bondage, IN THIS LIFE? (Too many of us live lives of reservation saying the ridiculous, “Maybe God just doesn’t want to deliver me from this right now…“
It’s past time that you start being honest with yourselves about the hidden faults in your lives. Show God you love him. Make a sacrifice of self.