The Crisis Of Temptation, Pt. 2

Matthew 4:1-11

Matthew chapter four is our text for tonight in our continuing study of Matthew. And we are examining this wonderful passage, verses 1 to 11 that deals with the temptation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Matthew 4:1 to 11.

Throughout the history of man, he has fought relentlessly against the reality of temptation. There's never been an era of man's history when temptation was not a problem. In A.D. 50, Polemon wrote of his own personal struggle, I should say A.D. 450, he said this, "Fly from all occasions of temptation, if still tempted fly further still, if there is no escape possible then have done with running away and show a bold face and take the two edged sword of the Spirit. Some temptations must be taken by the throat as David killed the lion, others must be stifled as David hugged the bear to death. Some you had better keep to yourselves and don't give them air, shut them up as a scorpion in a bottle, scorpions in such confinement die soon but if allowed out for a crawl and then put back into the bottle and corked down they will live a long while and give you trouble. Keep the cork on your temptations, and they'll die of themselves."

So even in 450 A.D. they were trying to cork their temptations, that's been part of mans life. Augustine, one of the Christian fathers before his conversion lived with an ill woman, and sometime after she accosted him as usual, and by that the writer means an evil woman, he ran away as fast as he could run from this evil woman of his past, and she ran after him screaming, why runnest thou away? It is I. And he answered, I run away because I am not I anymore, I am a new man. The... from the least to the greatest men have struggled with the reality of temptation. An ancient writer records the following, Saint Benedict sought an increase of grace and exemption from temptation by wearing a rough hair shirt, some of you with Catholic backgrounds can relate to this kind of thing, and living as he did for three years in a desolate cave beyond the reach of man, he isolated himself and wore this hairy shirt to irritate his skin, his scanty food was let down to him at the end of a cord, and even there, says the writer, temptations beset him. The memory of a beautiful woman he had met haunted him continually, and it so impressed Saint Benedict that he was on the point of leaving his seclusion to chase that woman. Near his grotto was a clump of thorns and briars, having undressed he threw himself among them and rolled about until his nude body was covered with bleeding wounds, and this he continued until the infernal fire was extinguished forever. The battle of temptation.

Another ancient writer records, Saint Marcion a monk of Caesarea was greatly tempted to commit vile sin, when just at the point to yield he thrust his limbs into a fire, and said, oh Marcion how feels this fire to thee now? Yet it is not comparable to that which will consume the sinner. And thus he conquered; afterward he resolved to find a place where temptation could not so readily reach him, so he found an island off the coast on which the re was a cave. Here he lived with all the advantages of solitude for six years, and then temptation came to him again and he fled to escape it. Fruitless task. The only refuge from temptation is the grave. Jovinean the heretic, whom Saint Jerome opposed, would needs think or at least say, that after baptism no man is ever again not tempted by the devil. Not only is a man/overcome but after baptism said Jovinear, he is never tempted, but said Jerome, baptism does not drown the devil. He's right. Man has always struggled with temptation. We know it from the Old Testament; we know it from the New Testament. And I just gave you some illustrations of the time between the New Testament and the present, some of the greatest of the saints realized the reality of temptation that faces every believer, and the battle rages today. But God has given us a wonderful plan for victory. In fact as at, you recall in our study of First Corinthians we came to chapter 10 and verse 13 and we read there the wonderful truth that, "There is no temptation that has taken you but such as is (what?) common to man;" Th...they've all been there, it's part and parcel of human existence, "But God is faithful, who will not permit you to be tempted above that you are able, but will, with the temptation, also make (what?) a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it." God has designed that there be a way of escape. Temptation is going to happen. And remember last time we saw that the word peirasmos is really a neutral word? God allows it as a test; Satan wants to turn it into an illicit temptation. There's going to be those kind of things, we are going to fall into those kind of circumstances where there'll be testings and Satan will endeavor to twist them into temptations. Maybe it's a financial setback, maybe it's a change in plans, maybe it's mistreatment by somebody, maybe it's ah, somebody's death, ah, Maybe it's a problem in your home or your family that appears to have no solution, maybe it's a, a good deal that tempts you to do what is wrong, maybe it's a persecution or a deprivation or an occasion ah, to be with sinful people, or a man or a lady who attracts your, your a baser nature, or maybe it's somebody who has something you wish you had, whatever it is life is just jammed full of testing grounds. And as we take them as a test, and as we endure them as a test, and as we find the way of escape that God has provided we go through victoriously, but as Satan twists it to a temptation, and we succumb to the temptation we fall to sin, we loose the victory.

And so there are tests, all around us, tests provided for us by God, and then pushed into temptations by the evil one, to drive us to internalize the test, to kindle lust about the test which generates sin. Everybody has to deal with it, "such as is common to man; but God is faithful." And God has provided says First Corinthians 10:13 an ekbasis, an out, literally. In fact it has a definite article, the out, the way out. There is a way of victory, there is a way to go right through a temptation, there is a way to bear the temptation, to win in the temptation. And that is of course to respond in obedience to God, and to fight temptation in the only way that it could ever be fought and that is he way it was fought by the Lord Jesus Christ. If you want to know how to handle temptation, you've got to learn your lesson from Christ, because He is the only one who ever lived on the face of the earth who was able to take temptation right to its limit and never internalize it, never let it kindle lust, never let it become sin. He knows how to handle every temptation, every category of temptation, He is the one who shows us the way through, He is the one who shows us victory, He is the only one who can give that victory to us. So we're loosing then at His temptation, not with a historic percep... perspective but with a present perspective. Not to find out, isn't it interesting how He did it, but look how He did it and how it can be applied to how we must face the reality of temptation.

Now in Matthew's particular viewpoint here, he is presenting the temptation of Christ really for two reasons, and the first reason is that it is necessary to demonstrate that Jesus is the King, that He is the ultimate King, that He is the all ah, glorious King, that He is the King of all other kings by showing that He has the ability to resist the only other dominion, the only other great ruler in the universe Satan himself. So if Satan is defeated by Christ, then Christ is established as the King of Kings, the ultimate Monarch, the Great Ruler, the ultimate Lord, the Supreme One, and that's Matthew's point, since Matthew is always concerned with presenting Jesus as King, he here wants to show Jesus in conflict with the other great monarch in the universe, to show that Jesus defeats him, that Jesus has control over him, that he is nothing but a, but a subject, to Christ's power and authority. And so the test first of all comes ah, to prove the royalty of Christ, to prove the Deity of Christ, to affirm that He is the King. Secondly, I believe it is included in the Word of God as a demonstration of victory over sin, to show how the believer is to tackle the situation of peirasmos, testing and temptation.

Now, there are three things that we looked at here, that we sug­gested to you, the preparation, the temptation, and the triumph. Re­mind yourselves of the preparation, and we saw that in verses 1 to 3. Let's look at it. Immediately after His baptism, "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the devil." Of course the test was from God, the temptation part was from the devil. "And when he had fasted forty days and f 6rty nights, he was afterward hungry. And when the tempter came to him," now stop right there. Ah, down through 3a we have basically the preparation, and I suggested to you several weeks ago that it was immediately after His baptism, and there's a spiritual principle there to keep in mind, that it is immediately after the high points of our life that Satan sometimes hits us with the greatest attacks. And the principle is this; let him that thinks he stands take heed, what? lest he fall. It is when we feel the most secure that we become the most vulnerable. So it and was immediately after His baptism. That was the time, and we're looking now at the preparation, the time immediately after His baptism. The purpose?Satan wanted to seduce Christ to commit sin. And if he could get Christ to submit to sin and to commit an act of sin, he would then thwart the entire plan of God, right? He would destroy it all, because the world needed a Savior, and the Savior of, the world needed had to be a sinless Savior, and if he could gets ah, Christ to succumb to sin then the plan of God was destroyed. So it was an effort to overthrow the Messiah, that was the purpose.

The place. We saw that, the wilderness. Difficult circumstances, a desolate, barren, lonely area inhabited by wild beasts. The plan, to attack Christ at the point of His strength and to push Him over the edge of His strength, into sin. Christ did have the ability to make stones into bread, and He did have a right to eat, after all He was the Son of God, push Him to take that right. Indee...even though He had it He would be acting against the will of God. Christ did have the right to be acknowledged the Messiah, so have Him dive off the temple and make a big popular appeal and get His right to Messiahship the wrong way, rather than God's way. Christ did have the right to all the kingdoms of the world, so give them to Him if He bows down to Satan. You see in each case, Satan tempted Christ consonant with a right that He had and a power that He had. He always tempts us where we are capable, where we are ... where, where it is possible to fall and where we are strong, and that's the subtlety of it. And so we saw then the preparation.

Now let's go to the temptation itself, and see how Satan approached Him. First of all, verses 3 and 4, there were three aspects to the temptation we'll see the significance of that as we go. The first temptation begins in verse 3, "And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But h answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." If, notice it? The first word Satan said, if, the doubt. Satan's ever resent if, always there. So he tempted Eve, so he tempted Christ, so he tempts us. He always begins by trying to create doubt about the reality of the divine standard. He doesn't say, You are the Son of God right out, he says, if You are, implying that there needs to be the proving of it. If he can create doubt about the reality of the standard, doubt about the authority figure involved he can lessen the concern of the one being tempted. So he tempts us with his evil whispers, breathing doubt into our souls, doubts about who we are in Christ, doubts about the veracity of God's revelation, doubts about God's power, doubts about God's love, doubts about our conversion, if thou be a child of God. Doubts about our inabilities, doubts about our strengths. He suggests again and again the terrible if, harassing the soul of a man with fear, with perplexing doubt. He knew Jesus was God's Son, and Jesus knew Jesus was God's Son but that didn't stop Satan from starting with if. Always questioning, always wanting to plant doubt. As we study the Book of Ephesians you'll see that one of the armor pieces of the Christian is the helmet of salvation. In ah, Thessalonians Paul says there, he gives us the full title of it, "The helmet of the hope of salvation." And one of the crushing things that Satan wants to do is smash the believer in the head with doubt, and it is the helmet of the hope of salvation that thwarts that doubt, in other words the confidence that our salvation is secure. That's an ever present attack of Satan.

Now loo k at the temptation itself, make stones into bread. Now some people say this is purely a temptation of the flesh. Back in verse 2 it says, after forty days and forty nights of fasting He hungered. And in a sense it is true, that the flesh is involved, that Jesus was really hungry. After forty days and forty nights His body craves food. But beyond that there is far more to this temptation than purely feeding His body, it's never that simple. It was not only a temptation of the flesh, for if it was a temptation of the flesh in what sense is it a temptation? What's wrong with eating? My word, if he's simply saying to Him, I'm tempting You to make bread and eat, what's wrong with that? He's just fasted forty days and forty nights He certainly has a right to eat. You see there's really no temptation there. The temptation is based upon His physical need, but the temp­tation is no simply to make bread so that He can eat. There's an­other way to look at it, Satan's temptation might have been worded like this, his God said, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Di-di, did He say that at Your baptism forty days ago? Did God say you were His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased and now He's leaving You out here to starve to death? Why should You starve in the wilderness when You have the power as God's Son to turn the stones to bread? Did not history justify such a temptation? Had not God give His people manna in the wilderness, and they were less than Christ? Had not God said, I will rain bread from heaven for you? Had not Isaiah said that Israel shall not hunger, that Israel shall not thirst? God fed His people in the wilderness by frequent miracles, may not His own Son work one miracle when He is hungry? It seems of such little consequence, if God is so well pleased, if God is so concerned, if You are embarking on Your ministry, You must have this, You must have Your physical' needs supplied. What would become of God's plan for Israel if the people died in the wilderness? What would become of God's plan for the world if You died out here, starving for want of food?

Now listen, I'm saying all of that to say this, the point of the temptation was not in feeding His hunger but in the suggestion that is hunger was incompatible with His being the Son of God. In other word Satan was saying, You better second guess God. God's not fulfilling His part of the deal. It was a, an urging on Satan's part for Jesus to sweep aside every human want by a divine act, and it was a temptation to, to really exercise personal selfish authority to do what would satisfy His own wants because He believed God had let Him down. Why are You hungry? You're the Son of God, if You're the Son of God You shouldn't be hungry, make these stones into bread, take a little right to Yourself, grab a little of the authority that's Yours, You're too dignified for this thing. If God isn't gonna meet Your need You take it Yourself. You were born in a stable, but You're the Son of God. Hurried off to Egypt for fear of Herod's wrath, You're the Son of God. A carpenter's roof supplied You with a home and in the Obscurity of a despicable town called Nazareth You spent thirty years, is that fitting for the Son of God? The voice of God comes from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Listen Jesus, You've suffered enough indignity. You've suffered enough You're the Son of God now grab some satisfaction, You have a right to it. You linger for weeks here in the desert, wandering among wild beasts and craggy rocks unhonored, unattended, unpitied, ready to starve, is this befitting the Son of God? If You are the Son of God, then take Your prerogatives. You wanna know somethin'? The crowd said the same thing at the cross, if You're the Son of God, get off that cross, if You're the Son of God what are You doin' up there? Remember that? You hear that voice of Satan, don't ya? You're a Christian, you deserve better than this, get it your way. Don't wait for God, He hasn't delivered. You see it was a wicked attempt to cause the last Adam to fail where the first Hadam, Adam had failed with a food issue. You see the first Adam blew it with the apple, and Satan wanted the last Adam to blow it with the bread. But the temptation was far beyond that. The point of Satan was this; he wanted to make Jesus distrust the Father's care. He wanted to destroy the Son's confidence in the Father.

Now there's no sin in satisfying hunger, none at all. When I'm hungry I get something to eat, unless for some purpose I've withdrawn myself from food. There's nothing wrong with that, that isn't t e sin. Listen, in Hebrews 10:8 the words of Jesus are recorded and these are the words He said, "Lo, I come, 0 God," don't ever forget it, "to do thy will." To succumb to Satan's temptation would've be would be to distrust God. Jesus in the garden, sweating as it were g eat drops of blood prayed a prayer, "O Father, let this cup pass from me;" Father, this is not something I would choose; this is not something I would want. And I'm sure right there the test was going on, an Satan was trying to turn it again into a temptation for Him to, to s y to Himself, why am I doing this, I don't deserve to die like this? And yet Jesus burst out finally in a victorious statement, He said, "No my will but (what?) thine be done." Listen, Jesus had given Himself to the Father's will; He said it again and again in His life, "My me this to do the will of him that sent me." I do what the Father tells me to do, "I have come 0 God to do thy will." And it was the basis of that absolute trust that Satan was trying shatter.

And you know what he would have done? He would have put an irreparable rift in the trinity, you see that? I mean this was an incredible shot, to fracture he very nature of God Almighty. Well Jesus reflects His attitude in he reply in verse 4, "But he answered and said, It is written," an you're goin' find that every time He answered He answered with the same beginning, it is written, He knew what David knew, "Thy word have I id in my heart, that I might not (what?) sin against thee." "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." You are better off, He says to obey God end to depend on God and to wait for God's sustenance than to grab some satisfaction, in this physical world. He relied on scripture, it is written. And He quotes Deuteronomy 8:3, Deuteronomy 8:3, "Man sha11 not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." That text in Deuteronomy 8 pictures Moses.Moses is reminding Israel of God's tender care for His people during the wilderness journeys. And we could paraphrase ah, what Moses is saying as saying ah, similarly here. You don't need to mistrust God, you don't need to gripe, you don't need to complain God is gonna take care of you, God is gonna supply for you, you don't need to be complaining and worrying about getting your satisfaction you live by God's Word and God will honor your obedience and take care of your needs. That's what Jesus was saying. A man is better off to obey the Word of God, and then count on the wonderful providential sustenance of God than he is to let his own desire and lust cause him to grab satisfaction that he knows is against the will of God because he thinks he deserves it. Oh, we get that temptation a lot. We could paraphrase it this way, Satan, Jesus says, you are proceeding on a false assumption, and that false assumption is that for a man, in order to appease hunger and stay alive he's gotta have bread, that is wrong, over against this erroneous idea I now declare to you that it is not bread, but it is the creative, energizing, sustaining power of God that is the only real source of any mans existence. He's right.

Listen, you can't say, says James, today I'll do this and tomorrow I'll do this, you don't anything about tomorrow your life is a vapor that appears for a little time and vanishes away you could be dead in the morning, the only thing that keeps you alive is the sustaining power of God, not your bread. And so says the Lord, I will affirm My absolute confidence in the Father's care, and I will never bend to ful­fill My own satisfaction at the expense of disobedience, or distrust. He knows that God wills that He live, and so He says, if God wills that I live, God wills that I accomplish the plan then God will pro­vide sustenance. And oh, did God ever provide it, you'll see that at the end, a feast like you couldn't believe. The principle then, lis­ten, the principle of His life must be the principle of my life, and it is this listen people, the governing motive of my life is do to only the will of God and believe Him for all the benefits. You wanna hear it another was? Matthew 6:33, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and (what?) all these things shall be added unto you." Why would you worry about what you shall eat or what you shall wear or what you shall drink, if God clothes the grass of the field is He gonna take care of you? If He takes care of the birds, is He gonna take care of you? If He takes care of the lilies of the field, is He gonna take ca e of you? Don't you ever bypass a true principle of righteousness to get something you think you want, you have just vio­lated the one God who grants you any existence at all, keep it in mind.

In fact in First John chapter 5 it says that there are some people apparently why are so busy violating the will of God to get their own satisfaction hat God takes away their existence and they die. There were some people in the Corinthian Church who were getting their sat­isfaction alright, they were gluttonous at the table of the Lord, and they were in on a drunkenness at the table of the Lord, and they were perhaps even committing sexual immorality at the love feast, and Paul says to them, because of this some of you are weak and sickly and some of you are d ad. It is God who gives you life, it is God who keeps you alive, n t your food. And so says our Lord Jesus, man lives by God's Word, and obedience to God's Word not by his self designed satisfaction as an act of disobedience. Jesus knew that the Father had told Him to wait for the Father's provision. It's easy when you're in business to fall into this, you say boy, if I ... I need this for my business if I just snitch a little bit on this deal, I'll close this deal and it'll be a real big deal. You know what you've just done? You have lived by bread alone, and you've just forfeited the blessing of God who alone grants life and existence and blessing. And by the way, who owns everything in the world anyway. That's the principle. The only governing motive for life is to do the will of God, and when you do that you can leave the residual to Him, He'll take care of it. Well Satan is pretty subtle, so he moves to a second temptation. So, he says, you're gonna trust God are ya? Wonderful! You're gonna trust God, You're not gonna usurp a little of Your own authority,

You're not gonna bypass the issue of obedience, You're not ah, You're not gonna gra Your satisfaction, You really trust God, do You? Well prove it. Verse 5, "Then the devil takes him up into (a) the holy city, (Jerusalem) and sets him on a pinnacle of the temple, And says unto him, If thou be the Son of God, (and if You're going to trust God so wonderfully as You said, then) cast yourself down; for it is written," How interesting. Now who's quoting scripture? The devil, by the way he misquotes the verse. Aren't ya glad? And for his own ends. "it is written, e shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." You're big on the Bible and You're big on believing God, hey, here's one God said try it and prove it. Pretty subtle, right? You wanna trust God? Here's a great opportunity, do a swan dive off the pinnacle of the temple, see if He catches Ya and gives Ya a nice soft landing. And by the way, in case you're wonder­ing whether that's His will it says it in the Bible. Oouuu, what subtlety. Sa an is quoting the Bible. He's quoting Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12.

Now let me talk about this a minute. The devil again in­ sinuates doub , apparently he can't stand to admit the truth about Christ. He wants Christ to force the issue and to prove it, so he wants Him to commit a sin, so verse 5, he takes Him up into this place in Jerusalem n the pinnacle of the temple, now we don't exactly where it is but, mo t people feel that on the Kidron Valley, which was east, in the, in the great temple, Herod's great temple there was a royal portico. The Kidron Valley ah, looking ah, if this is the west and this is the e st, it just drops and the temple ground is right here, it's just a sheer drop ah, at some point as much as 450 feet, straight down. And ah historians tell us that there was a roof edge over Herod's royal portico that stuck out over the precipice. And it would be a dizzy height. Josephus says it's a dizzy height of 450 feet. And by the way, tradition tells us that the, the Lord's brother, James, who was the head of the Jerusalem Church ah, was finally martyred by being thrown off that porch. And so it perhaps is there, and there Satan and Jesus are and I don't know how they got transported there but they did and, and they're looking over and Satan says, You gonna trust God? You're just gonna let God take care of everything, aren't ya? You're gonna have God take care of the whole thing, then jump. After all He I says He's not gonna let Ya dash Your foot against a stone. If You'll not prove Your Messiahship by working a miracle to save Yourself, then why don't Ya let God prove You're a Messiah by doing a miracle Himself? If God's the one You're concerned about let Him do it.

Now listen, if the sin of the first temptation is in doing it Himself a against God's will, now He can eliminate that problem. Now He has to let God do it, alright Lord, I'm just gonna depend on You, I'm just gonna toe...da... and you know wh ... this is the opposite problem, this is the tension, see? We say, well, okay ah, I'm not gonna bypass God I'm just gonna let God provide my food, I'm just gonna let God take care of everything, just gonna seek the kingdom and ah, God will take care of everything, and then I'm just gonna put God to the test, so I'm gonna go out and sit in the desert and I'm just gonna say, God I'm just trusting You for Matthew 6:33, I'm gonna read my Bible here, drop some food on me, prove Yourself. Now in a sense that's what's happening, that's the, the style of the thing.

He's eliminated the problem in the first temptation, and he's offered this option. "If you be the Son of God, cast yourself down; for it is written." This is worse, this is the worst temptation. Here's a double sin. The sin really doesn't trust God in the right way but more than that it is the sin of presuming on God. You're testing God. In the first temptation a peril existed, in the second one You create the peril. Here you say, God, here I goooo...catch me. And the to the Psalmist said, "Lord, keep thy servant back from (what kind of sins?) presumptuous ins." And Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, "Jesus said to him, It is written again, Thou shalt not put the Lord, thy God, to the test." Y u don't do that to God. My, so prodigious a sign as bailing right off the top of the temple and, and just settling down a nice soft landing like some kind of a comic book Superman, it would have been enough to convince everybody. But this was the Messiah, I mean that kin of stuff was really amazing. I mean after all Malachi said, "The Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple." And that would have been it. You wanna know something interesting? William Barcley suggests that this was the very method of false messiah's who were continually popping up. They tried to ah, to prove their messiah hip by some heroic thing, some fantastic act at the temple.

For example Theudas, ah, met the people at the temple, led them all out and promised that he was gonna split the waters of the Jordan River. Well, he didn't. And then there was a famous Egyptian pretender, who said that he would lay flat the walls of Jerusalem. And then there wasSimon Magus, and you know what tradition tells it that Simon Magus tried this, splat. It was a terrific dive and it was a rotten landing. These pretenders were forever trying to offer sensational appeals to the people to get instant public acceptance so that they would be thought of as the messiah. Is this what He wanted, is this what God wanted? Did God expect His Messiah to pull off some fantastic stu