Transcript
Alright, if you have your Bibles, you can turn in your Bibles to the book of Matthew. Matthew chapter what? Four. That's right. We made it to Matthew chapter four. We're moving along quickly. We're moving along quickly. When we get to Matthew five, I just want to give you a heads up. We will slow down in the Sermon on the Mount. When we go through five, six, and seven, we're going to go a lot slower, so we're moving through the early life of Jesus, the early ministry of Jesus, and then we're getting to Matthew five. We're going to slow down because the Sermon on the Mount in and of itself is just epic in proportions. So that's where we're heading. But this morning we are in Matthew chapter four. Before I read Matthew four, one through 11, though, I do want to put in front of you a different passage and it's going to be up here on the screen.
This is Genesis 12, one through three. The Lord said to Abram, go from your land, your relatives, your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. I'll curse anyone who treats you with contempt and all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. I want to put that in front of you this morning in preparation for this text because the nation of Israel has been waiting for these types of promises to be fulfilled. God certainly gave Abraham a son and that son had descendants and there were more descendants and God was faithful in developing this nation out of Abraham. But this was not just to be a large people group, but it was a large people group with a purpose and it was this purpose that they would bring a blessing. And what did happen with Abraham later on in chapter 12, you remember there,
Ishmael?
Not yet. Not yet. He did in 17 and 18 he had Ishmael, but before we get there, he's got to go find the woman that he has Ishmael with and he goes to Egypt because he runs away from a famine, right? There's a famine there and he lies about his wife and he says, no, no, no, this is my sister. Sister. That's right. Abraham lies. So if you go and then you lie about your sister and then the king takes Sarah as if, Hey, I'm going to bring you into my harem. Doesn't have relations with her yet, but brings her in. Is that a blessing or a curse to that nation? A curse. It's a curse man. This is how the story of Israel plays out. While God wants to use this, he wants to use humans to bring about this blessing. Humans keep failing.
Now, do we want a blessing? How many of us want to be blessed? How many of you pray? Lord bless me, right? We want the blessing, right? And God's like, I want to give you a nation. I want you as a nation to be a blessing, but it keeps failing and so the history plays out to this person, Jesus and Jesus comes, Jesus is the seed of the woman. He is the blessing that was promised to Abraham. Jesus is the way in which humanity is blessed. I've said as we've covered these first three chapters and now into chapter four, that there are echoes and repeated themes, and I want those to be in front of you this morning. Again, you have here Israel and Jesus, you have in the story of Israel, you have this miraculous conception of Isaac when Sarah is 90 in her nineties, right?
And we have the virgin birth of Jesus, a miraculous birth. We have Israel moving his family or Jacob moving his family to Egypt. We see Jesus taken to Egypt by Joseph. We have the babies killed in Egypt, and then we have the babies killed at the time of the Egypt flight. Then we have the baptized, we have Israel baptized into Moses. That's one Corinthians 10, eight via the Red Sea, and then we have the baptism of John. Jesus is baptized by John, and then we have the testing in the wilderness of Israel, and this morning we're going to look at the testing of Jesus in the wilderness. Do you see the parallel that exists between Israel's story and Jesus?
It's close, right? There are these parallel themes. Jesus triumphs and shows himself to be the true Israel, the son of God through whom God's redemptive purposes for his people is now at last reaches its fulfillment. Last week we saw John's ministry, or two weeks ago we saw John's ministry in his baptism, he introduces Jesus. And then last week we saw the baptism of Jesus and we closed with this verse. There was a voice after Jesus's baptism, a voice from heaven that said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. And now we go into chapter four and it says this. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights he was hungry. Then the tempter approached him and said, if you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread.
He answered, it is written, man must not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said unto him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will give his angels orders concerning you and they will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus told him, it is also written, do not test the Lord your God. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and he said to him, I will give you all these things if you'll fall down and worship me. Then Jesus told him, go away Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only him.
Then the devil left him and the angels came and began to serve him. Let's pray together. Lord, we pray and ask that you would teach us through this text and that you would speak into our lives through the things that we are reading here. We ask that you by your spirit would just cause this text to intersect with our own lives. We believe that your word is a light to our path and it's capable of correcting us and teaching us and comforting us and giving us the instructions that we need. We ask that you would do that. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. There are three temptations that the devil brings to Jesus in this setting. Before we get to these three temptations though, Matthew sets the stage by telling us some of the basic how questions answers to those questions. It says that Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. So we see here that the spirit, the last time we saw the spirit was that Jesus was baptized and as he came out of the water, the spirit of God descends on him in the form of a dove, and then we have this voice from heaven. It's that same spirit that now leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted.
Isn't it fascinating that the spirit of God is guiding the son of God, the one who is beloved into a place of temptation? This week I'm going to email you a video that I want you to watch is going to be five minutes long and it's about this theme of God's testing throughout scripture because you may be looking at this and you are like, wait, I've heard this story before, but it was a woman and there was a snake and it was early on in the Bible. Does it ring true of another scene where there's a temptation that happens where Eve is tempted by the devil to disobey God and in that setting the woman there does not pass the test. Adam does not pass the test. They both take the fruit disobey God and that's called the fall. Death comes into the world through that act of disobedience.
And so here, Jesus in a similar setting, but there's this reversal, there's parallelism, but then there's also contrast. So instead of a garden, we have wilderness, right? But is this the last time that Jesus is in a or no? This is not the last time that Jesus faces a test. There is another garden test, but it's late in his ministry. So we have a test at the beginning and we have a test at the end. The test at the end is in the garden. The test at the beginning is in the wilderness and the spirit of God directs Jesus into this place. It says in verse two that he is fasted for 40 days and 40 nights and he was hungry.
Let's talk about a few of these pieces here. First of all, the devil is introduced to us here in this text. The devil is going to play an important role throughout the ministry of Jesus. I'm very glad that the devil is here in the text because it brings to the surface a hidden theme or a kind of a subdermal theme. Throughout the Old Testament, we see the serpent in the garden tempting, but then we really don't have this predominant act or role or much of a sense of what Satan is doing throughout the Old Testament. The writers, the Hebrew writers take this theme of serpent and they weave it all throughout the Old Testament, but you have to be a really kind of a studied writer. I have a book this thick on just the motif of the serpent in Samuel and Kings, just the repeated themes of how this idea, how Goliath is a type of the serpent, how the snake and just the language that's used in Genesis three, how that language is used by the writer of Samuel and kings over and over again to show that wow, the serpent is at work, he's messing, he's taking on the form of leaders and lying and tempting and being a deceiver.
So the devil is there, but not in this named way as we have in the gospels and it's going to be significant. We're going to see not just the devil at work, but demons at work. And so as we travel through the gospels, one of the pieces of our understanding about God's world is that there is this invisible enemy that exists, has existed from the beginning and has an agenda. One of my seminary professors has suggested that there was God's creation of the angels before Genesis one, and for some reason God created angels and this is what existed before humans and there's this rebellion of Satan and he leads this rebellion. A third of the angels rebel with him, and there is this galactic battle that exists and a part of God's purpose for creating humans is to bring about his victory in a glorious way.
So humans are created into the middle of an open battle between God and this rebellious angel, Satan and the demons, and he allows, God allows this battle to play itself out and yet the role of humans are strategic in the victory that God plays out. He wants to accomplish some, not just a win, but a glorious victory. And so the story of humanity plays out in the midst of a cosmic battle. So Satan is an important character as we see Jesus doing the work that he's doing. Remember the message was repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand, so Jesus is bringing his kingdom to bear on the earth. Remember that as we go forward now. So here's the devil. You'll notice in our text already that the devil has three names in just the text we're looking at here. He's called the devil. What else? What are the other two names that he has?
Lucifer? Not in this text, but yes, he is called Lucifer. In just our text, these verse 11 verses we have somebody said the tempter, right, Satan, we have the tempter and we have Satan on Jesus. When Jesus talks to Satan, he calls him Satan. So we have the devil. We also have this name Lucifer that's given to him in Revelation. He's the dragon. There's all kinds of names that are given to the devil throughout scripture, one in the same person, and then there are his fallen angels that are called demons also in Ephesians that are called powers and principalities hosts. Maybe if we have time I'll turn to that text later on, but so we have the devil and here we have Jesus in this wilderness setting, fasting. So this means that Jesus is abstaining from food. He's probably drinking water only as he does this fast and he comes to the end of 40 days, which is about as far as the human body can go, abstaining from food and being only on water. He gets to the end of 40 days and he begins to feel hunger. Fasting is an expected religious activity for the followers of Jesus. When we get to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about giving to the poor prayer and fasting as normative. When you do it, he doesn't say, Hey, if you choose to do it, he talks about, Hey, when you do it, do it in this way. And we see in Jesus's life that it is a regular activity.
And so just for a second, let's talk about fasting. One of the guys that taught me about fasting early on when I was in my late teens, he gave this teaching and it was hypothetical, but it's been my experience is that where we've got these five senses and when you decide to fast and abstain from tasting food, you're really shutting down one of your five senses. You could say almost two of the senses because depending on your proximity to food, you're not smelling it as much and you're definitely not tasting it as much. And what that does is it opens you up your capacity, you've got less noise, you've got less sensory activity going on, and so it's like a radio. You're open to more frequencies coming through. And in my own experience with fasting, it is not great. It's not like the greatest experience ever because those open wavelengths, there's a lot of demonic stuff that goes on and it's not like, oh, the channels of heaven are open and I can hear God, no, I can hear Satan screaming in my ear and it's horrible, right?
It's not the funnest experience, but there's a lot of great reasons to fast one, so there's, there's also a lot of different ways to fast, and I'll say right up at the top, if you have medical concerns, you should not enter a fast without consulting with your doctor, but if you get your doctor's permission and you feel like you're up to it, you ought to build it in to as just a regular routine where you skip a day and you're like, Hey, I'm not going to eat today or I'm not going to eat this weekend. Even now medicine is catching up with these practices that are not just Christian, like Muslims fast and Jews will fast and different and Hindus will fast, but it has some interesting biological effects in our system kind of cleaning out our cells from how I understand it. But it does have just interesting carryover into the spiritual realm.
One of the things that just top of the top of mind that I think is good, and one of the reasons why it's helpful to fast is it just sends a signal to your body and when you do it saying, Hey, body, you're not in charge. If I decide I'm not going to eat, I'm in charge. I'm not dictated by my hunger pains. It also familiarizes us with suffering. We as Christians should be acquainted with suffering so that we're prepared when we hit a moment of suffering, we already have done selfs suffering in a sense so that we can, we're familiar with that experience. There's a whole range of reasons. God, it seems that the economy of prayer, that God is acting upon the faith that God is able to work in the context of faith. And when you're fasting, you're in a weakened state which should cause you to be relying and depending upon God, which is a healthy attitude in prayer. And so prayer and fasting is oftentimes associated with each other, so it is quick, it's easy. I know for me, if I'm in a place where I'm fasting, it's easy to just kind of just go, Lord, I need you. There's not much of a fight that I want to put up. I'm just weak and I'm hungry.
Jesus is in this place. And of course, Satan comes to him in that place. Let's look at this first temptation. It says this, it's this temptation to use your power to meet your own need. Verse three, then the tempter approached him and said, if you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bred. He answered, it is written, man must not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. The heart of this temptation is for Jesus to use his power to meet his own needs. Notice Jesus, he isn't like, Hey, here's a crack pipe, take a hit. That's not the temptation here for Jesus. It's this, you're hungry. Why don't you just prove that you're the Son of God and do this miracle? Now, could Jesus do this? Yeah, he could have, right? He had the power to do it.
And yet Jesus resists this temptation from the devil and he uses a passage from Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy six. And by the way, all of the verses that Jesus quotes are from Deuteronomy six through eight, and your homework this week is just go read that passage. It's this beautiful. You can see here's Moses speaking to the children of Israel who are in the wilderness getting ready to go into the promised land. All of these instructions about here's what it's going to look like for you to be a righteous nation as you occupy the land. And man, we don't have time to go through all three chapters there, but you read Deuteronomy six through eight and it is just like it's worth memorizing. It's so good. And so Jesus uses that text to respond to this temptation. Isn't it interesting that it's a temptation around food? What was the temptation in the garden?
Food, right? Eat this food. And here again we have now, what's so wrong with eating the fruit from this tree in the garden? Well, what's wrong with it is God said, don't do it right. What's wrong with taking this bread here is a very similar temptation to stop being dependent upon God. Just take up your own independence, your own authority, your own autonomy, use your power and turn this stone into bread. And Jesus says, no, this is not what's going to happen. Instead, he quotes Deuteronomy six. He says, man must not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God. Yes, Jesus is the son of God. That does not mean he ought to use his position to meet his own needs. I was going to take this for granted, and I thought maybe some of you haven't read John recently, so I just want to put these verses in front of you.
Here's Jesus's teaching. John, who was another apostle, he recorded a number of these statements from Jesus. Just help us see the relationship that Jesus had with his father. Jesus replied, he said, truly, I tell you, the son is not able to do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing for whatever the father does, the son does likewise, does these things for the Father, loves the son and shows him everything he is doing, and he will show him greater works than these so that you will be amazed. And then also the same thing is in John eight. Jesus said to them, when you lift up the son of man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own. But just as the Father taught me, I say these things, Jesus acted and spoke what the Father told him to do and say He had this interdependent relationship and John really picks up on this theme, not so much in the synoptic gospels of Matthew, mark, and Luke, but John really makes this clear that Jesus did what he did because he was in constant communication.
He was being led by his father. So to just take up these stones and turn 'em into bread would've violated this dynamic. It would've been this step of independence and it was have violated the picture. The interesting thing is this is how God, this is the way that God wants us to be in relationship with him. God wants us to be those that are dependent. This is dependent on him. He wanted this from Adam and Eve. You may have asked, well, what was so wrong with a tree of good and bad?
Why did God not want them to just take from this tree? And again, this is a bit of speculation, but it would seem as if that God wanted Adam and Eve to know good and bad, but he wanted to be the source of it. He didn't want them to go and take it from a tree. He wanted to teach them because isn't that the whole message of the Bible, that God is a source of wisdom? You get to Proverbs eight, seven, and eight, right? Lady wisdom is crying out in the streets. There's this cry of like, I want you to know what is right and good and what is wrong and what to avoid. God wants his people to mature and know what is good and bad, but in relationship to him, not independent from him. And so here, the temptation of Satan was, Hey, just be independent.
Use your position. Turn this bread, the stones into bread. The second temptation is this, use your position to test God. Let's see. Let's use your position. Then the devil took him to the holy city being Jerusalem. It had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will give his angels orders concerning you and they'll support you with their hands so that you'll not strike your foot against the stone. Jesus told him, it is written, do not test the Lord your God. So again, important to note here in passing, who is the devil and how is he doing the temptation? The devil here is quoting Bible to Jesus. He's quoting Psalm 91 saying, Hey, do this because the Bible says this and that fascinating that the devil can use the Bible to tempt the Son of God. Does that mean that that's what Satan may do for us? It's not just good enough to know the Bible. It's important to know how to use the Bible, right? That's why we go to church, that that's why we have a heaven and Earth Bible class. That's why we are trying to be students of God's Word is so that we know how to read it and understand it and apply it in the right context.
The offer is, look, you could do this and we'll just prove through this act of throwing yourself down that the angels are going to protect you, that they're not going to let you even dash your foot against a stone. And Jesus quotes again from Deuteronomy six, do not test the Lord your God. Let's look at the third temptation to get good results with Satan's methods, good results, but using Satan's methods. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor, and he said to him, I will give you all these things if you'll fall down and worship me. Then Jesus told him, go away, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only.
Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of world. The question is, was this Satans to give? Was this Satans to give? I would say that it was because when we look over at the same story of Jesus, Jesus's temptation in Luke four, six, the devil said to him, I will give you their splendor and all this authority because it has been given over to me and I can give it to anyone I want. This is another piece of the story. You see that when God kicked Satan out of heaven and he lost his place in heaven, Satan was cast down to the earth. So the realm of Satan is the earth. Satan has a kingdom. In fact, it says over in John 1231 that he is the ruler of this world. This is Jesus speaking, calls Satan, the ruler of this world will be cast out.
I don't have it here, but there's multiple times where Jesus calls Satan, the ruler of this world. So again, was it Satan's to give? Yes for a time being the world belongs to Satan. Satan has he literally. The way that it's portrayed here is fascinating. There's the splendor, the authority, it's been given to him. So Jesus here has this. Either he's physically carried there or it's this vision. He's showing him the different kingdoms. Imagine there's Saudi Arabia and there's the African nations. Here's the different kingdoms, and he's like, I'll give you these if you'll just bow down and worship me. Now, will there come a time where Jesus is the king over the earth? Yeah, yeah. This is where we're going, right? So here Satan's saying, Hey, let's just speed up the agenda so we will get you the nations, all the nations of the earth so that you can rule over them, the kingdoms of the world, but you just have to worship me.
And Jesus tells him, Hey, go away. It's written, worship the Lord your God, and serve only him. It's not good enough. God is not looking for you to come up with the answer. We tried that with Abraham, right? Abraham's like, okay, great. You want to have a nation? I got Ishmael right here. I'll just take my handmade and we will start the nation. God is not looking us to come up with the means or the method. Again. God wants us to be dependent on him for not just the results but how to get there. And there are people who have this idea of like, well, this seems like a good thing. I'm willing to sell my soul to the devil to get to this thing that surely God wants, right? And that is not the way to do it. That is exactly what Satan is looking for, and that's the temptation that Jesus rejects here.
This text contains a few different things. First of all, it shows us that Satan is real. It affirms that Satan is a spiritual being, a real spiritual being that is opposed to the son of God. Satan has been trying to move humans away from dependence on God over to independence. We go through scripture, the history of humanity. You look at Israel over and over again, why did there end up being a divided nation when after Solomon's reign? Because Solomon stopped depending and walking in God's wisdom. He's like, you know what? I'm going to take 700 wives. And those wives, some of those wives pulled his heart away. His heart was divided between Yahweh and these pagan religions that these wives brought to him, foreign wives brought to him, and he stopped being dependent upon God, and the nation was divided as a consequence. That was God's punishment for Israel.
And so he went from being this glorious king where he is just like, oh my gosh. This is the zenith of Israel's history, the golden moment of Israel's history, and then it becomes their downfall because their king, his heart's divided. He's no longer dependent on God. That's what Satan does. All throughout the story of Israel, Satan is allowed to use the Bible when he tempts. That's the third thing that we see. Satan is allowed to use the Bible. He knows the Bible better than you. And so again, you need to study the Bible, be led by the Holy Spirit in your use of the Bible. It's not just good to know bits and pieces. Have you ever listened to the podcast and the sermon or the man on the street interviews that I do before the sermon audio comes on? You're going to hear some this week.
I can't remember who it is, but I do the interviews on Friday in preparation for the sermon. So you should hear probably Tuesday afternoon when the sermon goes live. But one of the things that you'll hear is that people on the street are pretty familiar with scripture, but not how to use it. Well. It's like, oh yeah, I know that piece over there, and yeah, I know this piece over here, but it's that comprehensive. How do we put it all together? That's what you need in order to be able to fight like Jesus fought in the midst of temptation.
Lastly, there is also this good example to follow from the text. We learn, we observe this warning about Satan. We see this good example of Jesus. Jesus responds to temptation with scripture, so know your Bible, but I want to close with this. There is in this narrative of God to worship. This isn't in. Matthew isn't putting this in the text so that you know how to fight spiritual battles. Only. Now, there's some good lessons and principles to learn, but Matthew's putting this in here because this man who resists the temptation, he's your redeemer. He's our rescuer. He's the one who fought against Satan on our behalf. He's the one that stands between us and the wiles of the devil. He is our good shepherd that is protecting us. And when Jesus goes to the cross, it says that he puts to open shame the devil and his demons.
Look at Colossians chapter one and what it says about the work of the cross and how Satan is just humiliated through what Jesus does in the resurrection. This Jesus who faces this moment and is obedient to his father in the face of temptation, he is the good true Israelite who becomes the king that we had hoped for. If we read this story, he is the one who stands in the gap and makes it through these moments of temptation, and now he goes on to do ministry. We're going to see after this story that he begins his public ministry and he has had his victory over Satan, and he continues to just be victorious. Time and time again. Satan leaves him. It says in another text, he leaves him and looks for an opportune moment. Here in our text, Satan leaves him and they see that the angels come and they minister to Jesus. They care for him, and Jesus has a time of recovery before he goes and into verse two and the activities that are carried out there.
Our church is composed of people who are going very difficult things. Some of you, I know your stories. There's loneliness, there's physical suffering, there's fear of relapse or of addiction. There's broken relationships. There's job hunting that's going on. There's change in location. There's all kinds of things, and I want to encourage you that the Jesus who can stand in the face of Satan's attacks, that's your Jesus this morning. That's the one that we worship. That's the one we love, and we get to stand in his victory. So let's go before him and let's say thank you, Lord. We thank you that in the face of these three moments of temptation that you didn't take up the rage that you probably felt and you didn't act in anger, but you are patient and obedient to your father. You are the good Israelite that endured suffering, the suffering of this moment. You proved your loyalty to the Father. You proved that you're the beloved son, the good son, and we are so grateful that we get to have you as our redeemer. We worship you, we say thank you, and we ask that you would lead us, champion our victory this week. Go before us, Lord, we bring to you the pain and the suffering that our church represents, and we ask for your help. I ask this in Jesus' name, amen.