Jesus: Overcoming Temptation
Revelation 3:21-22 NASB
“He who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit down with Me on My throne, as I also
overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
Worldliness:
The biblical concept of worldliness describes the collection of ideas,
philosophies, religions, standards, values, purposes, and methods to achieve
those ends which characterize a culture or sub-culture. Its purpose is to
suppress truth in unrighteousness and redefine reality to avoid the righteous
demands of a creator God.
Worldliness is not just
another worldview of many equal worldviews, it has an
agenda to distance man from God, to create a world where God is not intrusive.
As such, this world view incorporates every aspect of a culture’s views of the
individual and social relationships, theories of knowledge and learning,
expressions of reality, and visual and performing arts, science, technology,
literature and law. When the Christian operates within this thought structure,
even though it may overlap in many ways with a biblical worldview it is still
classified as worldliness. Part of the process of the Christian life is trying
to ferret out all these ideas and philosophies and notions that we pick up over
the years and exchange biblical truth for human viewpoint truth. Worldliness
shapes everything from metaphysics to morals, from epistemology to aesthetics.
Nothing escapes, a divine worldview versus a human worldview are all-inclusive.
When we consider the
temptation of Jesus in the wilderness what we see is that even though the
temptations are to sin the rationale that is embedded in these temptations is
worldliness. And we watch to see how Jesus handles that, because He is setting
a pattern for us, giving us an example of how to deal with these things. There
is a comparison and contrast here between
1)
The Jews in the
wilderness go into the wilderness following their baptism into Moses, according
to 1 Corinthians 10:3. This is the beginning of their history. Jesus goes into
the wilderness following His baptism with John the Baptist, according to
Matthew chapter three. This is the inauguration into this new ministry.
2)
The events that
take place in
3)
Both are tested
with hunger. The Israelites have left
4)
5)
The order of the
tests in Matthew is to reflect the order of the testing in those early days in
Matthew 4:3 NASB
“And the tempter came and said to Him, If You are the Son of God, command that
these stones become bread.” The tempter is Satan of old, also known as the
devil, as defined in verse 1. The word “tempted” or “tested” is the Greek word PEIRAZO [peirazw] which means to examine, evaluate or test something.
It is often used within a legal context, to try something. The word to “lead”
(v.1), even though it has a common meaning of leading someone somewhere,
bringing them somewhere, taking something from here to there, it also has the
idea of leading someone into a courtroom for a judicial process. So there is a
level of metaphor here related to a legal process. Jesus is presenting evidence
about who He is and His qualifications to complete His mission as our savior. It is related specifically to something that goes
beyond the natural history, and that is into the supernatural realm of the
angels. Human history is related to the angelic revolt and it is through human
history that God is demonstrating certain truths related to those challenges
Satan has brought against God. These things are indicated by the type of
vocabulary that is used in this passage.
Jesus is now in a place of
vulnerability and He is being tested in that specific area. So the devil says,
“If,” and in the Greek this is “If and you are.” Satan knows who he is, he has no question about who Jesus is. In other words,
because He is the Son of God He can command the stones to become bread.
Notice how Jesus answers him:
Matthew 4:4 NASB “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.”
This is a quote from an Old Testament passage in Deuteronomy chapter eight.
Deuteronomy is a sermon, Moses’ last sermon to the Jews before he is going to
die. He is reminding them of past failure and divine provision. Deuteronomy 8:3
NASB “He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna
which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you
understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything
that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.” So there is a test related to the Jews that is being referred to. The manna provided everything needed
for their sustenance.
The context: In Deuteronomy
8:1 Moses reminds them that the commandments that God gives them in the Mosaic law weren’t designed to restrict their life but that they
were the path to life. So these commandments were given for a purpose, that
they could have life and enjoy the blessings that God had given them. In verse
2 is a reminder of past failures to trust God: NASB “You shall
remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty
years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart,
whether you would keep His commandments or not.” (Notice: God led the
Israelites in the wilderness and in Matthew 4 the Holy Spirit led Jesus into
the wilderness.) There is an evaluation taking place when we go through various
tests, and the purpose here was to teach them humility. Humility in the
Scripture is orientation to authority. It is understanding
who one’s authority is and being obedient to that authority. The Jews are put
in a place of vulnerability, out in the desert, in order to be evaluated, in
order to be tested. It was an opportunity for them to be dependent upon God for
everything. So God takes the Jews into the desert where they will be tested by
hunger in order to teach them dependence upon God and upon His Word. They had
to learn to think as God thinks. God is going to take them into the land to conquer
the Canaanites, but if they are going to be successful in the land then they
are going to have to learn to think as God thinks. If they are going to conquer
the enemies in the land then they are going to have to operate in dependence
upon God. By learning to depend upon God for their day-to-day sustenance for
forty years they would be able to understand how God could sustain them
spiritually and would take care of them in every test they would face in the
future.
So the first challenge that
Satan has for the Lord Jesus Christ is to challenge Him in terms of His deity
and say to use His deity to solve His personal problems. Jesus answered and
said that what was more important was that he was oriented to the Word of God,
that His thinking was informed and oriented to the Word. That tells us that we
have ti be subordinate to the authority of God. So what is embedded in this
temptation is first of all an appeal to arrogance or an attempt to make Him
operate independently of God (which is what arrogance is), and secondly, to do
that which is antagonistic or hostile to the plan of God. But Jesus passes on
both counts. He orients Himself to the authority of God, He is on a mission to
trust in God to provide His needs, not to act independently of the Father’s plan,
and it is to not be hostile to what God has revealed in His Word. So He emphasizes
the priority of the Word of God, that man shall not live on bread alone, but on
every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. There
is an important principle there. That is, that the issue of nourishment for each
of us in our spiritual life is the Word of God. It is not about our job, not
about our careers, it is ultimately not about our families, it is about our
day-to-day nourishment from the Word of God. If we think we need three meals a
day in order to keep body and soul together, how many times do we need to be
nourished by the Word of God to be reminded of the eternal principles of God’s
Word? If we think once a week will do it, then we are sadly mistaken. We have
to be reminded of God’s Word over and over and over again on a day-to-day
basis. We need to make the study of God’s Word and the application of it the highest
priority in our life.
The second temptation
comes along ion Matthew 4:5, 6: NASB “Then the devil took Him into
the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple,
This pinnacle of the
temple is understood to be Solomon’s portico which was in the south-east corner
of the temple complex. It was approximately 450 feet from the upper corner of
Solomon’s portico down to the ground. Te thrust of this temptation is that what
Satan is telling the Lord is that since he is the Son of God, He can do
whatever He wants to and the angels will have to take care of Him. “You can do
whatever you wish because you are God”! The angels are bound by their role to
take care of Him. Then Satan quotes from Psalm 91:11, 12, but actually it is a misquote. Psalm 91 is a psalm of trust. It begins: “He who
dwells in the shelter of the Most High Will abide in the shadow of the
Almighty.” It is a psalm that reminds us that God is the one who protects us, He is the one who is our refuge, our strength. Psalm
91:2 is a great verse to memorize: “I will say to the LORD, My refuge
and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust!”
Psalm 91:9, 10 NASB
“For you have made the LORD, my refuge, {Even} the Most High, your dwelling
place. No evil will befall you, Nor will any plague
come near your tent.” In other words, as a believer when we make the Lord our refuge
or dwelling place, then He is the one who protects us, who watches over us.
Psalm 91:11, 12, an
explanation: NASB “For He will give His angels charge concerning
you, To guard you in all your ways.
How has Jesus responded to
each of these temptations? The first temptation focuses on the dual aspects of
worldliness: arrogance and antagonism. Jesus responds by the accurate quoting
and use of the Word of God. If it is used inaccurately it doesn’t work. In
Ephesians chapter six where it talks about the armor
of God we have in spiritual warfare, there we are described as having the sword
of the Spirit. Many people think of that sword as an aggressive, offensive
weapon, but actually it is not the Rhomphia, it is the
Machaira which was used not only offensively but it
was a defensive weapon that was used in a counter attack. It says in Ephesians
6 “which is the word of God,” but it is not the LOGOS [logoj] of God, it is the word RHEMA [r(hma], the spoken or utilized Word of God that is the
sword of the Spirit. Jesus gives us a perfect example here of how we use the
Word. It is that we understand its true and accurate meaning and apply it
specifically to the situation. So Jesus says here it is not His job to do
whatever He wants to do but He needs to be oriented to the authority of God, He
needs to be thinking in obedience to God. Satan is trying to get us to be
hostile to God. His very twisting of the Scripture here indicates that
hostility to God’s Word which leads to mishandling or distorting God’s thinking.
It is very important not to get caught up into these traps and Jesus doesn’t
get caught by responding directly, He just goes to the underlying issue which
is testing the Lord. So again we see that arrogance and antagonism are present
in the temptation of Satan.
He goes back to the quote
from Deuteronomy 6:16 which relates to an event that occurred at Massah in Exodus 17:1. This was the second major test that
the Jews had to deal with coming out of
Exodus 17:1, 2 NASB
“Then all the congregation of the sons of
Exodus 17:5, 6 NASB
“Then the LORD said to Moses, “Pass before the people and take with
you some of the elders of
Then we come to the third
temptation. Matthew 4:8-10 NASB “Again, the devil took Him to a very
high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory;
What the devil is doing is
offering Him the glory of world rulership without having to go through the
path, the suffering of the cross. He is saying, “I can give you what the Father
is going to give you, but I will give it to you without the pain and the
suffering and having to bear the burden of sin on the cross.” The Lord again
quotes from Deuteronomy 6:13.
This gives us a methodology for understanding how to deal with worldliness. Worldliness we spot because it leads us to be independent of God and ultimately to be hostile to His Word. That hostility may have the veneer of neutrality—I’m just too busy, work has so many obligations, I’m too tired when I come home in the evening, I have family responsibilities, I have other responsibilities, I’m too busy to get to Bible class. But the issue is, if we are going to let the Word of God truly transform our thinking then we have to go through a transformational process where we learn the Word of God, where we know the Word of God. It operates at many different levels, but if we are not in a constant battle to learn the Word and make it a primary aspect of our thinking then what happens is we wake up and the world system just steamrolls right over us and we don’t even see it coming. It is only the objectivity from the Word of God that gives us the ability to discern and distinguish what the issues really are and where the absolutes really are.