Angelic
Conflict: Sufficiency
We have developed the idea that there is a parallel and a consistency, a
pattern that we starting with the very first attack on the human race which
occurred in Genesis chapter three when Satan indwelt the serpent and used him
to tempt the woman in the garden and then the man. The foundation of that
assault was to question three things. The first is a question of the
sufficiency of the grace of God, Satan’s question: Has God really given you
enough? That is what the word “sufficiency” means; it means that God has given
us enough. That means that no matter what problem, what situation, what
heartache, what insurmountable obstacle there may appear to be in our life
God’s grace is always enough; we don’t need to look elsewhere to in order to
surmount the problem. The second thing that Satan questions is the sufficiency
of the Word of God. We see this in the way he forms the question to Eve in the
garden: “Has God said?” The innuendo there is: is this really valid? It is not
really true, God didn’t really tell you the whole story. Then the third thing
that is questioned is the integrity of God’s plan.
Jesus never relied upon His divine powers to solve human tests. We ended
last time just at the verge of going into the three tests, the temptations of
Christ in the wilderness. When He is at a point of weakness, having spent forty
days and forty nights without food and at His most vulnerable, Satan comes to
test Him to see if He is going to rely upon the sufficiency of God’s grace, the
sufficiency of God’s Word, and the integrity of God’s plan, or not. Jesus
doesn’t solve the problems in His humanity by saying: “I can turn these stones
in to bread and I can feed myself.” He says He has to solve the problem in His
humanity by relying on the same resources that God has given every believer.
However, Christ did use His own divine power to demonstrate His own deity. It
wasn’t that Jesus never used His deity but He never used it to solve the
problems of His humanity. He used it to solve other people’s problems in their
humanity—when he healed them, when he forgave, when he changed the water into
wine and demonstrating that He was the creator, when he raised Lazarus from the
dead and indicated that he is the one who gives life. He did this from His own
deity, not to solve His problems but to solves others’ problems, as when He
healed the blind man to give him sight. He is doing this to demonstrate who he
was as the eternal second person of the Trinity, not to solve problems or tests
related to His own spiritual life. By limiting the use of His deity He
demonstrated that the Word of God and the Spirit of God are alone sufficient to
fulfil the Father’s plan for believer.
That should give us incredible confidence, that when we take the Word of
God seriously and at face value, and we trust it and we claim the promises of
God and understand the dimensions of the grace of God that are infinite, and we
understand the vast resources that God has given us, then no matter what we are
going through we can have stability and confidence and can relax and have joy
in Christ despite the pressure and the stress that comes from the pressure of
external circumstances.
Immediately following His baptism by John the Baptist Jesus is led into
the wilderness by the Spirit ti be tempted, i.e. to be enticed to disobedience,
to have His spiritual life tested or examined by the devil. The devil is the
enemy of every believer and, above all things, the enemy of God and God’s plan.
So Satan is going to test Jesus in three different tests.
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’.” For the
divine side of the Son, His deity, His omnipotence, this would be no problem.
Jesus Christ could very easily convert the stones into bread. So when Satan
addresses Him he is specifically addressing Jesus to rely on His deity. He
begins with an “if” clause: 1st class condition—If you are, and you
are, the Son of God. Satan knows that Jesus is the incarnate second person of
the Trinity. Since that term “Son of God” is a Hebrew idiom indicating full
deity Satan is saying: “Since you are God…” Jesus’ response is to quote the
Word of God. Notice that Jesus is handling the situation in every one of these
tests by quoting the Word of God. If we don’t have the Word of God memorised
then what verses are we going to quote? We have to know the Scripture. Jesus
said: “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD
THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.’” He quotes from Deuteronomy chapter eight.
The issue isn’t physical sustenance in our life, the issue is our spiritual
sustenance and that only comes from the Word of God.
There is a context to Deuteronomy chapter eight. The chapter alludes to
the Israelites being in the wilderness. Moses is addressing the people:
Deuteronomy 8:1 NASB “All the commandments that I am commanding you
today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and
possess the land which the LORD swore {to give} to your forefathers.
The issue in life is to focus on letting God solve our problems, not
trying to solve the problems we face in life apart from the Word of God. This
is the ultimate in human viewpoint thinking. In James chapter three James says
that the thinking of the world is really foolishness. He defines this human
viewpoint thinking as earthly, natural (the thinking of the unbeliever, the
soulish believer) and demonic; the thinking that we can solve the problems in
our life without submitting to the authority of God’s Word, the power of God’s
Word and the sufficiency of God’s grace. We may solve our problems for a while
and reach a level of stability without God, but ultimately it will fail because
this is the same thin Satan thinks. He thinks he can do it without. When we
think we can solve the problems of our life without God then we are thinking
like Satan thinks and that is called demonic influence.
Then we have the second assault on Jesus. Matthew 4:5 NASB “Then
the devil took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the
temple,
The context in Psalm 91. The way this is translated in most English
translation it is easy to miss what happens with Satan’s misquoting. This is a
psalm that was written to address the Exodus generation. Psalm 91:9 Because you
have made the LORD, my refuge, {Even} the Most High, your dwelling place. [10] No evil
shall befall you, Nor will any plague come near your tent. [11] For He will
give His angels charge concerning you, To guard you in all your ways.” The
focal point here is the sufficiency of God’s power over any sin, temptation,
problem that we face in life. God is our refuge, that fortress that He provides
for us in our souls in terms of doctrine is the refuge that we take and it
protects us from the assaults of the world and the devil. “He will give His
angels charge concerning you” is talking about the operation of guardian angels
over the Jews as they were going through the wilderness. “…To guard you in all
your ways.” Now there is the key phrase. The Hebrew rod that is translated
“ways” is a generic term, the Hebrew word which can refer to highway, road,
path, journey, it has a wide range of meanings. But the journey, the path of
the context here would be the direction of the Jews through the wilderness,
that God is promising them that He will protect them and sustain them no matter
what they face in their wilderness wanderings. [12] “They will bear you up in
their hands, That you do not strike your foot against a stone. [13] You will
tread upon the lion and cobra, The young lion and the serpent you will trample
down.” The whole context is talking about how God is going to protect the Jews
in the wilderness.
What Satan does is come along and take this out of context to test the
Lord. So we have to understand the Scripture, the context. But Jesus answers
Satan with Scripture. Matthew 4:7 NASB Jesus said to him, “On the
other hand, it is written, ‘YOU SHALL NOT PUT THE LORD YOUR GOD TO THE TEST.’” This is a quote
from Deuteronomy 6:16. The point that we see is that Jesus uses the Word of God
as His sword to parry the thrust and the attacks of Satan.
Matthew 4:8 NASB “Again, the devil took Him to a very high
mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.”
Scripture says that Satan is the god of this age, the prince of the power of
the air; he is the one who has now usurped the authority of man and he is the
one who is at the head of all the kingdoms of the earth. So he can legitimately
make this offer. He says: “I can give you the glory without the pain, the crown
without the cross.” He is saying that he is offering all the things that the
Father is going to give Christ, all the kingdoms of the earth, but without Him
having to go through the path of the cross. [9] “and he said to Him, ‘All these
things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me’.”
So what we see in each of these is that Satan is challenging Jesus in
terms of the same three things that we saw in Genesis chapter three. He is
challenging the sufficiency of God’s grace, i.e. has He really given you enough
to solve the problems you are going to face? Secondly, it the Word of God
really sufficient? Thirdly, is the plan of God right? Is their integrity in the
plan of God? Can you really trust the plan of God so that when everything is
gone you are going to trust the plan of God? That is what then devil is
challenging Jesus with in Matthew chapter four. Jesus surmounts those tests by
relying on the sufficiency of God’s grace, the sufficiency of the Word of God,
and He understands that God’s plan is perfect. He needs to go through the test,
go through the suffering and live as true humanity in a fallen world,
surrounded by sinners, go to the cross, and at the cross go through the
unimaginable horror of paying the penalty for every single sin in human history
so that he can provide that salvation for the human race. Jesus Christ passes
these tests that come at the beginning of His ministry and that authenticates
Him in terms of who He is in the inauguration of His public ministry.