3.1.20 Matthew 4:1-11
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” 4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:
“ ‘He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
7 Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
8 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” 11 Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.
There’s something rough and tough about this story of Jesus in the desert. It is the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise to send an offspring of the woman to crush the serpent’s head. There’s no messing around. Immediately after His baptism the Holy Spirit leads Him out into the desert and says, “Let’s get to work!” I like it! It fits with our theme for Lent, “The Son of God goes out to War!”
The Glorious Battle Begins in the Desert
Satan thought he was up for the battle as he started with a challenge. “If you are the Son of God.” There’s an underlying temptation behind the temptations, the temptation for Jesus to question who He was, and the temptation to feel the need to prove Himself to Satan: to measure up to his standards. It reminds me of what he tried to do to Job, questioning his authenticity: claiming that Job only worshiped God because he was spoiled. He’s always accusing us of being less than what he thinks we should be.
Satan still wants to set the standards yet today. Unless we know the standards, we can be misled.
A young man wants to prove himself a man, but what is the standard of a man? Is it sleeping with a woman? Is it the willingness to fight? Does it make you less of a man if you back down from someone else? Are you less of a woman if you don’t get married or have children? Who sets these standards?
Satan wants to set the standards in Christianity too. A woman from Carrollton recently questioned the Christianity of the Seminary parents because she didn’t see us praying during a basketball game. But where does the Bible say that we have to pray during a basketball game to be Christian? You have a tough day at work. You’re tired. So you come home and start snapping at people. You know it’s not very Christ-like behavior. So you question yourself. You wonder, “If I were really a loving person, I wouldn’t blow up like this. How can I call myself a Christian and act these ways?” That’s Satanic thinking in a way.
Jesus knew who He was. He didn’t need to prove it to Satan. This is why it is important for YOU to take comfort in your baptism, in what GOD says makes you a Christian. You are a sinner. You will always struggle with sin. But you have also been adopted by Jesus and bathed in His blood in your baptism. God says that you are His through faith in Jesus: weak or strong. It isn’t based on how often you pray. Your Christianity is not based on how angry or patient you are. It’s based on the fact that Jesus died for you and that He put His name on you and made you His own. That’s the standard. You are a Christian by God’s grace, not by the standard of your works. Let’s start there. Don’t get challenged into trying to be something you don’t have to be.
Now let’s look at how Satan specifically tempted Jesus. “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” It seems innocent enough. He was hungry. Why not eat? By today’s standards we would say, “He’s not hurting anyone.” Jesus was most likely starving and emaciated at this point after 40 days. It was God’s fault that He was starving in the first place, because the Holy Spirit let him in the desert. He had the power to do it, so why not do it? God helps those who help themselves. We could have come up with plenty of reasons why it was OK for Jesus to do just that.
But Jesus saw the deeper picture. Just because God has the power to do something, it doesn’t mean He is obligated to do it. Nor does it mean that it is the right thing to do. There are deeper standards to life than what I want and what makes ME happy. Just because I CAN doesn’t mean I should.
God had managed to sustain Him for 40 days and 40 nights. He may have been miserable, but He was alive. It was obvious to Jesus that God wanted Him to suffer hunger and thirst. He had to trust that the Holy Spirit knew what He was doing by leading Him into the desert and that He had a good reason for starving Him. Why was that? Perhaps it was that if Jesus truly was going to live in our shoes, He needed to feel the emotions and the pull of having a strong hunger for something. By turning the stones into bread He would have been taking the matter in His own hands in order to save Himself from pain. He would have been using the miracle for self-serving purposes, to avert God’s will. Jesus came to be selfLESS not selfISH.
Jesus said, ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ God could continue to sustain Him by His Word, without Jesus having to take care of Himself with His own Words. Sometimes life would be much easier if God would just use a miracle to heal us of a sickness or rid us of a desire. But sometimes God has a deeper purpose in letting it go, a deeper Word, so that His power can be made perfect in WEAKNESS. It takes trust to believe this: that He wants what is best for us when we are suffering and He COULD do something about it.
Well, the devil doesn’t give up so easily. As David used Goliath’s sword to chop off Goliath’s head, Satan tried the same with Jesus, by quoting the Word of God. I’m sure the devil knows the Bible well. I think of the arguments for abortion. One politician recently said that life isn’t life until an infant breathes, because God associates life with breath in Creation. What is the conclusion? It is ok to murder an infant in the womb as long as it doesn’t have the breath of life in it yet. That’s quite a step, just like Satan used in order to get Jesus to jump from the temple.
The devil said to Jesus:
God says He will command His angels to protect His children.
You claim to be His Son.
Therefore, jump from the temple mount and see if the angels will catch you.
The devil uses the same demonic logic today. Think about prayer. God promises to answer your prayers, and He says that prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. So he says to you, “If you’re sick and you pray to God, you’ll be healed if you’re righteous. If you’re not righteous and don’t have strong enough faith, then you won’t be healed.” The devil takes a general principle and makes it a hard and fast rule.
But when we read the Bible and know the Bible, we see that this isn’t how God always works. We know of Paul who had a thorn in the flesh that God DIDN’T take away, and it didn’t mean that he didn’t have faith. We also know of Jesus who prayed for the cup of death to be taken away, and God didn’t do that either. But when you assume that God must answer His promises when and where and how you command Him to, then you either have to blame Him or yourself, and all because the devil convinced you to be god. It makes people jump from the temple of faith and feel that God has abandoned them, all because the devil knows how to misquote the Scriptures.
So Jesus went back to the Word, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ He recognized the false premise that the devil was making. The devil was, in fact, tempting Jesus to test God, telling God to prove Himself, by jumping from the temple. Jesus knew the angels were there to protect Him. He witnessed their strength at the END of the battle, when Satan had been chased from Jesus. He didn’t have to force the issue to try and make God prove Himself to Him. The angels would show up when and how the Father thought best. He didn’t need to try and force the issue on the angels. He was able to do this because He knew His Bible well. And if Jesus learned the Bible for His own protection from Satan’s attacks, then don’t you think it would be good for you to do this as well?
Ultimately, all of this comes down to trusting who HE was and who GOD was. Who was Jesus going to trust to give Him bread? Was Jesus going to trust God to take care of Him WITHOUT jumping from the temple? He didn’t need God to prove Himself to Him or to prove Himself to Satan either.
So the last temptation doesn’t start with the “if you are the Son of God.” Satan seems to be saying, “Ok, let’s assume you are the son of God. I know what you’ve come to do - to win back your kingdom. Here, let me just give it to you without the suffering and the dying. Just bow down to me and you can have all of the glory with none of the pain.” But if Jesus had bowed down to Satan, then Satan would have been Jesus’ god, and Jesus would have been his puppet. It all came back again to the First Commandment, and Jesus recognized it for what it was. “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”
Oh, that we had such a knowledge of Scriptures! Oh, that we could recognize Satan’s deceits as easily! We don’t pray as often as we should, because we don’t think God really wants what is best for us. We don’t learn the Word like we could, because we are lazy! We are willing to take the shortcuts in life, because we don’t want to suffer. We would rather be satisfied and comfortable with sin than go through the work of resistance! Is it any wonder that we fall into so many sins that we shouldn’t fall into? And much of the time we don’t need Satan to convince us to do wrong. We convince ourselves because of our own selfishness and willing ignorance!
In reality, all Jesus needed was the First Commandment. “You shall have no other gods.” It wasn’t really that complicated after all!
Jesus knew His pathway would not be so easy. It involved rejection, suffering, and death on a cross. He went where the Father and the Holy Spirit led Him, even though it was a terrible cost to Himself. He didn’t cut any corners. He resisted the devil by holding to the Word, and won.
So think of how Jesus approaches us in the valley of the shadow of death. He doesn’t challenge us or question our faith. He doesn’t dare us to jump from temples. Jesus simply offers to give us what He earned without charge, free, by faith. He says, “I am your God and Savior! Drink from Me and find forgiveness and salvation!” He doesn’t change rocks into bread, but gives us His body through the bread. He says, “This is for you.” We don’t starve. We are well fed and full as we eat and drink for our full and free salvation. There is no leap of faith demanded from a temple mount. He holds us in His loving and gracious arms in baptism. He promises to be with us to the very end of the age. Jesus does everything that we couldn’t and Israel didn’t. That’s why He went in the desert in the first place, to rescue us from this dry and arid and deadly place.
Sometimes I watch those old Bear Grylls shows in Man Vs. Wild and I think, “That would be fun.” But if I actually tried it I probably wouldn’t have much fun at all. I’d much rather sleep in my house in my nice bed than be stuck out in the cold or the wilderness in the miserable rain.
The Holy Spirit took us out into the wilderness today. We don’t have to join. We can simply watch. We see Jesus in misery, fighting against Satan, not just for entertainment value, but for salvation’s sake. Here’s the One Person that went into the wild to conquer Satan. Here’s the One who won the battle, so that we could end up with Him in heaven. This is more than entertaining. It’s enthralling. We listen. We watch. We cheer.
Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle;
sing the ending of the fray.
Now above the cross, the trophy,
sound the loud triumphant lay:
tell how Christ, the world's Redeemer,
as a victim won the day. Amen.
