Every temptation is a kind of test . . . from the Evil One. A temptation is a trial posed by Satan, with the wicked hope that we will fail. - Philip Ryken(1)
Satan’s onslaught against the Word of God is constant. He’s always twisting and manipulating, trying to get us to doubt what the Lord’s said; for he knows that if we lose our faith in the Word then we’ll more easily abandon our calling and mission. In Matthew 4:1-11, we will see more of his unrelenting attacks, which he directed against the Old Testament Scripture in an attempt to fool Jesus.
In addition to attacking the Word of God, the devil will bombard us with testing and trials, trying to crush us with the weight of mounting opposition. In Luke 22:31, Jesus warned Peter, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat;” and the devil is still in the business of sifting people! One commentary says in regards to Luke 22:31,
After wheat is harvested from the fields, it is taken and placed on an outstretched cloth on the ground. They [use] special rakes and beat the wheat and keep crushing it until the wheat kernels fall out . . . The devil wanted to crush Simon Peter like the wheat, and wear him out so he would not serve Christ.(2)
You see, the devil wants to beat us and wear each of us out as well; therefore, we need to continue learning and becoming aware of the numerous ways in which he tries to subvert the Word of God; and we must become aware of his different methods of testing. These things can be observed in the devil’s testing of Jesus in the wilderness.
God Sometimes Allows Testing (v. 1)
First of all, we need to understand that God will sometimes allow us to be tested, just as He allowed Jesus to be tested. The New Living Translation of Hebrews 4:15 says, “This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for He faced all of the same testings we do, yet He did not sin.” In the Bible, we can observe some of the testing that Jesus endured; beginning with Matthew 4:1:
Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4:1).
We should first off note the location of Jesus’ testing (the wilderness), and secondly we should note who did the actual testing (Satan). Jesus was tested in the wilderness like so many of God’s people and prophets. The wilderness can be such a trying and brutal location that it serves as a purging ground that can shape and mold a person’s character.
For example, God allowed the Israelites to wander in the wilderness for forty years because the people had many character problems that needed to be weeded out. The wilderness also taught the Israelites to rely on God for their provision; or rather, it taught them to trust in the Lord. I do not believe God was trying to improve Jesus’ character; He was instead, wanting to prove to Satan that Jesus was absolutely faithful and could never be defeated.
If we ever feel like we’re in a wilderness, then we’ve likely entered the testing scheme. God wants to see what we’re made of; therefore, He will allow us to be tested by the devil. The 1600’s Puritan, Thomas Watson, said, “The devil tempts, that he may deceive; but God suffers us to be tempted, to try us. Temptation is a trial of our sincerity.”(3) God allows us to be tested so we can realize that we’re inadequate to help ourselves, and so that He can see where our heart really lies. The account of Job teaches that when we find ourselves in the wilderness, many times Satan is the culprit doing the actual testing.
The Lord gave Satan permission to test Job; and He might allow the devil to test us as well. God will do so in order to get us to realize some areas in which we need to improve in our Christian walk. He will also allow us to see places where we’re prone to falter. Commentator H. A. Ironside says,
The devil is the sifter of God’s wheat. The Lord wants His wheat sifted; He does not want a lot of chaff. But when the devil is thus used to sift God’s wheat, when His children are thus put in the devil’s sieve, not one grain of wheat is lost. The devil is simply used by God for the separation of the chaff from the wheat – that is all. Do not despair then, if like Job and like Peter, you are put into the devil’s sieve.(4)
In Matthew 4:1-11, we can observe how Jesus was tested concerning His faithfulness to the Lord. The way in which Satan tested Him was by misquoting the Word of God and by trying to trick Him into disobeying the Father.
If God allows Satan to test us, the devil will often do so by asking some very tricky questions concerning the Word of God. He realizes that the Word is our power source to defeat him, and he knows that if he can trick us concerning the Bible, or cause us to lose our faith in God’s Word, then he can defeat us and cause us to serve him and forsake the Lord.
Defending Against Physical Attacks (vv. 2-4)
It has been observed that there are three primary attacks from Satan: Physical, Spiritual, and Mental.(5) We will look at these three kinds of attacks tonight beginning first with physical attack. Jesus was tested physically by the devil. We read in Matthew chapter 4, verses 2-4:
And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. Now when the tempter came to Him, he said, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.” But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:2-4).
The devil approached Jesus and became rude and sarcastic with Him. The statement, “If You are the Son of God” (Mt 4:3) can also be translated, “Since You are the Son of God,” revealing Satan’s sarcasm. This rendering would also show that “Satan was not questioning Jesus’ sonship, but he was tempting Him to misuse it.”(6)
“Since you are God’s beloved Son, why doesn’t your Father feed you? Why does He put you into this terrible wilderness?”(7) We can see here that Satan was attacking Jesus through his physical needs. The devil wanted Jesus to feel as though God didn’t care for Him and that He would never come through for Him with any food, and he hoped that Jesus would curse God for allowing Him to hunger.
I want us to notice how Jesus responded to Satan’s attacks. He fought back by using the two-edged sword of the Word of God. He quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 out the Old Testament, which says, “Man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” When Satan attacks us through our physical needs, then we need to fight back at him with God’s Word.
Defending Against Spiritual Attacks (vv. 5-7)
Let’s now look at spiritual attacks. An example of a spiritual attack can be observed in the account of where Peter fell into sin and tried to talk Jesus out of going to the cross (Mk 8:31-33). Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men” (8:33). In our main passage, Jesus was tested spiritually by the devil, for we read in Matthew chapter 4, verses 5-7:
Then the devil took Him up into the holy city, set Him 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 shall give His angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone’.” Jesus said to him, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God’” (Matthew 4:5-7).
In these verses we see that Satan attacked Jesus spiritually. We read here that the devil took Him to the “pinnacle of the temple.” The pinnacle was the highest point of the temple, or “the high southeast corner of the temple platform that overlooked the great depth of the Kidron Valley.”(8) After Satan got Him there, he tested Jesus by trying to make Him forget some of God’s Word. He misquoted the Scripture from the book of Psalm where the Lord promised to care for His own. Psalm 91:11-12 says, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Look again at what Satan said in Matthew 4:6. He left out the phrase, “To keep you in all your ways.” This phrase would have reminded Jesus of His mission and how He needed to keep on course, but Satan didn’t want Him to think about that. The devil’s plan was to get Jesus off track.
But Jesus knew that Satan was twisting the Word of God, and not only testing Him but tempting the heavenly Father as well. So He fought back with the Scripture, correcting Satan, and saying, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Mt 4:7), which is from Deuteronomy 6:16. When Satan attacks us spiritually, then we need to fight back at him with God’s Word.
Defending Against Mental Attacks (vv. 8-10)
Let’s now look at metal attacks. An example of a mental attack can be observed in the account where Peter had to make a decision to admit to knowing Jesus, while He was on trial; which meant risking his life to identify himself with Christ. Instead of confessing his followership, he consciously denied Jesus three times in order to save his own life (Mt 26:69-75). Jesus was also tested mentally, which was an attack from the devil. We read in Matthew chapter 4, verses 8-10:
Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve’” (Matthew 4:8-10).
Here, we see that Satan attacked Jesus mentally with impatience. “The devil offered Jesus a shortcut to His kingdom . . . [However] there are no shortcuts to the will of God. If we want to share in the glory, we must also share in the suffering.”(9) 1 Peter 5:10 says that we are called to God’s glory only after we have suffered a while.
“Jesus did not need Satan’s offer. The Father had already promised Jesus the kingdom!”(10) In the book of Psalm we can actually see where the Father made this particular promise to His Son. In Psalm 2:7-8, God declared, “You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will give You the nations for Your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for Your possession.”
Jesus realized that God had more to offer than Satan, and so He retaliated by quoting Deuteronomy 10:20, which declares, “You shall fear the Lord your God; you shall serve Him, and to Him you shall hold fast.” When Satan attacks us mentally, then we need to fight back at him with God’s Word.
The Devil Will Flee (v. 11)
If we’re eager to put the devil under our feet and crush him; we can do so with the two-edged sword of the Word of God (Heb 4:12). After Jesus used God’s Word to defend Himself against the devil, then Satan fled the scene. We read in Matthew 4:11:
Then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him (Matthew 4:11).
Too many times people will quote James 4:7, which says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” It’s true that we need to resist the devil, but we must understand that we have no power to overcome him by ourselves. If we look at James 4:7 within its full context it reads as, “Therefore submit to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.” We have to first submit to God and depend on His ways in order to defeat the enemy; and one of the means by which to defeat Satan is God’s holy Word.
When we’ve endured the wilderness and have finally learned submission and dependence on God, then His presence will be manifested in our life. We read how it was “after” Satan had finished testing Jesus, and “after” Jesus had overcome through His dependence on the Word of God – and thus His dependence on God Himself – that the angels came and ministered to Him.
Time of Reflection
The devil is plotting this very minute on where he will set his traps (1 Tm 3:7). The Bible says he wants us to become ensnared, so we will fall “into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition” (6:9), and in order that we might be “taken captive by him to do his will” (2 Tm 2:26). The devil is hell-bent on our destruction, and he will test us to see if we will falter and turn from the Lord. Based on Matthew chapter 4, the Christian author Sam Storms tells us,
[He] comes to us, taps us on the shoulder or tugs at our shirttail and whispers in our ear: “You deserve better than what God has provided. He’s holding out on you. You deserve to feel good about yourself. I’ll affirm you in a way no one else can. Why live in misery any longer? Come to me. I’ll give you a sense of power you’ve never known before. I’ll expand your influence. I’ll fill your heart with a sense of accomplishment. I’ll nourish your soul.
You’ve never had a physical rush like the one I’ve got in store for you. Obeying God is boring. It’s a pain. He’s always telling you to do stuff that’s difficult and burdensome and inconvenient or ordering you to forsake the few things that really bring you happiness. Come on. You’ve only got one life. Obedience is ugly. My way is fun. My way feels good.(11)
We must learn to submit ourselves to God and obey Him if we expect to have a chance at putting the devil on the run. One huge way we can become dependent on Him is by studying the Word of God. When we study the Bible we’re admitting to the Lord that we desire the help that He provides in His Word.
Another benefit to studying God’s Word is that it helps us learn God’s strategy to defeat the enemy. Psalm 119:98 declares, “You [O Lord] through Your commandments, make me wiser than my enemies.” Be certain to study the Bible so that you may “show thyself approved unto God” (2 Tm 2:15 KJV), and “be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Eph 6:13).
God’s Word will also lead us to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Romans 10:8-9 says, “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart . . . that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
NOTES
(1) Philip Graham Ryken, When You Pray (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2000), p. 151.
(2) Preston T. Bailey, Jr., Spiritual Warfare (Longwood, FL: Xulon Press, 2008), p. 103.
(3) Thomas Watson, A Puritan Golden Treasury, complied by I. D. E. Thomas (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2000), p. 295.
(4) H. A. Ironside, “Daniel,” An Ironside Expository Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2005), p. 98.
(5) Jim Feeney, “Resist the Devil’s Three Attacks,” (1993): http://www.jimfeeney.org/resist-devil-attacks.html (Accessed March 26, 2010).
(6) Stuart Weber, “Matthew,” Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Holman, 2000), p. 40.
(7) Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, on Logos Scholar’s Edition CD-ROM (Wheaton: Victor, 1996).
(8) Weber, p. 41.
(9) Wiersbe.
(10) Ibid.
(11) Sam Storms, Pleasures Forevermore (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2000), p. 27.
