Theme: You must not put the Lord your God to the test
Text: Deut. 26:4-10; Rom. 10:8-13; Lk. 4:1-13
Today is the second Sunday in Lent and we at Covenant have been observing this holy season by meditating and reflecting on the Word of God and by prayer and fasting. It is following the example of Christ to prepare us deal effectively with the temptations of the devil. The Devil made me do it appears to be a very convenient excuse or defence all around the world when caught doing something we are not supposed to do. The story is told of a woman who used the family savings to buy a very expensive dress. She told her husband about it saying how sorry she was and that it was the devil that made her do it. The husband not understanding how she could be so extravagant when they had such little money asked, “Why didn’t you just say to him get behind me Satan?” The woman replied, “I did and he told me that it looked even better from the back”. Just as we may laugh at this there have been many reports in our papers of laughter in the courts when the accused person pleads ‘the devil made me do it.’ There is, however, one problem: the Devil cannot make us do anything. He may appear to be clever but he does not have the power to force us to do anything. This is the reason why he has to rely on different tricks and strategies to get us to do what he wants. He always uses the type of bait that fits the person and the situation. Satan knows people in a way that a skilled angler knows fish. He studies our habits and observes where and how we spend our time. Then he prepares suitable bait and drops it right in front of us. He cannot force us to bite but the bait, by appealing to our fleshly nature, begins a struggle within us. Our conscience immediately warns of the danger and the consequences of yielding to the temptation but the decision is left to us. Very often the bait is something we see or hear as happened in the case of Jesus and in the case of Adam and Eve. Luke in narrating the temptations of Jesus begins by first tracing His genealogy all the way to Adam and Eve and thus links the two temptations. Where Adam failed, Jesus would succeed. Where sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, one man would bring salvation and eternal life. If Satan were to defeat Christ as well then there would be no hope of redemption for the human race and death would have been victorious. But he failed because Jesus depended totally on God. His trust was so total that it was not necessary for Him to put God to the test. Our trust should be the same. You must not put the Lord your God to the test.
The temptations of Jesus Christ in today’s Scripture Reading reveal Him as the promised Messiah. They come straight after His baptism and after the Holy Spirit had descended on Him and He was identified as God’s beloved Son. These temptations were specific to Him and His role as the Saviour of the world as only He was capable of turning stones into bread. He would not do anything to please the devil but later on He would feed 5000 men with five loaves and two fish to glorify God. It was as though Jesus was being tested to see whether He could totally rely on God and whether He is worthy of the role of the Messiah. Jesus Christ is often referred to in Scripture as the Second Adam and by overcoming these temptations proves that He is worthy of that title. He resisted all the temptations and succeeded where Adam failed. God used the hostility of the devil to Jesus’ ministry to show not only who Jesus is, but also the kind of ministry that he had come to fulfil - the ministry of freeing mankind from slavery to sin by overcoming the devil.
The mission of Jesus Christ was to free mankind from slavery to Satan so that they could serve the Living God. His mission is clearly portrayed in the history of the Israelites. They were God’s chosen people but found themselves in slavery to the Egyptians. The Lord preserved them and delivered them out of Egyptian bondage with many signs and wonders. He used Moses to defeat the magicians of Egypt, to strip Pharaoh of his power, to humiliate the gods of Egypt, and to bring the Israelites out from slavery into freedom. He instructed them to celebrate important events relating to God’s intervention in their affairs to remind them of the faithfulness of God so that they would continue to rely on Him. They, however, when confronted with problems forgot about the faithfulness of God. Although they had witnessed the greatness and power of God, instead of relying on Him in the wilderness, they sinned by grumbling when they were hungry and thirsty. Jesus brings about a greater deliverance – deliverance from captivity to sin and to Satan. He gave up the glory of heaven to live a life of humiliation and self-sacrifice. Rather than looking after His own personal needs and rights Jesus was more concerned about relying on God, loving God and loving other people. He spent 40 days and nights in the wilderness, the place where obedience to God is tested, patiently waited for God to provide for His needs. The consequences of disobedience would have been disastrous - disastrous for Jesus’ relationship with God the Father – and disastrous for the salvation of the world that Jesus had come to save. Disobedience to God was the sin Adam and Eve committed and Jesus had be a sinless substitute on the cross. As Christians we should look up to God and trust Him to provide for our needs. This does not mean that we do nothing. It means that whatever we do, we should do it in such a way that God’s name is glorified. God can use times of testing to build up our trust in him and to make us see where our loyalty truly lies. Temptation itself is not a sin – it is only a sin when we give in to it and therefore should not be discouraged when we face temptation but be determined to continue resisting it. Martin Luther once said that he could not stop the birds flying over his head, but he could stop them from building their nests in his hair.
The Devil’s strategy is to look for areas of weakness or stress in our lives and this is the area where he will attack. He often uses the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life as he did in the case of Jesus Christ and as he did in the case of Adam and Eve. Today some people group them together as the 3 G’s – girls, gold and glory. He frequently uses problems within the family, problems with relations and friends and financial problems. He also uses our successes by making us believe that it was all due to our own hard work and to our own cleverness. Believing this would inevitably lead to pride and pride makes us feel we do not need God. Satan is always trying to make us focus on him rather than on God. He is always trying to get men and women to worship him because it was the desire to be worshipped that led to his rebellion against God. He wants to be worshipped desperately and if he tried to make Jesus Christ worship him what about us? One method that the devil is using to get man to worship him and which is proving very successful is to place his agents in places of leadership. We often find such people today behaving as if they were God and many people end up worshipping and trusting them rather than God.
The focus of our lives should always be God and not other people or our needs. The Scriptures make this clear and this is why it is so important for us to study and know the Bible. This is the only way to have a revelation of God in a way that we cannot do anything else but trust Him. Jesus knew and acted on the Scriptures - He trusted God completely. He was not concerned about His own material comfort because it could put in danger his unquestioning obedience to God’s plan. Jesus had both the power and the right to satisfy his own needs, yet this was not consistent with his mission. We put so much emphasis on self-reliance that it’s not easy to trust God to look after us. We want to be in control of our own destiny, so we sometimes find it hard to leave our destiny to God. We need to trust God completely if we are to have a meaningful and enjoyable life here on earth. Many Christians are not enjoying their lives because they have not been able to trust Jesus Christ completely. Their behaviour reminds me of a story of a young man who signed on as a sailor on a ship under an experienced captain. After leaving the harbour the vessel got into a storm that lasted quite some time. The young sailor was terrified and afraid that they were going to sink. The captain tried to assure him that the vessel would not sink but the young man just couldn’t believe it. He spent nearly the whole trip in fear and did not enjoy the trip one little bit. As Christians we all find ourselves on a journey. We are assured of reaching our destination, but are we enjoying the trip? We can only enjoy the journey when we put our trust in the Lord. Knowledge of the Scriptures, obedience and reliance on God is the only way to deal with temptations. The Devil always tempts by first planting a doubt as to what the Word of God says. He doesn’t deny it, he just twists the truth just enough to plant the doubt. His intent is to have us questioning what the Scriptures declare about the goodness, righteousness, justice, or truth about God.
The only way to deal with temptations is with the Word of God properly applied in the power of the Holy Spirit. Spiritual strength results from saying no to the flesh but yes to the Holy Spirit. God’s word spoken in the power of the Spirit cuts through Satan’s lies and exposes the truth. It tells us how to live and where to find true happiness. It assures us of God’s love and care and gives us hope for the future. It shows us the source of real joy, meaning and fulfilment in life. The temptations Jesus faced and which we all face are intended to confuse us and make us lose our focus on God. Jesus’ temptations struck at the very heart of the gospel. It sought to prevent our Lord from living a life of obedience to the will of the Father. It sought to prevent Jesus Christ from dying on the cross to redeem sinners. It sought to prevent sinners from being forgiven and from receiving eternal life.
One temptation believers often face is trying to attain holiness by putting their trust in fasting, meditation, Bible reading, prayer, or even attendance at Church services. Although they are all important, the most important thing is being obedient to God and relying on Him. During his forty days of fasting in the desert, Jesus prayed and meditated on the word of God. He was in close communication with God. He was obedient and relied totally on God and not Himself. He used Scripture to overcome every temptation even when Satan tried to use Scripture to tempt Him. Satan still uses Scripture to tempt us not to rely on God. He tempts us to read it unthinkingly, to take it out of context, and to read into it what our traditions have taught us rather than checking our traditions against what it teaches. Satan tempts us to rely on ourselves rather than on God. He tempts us not to see Jesus as the perfect sacrifice for sin. The Scriptures, however, reveal this truth throughout its pages. The Old Testament sacrificial system taught the Israelites that life could be sustained by a blood sacrifice. A person who had sinned was required to bring his sacrificial offering, a sheep, a goat, a bull or some other animal to the priest. He would confess his sin over the offering, and the priest would symbolically transfer the sin he had confessed from the person to the animal, which was then put to death to pay the penalty for the sin that had been transferred to it. Thus the sacrificial system put off the death penalty for sin. This was designed to foreshadow what was to be accomplished by the single, all sufficient sacrifice of Christ. The Lord Jesus, as the Lamb of God was to be the sin-bearer, whose sacrificial death would bring life to all who would believe in Him. To do this He had to be sinless. Jesus’ rejection of Satan’s proposition meant that He was determined to accomplish the will of God, even unto death, which ironically, was the way to life, for Him and for all who would believe in Him. To exercise His divine power to meet His human needs would have meant the loss of His power to save. But as a result of our Lord’s obedience to the Father, He emerged not only sinless, but also mighty to save.
We have at our disposal the same spiritual resources that Jesus used when He faced and defeated Satan – prayer, the Father’s love, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Word of God. But we also have Jesus Christ in heaven interceding on our behalf – the One who has completely defeated the enemy.
Satan tempts us to bring out the worst in us, but God can use these difficult experiences to bring out the best in us. Temptation is the devils weapon to defeat us, but it can become God’s tool to build us up. This does not mean that we should not prevent temptations coming our way. The Bible assures us that God will provide for us and protect us but this does not mean that we can force God’s hand. It is always better and easier to prevent what is preventable than to cure what could have been prevented. It is better and easier to be immunised against Polio than to treat polio after contracting the disease. If we can prevent sin by resisting temptation, even though it is hard work, then we will not have to deal with sinful lives later. We need to rely on God to resist temptations instead of yielding to them. Putting God to the test is a clever temptation that declares you do not trust God. When a wife asks her husband to do something to prove he really loves her, it is clear that she doubts his love for her. By the same token, asking God to do this or that to prove his love or his power or his providence is clear evidence that the person asking does not trust God. Jesus did not fall for this temptation, even though the devil quoted scripture to support it. God doesn’t have to prove anything. He has given us His Word. We need to believe His Word and act on it. God is faithful and will not let us be tempted beyond what we can bear. But when we are tempted, He will also provide a way out. Christ overcame every temptation to make our salvation possible and to give us His victory over temptation. This victory is only possible when Christ becomes our Saviour and Lord. Christ becomes our Saviour and Lord, according to the Scriptures, “when we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Is Jesus Christ your Saviour and Lord? Do you trust Him enough to be totally obedient to Him? We can only overcome temptations with Christ, the One who knows how and overcame them all. Amen!
