Stand And Fight: Let's Get Offensive Series

Jesus has been sent out into the desert to be tested and tempted. He undergoes a period of fasting for 40 days and nights. Satan waited until the conditions were right before he began his onslaught of temptation. Notice in v.1 it says that Jesus was “led up...into the wilderness…” The Judean wilderness stretches between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. It is an area of endless sand, and crumbling rocks. There are moments when the heat is all but unbearable. The conditions of the wilderness made the deprivation of hunger even greater. So after spending 40 days in such a place, it is something of an understatement when Matthew says that Jesus “was hungry.” He was famished. And this hunger became the opportunity for the Satan’s first temptation.

Satan tries to get Jesus to turn a stone into bread. Now, the sin would not have been to create food. We see Jesus turn water into wine and we see him on at least two occasions multiply fish and loaves to feed a hungry crowd. The temptation was for Christ to doubt God’ Word. Just before being sent into the wilderness, Jesus had been baptized and the heavens had opened and God had declared that this was His Son. Satan comes in and opens with, “if you are God’s Son.” He is trying to plant that seed of doubt that He is not who God Himself has declared Him to be. Satan uses this one on us all the time. He tries to convince us that we are not who God says we are. Jesus handles that temptation by using a rhema, a word from God. He quoted from Deuteronomy and basically says, “I will not doubt and test God rather I will trust Him for what I need. And with that Satan moves on. He takes Jesus to the city and to the highest point of the temple and tells him to jump!

We get to see here that Satan is no stranger to Scripture, himself. He rolls out his own knowledge of the Bible for the next temptation and quotes a Messianic prophecy from Psalm 91. Satan misinterprets the prophecy but we get to see that Satan will even misuse Scripture to lead people astray! It’s happening today. There are whole movements and denominations that are founded on a convoluted interpretation of a Scripture that is usually taken completely out of context. The prosperity gospel and some of the signs movements are based on parts that were never intended to make up a whole. The focus of all of these movements is on us and what we can get out of God instead of on God and His glory. You cannot take Scripture as a whole and ever think that its about us, its always about God.

Here, Satan is trying to get Jesus to reject God’s will. The time is not right for His ministry to be fully revealed but if He jumps and angels rush to His rescue, what an incredible miracle that would be and His ministry would start with a bang! Satan was urging the Lord to be presumptuous, not trusting. He was tempting Christ to prove the reality of God’s love and care. Jesus answers again and uses Scripture to interpret Scripture when He tells Satan that His responsibility is to trust God, not to test Him. Satan tries one more thing, he does away with any semblance of subtlety and tells Christ that he will give him power and riches and glory if He will just bow down to him. He is using the temptation of instant gratification that works so well on many today. Jesus again uses a rhema and quotes from Deuteronomy. And with that final thrust of the sword of the spirit, Satan is defeated and leaves and we’re told that God sent angels to comfort Him. God provided what He needed when He needed it and Jesus trusted that the Words of God were stronger than the temptations and lies of Satan. We have such a great example here of the use of this weapon.