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Matthew 4:1- 11, Luke 4:1-13
When God is preparing us for ministry, He puts us through the fire to teach us and to grow us. (James 1:2-4)
Jesus doesn’t just meet Satan in the desert by accident. The Spirit sent him out there.
- In Mark 1:12, we are told that he is sent – the King James Version says driven. In other words, Jesus didn’t have a choice. If he wants to fulfill his ministry, he has to go through this basic training.
- Dealing with Satan, with temptations, is part of our training for ministry. It took Jesus 40 days to complete this part of his preparation. It takes us much longer. But with the help of the Holy Spirit, we also can overcome.
- In Matthew and Luke, we are told that the Spirit leads him into the desert. We need to remember that even though we are going through this experience, God is leading us. That means we need to follow Him through this, that He is the one who will take us through it and that He has not left us but He is right there with us as we are going through it.
- Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him. – James 1:12
God isn’t the one who tempts us, but Satan does.
- We should get confused over who is doing this to us. Satan is the tempter. God does not tempt us – James 1:13
- However, God allows us to be tempted so that we can become stronger and better prepared.
- I’ve heard some say that "this does not sound like the way a loving God would act. Why would He allow us to go through difficult times and even fall into temptation?" This is a nice, hypothetical way of looking at God but it isn’t a realistic way. God is God and His ways are higher than ours. We usually do not have enough wisdom or understanding to know why God does what He does. But it isn’t much different than a parent who lets a child ride a two-wheel bike for the first time. The parent lets the child go, knowing full well that the child does not know how to stay up and will fall when they try to stop or turn. But the parent knows it is the only way the child will ever learn. Before the child has fallen, they are experiencing the time of their life – how wonderful the experience is! But once they have fallen, they wonder why their parent let go and let them fall. But the parent thoughts are higher than theirs and their wisdom is higher than theirs and they know that this incident is part of the learning that must occur if they are to be able to have the enjoyment of riding.
- In this analogy, the parent isn’t the reason for the fall. Gravity, the laws of physics and the child’s lack of experience are. In the same way, God is not the tempter but He uses the temptations to give us experience so that we can know how to deal with temptations in the future.
When Stan tempts us, he waits for a proper opportunity
- Jesus was in the desert for 40 days and nights. He is exhausted, hungry and tired. Any one of these would be a great opportunity for Satan. If there is any weakness in us, he will use that to his advantage. When there are multiple weaknesses, his attack will be that much more effective.
When the temptations come, they will usually first attack your physical appetites.
- Satan knows Jesus is hungry and so tempts him to take care of his physical situation
- He does the same thing to Eve in the Garden (Gen 3:1)
- In both cases he asks questions to them to help them question God’s desires and purposes, trying to get them to rationalize why it’s ok to fall to the temptation.
- Satan will always try to find out what your appetites are, what your weaknesses are and when you are struggling. At this time, he will tempt you with that thing that would appease your appetite.
- Our way to overcome this is to know the Word of God.
- Jesus quotes scripture to Satan as his defense.
- Eve tries to quote God but gets it all wrong
- She doesn’t really know God’s word and will well enough.
- This is the problem with most Christians today. They do not know God’s word well enough. So when The Jehovah’s Witnesses come to the door, they’ve got you with their subtle changes in the Word or when the Prosperity Gospel is preached on radio and television, people wholeheartedly fall for the lie.
- We need to be better prepared by knowing the Word of God. Then when Satan tempts us, we will know that we cannot rationalize that away and we will better be able to defend ourselves
Next, Satan will attack us through our vanity.
- We all want fame and fortune; we think that if we can make a lot of money, people will respect us. Or if we can do something special, people will think highly of us. We are vain people by nature.
- Over and over again the Bible teaches that greed and personal gain is a bad thing.
- In this case, Satan tried to get Jesus by offering him the opportunity to be special.
- There are those who say that the Jews were waiting for their Messiah to arrive from the air and come down in Jerusalem based on Malachi 3:1
- In any case, how would the people react if they saw someone falling from the highest point of the Temple and landing on his feet without a scratch or bruise?
- It was an attempt to give Jesus the fame and title that he was working toward
- Eve also was give a similar temptation
- Satan told her that she surely wouldn’t die if she ate the apple.
- Our desire to be rich and famous ensures that Satan will always have a way to tempt us.
- This is why it is so important not to get caught up in this world. When we let our money situation be important to us, we will find that Satan will always have a way to get us by either taking the money and everything else away - as he did with Job, at which point his wife said to “Curse God and die” (in other words, turning us from our God) – or by dangling the thought of more money before us – which is why so many poor people gamble and play the lottery. Only by making this world unimportant, do we start to think about how important eternity is and then our desire for riches and fame go away in this life, taking with it the foothold Satan has on us.
Finally, Satan will tempt us by making us think we can be God
- By making us think we can be God, we obviously no longer think that God has the ability to tell us what we should do and how we should act. We are now equal with God and we can decide ourselves what is right and what is wrong.
- In this case, Jesus is told that he will be king of all.
- In Eve’s case, she is told that she will be the same as God and have the same knowledge as God
- This attacks our desires to be in charge of our own destiny, to be the ones in charge.
- This obviously takes away from recognizing that God is in charge of all things and that what He deems is right is what He does and sometimes that means that we will not get to live the life we would have desired. If we could do whatever we desired, then we would feel very good about life – we would have all the things we want, do things we want – when we want, there would be no point in needing or wanting God to be in charge because we are doing fine for ourselves.
- Only by recognizing that God is in control and that not all things turn out how we would like but how God needs them to be, will we finally be removed from this type of temptation.
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Reaching and Developing People for Jesus 
