Jesus’ Temptation
Passage Matthew 4:1–17
Speaker Cavan Wood
Service Morning
Series New Year New You
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4 Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. 2 After fasting for 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 shall 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 set him 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 splendour. 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.
12 When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he withdrew to Galilee. 13 Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali – 14 to fulfil what was said through the prophet Isaiah:
15 ‘Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles –
16 the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.’
17 From that time on Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
This transcript has been automatically generated, and therefore may not be 100% accurate.
As we come before God's scripture. Let us pray. Father Almighty, help us to understand your world, your word, afresh and in the power of your spirit to live it out to the glory of your son this week. Amen.
And now I'm going to try not to sway about too much because we have some technical issues. And as a teacher, I used to love to walk about, but I'm going to try and rigidly stick to the centre here so we can all hear me this morning.
Back in the 1970s, there used to be an advertising slogan for cream cakes. They were naughty but nice. Naughty but nice. This was a slogan dreamed up by a man who went on to win the Booker Prize, Salman Rushdie, when he was an advertising copywriter. And if you asked people's understanding of temptation, it would be a little bit like that cream cake commercial.
You can see hundreds of different versions of that commercial on YouTube. I just looked one up before I came out. Naughty but nice. No, temptation is far more serious than the word naughty in our culture means, and it is certainly not if given into going to lead to a nice conclusion.
This scripture that we've read today illustrates one sort of evangelical great principle, that one scripture can be interpreted by another. And that is Hebrews four. Verse 15 says this, for we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weakness, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are. Yet he did not sin. I think when the writer of the Hebrews was writing that, perhaps he was also reflecting on this story of the temptations.
He may also have been thinking of the temptation that Jesus was later to face in the garden of Gethsemane, to not follow the way of his father. Now, that's a great relief for all of us that Jesus knows exactly what it's like to be tempted from the inside. But he did not give in.
This story starts in an unusual place. He's had, what you might call in today's language, a peak experience. Just immediately at the end of chapter three, there has been the baptism, and the spirit and the father have borne witness to how Jesus is the Son. Now, you might think that would be the best place to start your ministry. But then we have this extraordinary move into the desert.
Now, in our rather tame translation of the scripture this morning it says, but the spirit, then the spirit led him into the wilderness. Actually, the word led there is more like threw him into the wilderness, cast him out into the wilderness. Jesus is in the desert for Matthew. One of the things you can often read in Matthew's Gospel is Matthew trying to show you that Jesus is like Moses, but so much more. And where does Moses really begin to learn about God with great power after the time in Egypt?
Well, he learns about it in the desert. So these 40 days and 40 nights are symbolic. I think of also what had happened before in 40 days and 40 nights in the time of Moses. Perhaps they also recall the time of the flood again, another 40 days and 40 nights. The idea of God's judgement.
But here Jesus is going to show through this a better Moses and a saviour.
So there he is. Isn't scripture wonderful in its understatement, after 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. Well, I got up this morning at about quarter to eight. I am now hungry, if I am honest. So that's good news for you because it means I'm not going to keep you too much longer because I'm also thinking about my lunch, as you may be.
So that's just a few hours between when I last ate and now my body telling me already I'm hungry. So he is much more under control than I am. If it took 40 days before he was really, really hungry. And the first temptation that Satan comes to him with is a very selfish one. You could turn stones to bread.
You could immediately get out of this. And it's just about his own immediate need. You can do this. You're powerful. You can turn stones into bread.
No, Jesus says, what's more important than this is obedience to God and God's word. Man does not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds from the mouth of the father. So Jesus here is quoting deuteronomy. He's quoting it back. So he's quoting words of Moses back at the devil and saying, this is what Moses received in a desert years ago.
And now this is what I'm saying to you. Then the second temptation comes to him where the devil takes him to all the high places, takes him rather to the temple. Throw yourself off. And the devil this time comes at him with a scripture from psalm 121. Sorry, psalm 96, 91.
Sorry, I'll get that right in a bit. Anyway, he comes at him with a scripture and says, you could do this, you could jump off. The angels will catch you. Wouldn't that be impressive? Wouldn't that be impressive?
The angels will catch you. Everybody will know that you're the messiah. It'll be fantastic. It'll be a pr event beyond measure. And Jesus says, no, you do not put the Lord your God to the test.
Satan has one more testing for him. Then Jesus is taken to the high mountain and showed all the kingdoms of the world in all their greatness. All this I will give you. The devil said, if you kneel down and worship me, all that power of the nations Satan is claiming, actually, this is where Satan is a liar. Because any power, any power of any nation ultimately goes back to God, doesn't come from Satan.
So that is a lie. And Jesus is being encouraged into a lie. Come with me. You can have power, but that power isn't the authority of God. That power actually is quite destructive.
So there are many temptations here. A temptation to just give in to satisfy your own basic need and not really think about others. A temptation to show off, a temptation to worship the wrong sorts of power. Now, each one of us will have a temptation, or however many in your life. Temptation may actually be related to your age or stage.
There are some things that you will be tempted of now that perhaps you weren't tempted of when you were a teenager.
There are some things now that you are struggling with that you've been struggling with all of your life. In terms of temptation, the key thing from the passage is this. Jesus understands the temptations that you go through because he himself has been through that process. But without sinning, many of us don't just stop at temptation. We give in and it becomes sin.
We let it dwell in our hearts and minds, and it becomes sin. Martin Luther has this very vivid picture. He says that temptation and sin are like a bird, and the bird comes and sits and sits on your head.
That's like temptation. But you could push the bird off, and off it will go if you let the bird nest in your hair. This is a very extreme image, isn't it? But it kind of gets it. If you let that bird nest, then you are in a different place.
All of us will be tempted to say the wrong thing, to do the wrong thing, to behave in the wrong way. All of us will fail God in that way. But we don't have to leave it there. We can stop that. We can overcome that temptation.
And why can we do that? We can do that because of the next bit of the passage. Because we have a God who sends his son as a light to the world. The people who live in darkness will see a great light. Verse 16 says, on those who live in the dark land of death, light will shine.
We will struggle with temptations. We will at times be defeated. But here is the truth of scripture. We can look to a lord who can actually help us in this. We know, firstly from the baptism that precedes this chapter, that he is God's own.
He is God's own son. We know from this chapter that temptation is not the same as sin. We will all be tempted. What matters is what we deal with that temptation. Do we admit that we need help?
Do we admit that we need the power of Christ in a situation? Or do we arrogantly say, I can deal with that now? I heard some research the other day that said, if you set yourself a new year's resolution on December the 31st. You probably have given up by January the twelveth on average. When they've studied this now, you might set yourself a resolution not to be tempted and not to give into temptation.
Well, it won't take twelve days. It will take one day or 1 hour or 1 minute between your setting yourself that resolution and you actually not being able to do it. Temptation is only possible to be resisted if we are in the power of the spirit. This is a spiritual warfare issue. We confront powers like Satan.
We confront our own fallen nature as human beings. We confront the power of the world around us that would want us to do things that are wrong. And how do we fight in that spiritual war? We come at the enemy with scripture, as Jesus did. Our daily walk of scripture feeds our minds and feeds our spirits so that we know how to overcome the lies that temptation is all about.
We need lives that are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit working in each of us. There will be great defeats in our spiritual lives. There will be times when we give in to temptations and it will not be naughty, but nice. It may be quite harrowing in its consequences to our lives or the lives of others. We have a God who can redeem us, who can take us fallen human beings, and turn us around.
Do not be worried that you are tempted, even the person sitting next to you or around you, who's got the most holy look going or you think has got the biggest holy reputation in the church, they will tell you how much they struggle with temptation. I was once in a monastery a few years ago, and I was talking to a monk like you do, and I said to him, what is your biggest problem? And he said, I struggle with my pride. I thought, you're a monk. How can you still struggle with your pride?
But of course he will. If that's the area, that often is the way in for Satan to attack that man, then he will struggle with his pride. We will all struggle with issues of pride. And when we feel we're right and others are wrong, or we feel better than them. But he knew where to go.
He knew where he needed help, and he was, I'm sure, making progress, even though that was still a temptation for him. So let us rejoice that we do follow a God who can transform us. Let us rejoice that the light has come into the world and that temptation never has to be a place of defeat for us. It may be hard, hard testing from time to time it will be. But it doesn't have to be defeat, because we can be transformed by his spirit as we use and reflect on his word and live in his power.
So let's just pray.
Father, we know temptation is so hard, and there may be many people here today, myself included, who are struggling with various different temptations. You know what they are. Help us to come to you, Lord, to be able to share with you where we need help. If it's an area where we need, perhaps to talk to somebody else in order to get that help and support, help us to be humble enough to do that. We thank you for this powerful story of the temptation of Jesus, that you were tempted but did not sin, and we praise you that in your power, we too, can begin to pursue that light.
Amen.