• The Temptation of the Messiah, Part 2

  • "But first I mean to exercise Him in the wilderness.  There He shall first lay down the rudiments of His great warfare, ere I send Him forth to conquer sin and death, the two grand foes, by humiliation and strong suffering,"

  • The force of the temptations was not to make Jesus doubt His Sonship.  It was not to make Jesus prove His Sonship.  For us it proves His Sonship.  The force of the temptations was to make Jesus step out of His humiliation and act on His own, apart from the will of the Father and the power of the Spirit, therefore putting a breach in the Trinity.

  • the implication. You’re the Son of God.  Look, God even fed disobedient Israel in the wilderness.  God fed those people who complained and griped and all died in the wilderness and never entered the Promised Land because of their complaining and here You are the perfect, sinless Son of God and God doesn’t even feed You.  Are You sure God really loves You?  Are You sure God really trusts You?

  • And that’s the first category of temptation, to distrust God’s love.

  • a man doesn’t live because he eats bread. A man lives because he obeys God and God provides his bread.

  • The second temptation was to distrust God’s plan.

  • verse 6, "I’ll give You all this domain and its glory for it has been handed over to me and I give it to whomever I wish."  Boy, did he have delusions of grandeur.  He had a small opportunity to rule as the king of this world for a very brief time, but the only thing he rules over is evil.  It is God who determines the boundaries of the nations, according to Acts 17.

  • The devil, however, tries to deceive Christ into believing that he has control of everything.

  • Satan knows the Old Testament.  He knows the Messiah is going to die.  He knows the Messiah is going to be a sacrifice for sin.  He understands the sacrificial system.  He knows where all the lambs are pointed to and he’s saying to the Son,

  • So he’s saying You can miss the cross if You want, You can miss all that further humiliation, You can miss that Psalm 22, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

  • You can bypass the whole thing, all You have to do is recognize that I own all the kingdoms of the world and I will give them to You, verse 7, if You worship me.

  • you can skip the cross and go right to the crown.

  • Well, first of all, Satan couldn’t do that.  Second, if he could he wouldn’t right?  Because what did Satan want more than anything?  He wanted to be above God, didn’t he?  That’s why he fell.  He wanted to be worshiped by everyone, including God, including Christ. 

  • Jesus said to him, "It is written,

  • categorically we can and are constantly tempted by Satan to distrust God’s love.

  • I’ve got all kinds of trouble, illness trouble, job trouble, whatever it might be.  And, Lord, I’m just wondering if You really care for me

  • 450-foot edge

  • If Jesus will not prove He is the Son of God by doing what God has not said, namely use His divine power independently to make bread, if He will not prove He is the Son of God by doing what God has said not to do, worship anyone other than Himself, maybe He will prove He is the Son of God by doing something to prove the truth of what God has said.

  • Oh, You want to only do what God said, well let me quote Scripture.  Since You are the Son of God, since that is the reality of who You are, why don’t You just throw Yourself down and then You will do a wonderful thing. You will demonstrate that God’s Word is true, that God keeps His promises, because it says in Psalm 91 that He will give His angels charge concerning You,

  • What Satan wants to do here, His wicked purposes, is to kill Christ. He wants Him dead. 

  • the temptation to trust God presumptuously

  • Satan knew that Jesus was a man and that a fall like that would kill Him as a man.  He told Eve, "You’ll not die," but she did.  And so would Jesus.

  • He will not force God’s hand to do something presumptuously.  This is like saying, OK, God, You promised to watch over me and protect me, so I’m going to go stand in the middle of the freeway to see You vindicate Yourself.  He won’t do that.

  • Again categorically, Satan will try to tempt you to distrust God’s love, to distrust God’s plan, and then to trust God presumptuously

  • In conclusion, just quickly, what do we learn from this?  A few lessons, Satan’s strategy; he will tempt us to distrust the love of God; he will tempt us to distrust the plan of God and thus to compromise with sin to get what we think we need and deserve and want.  And then he will tempt us to presume.  If we’re going to say no, I trust God, no, I want to follow God, then he’ll get us to presume on God and act foolishly out of pride and self-will. Presuming on God’s grace we do things foolishly. 

  • How do you defeat Satan?  How did Jesus defeat him?  Three times, what did He do?  Quoted what? Scripture.  Be committed to obey God’s Word.  First of all, you have to know God’s Word and you have to obey God’s Word.  Know the Scripture.  Not only know it in your head, know it in your heart and be committed to live it.

  • The same thing, Jesus shows us here a pattern to follow in our own struggles.  Trust God’s love.  Trust God’s plan.  Don’t presume on His promises and His grace.  And you do that by being anchored in His Word.

  • In 1 Peter 2:21, “Christ suffered, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin.”

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