The Unlikely Gifts Of Testing And Tempting

Matthew 4:1-11

Introduction

Context

After his baptism, Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit to the desert to be tested.  There he met Satan, the tempter. 

“As I read the temptation story it occurs to me that, in the absence of eyewitnesses, all details must have come from Jesus himself.  For some reason, Jesus felt obligated to disclose to his disciples this moment of struggle and personal weakness.  I presume the Temptation was a genuine conflict, not a role that Jesus acted out with a pre-arranged outcome.  The same tempter who had found a fatal spot of vulnerability in Adam and Eve aimed his thrust now against Jesus.”[i]

History of Temptation and Testing of God’s People

Adam and Eve: There is a great parallel between Jesus’ temptation and the experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  God had great purpose for Adam and Eve.  God had created them for a vocation—to till and keep the garden, to name and have dominion over all the rest of God’s creatures.  God gave them gifts for their vocation—food for their physical nourishment, and pleasure for their work.  And God gave them the power to do the task, freedom to carry it out, and authority over the rest of creation.

But there was a limit to their freedom and authority.  For God said, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat…”

Curiosity and arrogance got the better of them and they went looking for the tree God had forbid them to eat from.  There the serpent tempted them with power and knowledge, and they gave in.

Israel: In the book of Deuteronomy, we read how God allowed the nation of Israel to wander in the desert for forty years before he brought them into the Promised Land.  It says, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what is in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.  He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna…to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord…”(Deut. 8:2-3). 

Israel, in the forty years had been unfaithful, throwing off God’s guidelines: collecting way too much manna than they needed, displaying a lack of trust in his promise to provide.  They had created for themselves false gods because they thought the One True God had abandoned them. 

Simply put, they disregarded God’s promises, God’s way, in favor of their own way.  They thought they could do better if they exercised their power.  They failed the test.

I fail the test frequently.

Jesus’ Temptation

Jesus’ baptism has much to with redeeming the failures of Adam and Eve, the nation of Israel, and us!  Let’s look at the story:

Matthew tells us that Jesus had been in the desert for forty days, and ate nothing!  At the end of the forty days, when he met Satan, it says, “he was hungry”.  He had eaten nothing and was hungry.  Jesus is about to encounter Satan while in an incredibly weakened state physically. 

There are certain details of the Temptation story that really puzzle me.  Satan asked Jesus to turn stone into bread, offered him all the kingdoms of the world, and told him to jump off a dangerously high place in order to test God’s promise of physical safety.  Philip Yancey asks this question: “Where is the evil in these requests?”[ii]

After all, Jesus would go on to feed five thousand people with a few loaves of bread and a meager catch of fish.  He’d conquer death by rising from the grave—something far more spectacular than anything the devil asked him to do.

This is All About God’s Way

Illustration: A Beautiful Mind

-Shock treatment, drugs: forced change didn’t work.

-Dr. Nash began to come to wholeness because he allowed himself to be affected by love.  In the movie, his wife stayed with him and loved him unconditionally.  She helped him to see what was true: Love. 

-This defied conventional medical and human wisdom.  Doctors and friends wanted him locked up, drugged, and shocked.  They found a different way to cope.

Why didn’t Jesus do what Satan challenged him to do?  After all, like I mentioned before, Satan’s requests were not necessarily evil in and of themselves.  But they were contrary to God’s way.

Satan was offering Jesus the chance to be a superhero, to be, as Yancey describes, “the thundering Messiah we think we want.”[iii]  Isn’t it true?  Don’t we all want Jesus to come and fix things?  Eradicate pain, suffering, and temptation?  Doesn’t it sometimes make us uncomfortable to think that our Jesus would choose the way of suffering rather than the way of power?

As recent as this morning I tried to reason with God.  Come show me your power, for I feel terribly weak.  Prove yourself, was essentially what I was saying.  Throw yourself off the top of the temple, turn these stones to bread…and I’ll believe.

Sometimes I want God to be a bit more obvious, more hands on rather than choosing to sit on his hands.  I want God to make right the obvious wrong in my neighborhood, to stop the senselessness of murder, famine, and unemployment.

And I want him to come and straighten out the dogged failings in myself.  The ones that too often speak with greater clarity and passion than the good things about me.  Answer my prayers quickly, heal my friends, and for God’s sake alleviate the suffering of my family.  You can because you are God, so do it!

George MacDonald writes:

Instead of crushing the power of evil by divine force; instead of compelling justice and destroying the wicked; instead of making peace on earth by the rule of a perfect prince; instead of gathering the children of Jerusalem under his wings and saving them from the horrors that anguished his soul—he let evil work its will while it lived; he contented himself with the slow unencouraging ways of help essential; making men good; casting out, not merely controlling Satan…

To love righteousness is to make it grow, not avenge it…he resisted every impulse to work more rapidly for the lower good[iv].

In Matthew 23, Jesus expresses his own desire to fix the flaws of his beloved people: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.  Ho w often I have longed to gather you children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”  Here in lies a major clue in understanding the temptation. 

Although he had the capacity in that moment in the desert, to snuff out the power of the enemy forever, he chose instead to rebuff him. Here’s why: God’s way is gentle and unforced.  Had Jesus simply banished Satan his reign would have been a forced one.  Us as his beloved children would’ve had no choice.  And that is simply not God’s way.  God will not force himself on those who are not willing to have him.

Instead of accepting the offer of world power, Jesus declined…for the time being.  God showed great restraint in the face of honey-sweet temptation.  He did this as an act of love.  You see, love is about the freedom to choose.  God wants a response of love from us, and the only way to garner a response of love is to give the choice to love. 

Had Jesus seized the opportunity to conquer the devil that day in the desert, it would have been akin to shock treatment and aggressive drugs.  It would’ve prevented any of us from choosing love, choosing righteousness, choosing God, choosing love.  For it was gentle, self-sacrificing, love that turned the light on in Dr. Nash’s dark world.  It is the same way with God. 

Application

Jesus’ temptation makes right, redeems the failings of Adam and Eve, and the Israelites in the desert.  They were all God’s chosen people, people whom He loves, but people whose faithlessness and lust for their own power separated them from Him.  God sent Jesus to earth to make a way for people to return to God. 

One of the first things Jesus did was model the way of truth in the face of great temptation.  One of his purposes in allowing His son to be tempted and tested was to redeem the failings of his people before.  At each denial of Satan’s offers, Jesus exposed the fallacy of earthly values: the drive for physical safety and security (bread); and the hunger for power and influence.

Each time the devil tempted him, Jesus replied, “it is written”.  He was referring to the Torah, the Jewish scriptures.  This gives us a clue as to what he had spent his time doing while he was in the desert.  He was learning the Bible!  He was immersing himself in the word of God, the word that describes in vivid detail what God’s way is.  So when the devil came to him asking him to do things that were contrary to God’s way, Jesus didn’t reply with a glib response that he’d concocted.  He replied with the word of God!

·        “Make Bread for yourself”, the devil said.

“It is written: man does not live by bread alone, but by what comes from God’s word.  Life is in the scriptures.  What is in the Bible is the true stuff of life”, Jesus replied.

·        “Throw yourself off the temple, God will save you”, the devil said.

“It is written: don’t put God to the test. 

·        “Worship me and I’ll give you power unlimited”, the devil said.

“It is written: worship the Lord your God, and serve him only

Friends, this is a very practical statement about the importance of God’s word.  Here in the Bible are the words and ways of life.  Here is the real bread, the real nutrients for life.

Illustration: A Beautiful Mind II

-Delusions, like temptations, were always there.

-Ability to ignore the delusions because he was learning to focus on what is true.  He chose to ignore because he was developing an increased ability to discern what is true.

We will always be tempted and tested.  It is a fact of life.  Jesus himself was tempted throughout his life, right up to his hanging on the cross. 

There was Peter who after hearing Jesus describe his imminent suffering said, “Never Lord…this will never happen to you.”  Again, the temptation to test God’s care, to throw himself off the temple and be caught by God’s angels.  To which Jesus rebuked Peter, “Get behind me, Satan…” 

And then on the cross came the temptation to prove himself as God’s Son: “Save yourself and us…”, the criminal cried.  And the spectators, “Come down and we’ll believe you.” 

Remember, Jesus did not come to make life good here.  He came to give us a hope and a future, but he never promised he’d make things easy here.  Anyone who has ever been tempted understands that!  Jesus came to provide a way for God’s people to return to God.  He came to outline and model God’s kingdom.  He came to partner in suffering.

We must not go for a temporal kingdom, which our Jesus refused; we are not to grab fulfillment now, which Jesus declined; and we must not compromise with Satan, which Jesus rejected.[v] 

What the temptation of Jesus in the desert and the temptations he faced throughout his life show us is that there is no easy path worth taking.  Jesus didn’t choose it, and neither can we.  We will always face temptation.  But here is the good news, founding the book of Hebrews:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are…because he himself suffered when he was tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted (Heb 5:15; 2:18).

©2002, Shaun Dyer

Zion Baptist Church of Kensington

Edmonton, CANADA

Permission to reproduce for

personal and non-profit

ministry use.

Notes