1 And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,
2 Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered.
3 And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.
4 And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.
5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
9 And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence:
10 For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee:
11 And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
12 And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
13 And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.
Introduction
In Luke chapter four we find the account of the temptation of Jesus, and today we are going to think about Jesus’ temptation and our own. In considering the experience of Jesus’ temptation we come to understand some things about our own temptation that will help us as we deal with life and as we seek to live victoriously for Christ from day to day.
The well-known British writer Oscar Wilde expressed perhaps the feelings of a lot of people when he said on one occasion, “I can withstand anything except temptation.”
All of us know what it is to be tempted and what it is to yield to temptation. Unfortunately, today there are a lot of people who are not resisting temptation, and the philosophy of today seems to be that doing your own thing is the end thing.
Jesus told his disciples on one occasion that they should watch and pray lest they enter into temptation. Almost every day, thousands of people fall into sin that they never would have thought they would have fallen into because they are careless at the point of temptation. The convicted embezzler never in a thousand years would have believed that his greed would have led him to disgrace and to prison. The faithful husband and the ideal wife would have never believed it if you had told them their lust and their innocent flirtations would eventually lead to the ruin of their family and their home. The star athlete and the honor student would never have believed you if you had told them that experimenting with drugs could destroy everything that they counted valuable and worthwhile. Again and again people find themselves doing the very things they thought they would never do because they have not dealt sufficiently with temptation.
I am told that when Napoleon was a student he wrote an essay on the danger of ambition. Ultimately it was ambition that destroyed him. I am told that when Nero, the emperor of Rome, signed his first death warrant, he looked at his hand and he said, “Would it that this hand had never learned to write.” And that which came so difficult for him the first time eventually became very easy as he yielded first to one temptation and then another. The Bible teaches us (and we know from our own experience) that temptation confronts not only worldly people, but also godly people. Every one of us ultimately deals with temptation in our own spiritual experience.
In verses one and two of Luke chapter four, there are three words that I want you to notice. Luke begins by saying “And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.” I want you to underscore in your mind that word “wilderness.”
I want you to know where this took place. The land of Judea was really divided into two parts. There is a mountain range that runs the length and the breadth of Israel. On the western side of that mountain range, in the land of Judah, there are fertile plains watered by the rains that come from the Mediterranean Sea. It is a delightful place to live. But right across the mountainside, on the eastern side of those mountains, there is nothing but a barren, desolate desert. It has almost no rainfall. A stretch of land 35 miles by 50 miles is so barren and so desolate that it has been named “the desolation.” The hills are like dust heaps. The rocks are bleak and jagged, and the heat rises up from the soil almost as if there were a furnace there. This desert slopes from the mountains to the deepest point on the face of the earth, down to the Dead Sea. It was out in that barren desolate place, uninhabited by man or beast, that Jesus was led by the Spirit of God.
We come to understand from studying the Bible that Jesus was led out there because he was struggling with his ministry and his work as the Messiah. There had been in his life a growing awareness of who he was and what his great mission in life would be. When he was 12 years old, in the Temple he had said to his mother, Mary, “Don’t you know that I must be about my father’s business?” And seemingly in that early age of his life he was becoming aware of who he was and what his great purpose in life was to be. When he was baptized we believe that there came to him at that time a full awareness that he was the Son of God and that he was the Messiah, and at that time he was given power to perform the miracles that would so mark his ministry.
Very much on the mind of Jesus at this time was, “What kind of Messiah will I be? What method will I use to redeem the world?” It had dawned upon him that it was God’s will that he should be a suffering servant, and that ultimately he would die on the cross for the sins of the whole world. He was struggling at this time with the will and the plan of God and whether he would do what God wanted him to do or not. It was the Spirit of God who led him out there to a time of prayer and fasting as he struggled with finding the will of God. While he was there, facing this great decision of how he would carry on his ministry, the Bible says he was tempted by the devil.
I want you to underscore in your mind, if not in your Bible, that word devil. What do you believe about Satan? There are some people who simply dismiss the whole idea of a personal devil as belonging to the nursery age of mankind. They liken it unto the characters of Greek mythology. They say it is a figment of the imagination, or that it is part of a fairytale.
But I want you to understand that Jesus believed and the Bible teaches (and I believe) that Satan was and is a real person. The name devil means the “slanderer” or the “false accuser.” That gives us some insight, not only into his character but into his work. Satan is the opponent of God and man. It is his purpose to slander man to God and to slander God to man. It is his purpose to draw us away from God and then to do everything he can to thwart the purposes of God for our lives and for this world.
Jesus was led out into the wilderness by the Spirit of God to struggle with how he would redeem the world. There he is confronted by Satan, whom he believed in and spoke of as a real person. The Bible says that out there in the wilderness, confronted by the devil, Jesus was tempted. That is the third word I want you to underscore. The word tempted means “an enticement to do wrong with the promise or by the promise of pleasure or gain.” Or to put it another way, it is a motivation to do bad with the promise that some good will come from it.
We shall see as Jesus struggles with temptation how that is true. Remember now, he is trying to decide how he will redeem the world and what kind of Messiah he will be. He is in the wilderness, he has fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, and he is hungry. Satan comes to him and he says to him, “If you are the Son of God, then turn these stones into bread.” There were stones all over the ground and they were about the shape of a little piece of bread that they would bake in the ordinary home in Israel in that day and time. Those stones could remind a person of bread, and Satan must have pointed to them—at least in the imagination of Jesus—and said, “If you are the Son of God, turn those stones into bread.”
Imagine if you were in Jesus’ spot. The temptation was to take that power—your messianic power—that has just come upon you at your baptism, and use it to satisfy your own desires. Use that power to build your kingdom and to save your life. It is a real temptation. The way God offered Jesus was the way of the cross, the way of suffering, and the way of privation. And now the temptation is to use the power that has been given to you to meet your own needs.
But Jesus refused to use his own power and to act independently of God, and he said to Satan, “It is written, man shall not live by bread alone.” In other words, “I’ll not use my power to satisfy my needs and I’ll not build my kingdom upon my own power. I will rather trust God to take care of me.”
When he said, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” he was quoting the book of Deuteronomy, which obviously was one of Jesus’ favorite books of the Old Testament. He quoted from it three times in this passage of scripture, and he quotes from the book of Deuteronomy more than any other book of the Old Testament. He was talking about that experience in which the Israelites were traveling through the wilderness, and God gave them manna from heaven to eat every day. All God had to do was to speak and the manna fell from heaven. And now Jesus was basically saying, “I will trust God to take care of me the same way he took care of Israel of old.”
The temptation was to use his own power, to do his own thing, and to act independently of God. Jesus said, “I won’t do it. I’ll follow what scripture says. I will trust God.”
But Satan was not through. He takes Jesus up into a high mountain and from that vantage point he can see all of the civilized world. In all probability he was looking up to a high mountain in his imagination. He saw the whole world laid out in front of him with its glory, its splendor, its riches and all that it had to offer, and Satan said to Jesus, “If you will just fall down and worship me, I will give you the whole world.”
Remember that Jesus’ mission was to redeem the whole world, and Satan is offering him a shortcut: “No need to go to the cross. No need to suffer and die. No need to spend all of that time. Just compromise, lower your standards a little bit, fall down and worship me, and I will give you what you want and all the glory that comes with it.”
Jesus said, it is written in scripture: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve. I will follow the way of commitment, not the way of compromise. I will not worship you. I will give my highest allegiance to God, even if it means a cross.”
But Satan was still not through. He takes Jesus to the pinnacle of the Temple. At that point, outside the wall, there is a sheer drop of 450 feet down to the Kidron Valley below. Now the temptation of Satan was, “Why don’t you cast yourself off of the wall of this Temple? Why don’t you fly through the air? That way people will be captivated by the spectacular, and you can win them by doing something sensational. You could quickly capture the hearts of people by flying through the air like Superman and landing on the ground unhurt.”
And just to reinforce the temptation, Satan quoted scripture himself. He did not quote all of the passage. He left out a part of it because it did not fit his purposes. Satan is a good theologian—he knows scripture, and he can quote what he wants to quote out of context, twisting it about to confuse us. He said to Jesus, “The scriptures say that you will not hurt yourself, you will not dash one foot against the stone if you jump.”
Jesus responded by saying, “The scriptures teach that you shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. I will not build my kingdom on my own power and strength. I will not take any shortcuts. If salvation and redemption leads to and through the cross, I will follow that path. I reject sensationalism and the spectacular as a way of winning people. I will do it God’s way.” In the wilderness, as Jesus struggled with temptation, he committed himself to doing it God’s way, not some other way.
When Satan had finished at that point the Bible says that he “left Jesus for a season.” And that word season literally means “until a more convenient time.” Satan was not through. Satan would come back again and again and again in attempts to get Jesus. He is never finished with you. He is never finished with me. He was never finished with Jesus, but just for a time, he left him. Jesus had at that moment won the victory.
There is in that experience of Jesus some truth for you and for me. There are five things I want you to learn, not only about Jesus’ temptation, but about ours.
First, temptation is inevitable. It is inescapable. It comes to every person.
Second, it is not a sin to be tempted. The sin comes when you yield to temptation and when you succumb to the enticements of the devil. But to be subject to temptation in itself is not a sin.
Third, temptation never comes from God. Temptation—the enticement to do wrong—always comes from Satan. Don’t ever blame God. Don’t ever blame somebody else. Don’t ever blame your circumstances. You can only blame yourself. It never comes from God.
Fourth, temptation always follows the same pattern. We will talk about that pattern when we get to that point. But in the experience of Jesus, you will see that pattern, and in your own life and in your own struggles, you will see that pattern. Temptation always follows the same pattern in any and every life.
Fifth, you don’t have to yield. You can win over temptation. You can be victorious in your life in following the will of God. As Jesus withstood the temptation, so you can withstand temptation. You do not have to yield.
1. Temptation is inevitable.
Temptation comes to everybody, it is inevitable. It is inescapable. Now, it would be wonderful if we could live a life without facing temptation. But the simple fact is that no person is above and no place is beyond temptation. The late Grady Nutt, the Christian humorist, said that he at one time attended a Christian college that was 20 miles from any known sin. We could wish that there were such a place.
There is no Christian college 20 miles from any known sin, nor is there any place on this planet nor any person that can ever get away from the temptation of Satan. He is to be found everywhere. If there were a place where a person was beyond temptation, you would think it would be out there in the wilderness—that place of devastation and barren desolation where neither man nor beast could live. Surely out there alone with God, praying and fasting, a man would be beyond temptation. Let me tell you that as long as you have a mind to think, and as long as you have the capacity to imagine, you are not beyond temptation.
The monk behind the cloistered walls of the monastery is as subject to temptation as the executive on Wall Street—whether he is in New York, or Chicago, or Dallas, or Houston, or Tyler, or wherever. As long as he can think, as long as he can imagine, and as long as he can see things in his mind, he is susceptible to temptation. It is inescapable in your life and in mine.
2. Temptation is not a sin.
It is not a sin to be tempted. Let me say this as carefully as I can: there is nothing wrong with being tempted. In fact you cannot prevent it, and the fact that you are tempted to do wrong does not mean you have done wrong. It only becomes sin when by your own personal choice, you yield to that temptation.
The Bible tells us in Hebrews 4:15 that Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus experienced temptation not just here, but at every point in his life. Every kind of temptation came to him—and underscore that word “yet” in your mind—he was without sin. It is obvious then that temptation is not wrong, and that being tempted is not a sin.
This is not the only time that Jesus was tempted. The Bible says in this passage of scripture that Satan left him for a season. He left him for a more convenient time. He would come back again and again, and one of the times when the temptation was most intense was when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was getting nearer to the cross, and the choice of dying on that cross was still his, up until the very last moment. In fact while he died on that cross, they taunted him, saying, “If you are the Son of God, come down.” Until his last dying breath he was faced the questions, “Will I do what God wants? Will I be the suffering Savior, or will I choose some other way?”
In the Garden of Gethsemane he was continuing to struggle with this problem in his life, and he prayed, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). It is not a sin to be tempted; it is a sin only when you yield.
Martin Luther said, “We can’t keep the birds from flying over our heads, but we can keep them from building a nest in our hair.” You can’t keep evil thoughts from flashing in your mind. You can’t keep evil desires from rising up in your heart, but you can refuse to yield to them all. Billy Sunday said, “Temptation is the devil knocking on the door. Sin is opening the door and inviting him to come in.” You can’t escape it, but it is not sinful when temptation comes. It is sin only when you yield.
3. Temptation never comes from God.
God permits temptation to be sure. God allows it to come into your life, but God never directs it. He is not the author of it. The temptation comes from Satan. God would never do anything to try to draw you away from himself and to lead you into sin. In fact the Bible says that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. There is nothing in God that would ever in any way try to lead anybody into sin.
James put it this way: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” (James 1:13).
You may ask, “Who in the world would ever blame God for temptation?” Well, you for one. And I for another. And all of mankind for the rest. Go back to the Garden where the Lord came to Adam after Adam and Eve had sinned, and the Lord asked Adam, “What in the world have you done?” You know Adam’s response: “Lord, the woman which thou gavest me is the cause of all of this.” He excused his sin, blaming both the woman and God. He blamed the woman. She was the one who handed him the apple, but God gave him the woman. Adam was saying in short, “God, you set me up. I had everything going my way in the Garden. Everything was good and you brought this woman in here. You gave her to me. It is your fault.”
We are masters at excusing ourselves. “My parents were too strict on me.” Or “I’m just weak and the peer pressure is too great.” Or “My wife doesn’t understand me. She won’t talk to me. She treats me coldly.” We can muster up all kinds of excuses and all kinds of reasons to justify why we do what we do so we don’t have to take personal responsibility.
In the Garden, God didn’t buy it. Adam said, “The woman you gave to me caused this.” God didn’t buy it at all. He held Adam personally accountable for what he did. He held Eve personally accountable for what she did. He held Satan personally accountable for what he did, and God will hold you personally accountable for what you do. You can’t justify an alibi on the basis of “That’s just the way I am.” Or “That’s my environment.” Or “That’s my upbringing.” Gods hold you accountable for your sin. You can’t blame God.
4. Temptation always follows the same pattern.
The pattern is this: the one who is below us—that’s Satan—appeals to that which is within us: our desires, to draw us from the one who is above us—God. The one below us appeals to that which is in us to draw us from the one who is above us. That’s ever and always his pattern.
We have desires, we have longings, and we have ambitions. Satan appeals to those and promises us something good and something enjoyable. He’ll promise us some kind of gain if we will do what he is trying to get us to do. When we yield to it, it takes us away from God. James put it this way. He said, “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (James 1:14). That word enticed is a fishing term. It describes what a fisherman does when he goes out to catch fish. He entices that fish.
The fisherman doesn’t drop a bare hook tied to a twine string down in the water and hope to catch fish. He tries to disguise that hook in such a way that it will be appealing to the fish. So he puts on that hook a juicy shrimp, or a shining minnow, or a wiggling worm, and if he doesn’t use live bait then he will take some artificial bait that has been so shaped and so disguised that it looks like the real thing. He throws it out there hoping to catch the attention of that fish, to lure him to the bait. He doesn’t just throw it out there and let it lay there. He jiggles it up and down. He jerks it and he does all kinds of little things to catch the attention of the fish. The fish sees the hook, is attracted to it, wants it, reaches out to grab it, and then he is hooked and cooked.
That’s the way it happens to you. Satan appeals to those longings and desires in you. He makes them so enticing and desirable, and he promises you something that he doesn’t produce. You respond to it. You see it, you want it, you desire it, and finally you take the bait and you are led into sin.
That’s what happened in the life of Jesus. He so wanted to win this world to God. That was his plan. That was his mission. Satan offered him alternate ways, and they were appealing. They were desirable. They were alluring. But Jesus didn’t take the bait. Most often we do, and it is our spiritual downfall. The pattern is ever and always the same. The bait is dropped, we desire it, we bite, and we are caught.
5. We don’t have to yield to temptation.
There is no power outside of you that can make you sin against your own will—not even the power of Satan. Even Satan with all of his power cannot make you sin. It is ever and always your choice. You can resist the devil. You can say no to him just like Jesus did in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said in that second temptation, “Get behind me, Satan.” He was saying “no.” The answer is an emphatic resounding “no.” Just say “no.” That would make a good slogan: “Just say ‘no!’” Just say “no” to drugs, just say “no” to pornography, just say “no” to filthy talk, just say “no” to gossip, to lust, and to greed—just say “no!” There is within you—by the power of God—the capacity and ability to say no.
I think about that boat captain in the days of the Civil War. The northern forces had set up a blockade to prevent the southerners from selling their cotton for a profit, and this cotton farmer broker came to the ship captain and said, “I’ll pay you 100 dollars to go through the blockade and sell this cotton.” The captain said, “No, I’ll not do it. It is against the law. No way.” The man said, “I’ll pay you 300 dollars to do it.” The captain said, “I won’t do it.” The man said, “I’ll pay you 500 dollars.” The captain said, “I won’t do it.” The man said, “I’ll pay you 1,000 dollars.” The captain said, “No. Emphatically, it is against the law.” The man said, “I’ll pay you 3,000 dollars to run the blockade.” The captain pulled out his gun and pointed it at the man and said, “You get off of my ship. You are getting too close to my price.”
There is a time when we need to pull the gun and say, “Get out of here. You are getting too close to my price. Get behind me, Satan!” What helped Jesus to say that? Three things: one, his knowledge of the word of God. Every time Jesus was tempted, he quoted a verse of scripture, and the best way to meet temptation is with a quotation. As a child back in the synagogue school of Nazareth, he had learned the scriptures. He had stored them up in his heart, and so when the hour of temptation came, he knew what was right and what was wrong, and he drew strength from the word of God that was within him.
Jesus had said, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Friend, there is something in you that meat and potatoes cannot satisfy and will not nourish. You have to feed on the word of God or you will be a helpless weakling in the face of temptation. The word of God is a light in our path. It is a lamp unto our feet, but more than that, it is substance to our souls. The word of God gives us spiritual strength.
Prayer is another thing. Jesus was out there praying, and that prayer and communion with God strengthened him. Prayer is not a psychological exercise. It is a spiritual experience. If you don’t believe in the power of prayer, try it sometime. Then you will believe in it.
Being with filled with the Holy Spirit helped. The Bible says that Jesus was filled with and led by the Holy Ghost. Yield your life to God, and in that yielding, God strengthens and sustains you so that you do not have to yield to temptation. Knowledge of the Bible, prayer, and being filled with the Holy Spirit is what’s needed.
We can’t keep temptation from coming. It comes to all of us. It is not a sin for temptation to come. The sin is when we yield to that temptation. But understand this, it never comes from God. It always follows the same pattern and by his grace we can say “no” and we can live the kind of life God wants us to live.
In addition to teaching us something about temptation, this experience enabled Jesus to be our sympathetic high priest. When we struggle with temptation, the Lord Jesus sympathizes with us for he has been there—right where you are. He knows the pull. He knows the lure. He knows the temptation. He is able to strengthen and sustain us in that hour because he has been there. Thank God he won the victory, he went to the cross, and he became our Savior.