Temptations and Trials

God doesn’t tempt, but he does test.

Matthew 4:1 “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”

On it’s face, without a careful reading, we can either miss the weight of verse 1 or get confused by it.

I come to Matthew 4:1 with questions.

“What do you mean the Holy Spirit lead Jesus into temptation?”

“Doesn’t Jesus teach us to pray “lead us not into temptation”?

So the first thing I want to do in these situations where there seems to be something a little weird is to go to the Greek.

I’m thinking maybe in the back of my mind that I’ll discover a tensing issue or an issue with the verb translation that doesn’t come across quite exactly right from Greek to English, and what I want to do in my flesh is bail out the Holy Spirit and make the text say something different than what it really says.

So here’s a little 2 minute Greek lesson this morning.

Jesus - nominative, which means he’s the subject of the sentence.

The very next word, “anechthe”

ἀνήχθη / ἀνάγω to lead up, bring up, was led up

Led up

The Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament 4

ἀνήχθη - to put out to sea, set sail. bring up, lead up

The word picture here is that Jesus is being pushed out to sea by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is doing the LEADING, the PUSHING

BUT

The deceiver, Satan, is the one doing the TEMPTING

He is led by the Spirit, tempted by the devil

You have to understand that distinction.

God will never tempt you. God can never tempt you. However, Satan wants your mind, he wants your soul. I said this last week, he wants to steal your joy, kill your hope, and destroy your future. He is constantly scheming trying to tempt and try you. He wants to see you stumble and fall. God has given you free will. We’re not robots. Temptation is real. The most pious of us, the most religious, the most holy, the ones who have molded and shaped for decades, some of you have been following Jesus longer than I have been alive. You are still prone to temptation.

You know how I know that?

Jesus was tempted. The Son of God in flesh experienced temptation right here in Matthew 4.

Temptation is inevitable in the fallen world we live in.

But take heart. Temptation isn’t sinful.

You know how I know that?

Jesus was tempted. The Son of God in flesh experienced temptation right here in Matthew 4.

Temptation is inevitable in the fallen world we live in, but you can overcome it. You want to know how?

Be led by the Spirit.

Set your ship out into the ocean and cast your sail towards heaven and catch the wind from Holy Spirit.

But hear this: If you’re not led by the Spirit you will be led by your temptations.

Thomas Watson in his meditation on the Lord’s Prayer was asking the question of what it means to pray, “Our Father in heaven.”

“As the Israelites had the cloud and pillar of fire to go before them, and be a guide to them, so God’s Spirit is a guide to go before us, and lead us into all truth, and counsel us in all our doubts, and influence us in all our actions. ‘Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel.’ Psa 73: 24. None can call God Father but such as have the conduct of the Spirit. Try then what spirit you are led by. Such as are led by a spirit of envy, lust, and avarice, are not led by the Spirit of God’”

Living in the leading of the Spirit is not easy. It’s not natural to our sinful flesh. It’s supernatural.

We have seen walking through the persecution narrative of Acts over the past several weeks how God takes what the enemy means for evil and uses it for good. We will discover the same theme in our text today.

In Matthew 4:1-11 we see the perfect example from our savior and Lord on how to handle temptation when it comes.

The Devil is a deceiver.

Temptation isn’t always the desire for something evil. There might be times when you’re tempted to murder. But sometimes we’re tempted for bread. There’s nothing wrong with bread. We’re actually told to pray for it. “Give us this day, our daily bread.”

I think the question of testing here comes down to motive. You can test the Spirit by asking yourself “Why do I want to do this?”

What would have been the motivation for Jesus to turn the stones to bread?

I think it’s two fold:

First of all he’s fasting.

Don Whitney defines fasting as, “A Christian’s voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purpose.”

Richard Forster defines it more broadly, “The voluntary denial of a normal function for the sake of intense spiritual activity.”

What is fasting at it’s core? It’s not about food or social media or caffeine. Fasting is about posturing yourself in a place of complete dependency on the sustenance of God. I love how the NTL translates Psalm 23:1 “The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need.”

For him to turn the stones into bread and eat would have been ending his fast on Satan’s terms instead of God’s terms.

Second of all Satan is foreshadowing the great tribulation of Jesus’s life, that people would not believe that he was the Son of God.

This little word “If” can get you in a lot of trouble. It leaves the statement open ended. It calls into question whether or not he really is who he claims to be.

Illustration: Is there anything you can do that you think is cool? Fortunately, I am a man with virtually no talent so I don’t really feel the need to brag a lot. But I’m looking out at a room of some sure enough talented folks.

Imagine if I said, I can play the piano really well. And I didn’t just say it, I spent all my time bragging about it. Everyone I spoke to I would just say, “I’m the best piano player around here.” People ask: “Well how good are you Will?” “I’ve been called the Beethoven of my generation by those who have heard me, That good!”

Then someone said, we’ll “IF” you can play the piano really well, then there’s a piano right there, play us a song. Now I’m in a predicament.

Put your money where your mouth is, put up or shut up. Right?

The analogy is funny because I can’t actually play the piano, but what if someone called into question something you actually did know or something you were actually good at?

Oh yeah? Prove it.

You’d be tempted to defend your honor. Or maybe you’d be tempted to show off.

Mohammad Ali: “I’m gonna show you how great I am.”

Matthew 4:3 “And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.””

Another 10 second Greek lesson. The word command here is an imperative, but the word become is subjunctive. Anyone can command a rock, only God can cause a rock to become bread. The ability to change the rock is what the devil calls into question, no the ability to speak to it.

You know that Jesus could have certainly turned the stones to bread if he wanted to. He created the rock. He could have commanded it to become bread, cry out in worship, or produce water.

But our Lord acts in humility, not pride.

He doesn’t have anything to prove. There’s no insecurity here. He knows who he is. He knows what his purpose is.

He quotes from Deuteronomy 8:1–6 ““The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give to your fathers. And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothing did not wear out on you and your foot did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the Lord your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him.”

In Jesus’s resistance of temptation we see that Jesus is the better Adam.

Adam is tempted by Satan with food, with the motivation of knowledge to be like God. He fails.

Jesus is tempted by Satan with food, with of showing he was like God. He passes the test.

In Jesus’s resistance of temptation we see so clearly in his quoting from Deuteronomy that He is the greater Israel, the chosen One of God.

They were led into the wilderness to be tested, were met with hunger, and they failed.

Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tested, was met with hunger, and passed the test.

God does not tempt us, but he uses the temptation from Satan to test and humble his people. May we be found faithful when temptation comes like our great example and Lord Jesus.

Fight temptation with the Word of God.

Jesus quotes Scripture to Satan. It is written. It is written. It is written. You see here Jesus establishing a pattern. When he is tempted, Jesus fights temptation with the word of God.

Psalm 119:11 “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.”

If you get hungry for a midnight snack, and you go into the pantry and there’s nothing there, that’s not doing you any good. You’ve got nothing stored up.

We’re called to store up the Word in our heart, so when we need it, we can pull from our reserves.

Catch this point though: The deceiver quotes Scripture back to him. And listen to this even further, he doesn’t misquote it either, he just takes it out of context and applies it inappropriately.

So it’s important not to just know what the Word says, but what the Word means, and what it doesn’t mean. What it’s always meant. How it’s always been understood by God’s gift of the church. A wise man warned a preacher one time, “If you come to the text searching for a novel thought, a new word, a fresh word, for your people, and you see something in the text that’s never been seen before in 2000+ years of church history, and you can’t find one single commentator who agrees with you or has thought that before. You’re probably not God’s gift to interperation, you’re probably just wrong.”

From the very first temptation in Genesis 3, until the temptation of Christ, Satan uses the tactic of distorting the Word of God.

Genesis 3:1–4 “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.”

So we see him outright denying that God said what he clearly said in Genesis 3, and we see him wrongly applying the things God did say in Psalm 91 to tempt Jesus to do something contrary to what the text really meant.

We see this happening in our culture today. There are people out there who are famous and have rapidly growing followings in areas of pop-culture and politics because they will stand up and say: “God never said X, Y, or Z. What he really said was not what has been believed he said for 2,000 years.” Hog wash. The Bible means now what it did when it was written down.

The same people will weaponize texts like:

1 John 4:8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

Matthew 7:1 ““Judge not, that you be not judged.”

And say if you call sin, sin you’re being “hateful” and God would love not hate. OR if you call sin, sin you’re being “judgmental” and don’t judge or you’ll be judged.

Guys I know Genesis 3 says he’s crafty, but he’s really not that smart. He’s been using the same tactic for thousands of years to try and confuse or deceive God’s people. Don’t fall for his lies.

Stand on the truth of God’s word.

Matthew 7:16 “You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?”

1 John 4:1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.”

Know the context, understand the meaning, clap back at Satan with Scripture.

Sometimes the answers in life aren’t obvious. “There’s a way that seems right to a man that ends in destruction.”

We live in a world that is constantly working to make everything as easy and convenient as possible.

This is my final point this morning and in closing I want you to know, that easier doesn’t always mean better.

Easier doesn’t always mean better.

Jesus could have bowed here and been given the Kingdoms of the world.

The nations are his to take. Why not go ahead and take them? Satan is proposing a much easier path.

Instead, Jesus is exalted king of the universe by humbling himself to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Bowing to Satan on that mountain would have been much easier than hitting his knees in the garden, sweating blood, and praying, “not my will but your will be done.”

We don’t believe in cheap grace.

It cost Jesus his life.

He was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin, and he was found a worthy sacrifice to go to calvary’s cross on our behalf.

It was our sin that put him there. It should have been us who died. But he went to the cross on our behalf, suffered in our place, took the sword of judgment, and rose victorious over the grave.

His perfect humility, his perfect obedience, his perfect submission to the will of the Father saw him high and lifted up shining in the light of his glory. The exalted King of the nations.

We can come to him with all of our mess, all of our sin, all of our shortcomings, all of our temptations, because he knows our frame. He remembers we are dust. He knows what it’s like to experience what we have, so he empathizes with us in our weakness.

Come to him today. He not only understands what you’re going through, he understands better than anyone how to escape it. He is your perfect example to follow.

Will it be easy? No, but it’s simple.

Believe in Jesus and repent of your sins and allow the Spirit of God to lead you on life’s journey onward.

Living in the leading of the Spirit is not easy. It’s not natural to our sinful flesh. It’s supernatural.

We have seen walking through the persecution narrative of Acts over the past several weeks how God takes what the enemy means for evil and uses it for good.

He’ll take your mess and use it for his message, to reach a lost and dying world who desperately need to know the peace, hope, and love of Jesus Christ.