Sermon Tone Analysis

Overcoming Temptations

The three temptations by Satan in the wilderness were not the only temptations our Lord ever suffered on Earth.

We read in Luke 4:2 that He was tempted by the devil for forty days, but He was undoubtedly tempted at other times (Luke 4:13; Matthew 16:21–23; Luke 22:42), and yet in all this He was without sin or compromise.

How does the Lord deal with trails?

How do you deal with trails?

The three trails deal with three common ares we all struggle with

I The Leading into the Trail

For all trials and temptations there is a story ...

The hurts of a marriage

The loss of income’

The illness that is terminal

Here it was fasting in the Wilderness

Temptation is never as great as when one has made a public declaration of faith as did our Lord when He was baptized in the Jordan (Matthew 3:13–17).

Just after His ministry kicks off a trial comes .......

We believe God is sovereign and knows all and a trial is a time to trust Him!

Illustration - how many times after a victory does it all come upon you .....

2010 - great victory Lasko Foundation provided over 400K new addition .

How about you ?

The introduction, the first couple of verses, tells us a couple of very significant things.

1) First, that He was led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

This is the same Spirit that just descended on Jesus at His baptism.

Almost immediately this Spirit forces the temptation.

This has to be given some careful thought.

What it indicates is that it was the plan of God for Jesus to begin His ministry with this challenge--and that it was not the devil’s doing.

The devil could tempt Jesus with every power he had, but he would not succeed.

The temptation episode was God’s way of showing that Jesus was the perfect man, that He could resist sin, that he could defeat Satan.

Right off the bat this had to be proved.....

Right after salvation or some great spiritual victory the temptation comes

2) The second thing for us to consider here is the devil, Satan.

The Gospels do not shy away from affirming that there is a whole spiritual world around the physical world, filled with angelic beings, some of whom rebelled against God with their leader Satan and are therefore evil.

He was successful in getting Adam and Eve to sin and plunge the world into darkness; but he was not able here to defeat the Son of God.

3) Third, we are told that Jesus had been fasting for forty days and forty nights, and was hungry.

This hunger is where Satan first attacked ....

II The Lust of the Flesh

The first temptation concerns the lust of the flesh (Matthew 4:3–4).

Our Lord is hungry, and the devil tempts Him to convert stones into bread, but He replies with Scripture, quoting Deuteronomy 8:3.

The first temptation picks up immediately on the fact that Jesus was hungry, that he had not eaten for forty days.

The tempter said,

We give into the flesh because our flesh pushes us to disobey ....

Lack of discipline

You deserve it

No one should have to go through that

So and so does that and they are Christian

What does the Bible say?

“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

There is a fine point of grammar

Sentences that begin with “if” (called conditional sentences) have different meanings.

“If you are the Son of God,” he did not mean “If you are the Son of God [but you are not],” but rather he meant “since you are the Son of God.”

He knew who this was, and would build his temptation on it.

He was saying, “Look, you are divine!

Why should you be hungry?

Just change some stones to bread.”

Now then, we have to ask what was wrong with that.

Was there anything wrong with making something to eat?

He had the power to do it.

He multiplied food later for people who were hungry.

So why was this a temptation?

The answer, I think, is that Jesus had come out into the wilderness to fast for forty days.

That was a spiritual exercise that had a very important place in His life at the moment.

But the devil wanted to ruin the mission of Jesus, and so if he could convince Jesus on this seemingly trivial thing to abandon a spiritual work, then he would have had him.

The temptation was to turn His spiritual nature into a means of satisfying His material need without reference to finding the will of God.

In fact, he would be doing the will of the devil.

The devil simply chose a little thing for the test; but it would have destroyed the work of Christ.

The perfection of Jesus is displayed in His refusal.

Hunger was not wrong, especially in a spiritual time of fasting (fasting was designed to focus attention on the spiritual and away from the comforts of life).

And Jesus was announcing to Satan, and to all of us who will hear it, that it is better to be hungry than to be fed without any reference or recourse to the will of God.

Satan had hit the nail right on the head--Jesus is the Son of God.

But the essence of Sonship is obedience to the will of the Father.

He would not, therefore, act independently of the will of the Father.

Jesus knew that the Spirit had led Him into a place that necessitated hunger, and so He would fulfill that task.

In response Jesus quoted from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

If you go back and read Deuteronomy 8 you will see that the topic there is about the Israelites hungering in the wilderness for forty years.

God tested them in the wilderness so that they would learn that they must obey what comes from the mouth of God.

He gave them Manna; but to acquire it and enjoy it required that they follow God’s instructions carefully.

The main point was that if they obeyed the LORD He would provide their food.

And so it was more important to obey God than to have all the food they could eat (recall that Adam and Eve chose to eat rather than obey God’s word).

So Jesus saw through the clever little ploy of Satan.

He defeated the temptation by appealing to a clear principle of Scripture.

III Pride of Life

If God loved you then ????

Some will move without the first inkling of what church they will attend .....

Long beach CA, UAE etc ....

God loves us and I am sure we will find a church .....

Here the devil uses a verse of Scripture (Psalm 91:11–12), but the Lord replies again with Scripture to the contrary (Deuteronomy 6:16), stating that it is wrong for Him to abuse His own powers.

The second temptation concerns the pride of life (Matthew 4:5–7), and here the devil uses a verse of Scripture (Psalm 91:11–12), but the Lord replies again with Scripture to the contrary (Deuteronomy 6:16), stating that it is wrong for Him to abuse His own powers.

If the first test was in the realm of the physical, the second is a test of the spiritual.

In fact, the test strikes at the heart of the previous victory.

Jesus had escaped that temptation by showing that He was not just physical but spiritual, that He could accept the hunger and the weakness if it meant obeying God.

And so Satan wants Him to do something spectacular to demonstrate that He is spiritually perfect.

Satan was saying to Jesus, “Very well, you have shown your trust in God in response to my first appeal; so now show your trust in God by flinging yourself from the pinnacle of the temple.”

This, no doubt, was to be in full view of all the assembled people; they would witness that God was with Jesus in a very special way.

What is interesting now is that Satan himself quotes Scripture in making the appeal.

He quotes from a psalm that says that God will give the angels charge over him so that he will not dash his foot against a stone (Ps.

91:11,12).

The psalm is a psalm of trust, telling how God protects his people.

It was never intended to be claimed apart from practical wisdom.

God promises to protect His people; but He has also given them common sense.

At the outset one should consider the source: if the devil, or, more obviously for us, someone who has no inclination to obey Scripture, if such a person prompts you to do something that it looks like the Bible says you can do, you would be wise to think it through very carefully.

A lot of Scripture is quoted out of context, or partially, and needs to be investigated.

Jesus’ response is also from Scripture: “It is also written, ‘You shall not put the LORD your God to the test.”

This also comes from Deuteronomy, 6:16.