Sermon Tone Analysis

1st Sermon in “Peculiar People” Sunday School Class December 1, 2019

Fathom Boyd Kimes

Please turn with me to:

Matthew 4:1-11

This is the Word of God

1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

2 And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.

3 And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ”

5 Then the devil *took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple,

6 and *said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command His angels concerning You’;

and

‘On their hands they will bear You up,

So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’

”

7 Jesus said to him, “On the other hand, it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’

”

8 Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory;

9 and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me.”

10Then Jesus *said to him, “Go, Satan!

For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only.’

”

11Then the devil *left Him; and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.

Let us pray.........

Our Father..........

Before I get into the text, I’m like to give a quick introduction of the book and put our passage into context.

The Gospel of Matthew is largely considered to be written by the Apostle Matthew around 60 or 70 AD.

Matthew is considered one of the three synoptic Gospels, because of the similarity of the first 3 Gospels, that is Matthew , Mark and Luke.

Because of the format in which the book was written, Matthew’s account is the clearest of all four of the Gospels.

It has a huge link with the Old Testament.

The Gospel of Matthew quotes the Old Testament some 60 times.

Fourteen different prophecies pointing to Christ from the Old Testament are recorded in Matthew as being fulfilled by Christ.

Now, lets get into our text:

Chapter 4 begins with the word “then”....”THEN” Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

The word “Then” is an adverb that connects what is about to be said with what was just previously mentioned, so looking back at the end of chapter 3 we can see why this word “then” is placed here.

Starting with verse 13, we read:

13 Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan coming to John, to be baptized by him.

14 But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?”

15 But Jesus answering said to him, “Permit it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.”

Then he permitted Him.

16 After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on Him,

17 and behold, a voice out of the heavens said, “ This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

Isn’t this amazing?!

This was a beautiful moment between God the Father and His beloved Son.

The Father here proclaiming Jesus, this carpenter from Galilee, as His son, and then furthers His proclamation by saying of Him, “in whom I am well pleased.”

(Put this in own words) This makes me think of the many times that I have intimate fellowship with God, or times that I talk with someone about God, it seems right after to be followed by some kind of temptation.

Calvin Put it this way:

“When he was leading a private life at home, we do not read that he was tempted; but when he was about to discharge the office of Redeemer, he then entered the field in the name of his whole church.

But if Christ was tempted as the public representative of all believers, let us learn, that the temptations which befall us are not accidental, or regulated by the will of Satan, without God’s permission; but that the Spirit of God presides over our contests as an exercise of our faith.

This will aid us in cherishing the assured hope, that God, who is the supreme judge and disposer of the combat, will not be unmindful of us, but will fortify us against those distresses, which he sees that we are unable to meet.”

So we see here 1 way that the enemy likes to destroy our fellowship with God, by putting an end to it before it gets begins, or immediately after walking closely in obedience with God through a trying period, or after rejoicing with God because of a great victory He has accomplished in your life, the devil comes to snatch it away.

A second, is what we see in the following 2 verses, Starting at verse 2, “And after He (speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ) had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.

And the tempter came and said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.”

First notice, that Satan loves to find us when we are weak.

When we are in vulnerable circumstances, this is often a prime time for the enemy to come and sieze his opportunity to destroy us.

He uses this time to try and sew doubt into our minds, the doubt of, is God who he really says He is, and the doubt of, if we can truly trust Him at His Word.

You can see this by how he starts his conversation with the Lord.....He begins with the word “IF”, “IF” you are the son of God”.....

There are two important deceptions going on in the simple but cunning way the enemy speaks here.

First, he is questioning who Jesus is, trying to put doubt into the mind of our Lord, and doing so by trying to get Him to prove who He is by doing a miracle, of course, the first part of this temptation only works when we as believers are tempted by satan, there was never a doubt in Jesus mind who He was, nor could there have bee... Jesus knew this and satan knew this as well.

The second was, questioning who the Father is.

God has just literally said at the end of chapter 3, with a voice coming from out of the heavens, “this is My beloved Son”.

Now here we have the devil casting doubt that God is who He says He is, which is the Father of Jesus.

This seems to be a common thing that the enemy does even today, he loves to try and sew doubt about who WE ARE in Christ and sew doubt in our trust in WHO GOD is....If He is who He says He is, if His word is accurate and true, and if we can trust Him at His word.

In verse 4, Jesus responds, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ”.

Jesus here is rebuking the devil by quoting Deuteronomy 8:3.

But now, notice the difference in the way that Satan speaks with our Lord.... Previously, in verse 3, satan just point blank tells the Lord to prove that He is in fact the son of God, show me a sign, show me a miracle, and do it now, seems to be the way in which the devil was taunting the Lord Jesus.

But now look at verses 5 and 6, look at the approach, the subtle but crafty way he seeks to manipulate the Lord....... ”Then the devil *took Him into the holy city and had Him stand on the pinnacle of the temple,

and *said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down; for it is written,

‘He will command His angels concerning You’;

and

‘On their hands they will bear You up,

So that You will not strike Your foot against a stone.’

”

First, we must notice where this temptation is taking place....satan takes our Lord to the holy city, that is, Jerusalem, and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple.

Now, we don’t know exactly where the pinnacle of the temple was, but the most often place is said to have been in the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount.

This corner is where Solomon’s porch and the Royal Portico would have met and it overlooked the Kidron (Kid drone) Valley.

The height was anywhere between 450 and 700 feet from the ground.

Wherever the specific place was, the important fact is that Jesus was taken to where He would later proclaim during His ministry, as recorded in Matthew 21:13

“It is written, ‘aMy house shall be called a house of prayer’; but you are making it a robbers’ den.”

This is where satan took the Lord in order to rob Him of His trust in His Father, this is where he took Him in order to rob Him of His ministry, he took Him to His Father’s House, and it was here, at His Father’s house, where He tried to use Scripture, actual Scripture to bring Christ down.

The context in which satan speaks is incorrect.

He is using Scripture, but he is using it outside of the context of the rest of Scripture.

This is stunning to me!

I mean we know that the devil bends the Word of God, or gives half truths, such was the case in the Garden in Genesis chapter 3.

You can turn there with me if you would like....

But first, for context, ,lets take a look back in Genesis 2, where God is actually speaking.

Many of us are aware of these verses, as recorded in Genesis Chapter 2 verses 15 through 17

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

The Lord God commanded the man, saying, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely;

but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you will surely die.”

Now lets read what Satan says to Eve as he is “supposedly” quoting God’s word.

To do so, just skip accross the page to Genesis 3:1-5

 1.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, “Indeed, has God said, ‘You shall not eat from any tree of the garden’?”

2. The woman said to the serpent, “From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat;

but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die.’

”

The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die!

“For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

We can see here that the devil is clearly manipulating and currupting God’s words.

But this was not the case in Matthew.

In Matthew, he starts off by saying “it is written”.

Notice when he first spoke with the Lord Jesus in Matthew Chapter 4 verse 4, he did not say this, because He wasn’t quoting Scripture, but after Jesus rebukes him using the term “it is written”, followed by a quotation from the Word of God, the devil tries to reply in the same manner...

So he says in verse 6: