Sermons

If asked in mid-September of last year to project a year ahead – the state of the country – what would you have said? 

• I am convinced the most aggressive conspiracy theorist would not have predicted the dramatic shifts we have experienced in a year and the speed at which they have come.   
  • Modern media has imperceptibly become our second brain injecting liberal ideologies on an unimaginable scale.
  • I still remember something called the 6:00 news and “film at 11:00.”

 

• Opinionated people now make up anyone and everyone who wield wide platforms of influence.

November we have an election. 

• It has been said, one of the political parties is running on the platform of Romans 1!
  • A culture of perversion and lust.
  • Certainly, we are living in a culture of fear.

“So who is truly behind it all?” 

• I am certain of the source.
• It is Satan.
  • He is the ruler of the world (Jn 12:31; 14:30; 16:11).
  • The god of this age (2 Cor. 4:4).
  • The world lies in his power (1 John 5:19).

 

• America is under demonic influence.

 

• Daniel 10:13 identifies the source of the ancient world power, Persia as a demon called, Prince of Persia.

 

^ESV  Daniel 10:13 The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia

 

• The fruit of Satanic culture is one filled with anarchy and lawlessness.

The real battleground where Satan attacks are not within bullying crowds, riots, or fires.

• The battleground is in your mind, in your thinking.
• Satan is attempting to brainwash our country from Christ.
• With the same three basic temptations, he has always used.

^ESV  1 John 2:16 For all that is in the world–the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions–is not from the Father but is from the world.

• These three temptations sent by antichrists (cf. v. 18).
  • Antichrists in the “last hour” (v. 18) make three promises:
    • You can feel however you want,
    • You can do whatever you want,
    • You can have whatever you want.

 

• Three temptations of our culture:
  • Instant gratification,
  • Absolute freedom,
  • and Unlimited power.

 

• By the way, this is what drives the love of money.

 

• Same temptations Satan brought down Adam and Eve with – a perfect culture – Paradise lost.

 

• The same temptations succumbed to by Israel in the wilderness.
  • Doubting God’s provision.
  • Making a Golden Calf.
  • Bowing to their flesh.   

Satan is trying to take over our country including its churches with these same three temptations.

 

Jesus identified, exposed, and counter-attacked Satan’s assaults.

1. Instant gratification

Jesus was immediately led by the Spirit into the wilderness. 

• Mark’s account literally says, “The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness.”
  • The same Holy Spirit who descended upon Jesus like a dove “led” [cf. “drove”] into the wilderness.
  • Literally means “desolation” and isolation.

 

• A dramatic shift from the Father’s affirmation to being “hurtled out into the wild.”

Going to the wilderness was for Jesus’ preparation not as a retreat for solitude but testing and training for warfare. 

 “Wilderness” more a desert is an undisclosed barren location – anything but comfortable. 

• A place called Yeshimon is due west of the Dead Sea, south of Jerusalem called the devastation.

 

• Moses referred to this area of desert where Israel wandered.

^ESV  Deuteronomy 8:15 who led you through the great and terrifying wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water, who brought you water out of the flinty rock

 

• Jagged cliffs and 100-foot ravines with dangerous animals lurking everywhere – snakes, scorpions, mountain lions, panthers, and jackals.

 

• Jesus was walking prey.

 

“Why was this necessary?” 

 

• Jesus in this condition ties together with the Bible’s history of Moses and Elijah.
  • Moses given the 10 commandments (cf. Ex. 34:28).
  • Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal (cf. 1 Kg. 19:8).

 

• Jesus’ stripped down in abject vulnerability and dependence – answering the Law and the prophets.

 

• Lesser war preparing Jesus for the greater war, the Cross.

 

Jesus there for a specific purpose, “to be tempted by the devil.” 

• The word “tempted” is a curious word in that it carries two ideas.

 

• Translated “trial” and “temptation” like a chameleon’s skin, it blends into the color of what it aligns with.

According to James 1:1-12, when someone faces a trial God sends and you bear up under it, then this is like a “weight” meant to make you stronger. 

• However, when someone believes this same “trial” is a cause for sin – blaming God for what is happening and allows himself to rebel then this is now a “temptation.”

Everything turns on the fulcrum of the heart’s response! 

 

This clarifies a few things about Jesus’ situation. 

• First, the Holy Spirit was not leading Jesus into a situation so that he would sin.
  • God cannot tempt us to sin – his nature (holiness) renders this an impossibility (cf. Jas. 1:13-14).
  • The Holy Spirit did guide Jesus (guides every believer) into hard circumstances, to prove Him out!

So, when we pray, “Lead us not into temptation” we are not praying against the Holy Spirit to make our life easy but for our hearts not to turn God’s test into a spiraling temptation!

 

God will not put more on you then he puts in you to bear it up. 

• Second, if Jesus allowed a trial to become a temptation then he would be disqualified as God’s Son and our Savior!
  • Purpose to save halted.
  • Glory lost.
  • Enemy, exalted.

Jesus resisted the temptation to vindicate or prove his worth as Savior! 

• The only other man who faced Satan with no sin, like Christ, was Adam.
  • He fell and Paradise fell with him.
  • The second Adam came to make this right!
  • Paradise lost, now Paradise must be regained.

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry (v. 2). 

• The timing and conditions of Christ’s first temptation could not be more ferocious.
  • The text seems to understate how hungry Jesus was.
  • No one says trials would be easy! Severe!
  • If someone’s guard could be down, it was now.

The devil is called “the tempter” naming him for what he was there to do. 

• Satan goes for Jesus’ mind!
  • “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (v. 3).
  • There were loaf-like /sized stones – made out of limestone rock.

Here we have a Double Temptation. 

• Recognize Jesus is not in doubt about who he is!
  • The Father’s pronouncement at baptism was clear – he is the Son of God.
  • “If” here means “since” [3^rd class conditional] acknowledging Jesus as the “Son of God.”
    • He should exercise his right to instant gratification.
      • To selfishly use his powers and stop trusting God’s provision!

 

• Step outside of God’s Plan!

Jesus answered, “It is written” [gegraptai] quoting Deuteronomy 8:3. 

• “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (v. 4).

“What comes to mind when Christ is tempted?” 

• The story of Israel in the wilderness.
  • Jesus is in the same area they were, so this makes perfect sense.
  • They were 40 years and Jesus 40 days.
  • They wanted the instant gratification of Egypt’s food, not trusting God to provide.

Deuteronomy 8:2 is Moses’ summary:

^ESV  Deuteronomy 8:2 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.

 

• Before entering the Promised Land, Moses said, remember God led you for 40 years to test you!
• Jesus applied this to himself. “KEEP THIS A TEST, NOT A TEMPTATION!”  

 

How? 

 

^ESV  Deuteronomy 8:3 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 word¹ that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

• Jesus grabbed for the point of the text!
• God provides physical food and God keeps his “every word” or “every promise!”

Satan is trying to move Jesus out of a posture of dependence and humility. 

“You deserve this!”  “Bread is your divine right!” 

The sin would not have been Jesus performing a miracle (i.e. “water to wine”). 

• Proving he is who he said he was!
• The sin would be Jesus saying, I want this bread MY WAY!

“So how do you fight this kind of temptation?”

• Jesus did not fight Satan, he fought for Truth!

 

• Jesus would go into a logic debate with the devil like Eve did.

^ESV  Genesis 3:1-5 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. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

 

When attacked, do not enter into the fight. 

• Rather fight for Truth.
• Content earnestly for the faith.
• Fight the good fight of faith.

 

First tempted toward instant gratification, second tempted to exercise absolute freedom.

      

 2. Absolute freedom

The devil wastes no time moving into the second temptation. 

Luke’s account reverses these final two temptations but it does not matter. 

• The first temptation syncs up with “the lust of the flesh.”
• This second temptation syncs up with “the boastful pride of life.”

Somehow the devil transports Jesus to “the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple” (v. 5). 

• Satan is assumed to be a very powerful fallen.
  • I am not certain what powers Satan has to “take” Jesus anywhere.
  • In Job’s account, he says to the LORD – he was moving to and fro across the earth.

 

• Scripture does not say exactly how Satan literally tempts us.

 

• Ephesians 6 assures we wrestle not against flesh and blood but principalities.

 

• Satan is not omnipresent but he is a force to be reckoned with – in terms of his devils who terrorize us and whom we must resist!

Satan the adversary took Jesus to the most public precipice in Jerusalem.

• The Temple built on the top of Mount Zion.

The top of the mountain was leveled out into a plateau, and on that plateau, the whole area of the Temple buildings stood.  There was one corner at which Solomon’s porch and the Royal porch met, and at that corner there was a sheer drop of four hundred and fifty feet into the valley of the Kedron below.  Why should not Jesus stand on that pinnacle, and leap down, and land unharmed in the valley beneath?  Men would be startled into following a man who could do a thing like that. [Barclay]  

Josephus said the pinnacle of the temple was the southeast corner overlooking a massive retaining wall flowing deep into the Kedron Valley creating a dizzying 450-foot cavernous drop.

 

People have pretended to be Messiahs. 

• Theudas [Revolutionary against Jews / died A.D. 46] said, “With a word he would part the waters of Jordan.”

 

• Others promised to flatten the walls of Jerusalem (cf. Acts 21:38).

 

• Simon Magus claimed he would fly through the air and died trying – jumping off Temple!

 

• This is sensationalism!

 “Why wouldn’t Jesus show them all up?” 

• Many times in Jesus’ ministry, he held back!
  • When people seek miracles to prove God’s existence, they become addicts.
    • They keep looking for their next fix!
    • No sensation will satisfy!

Satan says exactly what those passing by Jesus while he was dying on the cross.  

^ESV  Matthew 27:40 and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.”

• Satan is crafty as this time he uses Scripture to provoke Jesus!
  • Jesus was using Scripture, so now Satan will use Scripture.
  • He quotes most of Psalm 91:11.

^ESV  Psalm 91:11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

• Satan conveniently leaves off “in all your ways” taking this out of the context of normal trials.
• Satan twists the meaning skipping to the next verse.

^ESV  Psalm 91:12 On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

“Jesus’ reply?”  “Does he take Satan head-on?” 

• Jesus does not take on Satan’s bad hermeneutics and inappropriate application.
  • He instead, discerns from Scripture what the temptation would be!
  • The sin that the devil wants him to fall prey to.

 

• He wants Jesus to trade trusting God for testing God.
  • Again, the sin was not Jesus doing something supernatural.
  • In God the Father’s timing, he walked on water.

Jesus’ self-emptying (cf. Phil. 2:7) was his laying aside of the independent exercise of his divine attributes. 

• Jesus’ humiliation and submission meant he was not acting independently!
  • Our country’s rioting culture is crying out for its autonomy!

 

• Organized anarchy is doing the same.
  • The irony is that lawlessness is manifest enslavement to sin and to Satan!
  • It is always that way!
  • People who rebel become co-dependent and miserable addicts.
  • Yielding to truth is what sets people free.

Jesus raises the same weapon we possess. 

• The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (cf. Eph. 6).

Alaskans appreciate their weapons.  Weapons are personal.  We do not presume to pick up or handle someone else’s firearm.  However, there is a particular weapon that we all own and must use!

^ESV  Deuteronomy 6:16 “You shall not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.

• This is Moses recounting what Israel did early in their journey, complaining “quarreling with Moses” – testing the LORD! Grumbling! 

 

• The immediate context of Deuteronomy 6:15 is why you do not “test” the LORD! God’s grace is real but the time of grace will run out to those who do not yield!  

^ESV  Deuteronomy 6:15 for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God–lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroys you from off the face of the earth.

Satan offered Jesus permission for instant gratification and absolute freedom. 

Lastly, he offers Jesus unlimited power. 

 3. Unlimited power

Once again, without hesitation “the devil [somehow] took him to a very high mountain” (v. 8). 

• This was an undisclosed mountain.
  • It was “high” to symbolize “high” power over “all the kingdoms of the world” (v. 8).

To see all the kingdoms they had to be supernaturally projected to Jesus. 

• Probably a vision.
• All of the empires.
• All of them throughout the ages?
• And their “glory!” (v. 8)

 

• Verse 9 sets the single condition to have it all now!
  • Satan is saying,
    • “you can have it now” –
    • “you can have it your way”
    • and “you can have it all.”

 

• Just yield.
• Submit to me not your Father. 

• The language is explicit, “fall down and worship me” (v. 9).

 

Romans 1 says our culture is to worship the creature instead of the Creator! 

What liberalism is attempting to push into office. 

What was being pushed on Eve back in Genesis 3.

^ESV  Genesis 3:5-6 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

 

Temptation is when someone believes God is holding out on you! 

 

• He does not want you to have what you deserve!
• This is the temptation for “the boastful pride of life!”

 

“Does Christ deserve unlimited power?” 

 

• In the sense that Jesus is God, he is the ruler of all the kingdoms of the world.
  • Did not Jesus already possess full power!
  • As the second person of the Trinity, he is willingly submissive to the Father.

 

• Psalm 2 affirms both truths about Jesus.

 

^ESV  Psalm 2:8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

 

Jesus always knew the cross was before the crown! 

 

• 1 Corinthians 15:22-28 tells us what must come first.
• God’s plan was always to crush sin and Satan at the cross before Jesus’ ultimate coronation and crown!

 

Still, Jesus does not take the bait and argue head-on with the devil. 

Instead, he says, “Be gone Satan!  For it is written…” (v. 10).

• How Jesus addressed Peter – when trying to deter him from the cross!

 

• Not whether Jesus deserves absolute power.

 

• Whether Jesus will yield to Satan or God.

Jesus answers what he will do with Scripture. 

• Jesus is not traveling all over the Bible to combat the devil.
• Quotes again from Deuteronomy 6.

^ESV  Deuteronomy 6:13 It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear.

^ESV  Matthew 4:10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, “‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”

 

Verse 11 summarizes everything in one final scene.

^ESV  Matthew 4:11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

• First, the “devil left” (cf. James 4:7).

^ESV  James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

• Second, “angels came” (v. 11).

On a human level, Christ was alone in utter desolation but we know he was never alone. 

• God immediately sent his angels to affirm and support his Son.

 

• Jesus had physical needs and these angels undoubtedly brought him food and water – as in other Old Testament accounts with prophets at the end of their trial.

 

Jesus passed the test because Satan’s temptations never became Jesus’ temptations. 

• These tests stayed tests!
• If Jesus had failed, he would have disqualified himself as Savior.

He was vindicated! 

• This victory was vindication and the first strike against Satan!
• Foreshadowing the cross!

You need to know Satan’s schemes are the same! 

• “You deserve what you want now!”

 

• “You deserve the freedom to do anything you want to!”

 

• “You should have whatever you want!”

 

These temptations are pervasive ideologies within our Country’s media – speculations raised up against God!

^ESV  2 Corinthians 10:5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ