P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

VICTORY OVER TEMPTATION

Yes, you’re right, Connie. The It is Written telecast, still continues since your beloved father’s death, and the title of the telecast he founded contains the secret we’re searching for today.

This week we’ve been exploring Matthew’s royal Jesus. One of His many names is “lion of the tribe of Judah.” The lion is the king of the forest and Jesus is the King of the Universe. And to illustrate the majesty of Jesus described by Matthew, we’ve been exploring the three great temptations. Today we pick up where we left off yesterday, to explore the three specific temptations and what each means to us in our struggle with temptations. For above all we all want to exclaim with the apostle Paul,

But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).

It took enormous power for Jesus to overcome Satan’s three cunningly devised temptations. And the victory gained in the desert by our starving Lord, is all the more powerful when we see how Satan was able to create a series of temptations that encompassed the whole spectrum of life’s temptations. It reminds me of the words of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (NIV):

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless.

There’s a clear inference that this expression, “body soul and spirit,” encompasses our entire human existence. And when Satan tempted Jesus in body, soul and spirit, Jesus was the victor. Satan comes to us in the same three arenas, seeking dominion over my “body, soul, and spirit,” and yours too.

In Satan’s initial temptation, he comes with a temptation based on the needs and desires of the physical body. Very shrewd! This kind of a temptation worked successfully in Eden, with God’s created son and daughter, Adam and Eve. Maybe he could make it work in the Judean wilderness with Creator God.

Both then and now, stones litter the landscape. It didn’t take much imagination to see them in the shape of bread rolls! “Make bread,” Satan says. “You’re starving!”

Now think for a moment of what an easy thing that would have been for Jesus to do. Jesus later showed how easy, when He fed 5000 people with five small bread rolls, made by a Jewish mother, which she gave to her boy so he wouldn’t be hungry while away for the day.

And in the grand scheme of life, this was a most important thing to do! Jesus is starving, wasting away, before He preaches a sermon or gives a Bible study on the Messianic prophecies. The plan of salvation seems to be at risk here! So why not make and eat bread?

And it would be a divine act, for only God could perform such a miracle. It would have demonstrated the deity of Jesus.

But by resisting this temptation, Jesus illustrates a truth we may not want to hear! Some of the things we desire, and the material pursuits that pander to those cravings, may be quite lawful in themselves, but they can become unlawful by circumstances. And it’s for us to decide when that’s the case. That could be our greatest temptation!

And how did Jesus overcome this temptation? He replied:

“It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4, NIV).

Jesus quoted the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy. He found strength and victory because he’d enshrined in His mind the words of the Bible. That was the key to His victory! It is the key to our victory over temptation as well.

In the second temptation, Jesus and Satan met for a verbal dual at the sacred temple in Jerusalem. I imagine them climbing the interior steps together, up to some observation tower, and then to a narrow ledge the builders has used to complete the topmost part of the roof. And there, “the fallen angel” showed himself also to be a master of Scripture. Satan knows the Bible by heart too. He can quote all the verses—but out of context, so they appear to say things they were never intended to say or mean.

Just listen to the devil, the one who had slithered so successfully as a snake in the Garden of Eden. Looking down from this great height, they could see the crowds milling in the courtyards below, bringing animal and bird offerings for their sins. The people in the courtyards looked so small from way up there. And Satan suggests that this could be a spectacular beginning to Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus should jump! The crowds would see someone in free fall. But then as the Scripture says, the soft wings of angels would come and surround Him, and gently lower Him into the center of a cheering crowd. What a spectacular beginning to a public ministry. It would be a publicist’s dream come true! Here are Satan’s words:

“If you are the Son of God," he said, "throw yourself down. For it is written: " 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.' " Jesus answered him, "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test' (Matthew 4:6, 7).

This is Satan’s temptation to the mind, or soul, of Jesus. First it was the body of Jesus, now the mind. Satan was appealing to the decision-making entity of Jesus. In our minds we think about our options, decide what we will do. And often, rather than being rational, we rationalize our way into making decisions that meet our wants, but disregard God’s will.

In this case, Satan was trying to play with Jesus’ mind, but using flawed logic. He misquoted and misinterpreted Scripture. The important little words, “to keep thee in all thy ways” were dropped. Satan just hit the delete key on that phrase on his way up the temple tower.

Which brings us to the third temptation. Matthew says,

“The devil takes him to an exceedingly high mountain” (Matthew 4:8, NIV).

He takes him to the top of a kind of Everest on a fine day. There’s nothing in all Palestine that remotely fits this description. But they went somewhere high enough to take in a sweeping gaze of the world. Jesus looked, as Satan pointed them out. Every world power and influence, every civilization, some infant some fully formed. Every great leader and general, and the population of the world were all under “his” control—to a significant degree. How proud Satan was of “his” world! Or so he claimed it.

Then this third temptation. Satan suggests that he’ll give it all back to Jesus! Satan had stolen it! He claims these are all his people now—
not the Lord’s. His nations—not the Lord’s. His world—not the Lord’s.

So Satan offers a deal, just one small act of worship and the battle between them would be over. Jesus would be free, Satan suggests, to go back to His Father in Heaven, back immediately to His rightful throne! Thus spoke the angel that wanted to be God!

In this third temptation, there’s a replay of the original rebellion in heaven. The Day Star stole the affections of some of the heaven’s choir members. He turned them against God based on questions about God’s love. In some inexplicable way, it worked then, maybe it would work now.

So this was Satan’s final try. If this failed, there was nothing else to try. For this temptation fills in the last of the three “universal” domains in which Satan can bring his temptations against us: body mind, and heart. Listen to the insinuated question. Can you trust God’s love? Well, some angels questioned that in heaven millennia earlier, but how could you question it, when you’re side by side with God’s son Who has emptied himself of heaven’s glory and taken on human flesh bearing the evidence of thousands of years of degeneration and decline. What limitless love He has shown!

Then with the Words of Scripture, the “Son” of David felled the satanic Goliath in front of Him. He said,

“It is written, ‘Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve’” (Matthew 4:10).

And with those words ringing in his ears, Satan slinks away in defeat. The universal temptations of that day are over. There had been no response in body, mind, or heart. Jesus achieved complete victory, through the Word of God He had stored in His heart from His youth up. And so can we.