Tempted -- Matthew 4

We began our series on Matthew's gospel last week and we saw that Matthew in the opening chapters, was setting the scene for the coming of Jesus, as the promised King and Messiah.  
John the Baptist was preaching about the soon arrival of his Kingdom. And the people were really excited about his message because they have been waiting for hundreds of years for the coming of their own King, who they believed will rescue them from the hands of their  enemies and conquerors. 

John's message to them was Yes, the King is coming soon, but you are not ready.  To be ready for your King, you must:  Repent, change your ways. We looked at the meaning of repentance, and realized that it is more than being sorry for our sins, but it must involve  a change of direction in our lives, a turning around that would place God at the centre of our lives, rather than ourselves. 

For this reason, John had some really severe words to say to the religious groups who also came to him for baptism: the Pharisees and Sadducees.   He rebuked them for having just an outward show of piety without an inward change of heart.  For all their outward show, there were no real actions that proves that they were really sorry for what they have done. 

Finally, along with hundreds of others, Jesus himself also came to John for baptism.

There was no fanfare, red carpets, or any fuss,  Jesus simply lined up with everyone to be baptised by John.   This really took John by surprise, but such is the humility of Jesus, as the Servant King

Even as Jesus was baptised, and came up out of the water, the scriptures said :the heaven opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.  

The Spirit of God came down like a  Dove and rested on Jesus.  What is the significance of that ? Well a Dove nearly always represents gentleness and meekness. 

While the Spirit of God comes to empower Jesus for his future, he also comes to represent the kind of power that Jesus is to exercise in serving the world.  Not the power to dominate or to manipulate, the power to crush and make people to submit to you against their will. But the power to set people free, to heal, to encourage, to love and to serve.   No wonder that was the picture God gave about his Son, in Isaiah 42 :

Here is my servant, whom I uphold.  My chosen one in whom I delight.  I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.  He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets.  A bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out….."

May we too learn from Jesus and be the same kind of servant leader that he was
God the Father himself spoke from heaven acknowledging his love for his Son.   This is my Son, my beloved……I am well pleased with him……  God put as it were his stamp of approval on Jesus right at the beginning of his ministry.   Well done my beloved Son, I am delighted with you.  Those words must have encouraged Jesus throughout his future ministry and boosted his spirit when at time he must have felt a little discouraged.  

You might say : well won't it be nice, if God said that the same to me when I am really discouraged ?  when I feel I am useless and worthless ?  

But the amazing thing is that God is saying the same to each of us, as his Sons and daughters.  If our ears are open today, we would hear God speaking our name : saying : Cathie, John, Robert, Jennifer :  You are my beloved Son, my daughter I love you very much.   My love for you is without conditions, without strings attached. It does not depend on how well you perform, how you feel, what you have done or have not done.   I have loved you well before you knew me because I have loved you with an everlasting love.   Come and receive my love. 

How do we know that ?   I think John 3:16 said it all :    God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  How much love…. Enough for him to give up his own Son !  the most precious one to God in the whole universe…. If God loved you enough to send Jesus to die for you, then you must be worth a huge amount to him….

Matt. 4 :   The temptations
After Jesus' baptism and the public proclamation of the Father's love for his Son, we would have expected Jesus to launch straight into his ministry.   But no.  The scriptures said that the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the desert to be tempted by the devil.

What then is temptation ?   Why did Jesus have to be sent to the desert to get tempted ?  

Well temptation is a choice :  Satan offers us something that seems to be attractive, Something that is attractive on the surface but which will lead us into sin and rebellion against God in the long run if we choose to do what he tells us to do.  Satan often makes use of the vulnerable areas in our lives, and in temptations tries to lead us astray.   

As James has said : "each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed "   James 1:14

We sometimes use the term loosely to indicate a choice which panders to our weakness : I was tempted to have another serve of the ice cream even though I am already overweight. Well obviously eating ice cream was no sin, but we do pay the penalty for it in some other ways.   

But Satan certainly knows where our weaknesses are, and his offers often target to an area of our life that may not be particularly strong. 

That's all very well, but why did Jesus have to go through temptations ?  seeing there is no sin or weakness in him ?

This is  not an easy questions to answer and theologian for past many centuries have debated over

it many times over. We could answer the question by asking you another question:  Why did Jesus have to be baptised by John ?  He had no sin to repent of .

As the second Adam Jesus had to take our place in a baptism of repentance in order that he could identify with us and later on stand in our place and pay for our sins on the cross.   for, So in the same way, God has allowed him to be tempted in order that he could win a victory for us that our first Adam has lost.  And this has given us hope !

Hebrews 4: 15      For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin.   Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

1 Cor. 10: 13    No temptation has seized you except what is common to man, And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.  

He went through all our trials and temptations in order that he could in future not only understand our difficulties but also to provide a way of escape for us.

Temptation I    : The Desire for Satisfaction

When Jesus had fasted for 40 days and was hungry, the devil said to him If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread ….. This is not a new temptation.  

Thousands of years before that,  Satan in the form of a serpent came to Eve

 Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?

Eat that fruit, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.   It is so delicious, besides you would become wise --- your eyes open – you will be like God, knowing good and evil. God is really keeping something good from you. 

Eve fell to the seductive suggestion of the serpent – maybe she was really missing out on something;  maybe there was something between God and Adam that she did not know about, and they were hiding things from her.  Maybe the serpent was right.  What is the harm.  So she took the fruit and ate it. And later gave it to Adam as well.  

But of course it is a lie and a counterfeit :

All along God was not depriving her of anything that was good for her, nor did he want her to miss out on being like Him…. In fact he has made us initially for exactly the purpose, he has made us to be like Him – to love, to create, to understand, to share in his life and power and wisdom and glory – in fact God wants us to have the best he could ever give us. 
But Satan, as always has tried to misrepresent God and poison the minds of God's children.   Just as he has rebelled against God, he has initiated a similar rebellion in Eve and Adam.  

 Before Jesus could begin his ministry, as the second Adam,  he needs to confront the devil in the very areas that the first Adam has failed.  The devil started the temptation exactly as he did to Eve, working on his appetite…. You are hungry….so what's wrong in using your power to satisfy your own hunger – after all food is perfectly legitimate when you are hungry !  And if you are the son of God, then prove that you can do it ?  change these stones into bread. 

So like the temptation of Eve,  he not only made use of our appetite but also creates doubts in our minds about God….. If you are the Son of God….. Did not God already said that at his baptism ?  
don't wait for God, God has probably forgotten about you, you must do your own thing – see you have got the power – try it out – don't wait.   

But stones are a very poor substitute for real food. 
And they  do not really satisfy….By trying to put things into our own hands, by trying to manipulate the situation for our own need, we miss out on God's best.   And that is exactly what Jesus said in reply :  Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God….. 
Maybe I could paraphrase that :     
Food is not the only thing that will make us satisfied….. Our relationship with God, and our desire to hear him and to speak to him – that will satisfy… Sure, I am hungry now, but that hunger is nothing compared with my hunger for God…..   By doing things for myself rather than waiting for God will damage that relationship, and in turn will make me miserable and unsatisfied.
   
One of the most amazing phenomena in the animal kingdom is the ability of animals to find their

way home:  we call that  the homing instinct.    Cats and dogs find their way home across miles and miles of unknown country.   Pigeons fly direct to their homes after being taken hundreds of miles from their lofts.  Swallows and other birds take a confident journey between destinations which are thousands of miles apart.  Salmon return to spawn in the rivers of their birth.   But even more wonderful is that deep in the heart of every human being, too is a homing instinct – a longing for God.  
"I spread out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Ps. 143:6. 
It is an ache and almost a pain which cannot be relieved until a person finds his longing being met as he comes to experience God as his heavenly Father.  
Ps. 42:1     As the deer pants for stream of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. 

The temptation from the devil is to stifle such longings with substitutes:  stones instead of bread, material instead of spiritual, the temporal instead of the eternal, physical pleasures instead of the Living God…..

We face these kinds of  temptations everyday….. in our desires and our appetites and in our relationships.   Everyday we are bombarded with advertisements to buy this and buy that. In our hearts we have this strange urge to possess things.  O I Want That  -- I have always wanted that – regardless of whether I really need it or whether I can afford it  -- or whether it is the proper way of using the money that God has entrusted to me.  And whatever I want, I want it now !  Ever had that feeling ? By the way,  I have discovered a way of countering those tempting advertisement that talk about 50% off or saving a ridiculous no. of percentage over  certain commodities……   My response to those is simple :  I can do better than that : if I do not buy it then I save 100%.   No shop can ever beat that !  (if they do, they will have to pay me to take their goods).  

But the desire to possess things can easily extend to our desire for relationship.

God is a God of relationship, a God of love who desires relationship with us and he created us to enjoy relationship with him and with one another.   But sometimes we confuse that desire for relationship with our desire to possess…. We became angry – we become jealous – we become impatient in our relationship with people we would like to love and be loved…..but relationship takes time, and love needs to be cultivated and nurtured and nourished.  

I can always remember a cartoon with a little fellow carrying a placard "Love ….or Else"

And so we manipulate people to gain what we want, and sometimes we confuse love with desires, sex instead of relationship, lust instead of love…..and in our haste we turn stones into bread….. and we wonder why we are left unsatisfied, and in the process causing repairable  damage and hurt and pain.   Listen to the voice of Jesus :  Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God……

And if we have yielded to temptation at this point, let us not despair, let us turn to Jesus : let us hear his voice : let  us experience his love …. His deep, intense, everlasting, unchanging and unconditional love…. Let him and his word satisfy you, let him come into your life and bring his balm of healing….. Hand over those stones – they can't satisfy -  let him replace it with his own bread……I am the bread of life…..he who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty…… John 6:35

Jesus has won the first round with the devil, resisting him with the Word of God and his obedience to the Father, rather than the urge of his desires…….

Temptation 2.   The Desire for Recognition

But the second temptation is a little more subtle:  here the devil in a vision took him up to Jerusalem ; right into the middle of the temple and standing high up at the highest point of the temple where he could see the milling throng of priests, Levites , teachers of the law, as well as worshippers.   He could see the sacrifices being offered on the altar, the incense that ascended  with a fragrant flavour, a place of worship, of teaching, a place he has frequented when he was younger coming up with his family to worship.   Now, the devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, jump, and God will send his angels to catch you.   Look here is a chance to begin your ministry with a definite headline on the local news.    Imagine what the daily news would say tomorrow: man jumped down from the pinnacle of temple without being hurt….  A sort of bungi jump without the cord.  We saw angels supporting him in mid air !   surely, this must be the Son of God….

why, you have nothing to fear, because doesn't the Bible also promise you that His angels will carry you in their arms so that you will not dash yourself against the stones…….. Imagine you have instant audience and you have instant proof that you are what you claimed you are……the Son of God.   Did not your Father say to you when you have been baptised that you are his beloved Son…. Surely you will not come to any harm in the process…..

Once again it is a case of being tempted to take short cuts…….. a case of drawing cheap attention to ourselves of what one can do without paying the price of servant hood…trying build a reputation for ourselves in a cheap and hopefully painless way.  

Jesus resisted the temptation and quoted again the words of scriptures : Do not put the Lord your God to the test…….   It is not right to gamble on the fact that God will save you in a sticky situation if you deliberately put yourself in danger; especially with the motivation of gaining cheap publicity.  

Temptation 3 :  The Desire for Power

Again, in a vision, the devil took Jesus up to a very high mountain, and showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour.   All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me"  the devil said to him.  How could the devil offer Jesus the world ?   Does he own the world ?  In a sense he does.   1 John 5:19   has a startling revelation :  " We know that we are the children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one".   In another passage we are told that Satan is the prince of this world…..John 12:31   
Yes, the world that does not know God, and are in rebellion against God is under the control of the Evil One.  Every person who does not know and serve Jesus is under the control of Satan, whether they know it or not and whether they liked it or not. But  Jesus has come to set his people free from the control of the evil one.   The only way he could accomplish this is by paying for the price of sin and rebellion – by dying on the cross.

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.   You have made them to be a kingdom and priest to serve our God and they will reign on the earth.   

Rev. 5 : 9

The temptation is to avoid the cross :  look don't take the difficult path.  Why do you need to die a painful and agonising death.  Take the easy way out.   You can win the world by worshipping me !  

This of course is a blatant lie. As soon as Jesus worships Satan, he too will be under the control of Satan, he too will be included in the world to be set free. No longer will he will able to save the world even though the world is offered to him. Like the two previous temptations, Satan is offering the counterfeit,  the easy path, don't be foolish, save yourself, make life easy for yourself, what does it matter what God thinks or what God wants, you look after number one. 

Quick as a flash Jesus replied:  Away from me Satan (the adversary, the accuser),  For it is written: worship the Lord your God and serve him only.  Deut. 6:13

How do we overcome temptations ? 

a.   Recognising the counterfeits …… 

Satan cannot create; he imitates : he gives you what is only the second and third best and these often come with a sting on its tails.    Learn to recognise what God has provided for you in Christ.  Embrace the real thing.  Know our real inheritance in Christ – the richness of God's provisions in every area of our life – whether it is physical, emotional, relational and spiritual.   Avoid the stones, the avoid the counterfeits, avoid the short cuts and soft options.  Story of man in charge of forged notes :  study the real thing very carefully……  This is exactly what Jesus did. 

How did Jesus overcome the temptations ? 
He knew and trust his Father.  He did not allow doubt to creep into his relationship with his Father.  He knew God's word, the scriptures, he knew the heart of God and he is not being deceived by the devil even he quoted scriptures at him.  
Psalm 119 : 9,10,11.  How can a young man keep his way pure ?   By living according to your Word  ..I seek you with all my heart do not let me stray from your commands.      I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.