Question Marks or Periods?
Notes
Transcript
NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
I’m going to begin this morning with a poll. I’m going to ask a very important question that is really at the heart of the passage we’re going to look at this morning:
Could Jesus have sinned?
There are two options here - yes or no.
How many of you think that yes, Jesus could have sinned? Go ahead and raise your hands.
OK, now how many of you think that He could not have sinned. Again, a show of hands.
I appreciate the boldness of all of you who voted. How many of you didn’t vote either way? And how many of you voted both yes and no? Actually that is the only group that got the right answer because the correct answer is “yes and no”. Let me explain.
Here are four things we know about Jesus:
Jesus was fully man (John 1:14)
Jesus was tempted (Hebrews 4:15)
Jesus was fully God (John 1:1)
God cannot be tempted (James 1:13)
As a man Jesus certainly could be, and was, tempted. And therefore, He could have sinned. But as God, He could not be tempted. And therefore, He could not have sinned. So the answer is “yes” and “no”.
This is one of those wonderful mysteries that we just have to accept by faith even though our finite human minds can’t fully comprehend it.
Tension
This morning, we’re going to read an account that is probably familiar to many of you - the account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. And the reason that I began with the question I did this morning is that if it was not possible for Jesus to be tempted and sin, then there is really nothing that we can learn from that passage about how to deal with the temptations that we face in life. And frankly, I think that would be a shame.
But because Jesus could have sinned, then we can learn much about how to deal with temptation in our lives by observing how Jesus faced the temptations from Satan.
Truth
So with that in mind, go ahead and follow along as I read our passage:
1 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
2 And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
3 And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
4 But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”
5 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him 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, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ”
7 Jesus said to him, “Again 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 I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
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.’ ”
11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
Because it is such an important concept, let me remind you again that if it was not possible for Jesus to sin, then there probably isn’t a whole lot we can learn about this passage about how to deal with our own temptations. But because, in his humanity, it was possible for Jesus to give into temptation, then the way He deals with the temptations presented to Him by Satan is quite instructive for us.
Before we take at look at each of the three temptations, I want to step back for a moment and take a look at the big picture here. And as we do that, I want to enlist your help in identifying the main tool that Jesus uses to combat temptation in this passage.
That’s right - the Word of God, the Scriptures, the Bible. But I think there is something more going on here that’s even deeper. After all, in this passage, we also see that Satan uses Scripture, too. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is likely that Satan knows Scripture better than you do.
Reading, studying, and memorizing the Bible is absolutely crucial if we’re going to be effective in overcoming temptation in our lives. But we need to be doing that with the proper focus and motivation. The way that Jesus deals with Satan’s temptations here reveals this principle that we’ll develop this morning:
Don’t let Satan put question marks in your life where God has put periods.
Don’t let Satan put question marks in your life where God has put periods.
Remember the context here. As we saw last week, Jesus had just been baptized and God had proclaimed’ “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” That’s the period. But what does Satan do? He tries to get Jesus to question what God said. In both of the first two temptations, Satan asks, “If you are the Son of God…?” Now Satan knows that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. In the underlying Greek, the question doesn’t convey doubt. It could accurately be translated “Since you are the Son of God...” But with each of the three temptations Satan is trying to get Jesus to question that fact.
There are certainly some parallels here to the way that Satan tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden.
1 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’?”
Here, just as he does with Jesus, Satan is trying to get Adam and Eve to question something God had said. So he does what he often does and twists what God had said just a little in order to deceive. God had not said that they could not eat of any tree in the garden. In fact, He had given them permission to eat of all but one specific tree. Satan is subtly trying to get Adam and Eve to think that God is withholding something good from them, that He really doesn’t have their best interests at heart. “If God really loved you why wouldn’t He let you eat from that tree. After all doesn’t it look better than all those other trees?”
Satan does something very similar with Jesus. In just a moment we’re going to look at each of the three temptations and see what we can learn about how Satan tries to tempt us. And then we’ll look at the response of Jesus to see what we can learn about how to counter and overcome those temptations. As we do that, go ahead and keep in mind our main idea:
Don’t let Satan put question marks in your life where God has put periods.
Don’t let Satan put question marks in your life where God has put periods.
As I pointed out earlier, Jesus confronted each temptation by quoting Scripture. But He was doing more than just randomly quoting Bible passages He knew. He was using specific passages that reinforced the truths He knew about His Father. And that kept Him from being sucked in by Satan’s attempts to get Him to question what God had said earlier at His baptism.
Application
So how do we do that? Obviously, we’re not Jesus so we won’t do it perfectly, but I think there are some things that we can learn from Jesus that will really help when we face temptation. Obviously we need to know the Bible, but there are three specific things we need to know from the Bible that will help us overcome temptation:
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST TURNING PERIODS INTO QUESTION MARKS
HOW TO GUARD AGAINST TURNING PERIODS INTO QUESTION MARKS
Know myself
Know myself
The first thing I need to understand about myself is that, unlike Jesus, I am not capable of overcoming temptation perfectly and I’m certainly incapable of doing that in my own power. Knowing that is the first step to overcoming the temptations that come into my life.
James gives us some really important insight into how temptation operates:
14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.
What James is telling us hear is that we are tempted when desire and opportunity meet. We all have God-given desires that are not in themselves a temptation. Jesus had a desire to eat, but until Satan came along and gave Him an opportunity to satisfy that desire in the wrong way, there really wasn’t any temptation.
Conversely, an opportunity to sin doesn’t become a temptation unless it is accompanied by a desire that leads us to give in to that opportunity. That is why something that might be a temptation for me might not be one for you at all - and vice versa. We all are prone to being tripped up by different desires.
In practical terms, that means that if I have some desire that might lead me into temptation and sin, I need to do whatever is necessary to remove or avoid the opportunity. That might mean making sure that the computer screens in my workplace and in my home are visible to others at all times. It might mean taking a different route to and from work. Maybe it means you have to make sure your doctor is watching you during the refreshment time after church. For me one practical way that I’ve done this in my life is to employ the “Billy Graham Rule” and never spend time alone with any woman other than Mary.
But no matter how hard I work to minimize opportunities to sin, they are still going to come up in my life. And that is when it is really important that I have developed desires that are consistent with God’s desires. That is something that takes time and work on my part. And that’s where the Bible is indispensible. I don’t have time this morning to go into a lot of detail here, but this is where it would be really helpful to memorize some verses that deal with the desires that I know are most likely to trip me up.
Know my enemy
Know my enemy
Jesus was able to overcome the temptations of Satan at least in part because He understood how Satan operates. In this passage there are two things that provide us with a lot of insight into how Satan works in our lives:
Three names:
“the devil” (vs. 1, 5, 8, 11)
The underlying Greek word is “diabolos” from which we get our English word “diabolical”. It is a compound word that literally means “to cast or throw through” and was used to describe someone who slandered or made false accusations.
One of the tools that Satan will use against us is to make accusations about us before God. But if we have put our faith in Jesus, when Satan makes those accusations, God sees the righteousness of Jesus and not our sin.
“the tempter” (v. 3)
This is actually a present tense participle which literally means “ the always tempting one”. So just as Satan was persistent in trying to tempt Jesus here, we can know he is going to do the same in the lives of those who belong to Jesus.
Satan (v. 10)
This is the transliteration of the Hebrew word that means “adversary”. Peter gives us a clear picture of this aspect of Satan:
8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
Taken together these three names reveal that Satan is a powerful adversary. So we shouldn’t ignore or discount the harm he can cause in our life. But we shouldn’t fear him either, because he can only operate to the extent that God allows and besides Jesus already defeated him on the cross.
Three temptations
Although Satan won’t obviously attack us exactly the way he attacked Jesus, the three temptations Jesus faced are representative of the kinds of attacks we can expect:
Self gratification
There was nothing wrong with Jesus being hungry and desiring to eat. But the temptation that Satan presented was to try to get Jesus to satisfy that desire in a way that was contrary to God’s purposes, plans and ways. He is essentially saying to Jesus, “If you really are the Son of God and your Father really loved you, He certainly wouldn’t let you get hungry like this. So just go ahead and create your own food. God surely wouldn’t mind.”
That is probably the most common way Satan tempts us. He tries to take a God-given desire and get us to fulfill that desire in a way that is contrary to God’s will.
I think we most often see this played out in our culture today when it come to sexual temptation. God created us with a sexual desire that is good when it is satisfied as God intended - within the marriage of one man to one woman for a lifetime. But today in our world so many have chosen to fulfill that desire outside of God’s will and God’s Word - whether that be homosexuality, adultery, pornography or any other form of sexual immortality.
Presumption
In the second temptation, Satan tries another tactic with the same goal - to get Jesus to question what God had said. He even used Scripture this time. But the problem is that he used it out of context and twisted it to try to get Jesus to presume upon God.
“Well I see that you really do trust God, don’t you? That’s great. So why don’t you demonstrate just how much you trust Him. Go ahead and put yourself in a place of danger and when you cast yourself from the pinnacle of the temple and God saves you, everyone will see just how much you trust your Father.”
We see just how diabolical Satan is here. Essentially what he is doing is to try to bait Jesus into asking His Father to prove just how much He loves Him by rescuing Him in a miraculous way.
Satan still uses that same tactic today. He loves to bait us into asking God to prove just how much He loves us by doing something miraculous in our lives. And often that involves twisting Scripture - often by asking God to fulfill some promise that isn’t even intended for us. While God is certainly capable of performing miracles still today, we should never ask God to do that for our personal benefit.
Ambition
In the third and final temptation, Satan changes tactics once again. This time He tries to get Jesus to question God’s timing. The Father had already promised Jesus that He would one day rule over all the kingdoms of the world. But first He would have to suffer ridicule, shame, rejection and die on a cross. And then He would have to wait to physically rule over the earth until the time that His Father determined.
But Satan offers to allow Jesus to have all of that right now, without going through all that suffering. This is a really bold move on Satan’s part since he didn’t have the power to grant that anyway. While for now he is the “prince of the power of the air” and he does have the ability to exercise some dominion over the earth, that power only extends to the degree that God allows it.
This is quite similar to how Satan tempted Adam and Eve isn’t it? Go ahead and eat this fruit and you can be just like God right now. And it is the same tactic that Satan uses today. In this microwave world, we are often so impatient to get what we want when we want it that we take things into our own hands rather than waiting on God’s timing.
Know my God
Know my God
Although I’m not going to spend as much time here, this is actually the key to responding to temptation.
If we try to battle Satan mainly by what we determine we are going to do, we won’t be very successful. But if we battle him by knowing who God is and who we are in Him and proclaiming that, we can overcome temptation.
Jesus resisted temptation by resting in the unshakable security of who His Father is. He trusted that His Father is good and that everything that comes from His hand is good. He trusted that His Father loved Him and wanted the very best for Him, even when that road would become hard.
So in response to each temptation, Jesus quoted Scripture - but not just the Bible in general. He quoted specific verses that conveyed something important about the character of God, verses that confirmed that God is trustworthy and that we can rely on His Word.
When Satan tempts Him in His hunger, Jesus quotes Scripture that reminds us that there is more to this life than just the physical. Man does not live on bread alone. For Jesus, and hopefully for us, obedience to a God who loves us and wants the best for us is more important than temporary physical pleasure.
When Satan tempts Jesus to presume on God, Jesus quotes Scripture that reminds us that it is wrong to put God to the test. That kind of testing undermines faith, and as the writer of Hebrews reminds us:
6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
And when Satan tempts Jesus to short circuit God’s timing, Jesus quotes Scripture that reminds us that the genuine worship of God means that we will trust in His timing and not try to exalt ourselves.
Action
This morning we’ve developed this principle when it comes to dealing with temptation...
Don’t let Satan put question marks in your life where God has put periods.
Don’t let Satan put question marks in your life where God has put periods.
Satan’s go to tactic in our lives is to try to get us to put question marks where God has put periods. He wants us to establish our identity based on something other than who God has declared us to be in Christ. And the moment that he convinces us to insert those question marks in our lives, we are prone to give in to temptation.
Ultimately, we generally give into temptation because we either don’t know God or we fail to trust that He is who He says He is.
Jesus battled Satan the exact same way we need to - with the Word of God. We need to heed the advice of the Psalmist
11 I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.
Obviously that starts with reading the Bible, but hiding God’s Word in our hearts goes well beyond that. Like Jesus, as we read the Bible, we need to find those “go to” passages and verses that remind us of who God is and who we are in Christ. And it is essential that we memorize some of those verses, or at least mark them prominently in our Bibles so that we can find them during times of temptation.
Inspiration
Unlike Jesus, none of us here today will ever overcome temptation perfectly. But the good news is that if we’ll apply the principles we’ve talked about today so that we don’t let Satan put question marks where God has put periods, we can certainly have a lot of success. And when we fail, as we inevitably will, as long as we have put our faith in Jesus, those failures are never final because of who we are in Him.
