Elevate - The Story Pt 23 - The Temptation of Jesus

Jesus is led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. The first temptation is for Jesus to turn stones into bread to satisfy His extreme hunger. Jesus responds by saying that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from God. This shows that Jesus prioritizes God's will over His own physical needs. Satan often tempts us by appealing to our appetites and desires, but we must trust and obey God rather than relying on our own self-sufficiency. Let me tell you that the enemy of your soul will always come at an opportune time. Not an opportune time for you, an opportune time for him. Look at Jesus, he had just been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended on him. God the Father yells from heaven, this is my son whom I love and through my wealth. Please, what a mountaintop Jesus must have been on in that moment. And it's in that moment of spiritual victory that the enemy tries to come and tempt him. Welcome to Elevate from Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama with Pastor John DiQuatro. We hope it builds your faith and helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live. We hope it inspires you to be a wholly devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Enjoy the message and welcome to Elevate. We're going to start here with a scripture in the book of Hebrews chapter 4, beginning in verse 15, it goes like this, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. You know, one of the just most amazing aspects of Jesus is not just that He is God, and not just that He did miracles or that He cast out demons, but that He was both fully God and fully human. And in His humanity, He faced everything that you and I will face and more. He understands our weaknesses. He has faced every temptation and overcome. And because of this, we can approach God's throne of grace with confidence, not in fear, not in a place of shame and guilt, but we can approach His throne of grace with confidence, knowing that His mercy and His grace abound to us and that He hears our prayers. Listen to me, Jesus understands. Don't ever think that Jesus does not understand your struggle. He has been through it all and more than we will ever face. And so we are in the story series, and we are at this point where we know that now Jesus has been born to Joseph and Mary in the town of Bethlehem, but He has not yet begun His ministry. And if you read in chapter 23, you would have read that John the Baptist, before Jesus came onto the scene, John the Baptist was a forerunner to point people to Jesus. And he was preaching repentance from sin and baptizing people in the Jordan River. And there was truly a revival of repentance that was taking place in Israel. People were turning from their sin and getting their heart right in relationship with God, and not just following the rituals of the law and of their traditions. But John the Baptist ultimately was paving the way for Jesus' ministry, for Jesus to come on the scene. And so when Jesus does finally come on the scene, He first goes to John the Baptist when He's got a crowd of people around Him, and John's baptizing people. And He comes and He tells John, He says, John, I need you to baptize Me in order to fulfill all righteousness. And then to set an example for those that would follow Him. And so Jesus is baptized by John, and as Jesus comes out of the water, a booming voice from heaven, an audible voice says, This is My Son whom I love. With Him I am well pleased. And then we see the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus, it says, like a dove. And that moment marks the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He's been baptized, He has received the power of the Holy Spirit, and He is ready to begin the ministry that God has given to Him. And the very next thing that happens in Jesus' life is found in Matthew 4, verse 1, and it says, Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Before He ever preached a sermon, before He ever cast out a demon, turned water into wine, or healed a sick person, the Spirit of God led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And it seems a little bit odd that the Holy Spirit would lead Jesus into the wilderness for the sole purpose of facing the devil in this showdown of temptation. But just know that Satan did not lure Jesus into the wilderness. God placed Him there. Remember what we just read, right? Jesus had to go through the things that we would go through and do it without sin, and become an example to us of how we can resist temptation and overcome in this world. Do you believe that you can overcome in this world? Do you believe that you can resist temptation and be victorious? Amen. And as we read throughout this passage of Scripture today, we're going to see that the temptations that Jesus faced are very similar to the temptations that we face every day. Of course, the culture is different, the details are different, but human nature is the same, and the devil knows exactly which buttons to push to lead us into sin. And it's interesting to note that Jesus was alone in the wilderness. So the only reason that we know what happened is that Jesus shared it with His disciples. He told them what happened. Jesus thought it was important to let His disciples know about His personal battle with temptation. Amen? And we'll see together that there are important things to learn from the victory that He won in His battle with temptation. So we're going to look at the temptations that Jesus faced together. We'll begin in Matthew 4, verse 2. It says this, After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. The tempter came to Him and said, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Now this Scripture may be one of the biggest understatements ever. After fasting forty days and forty nights, He was hungry. Now I don't know about you, but I'm hungry about an hour or two after my last meal. So I think after missing 120 meals, the right word to use would be famished, starving, ravenous, out of my mind hungry. So Jesus was in this state of extreme hunger. His body was crying out. He had not eaten anything in forty days. And so Satan comes to Him and suggests to Him to go ahead and turn the stones that are lying around Him, turn those into bread so we can have something to eat. Now on the surface, this doesn't seem like such a big deal, does it? I mean, He is Jesus. He is the Son of God. And He can turn a stone into a loaf of bread. In fact, making bread was actually a part of Jesus' ministry. We'll see as He goes along, not too far in the future, that Jesus was making bread for the 4,000 that were hungry and the 5,000 that were hungry, right? He did that on different occasions. So what's the big deal about making a little bit of bread for Himself right now? Well, I'm told that in this part of the world, the stones can become so smooth by the wind and baked by the sun that they look like little loaves of bread. So why not just perform this little miracle? I mean, it already looks like bread. Just make it bread, tear off a hunk, and eat it. But maybe the answer to the question of why not perform this little miracle is found in Jesus' reply to Satan. Because in verse 4, Jesus responds to the temptation that Satan gives them. He says, Jesus answered, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. You see, in this moment, Jesus was not interested in meeting His physical needs. He was interested in what God had to say. God's will was paramount in Jesus' life. In fact, He says this to His disciples in John 4. He says, My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work. He said, My food, the thing that sustains Me, is to do the will of God. And we know that in this moment in the wilderness, when God led Him into the wilderness to fast for a period of time, that God's will for His Son at this time was to fast and not to eat. That's not what God wanted. And so to make bread and eat would be to disobey what God had commanded Him to do. Now, in time, God would provide food for Jesus. But this was not the right way to get it. So the challenge for Jesus in this particular temptation was whether or not He would trust and obey God rather than turn towards His self-sufficiency. One of the ways that Satan tries to lead us into sin is by tempting our appetites. These appetites are part of being human. We have drives, we have urges, we have needs. It could be our appetite for physical food or for sexual fulfillment, or for housing and clothing, or our appetite just to be free from the pain of our lives. And these are legitimate needs that every single one of us has, and Jesus faced them. But the question is this, what will we do in order to get these needs met? What is it that we are willing to do in order to get our physical needs met? Are we going to trust God and walk in obedience to His Word and to His will when we feel like those needs are not being fully met in the moment? Or, will we go about meeting our needs any way that we feel we have to? There's a temptation here, because it's in these moments that we find ourselves in self-sufficiency and relying on our own strength that we get into trouble and we start getting caught up into sin. We are at our weakest and our most vulnerable when our body or our emotions are crying out to feel better. Anybody that's had an addiction understands that. When you're at your weakest and most vulnerable when your body and your emotions just want to feel better. To have financial relief and not face the stress and the anxiety that you're facing, or to have that promotion or that opportunity that we really want, but we can't seem to get it because it's out of reach to us. And this is when the tempter comes in and says, listen, I know what God says, but there's another way. We saw Abraham fall into this temptation. God promised him a son through his wife, Sarah. And rather than trusting God to give him that son, he figured that he had to have a son through his wife's servant, Hagar. And so Ishmael was born, and that's not what God wanted. That was not the promise, that was not the plan, and Abraham deviated from it. But he was so desperate to have what God said he could have, that he didn't have yet, that he went about things his own way, and it brought him all kinds of heartache. And today, there is still trouble in that part of the world as the descendants of Ishmael, the Arabs, are still at war with Israel in the Middle East. All that fighting, all of that stuff over the Gaza Strip and Palestine, all of that is a result of Abraham trying to get the promise of God without God. Trying to have his needs met and get what he wanted outside of the will of God. And we face these types of temptations when we think that maybe cheating on our taxes, or maybe throwing somebody under the bus at work, or maybe lying to get our way, or maybe having an affair, or any number of things, will be a tempting shortcut to get what we want rather than waiting on God and obeying Him. Jesus was tempted to disobey God, to turn to His own self-sufficiency in order to meet His own needs. We are constantly faced with that, guys. I'm constantly faced with that. I want to see things a certain way in my life. I want to have my needs met in a certain way, and when they're not being met, it's easy to want to turn to trying to do it my own way, which is not God's way. But Jesus overcame this temptation. Thank God He overcame this temptation and is an example for us. But because He overcame this temptation, Satan had to come up with another one. So in verse 5, it says, Well then, the devil took Him up to the holy city and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. 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 the stone. So the pinnacle of the temple may refer to the southwest corner of the temple mount. And according to the historian Josephus, there was a designated spot on the corner of the temple, high above all of the houses and the shops below. And that's where the priest would stand when he would blow the trumpet, and it was probably about 450 feet high. So what's really going on here? How is this temptation supposed to make Jesus sin? Well, some people have suggested that this is a temptation for fame and popularity. Just think, if Jesus does this little circus trip, you know, do a back double tuck gainer off of the temple and lands in like that superhero landing, right? And everybody sees this, He certainly would gain a name and a following immediately. However, I think from Jesus' response, I think there's a little bit more that's also going on here. Because in both of these first two temptations, the temptation to turn the stones to bread, the temptation to jump off the temple mount and let God's angels catch Him, Satan says these words, if you are the Son of God, in these words there is the challenge to prove Himself, to prove His identity. But then also in the second temptation, there is the challenge, listen to me, to make God serve Him. So Satan says, if you're really the Son of God, then jump and make God catch you. So Jesus answers him, and He says in verse 7, It is also written, Do not put the Lord your God to the test. You know, Jesus doesn't want to simply draw a crowd by doing something foolishly sensational. Of course not, that's not what He came to do. He was a humble servant. But more importantly, just because Jesus knows that God promised to keep Him from harm doesn't mean He should do something to force God to save Him. We can fall into the same trap when we know that God loves us, and He has promised to provide for us, and to forgive us, and so we assume that we can be sinful and irresponsible, and God will pick up the pieces. Like spoiled children of God, we can choose to do whatever we want and just expect for God to come to the rescue. When we're being disobedient and walking in our own way and expecting God to come to the rescue. You know, I was discipled in a very dangerous and false theology called the prosperity gospel. And in this teaching, this is the way that I was being discipled as a young man in ministry, that in this teaching, your millions are always just around the corner. God wants to make you rich, and therefore you cannot outspend Him. So in the name of faith, people are spending more money than they make, buying houses and cars that they can't afford, and living lavishly with the expectation that God's going to come to the rescue with all of those riches. It's foolishness. It's putting God to the test. I remember hearing a preacher in that stream saying something like, saying something like, when you declare what it is that you believe in Him for you, and you tell other people what you believe in God for, then you obligate God. I heard someone say that, and you know what? That is in direct violation of what Jesus said. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. It's not our job to obligate God. It's not our job to go and live our life however we want and expect God to rescue us when we end up in trouble. We can't do that. It's foolishness. God's not just going to bail us out every time we do whatever we want to do, even though we know it's wrong. He has given us principles to live by. And let me tell you, living simply by the principles of the Word of God that He has given us is every bit as spiritual as believing God for a miracle when you really need one. Let me tell you, if you live by the principles of God in your life, you'll find yourself needing a lot less miracles. But when we follow our own ways when we get into trouble, and then we're begging God to bail us out. Live by the principles in the Word of God and don't put God to the test. That's the victory that Jesus won. The temptation for Him to prove His identity and fast-track His fame by making God serve Him was a real temptation. But He chose to allow God to keep His promises the way that God intended. That temptation didn't work on Jesus. So Satan tries again. In verse 8, He says, Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give you, He said, if you will bow down and worship Me. So Satan takes Jesus to a mountain. Perhaps it was Mount Hermon which is located at Israel's northern border. It was the tallest mountain in Israel. So he could look out and see all of the kingdoms that lay before him. And there, Satan offers Jesus a shortcut to power and glory. A shortcut. You see, in God's plan, Jesus would have been given the place of glory and supremacy after suffering and being raised from the dead. But in Satan's plan, Jesus could bypass the cross and reign over all the kingdoms of the world. In many ways, this must have been a tempting offer. But all He had to do to get it was to bow down and worship the devil. But Jesus wasn't biting. He wasn't biting on this temptation. He says in verse 10, Jesus said to him, Away from Me, Satan, for it is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only. Listen, you've got to know this, that anything that Satan offers you is a counterfeit. It is a counterfeit. It's not really what we need or even want. It just looks like what we need and what we want. Satan's offer to Jesus to give Him all the riches and splendor and kingdoms of the world, it was a counterfeit offer. Ultimately, it was not going to turn out as the devil promised. And Satan may promise us all kinds of things in this life if we will just bow down to him. Right? The world and the movies like to call it selling your soul to the devil. I'm going to go his way in order to get all the things that I think are what I need and what I want. But listen, he's counterfeit every time. He promises freedom, but he delivers bondage. Just ask the criminal that's rotting in prison right now. He promises the best, but what he delivers is the worst. Just ask the husband who cheated on his wife if his life is better now. He promises pleasure, but delivers pain. Just ask the sexually promiscuous. And what kind of pain that's caused them in their life. The devil promises life, but what he delivers is death. Just ask the drug addict. They'll tell you. You see, Jesus knew that serving God and God alone was the best path in life. And Satan will offer you everything this world has to give and get you focused on the wrong things. Get you focused on fame and wealth and status and reputation and pleasure. All for the purposes of pulling you away from God's best plan for your life. Don't fall for it. Don't fall for it. I promise you this, a little extra money in this life is not worth the eternal riches that await you. It's not worth giving that up. I promise you a little bit of worldly pleasure right now is not worth giving up an eternity spent in a place where there's no sorrow, no tears, and no pain. It's not worth giving up an eternity spent in a place where there's no sorrow, no tears, and no pain. So after Jesus stood strong and resisted the devil's temptations, the Bible says this, in verse 11, Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. Now, the account in Luke adds this next scripture, and it says in Luke 4 verse 13, And the Bible says that he waited for an opportune time to come and mess with Jesus again. Let me tell you that the enemy of your soul will always come at an opportune time. Not an opportune time to come and mess with Jesus again. Not an opportune time to come and mess with Jesus again. Not an opportune time to come and mess with Jesus again. At an opportune time. Not an opportune time for you. An opportune time for him. There's times where the devil comes after us. Oftentimes after a spiritual victory. Look at Jesus. He had just been baptized. The Holy Spirit descended on Him. God the Father yells from heaven, This is My Son whom I love, with whom I am well pleased. What a mountaintop Jesus must have been on in that moment. And it's in that moment of spiritual victory that the enemy tries to come and tempt Him. Satan loves to mess with us when we're on the mountaintop spiritually. I cannot tell you how many people over 23 years of ministry that I have seen walk away from God right after they were baptized. Why? Because the pressure was turned up. Because the enemy wasn't happy. So the enemy took that spiritual mountaintop victory and used it as an opportunity to come in and begin to tempt and try to pull them away. Or any other spiritual high place that you may have been in your life. When you get to that place, expect that the enemy's not happy that you're there. Satan's tactic is immediately to try to knock you down after your spiritual victory. But he also comes after us when we're alone. When we're alone. Jesus was alone in the wilderness. Jesus was not surrounded by all John the Baptist's disciples and all of His people. He wasn't surrounded by His family. He was alone in the wilderness. Listen, Satan loves for you to be alone. No one to perform for, no one to put on your best face for, just you and your thoughts and your temptations. This is, it's in the alone moments, that's when men fall into pornography. It's in the alone moments where addictions are incubated. It's in the alone moments where the seeds of self-harm and suicide are sowed. Listen, when you're alone, understand this, the enemy is going to take every opportunity to start sowing thoughts into your head and temptations into your head. So just know this, be on guard when you're alone. When you're on a business trip, when you've got to travel for your work and it's just you alone on a plane, and it's just you alone in a hotel room. Look out, the enemy is coming after you to try to tempt you. When you're traveling, whatever it is, you've got to go visit somebody, you have to, or you're just, everyone's gone and you're just alone in the house. Those are the moments where the enemy is going to try to tempt you. So go ahead and be on guard. The enemy is going to try to tempt you, so be on guard. We also see that He likes to tempt us when we are physically weak. Jesus was fasting for 40 days. He was hungry. He was tired. He was famished. His body was weak. And when our bodies are worn out or our minds are tired, that's when the enemy tries to swoop in for a kill. Anything for a relief from our hunger or our weariness or our mental tiredness, whatever it is, the enemy will try to come in in your weakest moments to tempt you to do and be what you ought not to do and be. And the enemy loves to tempt us when we're starting something new for God. You see, this was the beginning of Jesus' ministry. I mean, He was ready to go and start healing and opening blind eyes and casting out devils and preaching the kingdom of God. He was just beginning His ministry, but this is one of Satan's oldest tricks. It's to kill things in their infancy. He tried to drown Moses, right? He tried to kill Jesus when He was a baby. Like, let's just take this problem out before it even becomes a problem. That's how He operates. Just know that the enemy will try his best work when you're about to do something for God. I'm telling you, when you say, yes, you know what, I'm going to start that small group, or yes, I'm going to start serving in this area, or yes, I'm going to start sharing my faith, or yes, I'm answering the call to go to Bible college or to become a pastor, or I want to start teaching a class, or whatever it is, and you say yes to what God has called you to do, I promise you this, the devil's coming after you to try to tempt you, to try to get you in a place where you are so far from God's plan in your life that he cuts it off at its infancy before it even has a chance to get started. So learn that from the temptation of Jesus. Look at the situation of the temptation of Jesus, right? He was after a spiritual victory. He was alone in the wilderness. He was physically weak, and He was just getting started with His ministry for God. Be on guard. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We hope this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 3750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website, AuthenticLife.tv, for more information about Authentic Life Church, to find out what we have going on, or to make a donation. You can also find us on Facebook. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. For Pastor John DeQuatro, I'm Scott Chestnut. Thanks again for listening, and God bless you.