“The Case for Christ - Temptation”

‘And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him. And, lo, a voice from heaven saying, ‘This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased’. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted, tried of the devil’. (Mt 3:16-4:1)

And in Luke 4:1, we read: ‘And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.’ 

And, one more Scripture found in James 1:12 that I would like to relate to this: ‘Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love  Him.’ That was in James 1:12.

There was great purpose behind this particular event of Jesus’ temptation at the start of His ministry. One of the most important reasons for the temptation scene, along with all the temptations Jesus faced, was to make the entire sequence of the events of salvation history understandable.  And - this is what I would like to address tonight.

This temptation scene, although it can appear surreal to us, is a very real, intense, and factual encounter that Jesus had to endure.

Strangely enough - at least to us - it was God’s will for this to take place - for - the Spirit of God led Jesus right into the face of the evil one to be tried to the fullest.
 
As we look at ourselves and our temptations to sin, we look at them far differently. They come to us and put us into a position of choice where we are asked to choose the way we will go with them.

Jesus stood at the place of choice, as well, but the temptation He faced was increased a thousand-fold and more - so much more that we cannot even speculate really.

He was God/man Who was thrown face to face with the very pit of hell standing before Him. 

Hell - with all its sinister, ugly, dark disorder - was challenging the very epitome, the very personification, of Holiness in the body of Jesus, the man.

This was Satan’s real kingdom at work - it was operating in full force, and, it was about to face - not just a transient skirmish with the opposition, not just a momentary threat, not just a supposed peril - but it was about to face a full-blown war right down to annihilation and total decimation that was coming through the Person of Jesus Christ! 

What such an encounter meant to Jesus we dare not even try to fathom! Pure holiness having to suffer the inward pang of facing hell - how could we possibly describe that?

That puts this scene far beyond the insidious, subtle, sudden attacks that we experience in temptations to sin.

This was a very well-planned assault - a systematic, expertly organized strike upon Jesus in every segment of life. 

The devil stood before Jesus in the personalized power of evil, as head of the demon world, head of the principalities and the powers of this world, as head of the rulers of darkness, the spiritual wickedness in high places. (Eph 6:12) 

On the opposing side was Jesus representing God, His Father, in His divine nature upon the earth in the body of man.
 
He had come to earth to execute God’s will in saving man from Satan who was continuing to resist God’s will in God’s history of the salvation of man. 

Jesus had just identified Himself with sinful man in the baptism of repentance and stood before Satan in that capacity.

And, now, the question that arises is: can Representative God in the body of sinful man face the full onslaught of evil and still stand? 

We need to understand that Jesus was not led out to attack the oppostition to answer this question!

Oh no - He was led out to sustain the enemy’s attacks upon Him!

On His human side, He is ‘learning obedience by the things which He suffered’, so that ‘by the obedience of One many shall be made righteous’, and was being made ‘in all things like unto His brethren that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in all things pertaining to God’. 

With that in mind, we understand, above all, the tremendous clash taking place between God’s will and Satan’s will on the battlefield of Christ’s humanity and the purpose for which He had come.

This early conflict with Satan was not limited to just this moment on the mountain. It showed the underlying, continuing clash between the two opposing kingdoms throughout all of Jesus’ life.

We already saw the attempt by Herod made upon Jesus just after His birth. At that time, it had not been openly revealed that the netherworld was behind this aim to eradicate Jesus at once.

That try failed - now it is openly revealed that there is that clash taking place - a clash that is happening throughout all of God’s plan in all of His salvation history. 

The hostility between Jesus and the Jewish leaders in the Gospels and even after His resurrection and ascension within the context of Christ’s Church is only the superficial picture that is taking place behind the scenes.

Jesus explained the situation in Mt 12:28-29 in saying: ‘But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come unto you, or else how can one enter into a strong man’s house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man? and then he will spoil his house.’

Jesus had come to spoil the strong man’s house - to sweep it clean - He had come to this earthly kingdom that was characterized by anarchy and rebellion ‘against the things pertaining to God’ to destroy that power altogether! 

1 Jn 3:8: ‘...the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil.’

God had clothed Himself in a Man so that He could ‘bind the strong man’ and go on spoiling the strong man’s goods - go on to the redemption of the race spoiled through the weakness Adam, the man, showed.

So, if Jesus, as the Divine Son of God, was to be King of the Kingdom of God, He must overpower the head of the opposing hellish kingdom by facing its chaos and its ugliness in the body of man and face it as man must face it. 

He had identified Himself with man, and, as such, must now face what is ahead as man, and, in that position, He would ‘...destroy the works of the devil’. 

There is no doubt that Satan knew Jesus’ purpose well - he knew all about Jesus.

He knew how Jesus was miraculously conceived and born. He knew how God, His Father, had acknowledged Jesus as His Son in Whom He is well pleased. He knew Jesus was marked out to be the Messiah, the Anointed One of Jehovah Who was come to crush him by saving the people from their sin - come to destroy all of his evil works.

So - how much power do you think Satan was going to  exert to stop the divine plan - to thwart its movement onward?

From God’s side, Jesus was to be ‘tested to the finish’, which is what the phrase ‘tempted by the devil’ fully means. 

And the devil was to exert, to the fullest extent, to the maximum, to the greatest, to the highest degree, his power upon Jesus, to ‘test Him to the finish, to test Jesus to His ruin, to His very end’, or to ‘put Him to the proof’, as the translation reads. 

To ‘put Him to the proof’ of what?

And here we must understand that Satan was not attacking Jesus to find out if Jesus could sin.

Oh, no! we know Jesus did ‘...no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth...’; He ‘...knew no sin...’. (Isa 53:9; 2 Cor 5:21) 

When the pressure to follow the lure of temptation comes to us, we know it is far easier - at least, for the moment - to yield to the appeal of that temptation than it is to escape it by suffering through the hardship in overcoming it, of fighting it with tenacity and grit to its very end.

We give in before its lure is fully spent, before we have endured so long and so hard against it that it is no longer a temptation but only a suggestion that holds no attraction to us anymore.

Only as we endure that long without yielding to it do we really know the pressure of it - the full force of it.

We can be sure, in that light, that Jesus felt in His own consciousness the struggle of being righteous in this domain of sinful man.

We can be sure He felt pressing upon Himself the reason why men choose to follow temptation’s lure.

Even at that, it was said of Him that He knew no sin. He could face every temptation that is ‘common to man’ - right down to its being fully spent - and ‘...yet not sin...’ in the capacity of man: He overcame without sinning. (Heb 4:15) 

What was it, then, that was to be proven, to be tried?

Satan skillfully directed his questions to try Him, to test Him: was Jesus thoroughly one with the Father, as it was so needful to be? 

Was His Father’s business really the one interest of His heart and the great business of His life?

Did He really delight in doing God’s will - was that delight so strong that it could not be overcome by any human feeling that was more intense, by that feeling of being under ruthless, relentless pressure?

How loyal is He to His unequaled call of God upon His earthly life? How fruitful will His life be in ‘those things pertaining to God’?

In short, would He be able to say, of a truth, ‘Satan cometh and findeth nothing in Me’?      

Yes - here was the purpose of these temptations - to prove - to establish - to confirm the fact - to show beyond any shadow of a doubt, once and for all - that He was the Sinless One Who did not sin in the face of excruciating temptation.

This was Satan’s intention for which he had to exert every ounce of his power to prove that Jesus would do otherwise! 

He had - backing him up - every power hell could muster against Jesus to try to do just that!

I hope you are not looking at this as though it was just a little test - a little temptation like the ones that come to us in our daily living, with the attitude of ‘after all, He was the Son of God, so what is the big deal’ kind of thought?

If you do think that way - please stop to think this through again! 

We have already seen, up to this very point, how it had already been established that Jesus is the Son of God. 

John, the Baptist, announced His Messiahship and something of the nature that His mission would take on.

His work ahead would require unflagging allegiance and fidelity to God, His Father, in carrying out the divine will.  

This was a tremendous work - unequalled in every way conceivable in its importance!

And Satan was only too willing to challenge his chief enemy - he gladly took up the summons to lay Jesus low - to conquer Him - to keep Him from doing just that! If Jesus had failed at any point along the way, Satan could have been declared king over all!

This, then, was not just a ‘little test’ at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Let us be clear on that.

God’s will and the devil’s will met precisely at this juncture of God’s salvation history to openly show the underlying conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world - that the power of the Kingdom of God was going to show itself through a new, overcoming way of life! 

We ask the question at this time, ‘How does that impact us as Christians? What good does all this do us now?’ 

Let me start, by saying: the battle was not just against good versus evil - oh, no!

This is what we hear so much about - we have heard it all through church history! Stories, films, fables, books, novels have been published these many, many centuries with the theme: ‘will good ultimately triumph over evil?’

But - let us go back to the question that loomed before us earlier: can Representative God in Jesus Christ, the man Who identified Himself with sinful man, stand against the onslaught? 

And, in following our Lord’s teaching about Himself and His abode in the man who accepts His redemptive work and His Lordship over him, the question is carried to this: can Jesus Christ in man, as sinful as man is in himself, radiate forth from man His Perfect Righteousness on the battlefield of man’s humanity?

That is the big question - it is not merely ‘can good triumph over evil?’ - the answer to that is ‘yes, it can!’ Many a man has been able to triumph over evil by doing good.

But - the more important question is: can sinful man contain and express the Perfect Righteousness of Jesus Christ that ousts Satan’s influence altogether and establishes the reign of God’s Kingdom in men’s hearts with certainty, with consistency, and without equivocation?

That is the war taking place on the battlefield of man’s humanity! And that is the question Jesus answered!

Have you ever felt as though a war was going on within you when you faced a choice in the area of temptation - where you felt as though you were on the battlefield and two opposing forces were fighting it out within you?

That is the dilemma Paul felt - he wanted to do good but there was warring within him that law of sin that would not cooperate.

‘Who will deliver me from this constant battle?’ was his question.

And, then, he wrote, when he came to see the Light of Christ within himself, ‘I thank God it is through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ 

Christ’s perfection was Paul’s inheritance - yes - Christ’s perfection was Paul’s inheritance. 

Paul could face his temptations in the knowledge that they are overcome by Christ’s sinless perfection that Jesus proved as a man.

Yes - Christ crowned life for man in the proof of His sinlessness to its fullest power in the face of temptation as a man.

In conquering temptation, it can be said now of Him that He knows how ‘...to deliver the godly out of temptation’ - He knows how to ‘give grace to help in time of need’.

And He did it so it can be said of those who follow Him: ‘Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him.’ (Jas 1:12)

‘Blessed is the man who endureth temptation - who remains firm, who perseveres...’ - why is he blessed?

‘For when he is tried - once his testing is complete - and, he stood the test - he shall receive a crown of life...’ - on what basis?

‘...which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him’ - on the basis of Christ’s unflagging loyalty to the call of God upon His life - a loyalty transferred to the man whose fidelity to the Lord has been tried.

This is why this temptation scene is so important for Christians. It makes the entire sequence of the events of salvation history understandable to all of us who are in Christ Jesus! It makes clear to all that we are the recipients of that Victory of Christ Who is the Victor of the war against the temptation to sin! 

He gained that ground for man on the battlefield of man’s humanity - He is man’s new and overcoming way to meet the damning temptation to sin! 

Amen! 

Next week, Lord willing, we will continue in this study. In the meantime, pray about these things - let the Holy Spirit continue His good work in each of us this coming week where His ground becomes ever more secure in our Savior’s Victory! 

Let us pray together!