How to Overcome Temptation
Matthew 4:1-11
Without any question - without any question at all, the biggest problem that Christians have is temptation. By far, it's the biggest problem. If you can eliminate temptation, you can eliminate sin.
A pastor once told his congregation, "I learned a great lesson from a dog." He said, "His master used to put a bit of meat or a biscuit or some kind of food on the ground, and he'd say to the dog, 'Don't eat that,' and the dog would run over and eat it, so he'd hit the dog. And he put another piece of meat on the ground. He'd say, 'Don't eat that.' The dog would go over and eat it, and he hit him again. Well, after awhile, the dog got the message: eat meat, get hit. So the dog decided he wouldn't eat the meat." But the man telling the story related how that the dog never looked at the meat. The dog evidently felt that if he looked at the meat, the temptation to disobey would be too great, and so he looked steadfastly into his master's face and never took his eyes off him, and thus the temptation never caused a problem.
Now, temptation works like that. As long as we stare at it...as long as we look at the baubles or the bangles that Satan dangles in front of our eyes...as long as we entertain ourselves on that and feed on it, we're susceptible, obviously. And temptation is a very common problem for all of us, and perhaps, victory over temptation is not so common. And the problem is the same problem the dog had. The problem is we entertain ourselves by looking at the temptation rather than staring into the Master's face.
And tonight I want us to get our eyes off temptation in a sense, and I want us to focus on the Master, Jesus Christ. And in order to do that, I want you to turn in your Bibles to the fourth chapter of Matthew. And I wanna show you how to overcome temptation by showing you the perfect example of one who did, Jesus Christ. Matthew chapter 4, and we'll consider verses 1 through 11. Now, this message tonight is sort of slipped in the slot between the conclusion of Revelation and the beginning of our series on the body of Christ and the book of Ephesians, but it's one that we feel is very important and have been a long time waiting to give. We believe God has led us to this subject for tonight because this, as I said, is the number one problem that we face as believers.
Now, as I said before, in order to be victorious over temptation, we have to put our focus on the person of Jesus Christ. We cannot entertain ourselves with the temptation and then wonder why we get into problems. There was an occasion where a girl became pregnant, and she came to the person that she was talking to...it was a youth director...and she said, "I don't understand it. How could it happen? We prayed before every date." The youth director said, "What'd you do after you prayed?" See, real good. Started out with prayer and then proceeded to get involved like that. Evidently they started out with their eyes on the Lord and then took them immediately off the Lord, put them on each other, and the problem was obvious.
The only way to overcome temptation is to look at Jesus Christ. It's the only way. Get your eyes off of temptation, and get them on Jesus. You say, "Why should we look at Him?" And the answer is in the Book of Hebrews in several places, if you remember it. The Bible says in Hebrews 3:15, "For we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities but was in all points"...what..."tempted like as we are, yet"...what..."without sin." The reason we wanna look at Jesus Christ in temptation is because we know He's been there, and we know He's wise enough to show us the way out. Why, Hebrews 2:18 says this, "For in that He Himself was tempted, He is able to help those that are tempted." See, he's been there.
And so in the midst of temptation, we're to fix our eyes upon Jesus Christ, not only for sympathetic understanding, but for victory, for He knows the victory. And the Apostle Paul said, "There has no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able but will, with the temptation, also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it." You're never tempted above that you're able...never...not one time in your whole life after Christ, not one time.
We wanna look at Jesus Christ. If you have trouble focusing on Jesus Christ in the midst of temptation, you haven't learned how to live the Christian life. The Christian life, my friend, is nothing more than practicing the conscience presence of Jesus Christ. That's all it is. Beautiful thought. That's all it is. Just constantly practicing the presence of Christ. It's never taking my eyes off Him. Why do you think Paul says, "Pray without ceasing?" Because he wants you to keep your focus where it belongs. Why do you think he says, "Set your affections on things above and not on things on the earth?" Because he wants your mind to be _______ with God. Constantly, constantly, constantly. And we're gonna see this.
And I want you to see Jesus Christ when He was tempted so that you'll understand why to keep your eyes on Him. Now, in His temptation, in Matthew 4:1-11, we see some tremendous things. I wanna pull out three points: the preparation, the temptation and the triumph. And having seen Jesus in His temptation, we're going to see victory, the possibility of victory, and we're gonna understand why and how Satan operates. And I trust we'll learn to keep our eyes on Christ.
First of all, I want you to notice the preparation. Chapter 4, verse 1 through the first part of verse 3: "Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tested by the Devil. And when He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He was afterward hungry. And when the Tempter came to Him..." We'll stop right there. Now, here we get the background. The first event in our Lord's ministry, which Matthew records, after His baptism is His temptation. Immediately after Christ's baptism, which you remember was a declaration of His ministry, the Spirit of God descended like a dove, anointing Him. God's voice came out of heaven saying, "Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased," and Christ began His ministry. And immediately after the exaltation and the anointing at His baptism, He immediately went into direct confrontation with Satan.
And it's an interesting thing that it is a very common experience of men. The times of special spiritual endowment or exaltation are followed immediately by occasions of special temptation. That's exactly what the Bible means when it says, in one sense, "Let him that standeth take heed lest he fall." Satan knows that when we are at the highest pinnacle, we are most easily deflated.
Arnold Coinby, the historian, made it clear in one of his books that the most dangerous period for a civilization is when it thinks it's safe and no longer needs to face further challenges. Same thing is true of an individual. Same thing is true of Christians who have experienced some spiritual victory, and they're misled to think that they can bask in that spiritual victory for an undefined amount of time. They cannot. The Christian life is lived one moment at a time with focus upon Jesus Christ. And just because you have reached a point of spiritual victory at one time doesn't guarantee your spiritual victory even for the next moment. In fact, it almost always assures you that Satan's gonna hit harder than he has before. It's the very precise point when we think we stand that we have to evaluate ourselves lest we fall.
This was graphically illustrated to me in highschool. We had a third-string halfback whose name was Henry, and Henry wasn't really too good, but his father gave a lot of money to the school. Anyway, he was on the team, and I remember we were winning this game 36-0, and there were just a couple of minutes to go, so they put Henry in the game. And he came into the huddle; he was so excited, just _______, excited, first time all year. So we kinda, "Just calm down, Henry." Got in the huddle, and we called a play for Henry. We're on about the sixth yard line, and we're gonna go in for a touchdown. The quarterback got the ball, handed the ball to Henry. The hole opened...the hole was so big you coulda driven the fifth army through it...just gigantic, see. Henry grabbed the ball, right into the end zone. He was so excited when he crossed the goal line. The glory of it all hit him. Now, I'll never forget this as long as I live, standing right there in the field. With the thrill of going over the goal line, he was overwhelmed. He had the ball tucked under his left arm, and as he was racing through the end zone in all the glory, he was waving to the stands. And he ran right through, waving to the stands, hmm, he hit the goal post dead center. The whole goal post went like this, (ringing sound). Split his helmet clear down the side, knocked himself completely cold, and the ball squirted up in the air and fell down.
I looked back on that and thought, "Now, that is a perfect illustration of the moment of victory turning to abject defeat." You know, the same thing has happened in your life and mine, hasn't it...spiritually speaking? We just get up to the top, and all the sudden, Satan starts firing away, and we just come crumbling down. That's the way he works. He likes to find us in the moment of glory when our defenses are down. You see, that's why Jesus said, "Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation." Don't ever take your eyes off the adversary. How graphically this is illustrated by the temptation of Christ. In full cognizance of His divine mission, just having experienced His baptism, His sacred human nature was filled through and through with the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. He was moving out to His great and glorious messianic ministry. His soul was aglow with the warmth of the Spirit of God, the job of communion with the Father, the contemplation of a blessed work that lay before Him. Finally, after 30 years of obscurity, He was gonna step into the limelight.
But it didn't last very long. No sooner was He anointed by the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit Himself drove Him into direct confrontation with Satan. Now, I want you to understand one thing that I believe with all my heart. I do not believe that Christ went into that wilderness on defense. I think He went in there on offense. My Bible says this, "Jesus was led up by"...whom..."the Spirit." Listen, I don't think Satan wanted that confrontation. I think he would have liked to avoid that as long as he could. I think the Spirit of God made that happen, drove Jesus Christ into direct confrontation with Satan to establish his victory over Satan at the beginning of his ministry. And so Jesus Christ was put into direct and fierce conflict with Satan.
Now, we have no right to assert that during the first 30 years of His ministry He was never tempted because He was. Matthew 16:23, He says, "Get thee behind me, Satan." He evidently recognized Satan. He understood what Satan was doing. And you can go back when He said to His disciples, I think it was Luke 22:28...He says, "Ye are they who have continued with me in my temptations." Satan worked on Christ for a long time. He said, "You are the ones who've been with me in my temptations," and they weren't up there in this place when He was tempted. I don't think Satan ever let Christ alone. I think he tempted Him right down until he had Him sweating great drops of blood in the garden. Satan never let up on his attack. He wanted to overthrow the Messiah, and what better time could he take than this time, perhaps. If God was gonna put him in confrontation, he'd use this time to overthrow Messiah at the beginning of His ministry. So the Holy Spirit leads Jesus Christ into conflict with Satan to prove victory.
Notice the character of the area. It says, "He was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness." Now, the wilderness is an interesting place. The Old Testament calls this area, which is down between...well, Jerusalem is a plateau and then the Dead Sea. And down on the edge of that plateau is called the Devastation, and that's this area. George Adam Smith described it this way: "It is an area of yellow sand, of crumbling limestone and of scattered shingle. It is an area of contorted strata where the ridges run in all directions as if they were warped and twisted. The hills are like dust heaps. The limestone is blistered and peeling. Rocks are bare and jagged. Often, the ground sounds hollow. It runs right to the Dead Sea, and there comes a drop of 12,000 feet down to the Dead Sea. In that wilderness," says Smith, "Jesus would be alone, more alone than anywhere else in Palestine."
But Jesus went there, first of all, to be alone because prior to His direct conflict with Satan, He was alone with God, a time for sustained prayer, a time for solitary preparation for His task, a time for communion with the Father. And you'll remember that Moses had to spend some time. Elijah had to spend some time. Paul even spent three years. These men had to spend time in preparation before God, in meditation, before they engaged in their ministries. And so does Christ. And He spends this 40 days preparing His heart before God. In His perfect humanity, He needed that. He needed time for quiet thought. He needed time to collect Himself. He needed time to brace Himself for the life that was coming, to realize the tremendous change that was on hand from the obscurity of Nazareth to the limelight of Jerusalem. It was a time of preparation.
And you know, this was His strength. He was so prepared for the conflict with Satan that by the time it came, Satan was hopeless, didn't have a chance. Jesus had spent that time with the Father as an example to us, that when we are in time with the Father, preparing ourselves for the conflict and the contention of the adversary, it is certainly ineffective. That's why the Bible says, "Watch and pray." Not only watch for Satan, but be in communion with God all the time prior to Satan's temptations. And so Jesus was.
I might add at this point just a thought that fits into this point, and that is that the greatest enemy of the Christian is spiritual unpreparedness. It's a failure to be ready for temptation. That's our greatest enemy. We're just not ready for it. We're not ready for it because we're not watching for it. And secondly, we're not praying. We're not in constant communion with God. Peter illustrates this graphically...so perfectly. Peter was just a tremendous apostle, and he loved to be where Jesus was. But when he got removed from the presence of Christ, he faltered and fell and stumbled and denied Him. And the same thing is true with us. As long as we're focusing on Jesus Christ, there's resource. But as soon as we stop praying...that is, we stop that constant communion with Him...we are vulnerable.
Now, I want you to notice the tempter. It says He was led into the wilderness to be tested by the Devil, by the Devil. Satan is real. There's no question about it. I'm sure you remember the old story of the ink stain on the wall of Martin Luther's room in the castle of Wartburg in Germany. There's a great big ink stain there, and it was caused by Luther one night was being tempted by the Devil, and he picked up his ink well and threw it at him. That's how vivid the Devil was to Martin Luther. He's a vivid adversary. He's real. He is the tempter in every case. God never tempts. No man is tempted of God. The Devil goes around doing the tempting.
So we see the place and the person. The place: the wilderness. The person: the devil. Notice the plan. Here comes the strategy. Verse 2, "And when He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He was afterward hungry." Now, Jesus had been fasting for 40 days, and as Luke puts it in his gospel account, "When they were quite ended, He was afterward hungered." Evidently, what this means was that Jesus never even sensed hunger during those 40 days. 40 days without eating anything, and He had no hunger. You say, "How did that work?" I believe God gave Him supernatural endurance, supernatural endurance. During those 40 days, He was tempted...not just at the end of it, but during those 40 days...for both Mark and Luke say that He was tempted for 40 days. All that temptation, in the midst of His communion with the Father and His tremendous hunger, and He never sensed it. He was never conscious of it. I believe God gave Him a supernatural ability to sustain Himself without hunger.
Now, I want you to notice Satan's approach. The temptations that Satan brings Christ...and there's gonna be three of them, and I'm gonna open up some new areas of it, I hope, to you tonight. But the temptations that come could only come to Jesus Christ. They couldn't come to me or you. I would not accept the temptation to jump off the pinnacle of the temple. No way. I could not possibly accept such temptations because I can't make stones into bread, nor could I possess the kingdoms of the world. They are not temptations that are universal for all of us. But I want you to see a fantastic lesson here: Satan tempts us at the point of our own abilities. Did you get that? Well, that's important. We are tempted through our gifts. The temptation was the problem, for Jesus, the temptation was the problem of what to do with supernatural power. And so it could only come to one who was supernatural. The temptations that come to us are what to do with our gifts and our abilities. We're always tempted according to our gifts and our abilities.
For example, the person who's gifted with charm will attempt to use that charm to get what he wants. The person who's gifted with the power of words will be tempted to use his command of words to produce glib excuses to justify his conduct. The person with a vivid and sensitive imagination will undergo agonies of temptation that a more stolid person will never experience. A person with great gifts of mind and intellect will be tempted to use them for himself to become the master, not the servant, of men. And this is even true in spiritual gifts, my friends. If a person has the spiritual gift of teaching, he will be tempted to lord it over others. If a person has the spiritual gift of whatever the case may be...the spiritual gift of healing, even, in the New Testament, he would tend to exalt himself. Some of them in Corinth, evidently, had the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, and they turned it into a joke as they made a mockery out of it. We can take the spiritual gifts that God gives us, and we will find that Satan will tempt us right at the point of our gift to misuse it, because it's the one thing we do effectively, to misuse it for our own glory.
It is always the fact...and the grim fact it is...that in temptation, it is where we are the strongest that we must forever be on the watch. Satan does not want to lessen our strength at the point of our gift. He wants to use our strength for his advantage, see. If you do something well, my friend, that's exactly what Satan wants you to do, only he wants you to do it for him.
Now, we've seen the preparation. Let's look at the temptation beginning in verse 3. "When the tempter came to Him, he said, 'If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.' But He answered and said, 'It is written: Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'" Now, there's temptation number one, Satan gets Him. First of all, Satan says "if". He always plants that doubt. "If you are the Son of God, then do this." And the if could just as well be translated since. I mean, "If You're making these claims or since You're making these claims to be the Son of God, why don't you prove it." That's the way he always does it, sticks the doubt in there, "Oh, you better prove it. You better verify it. It might not be so." If he can create doubt, he's got a foot in the door. He tempts us to doubt. He suggests again and again to our minds that terrible if, harassing our souls with fear, the doubts of God's love, the doubts of God's revelation, the doubt that we're really saved and many other doubts.
Now, he knew that Jesus was God's Son, and Jesus knew that Jesus was God's Son, but Satan still began with a seed of doubt, and oh, he uses doubt. Then comes the temptation itself, and look it, he told Him to make bread, "Turn those stones into bread." Now, it has been said that this is a temptation of the flesh, that what really is involved here is he's saying to Christ: "You're hungry, so make some bread." Well, the only problem with that is, if that's all there is to this temptation, it's no sin. What's the sin of divine power making a little bread and eating it? There's no sin there. Nothing wrong with eating. It's not the lust of the flesh to have a little bread. There's far more to this. If the only temptation was the temptation to eat bread, then there's not even a temptation there because there's no sin involved unless of course it was gluttony, and Jesus was gonna stuff Himself with bread, which is highly unlikely.
But let me show you what Satan's saying here. You might word his temptation like this: "Jesus, did God say, 'Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased?' Did He say that? And then did God say, 'You shall not eat?' Why, that's really strange, Jesus, that God would say, 'Oh, You're my beloved Son,' and then He would deprive You of food. That's kinda strange. I mean, no loving father's gonna deprive his child of food. Why should you starve in the wilderness, Jesus? Why, you have the power as God's beloved Son to turn the stones to bread. I mean, didn't history justify it, Jesus? Didn't God give His people manna in the wilderness? Didn't God say, 'I will rain bread from heaven for you'? Did God, through Isaiah, say, 'They shall not hunger or thirst'? Didn't God feed His people by repeated miracles in the wilderness? If God did all that for His people, my, couldn't You do one little miracle and make a little bread? It seems like no big deal. Well, what would've become of God's plan for Israel?", Satan's thinking. "If they'd all died in the wilderness. God had to feed 'em, you know, gotta take care of 'em. I mean, what would become of God's plan for the Messiah if you just die out here without food. You better make some bread there, Jesus."
You see, the point of the temptation is not the feeding of the hunger. It's the suggestion that what is going on is incompatible with Jesus being the Son of God. Do you see that? Satan is saying, "If you're the Son of God, what are you doing being hungry? God has fed His people all throughout the centuries. You're out here starving, and You're the most beloved of anyone." You see, here's what Satan's trying to do...watch it, mark it down. This is a temptation to exercise personal, selfish authority to do what would satisfy His own wants. See, He felt hungry at this time. He was hungry. And this was a temptation to be selfish. Satan was saying, in effect, "You were born in a stable, but You're the Son of God. You were hurried off to Egypt for fear of Herod's wrath, but You're the Son of God. A carpenter's roof supplied You with a home in the obscurity of a despicable town in Galilee. You spent 30 years, but You are the Son of God. A voice from heaven proclaimed it in Your ears at the Jordan. You're the Son of God. Listen, Son of God, what are You doing hungry? See? You've suffered enough indignity, Son of God. If You're the Son of God, grab some satisfaction. Why linger for weeks in this desert, wandering among these wild beasts and craggy rocks, unhonored, unattended, unpitied, ready to starve for the necessities of life. Is this befitting the Son of God? Use Your authority. Make some bread."
And after the temptation, Jesus says, "It is written," - He always used the Scripture, didn't He? "It is written," - the Son of God, full of the Holy Spirit...mark it...uttered the first words of His ministry, three words. You know what they were? It is...what? Written. Isn't that what anybody's ministry ought to be. That's how He began His ministry. "It is written." That's a biblical ministry. He relied on Scriptures. What did David say? "Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee." "He answered and said, 'It is written: man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'" What's He saying here? What's He saying here? Listen. He's pointing to the fact that food won't keep a man alive unless God says he's to live. You know that. You can eat all the bread you want, and if God says you die, you die, with or without bread. And you can eat no bread, and if God says you live, you live. Right? You don't live by bread. You live by every word that proceedeth, what? Out of the mouth of God. God determines whether you live or die, not bread. Boy, what an answer. What an answer.
Jesus was saying this: "God wills that I live. And if God wills that I live, I will live, bread or no bread." See? Tremendous truth. Jesus says this...now, here's His answer: "I will not work a miracle," - you get this - "which God has not willed in order to effect what God has willed." See? "I will not take God's control out of His hands and control my own life." That's what Jesus says. "I await my Father's divine supply. When God's ready to give me bread, I'll have all the bread I need and not until." You see, Jesus will not exercise His own will to supersede the will of God. You see it there? That's it. that's the whole key. Christ said this: "My food is to do the will of Him that sent me. I don't need bread. If God says I live, I live if I never eat another loaf." That's tremendous truth.
The lesson is simple. Philippians 4:19, "But my God shall supply all your needs." That's it. We don't need to get uptight about it, say, "Oh, God, I don't have all my needs, God. I'm gonna have to grab a little satisfaction, God. _______ getting rough out here." Jesus said, "No, my circumstances may be terrible. My life may be going down the drain." Satan comes and says, "