I hope that you've had a good week.
You can open your Bible to Matthew chapter 4, Matthew
chapter 4. We're still in the part of
Matthew that talks or that tells of the King's preparation.
Jesus is being prepared for public ministry.
And so Matthew chapter 4 is a new movement in that.
Now what we want to remember from last week is that Jesus has
just been baptized. The heavens opened, the Spirit
descended on him, and the Father spoke very clearly, saying, this
is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.
Now what follows immediately is not what we might think.
We might think there would be a big celebration on earth.
It's pretty miraculous moment. We may think there'd be some
sort of public celebration, but that's not what comes next.
What comes next is a time of testing.
A son will be tested. Now, Matthew wants us to see
this because before Jesus begins his public ministry, the Son of
God must be proven faithful. Now he's going to be proven
faithful in the same way that Adam and Israel before him
failed, right? So this passage shows us who
Jesus is. It shows us what kind of king he
is, and it also shows us how he stands in our place.
Jesus goes into this time of testing.
He doesn't avoid temptation. He doesn't bypass the suffering
that's coming at him. He enters the wilderness as the
true Son of God and faces the enemy head on.
And as we'll see, he succeeds again where Adam fell and where
Israel fell. He succeeds by trusting God and
obeying His Word. So Matthew chapter 4, verses one
through 11, if you're able to stand, would you please stand?
As we read these verses? Then Jesus was led by the Spirit
into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.
And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God,
command these stones to become loaves of bread.
But he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread
alone by, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and sent him on the
pinnacle of the temple, 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.
Jesus said to him Again, it is written, You shall not put the
Lord your God to the test. Again the devil took him to a
very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the
world and their glory. And he said to him, All these I
will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.
And then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written,
You shall worship the Lord your God.
In him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and
behold, angels came and were ministering to him.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God, let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we come before your word, and we ask that you
would humble us. O Lord, would you make us ready
as sons and daughters? To receive Your Word with
humility. How would you help us to
understand it? God, would you plant this Word
deep into our hearts and let it bear fruits?
May our hearts be good soil today.
Lord, we are grateful that You have spoken to us through Your
Word. We're grateful for this passage
and all that it means about Christ and about the victory
that He has and about the victory we can know through Him.
And so, Lord, we ask that again, you teach us today that you help
us to know Your word well. But more than anything, Lord,
would you help us to not be hearers of Your word only, but
doers also. Lord, I pray for strength today
to preach. When I ask Lord that you would
fill me with your spirits, speak through me, it's in Christ name
I. Pray, Amen.
Amen. You may be seated.
So I have some good news for you.
A lot of good news today, I think.
But temptation is not something that's reserved for a few
especially weak people, Amen, Nor does, nor is it something
that shows up only in dramatic moments of your life.
Temptation meets you in ordinary places.
It finds you when you're tired, when you're hungry, when you're
discouraged, when you're alone. It presses on us at our weakest
points, and it whispers that there must be an easier way.
There must be a quicker solution.
There must be a safer path than simply following God's plan.
Matthew 4 reminds us that temptation itself is not sin,
but how we respond to temptation matters.
A lot. And before we ever ask how we
are to face temptation, what we see in this passage is first who
Jesus is and what he has done. All right, that's going to be a
great encouragement to us as we think about our own temptations
today. We must first see who Christ is
and what he has done. Jesus does not meet temptation
merely as an example. He he meets temptation as the
faithful Son of God who stands in our place right and where
Adam fell, where Israel, Israel fell in the wilderness.
Jesus remains obedience. He he resists Satan not not by
displays of power, but by humble submission to the Word of God.
And that leads us to the main point of the passage today.
If you're taking notes, you can write this down.
Trust and follow the faithful son who overcame temptation
through obedience to God's Word. Trust and follow the faithful
Son who overcame temptation through obedience to God's Word.
As text calls us to look to Christ with confidence, it calls
us to rest in His victory. It calls us to walk in His
faithful obedience as those who belong to Christ.
And as we walk through the passage together, we're going to
see 4 movements. First, we'll see that the king
is LED into testing by God's design.
Second, we'll see that the king is tempted as the sun, standing
firm where others fell. 3rd, we'll see that the king
overcomes by the word of God. And then finally, we'll see that
the king is vindicated and served, confirming his victory
and faithfulness. Again, this passage matters for
us today because every one of us faces temptation.
All right, if you face temptation this week, would you
please raise your hand? All right, all of you with your
hands down were tempted to lie and you failed.
All right, OK, it's OK. You're in the right place.
So it matters for us because we all face temptation.
We need more than advice. All right?
So often you'll sit down with somebody who wants to know, how
can I overcome temptation? And we offer all sorts of
helpful platitudes, right practical tips, things that are
nice and well meaning and could be helpful.
But so much of it, if we'll examine our counsel, and I'm
including myself in this, if we'll examine our counsel to
others, so much of it is the foundation is your strength
right? You, you can overcome temptation
by your strength. And what we want to see today is
that we overcome temptation through the strength of Christ.
We need a faithful Savior and Matthew shows us that we have
one in Jesus Christ. We, we have a king who has been
tested. He, he's been proven, he's been
victorious and and now he calls us to trust him and follow him
in obedience. So point #1 the king is LED into
testing verses one and two. Then Jesus was led up by the
Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.
So Matthew begins this with a sentence that immediately
corrects the way many of us instinctively think about
temptation. Right?
He says. Then Jesus was led by the
spirits into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
Now notice the first word then, right?
This is not a random episode that's dropped into Jesus's
life. It's the next step in Matthew's
story. Jesus has just come up out of
the waters of baptism. The Father has just declared,
this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased.
And what happens next? The Spirit leads the beloved Son
into the wilderness, into conflict.
Now, the testing of Jesus is not an accident.
It's an appointment. It's a divine appointment.
Matthew is explicit. Jesus is led, and he's led by
the Spirit into the wilderness. Now, that means that the
wilderness is not outside of the Father's care, Amen.
And temptation is not outside of the Father's plan.
Satan is real. The devil is active, but Satan
is not sovereign. He's not offering the story.
He he is being used by God within the story.
Jesus is not stumbling into a trap.
He's walking into a test. And and there's a difference
between a trap and a test. A trap is designed to destroy
you, and the test is designed to prove that things are true about
you, right? So Scripture uses this language
carefully. It'll tell us that the devil
tempts in order to entice us to sin and ruin.
But God test in order to prove or to refine or to display
faithfulness, right? So James is clear that God does
not tempt anyone to sin in James 113.
And yet Scripture also shows us again and again that God test
His people. You can think of Abraham on
Mount Moriah in Genesis 22. You can think of Israel in the
wilderness and Deuteronomy 82. And in here you see it with the
true Son himself. So, so right away, Matthew is
teaching us something that we desperately need to believe.
Being led by the Spirit does not mean that you will be LED away
from hardship. OK?
Sometimes being led by the Spirit means that you're being
LED straight into hardship, right?
Because God intends to show his faithfulness in you, right?
And, and more importantly, he intends to show you or to
display the faithfulness of his Son for you.
So, so Matthew also tells us where this happens, right?
Then he was led into the wilderness.
So in Matthew's Gospel, the wilderness is never just the
setting, right? It's a theological stage, right?
That this is a place of Israel's testing.
This is the place of hunger and weakness and dependence and
exposure. Israel was called God's Son in
Exodus 422 and then brought into the wilderness, where they
repeatedly doubted him. They complained and grumbled
against him, and eventually they rebelled against him.
But now we have Jesus, the true Son, the true and better Israel,
going into the wilderness as well.
And Matthew adds that after fasting for 40 days and 40
nights, he was hungry. And we all said, Amen all.
Right now, let's not filler language here, OK?
The Matthews not meaning this as some sort of filler.
This is spirit inspired reminder that Jesus is not facing
temptation with a full stomach and a clear mind, right?
He's facing it at the point of physical weakness.
The 40 days here echoes Israel's 40 years.
They also echo Moses 40 days on Sinai and Elijah's wilderness
journey journey in First Kings. So Matthew is stacking the deck,
so to speak. He's not trying to make Jesus
look superhuman, but to show that this is a covenant history
coming to a head, right? The long story of human failure
is about to meet the faithful obedience of the true Son, Jesus
Christ. And so we don't want to look
over the last phrase. He was hungry, right?
This is really important to our understanding of who Christ is.
The Son of God in the incarnation took on real
humanity, right? He became a man.
He's fully man, fully God. This is not play acting.
This is not Jesus pretending to be weak.
He's hungry. He's he's truly man.
He's truly hungry. He's exposed to the pressure of
temptation. Hebrews tells us plainly we do
not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in
our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted
and tried as we are, yet without sin.
That's Hebrews 415. So that means when you're hungry
and when you're tired, when you're worn down, when you're
emotionally spent, when you're more vulnerable than you'd like
to admit, Jesus is not standing far.
Off from that, brothers and sisters.
He's he's not distant, He knows precisely what you're going
through. He has stood there in your
place. So Jesus goes into the
wilderness as our representative king, all right?
He's not merely showing us how to fight temptation.
He is first doing what we could never do.
He's withstanding it. Now.
Adam was tested in the garden, surrounded by the Lord's
provision, and he fell. Israel was tested in the
wilderness under daily miracles and they fell.
Jesus is tested in the wilderness after 40 days of
fasting and he stands right. This is why the gospel does not
begin with try harder. No, the gospel always begins
with look to Christ, look to the Savior.
The first comfort in this passage is not a technique.
Brothers and sisters, it's a savior.
We have Jesus Christ, the great high Priest, our Lord, our
Savior, our King. Now the Puritans used to used to
say this. The same sun that hardens the
clay melts the ice. In other words, the same
pressure that exposes unbelief can also reveal faith.
The wilderness reveals what is really.
In you. Reveals what's really in US and
in Jesus the wilderness reveals that Israel.
What? Reveals what?
Israel was always meant to be a son who trusts the Father, a son
who loves God's word, a son who obeys from the heart.
And that matters for you today. That matters for me today,
right? Because many of us are tempted
to read our hardship as proof that God is distant.
God is not distant in our hardships as some of you are in
a wilderness season right now. It's a physical wilderness.
It's financial, it's relational, it's spiritual, right?
You're praying, you're trying to obey, and yet the pressure will
not lift. And the devil loves to whisper
to you in those moments, if God loved you, you wouldn't be here.
But Matthew 4 comes to us as a comfort.
It contradicts that lie. The beloved Son himself is LED
into the wilderness. The Spirit says in effect, this
is the. Path so.
I don't want you to assume that difficulty means that you've
been abandoned by God, no. Not at all.
I don't want you to to to think that difficulty means that the
Lord is not concerned about you. Because sometimes difficulty is
the very place that God intends to strengthen your faith.
It's the very place where God intends to fix your eyes more
firmly on Christ. And I can say it even more
personally, your wilderness is not wasted when God.
Is in it, And for the Christian, those of you who love and trust
the Lord, God is with you in your wilderness, not only by His
Providence, but by His promises. And beyond that, your wilderness
is never faced alone. You have a king who walked into
the wilderness ahead of you and he did so to show you that he is
faithful to to begin the saving work that will secure your life.
Maybe you think of it this way. We started baseball practices
this week at CCS for the junior high boys and it was cold in the
evenings. But a good coach does not only
train his team when conditions are perfect.
Nice weather, full energy, everything's easy.
No, a good coach trains his team under stress, when your lungs
burn, as you're running, when your legs ache.
Because that is when you find out what the team really
believes, what they will really do.
Right in the Wilderness reveals that.
And what does it reveal here? It reveals that Jesus is not
only called the Son by the Father in chapter 3, He is
proven faithful as the Son in chapter 4, Right?
So as we come under the first points, here's some application
for you. Do not interpret temptation as
proof that God has deserted you. You.
You must interpret temptation as a call to cling to Christ and to
depend on His word always. Here's a warning.
Don't romanticize your strength. Be honest.
Be be honest. Romans 12 Be honest in your
evaluation of yourself. Matthew reminds us that
temptation often comes hardest when you are hungry, when you're
weak. So.
So learn to take basic spiritual wisdom seriously.
Guard your soul when you're tired.
Guard your soul when you're stressed.
Guard your soul when you're isolated, but those are the
common wilderness moments in your life.
And in those moments, don't begin with yourself thinking,
oh, I am strong. No, begin with the Savior and
think to yourself, He is strong. He's the faithful son.
He's the tested King. Trust Him.
All right, so Matthew has shown us the setting and the purpose.
The king is LED into testing. But next the camera zooms in,
the enemy steps forward, and the devil does not merely tempt
Jesus to do bad things. No, he tempts him to abandon the
path of sonship itself. That's point #2 the king is
tempted as the sun. Verse 3.
And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God,
command these stones to become loaves of bread.
But he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and sent him on the
pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, again, 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 the
stone. Jesus said to him Again It is
written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test again.
The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all
the kingdoms of the world and their glory.
And he said to him, All these I will give you, if you will fall
down and worship me. So .1 shows us where the battle
takes place and who leads Jesus into it, .2 shows us how Satan
fights. Matthew says, and the tempter
came. John 8.
Jesus declares that Satan is a liar and a deceiver from the
beginning, that this title matters.
He he's not called the curious one.
He's not called the negotiator or some other name.
The tempter, the he's the one who entices.
He's the one who bends things. He twists things.
He lures us. Matthew wants us to see that
Satan is not mainly interested in making Jesus mess up.
No, he's interested in undermining Jesus's sonship all
together. You can hear it in the repeated
opening line of the 1st 2 temptations.
If you are the Son of God, that if is not innocent, brothers and
sisters. The Father has just said in
Chapter 3 this is. My beloved son.
And Satan comes immediately after to say, Are you sure?
Prove it, Use your power, take control.
In other words, Satan's strategy is not merely to tempt Jesus
with bread or heights or a Kingdom.
His strategy is to tempt Jesus to act like a son without
trusting the Father. Right.
Satan begins where Jesus's weakest physically hunger,
command these stones to become loaves of bread.
Now there's a reason this is First, it looks harmless.
It even sounds reasonable. You're hungry.
You have the power, fix it. But the poison of the temptation
is in the implication, Satan is essentially saying.
Why are you waiting on the father?
Why are you living like a dependent son?
Take these matters into your own hands.
Now we know that it would not have been sinful for Jesus to
eat bread, right? He will eat.
He will multiply bread. The issue here is the timing and
the trust, right? The temptation is to use divine
power to step outside the Father's will and to refuse the
posture of a dependent. Son, it's to become autonomous
from the father. Jesus's reply, of course, will
come in .3. I'll get there.
But even here, we should note, like the theological shape of
what's happening, Satan is tempting Jesus to reverse the
logic of the incarnation. The sun has taken on true
humanity. He has embraced weakness,
limitation, dependence. Right.
Satan says, stop living that way.
Assert yourself, prove yourself. Now, brothers and sisters, I
want you to know that that's still one of Satan's favorite
plays. It was the play in the garden.
It's the play with you and I when you're under pressure, if
it's financial pressure, relational pressure, some sort
of fear about the future, the devil rarely begins by telling
you to apostatize. All right?
He, he begins by saying just handle it, take control, do
whatever it takes. You can repent later.
It's provision without trust. Now this mirrors Israel again.
I'm trying to make that known, but this mirrors Israel in the
wilderness. Israel grumbled.
Israel demanded things from. God.
Israel accused God of bringing them out into the wilderness to
die. They even said they would rather
go back into slavery than to be a free people under God's rule.
They did not receive their daily bread as dependent children.
They demanded it as entitled rebels.
But Jesus will not do that. He will not grasp.
He will trust. And so next the devil changes
his tactics. Matthew says that he takes Jesus
to the holy city, sets him on the pinnacle of the temple.
This is no longer the temptation of private appetite.
This is the temptation of public spectacle, of religious
presumption. Again, if you are the Son of
God, throw yourself down. And now Satan quotes Scripture,
Psalm 91 to be exact. He will command his angels
concerning you. Now this is important.
Satan can cite Bible verses. He can put scripture on his
lips. But Satan is always using
scripture like a weapon of distortion.
He rips it from its context to justify your disobedience.
So what's the temptation here? It's not simply do something
dangerous. It's this use God's promises as
permission to be reckless. Turn faith into presumption.
Put God in a corner. Force his hand.
This is exactly what Israel did at Masah.
They tested God, they demanded proof.
They acted as though God must perform on demand.
You can see that in Exodus 17, Deuteronomy 616, and here Jesus
refuses to do that. The lesson for us is painfully
clear and it serves as a warning to all of us.
You can be very Bible Y. Let's make up a word this
morning. You can be very Bible, you can
have a lot of knowledge and still be spiritually foolish
right you. You can grab promises and ignore
commands. You can say God will protect me
while you walk straight into sin or walk straight into
consequences that you were warned about.
My brothers and sisters who love you and love the Lord, you can
do all of that and you can call it.
Faith. This is why the scriptures warn
us not to be hearers only, but to be doers.
Also in James 122. That's why Jesus will later say,
not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the
Kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father.
You see, the devil loves loves a form of godliness.
That has no obedience to the Lord.
So let me say this plainly. Real faith does not demand that
God prove himself. Real faith obeys because God has
already spoken. Satan says jump and God will
catch you. Faith says I will not test my
Father, I will. Obey him.
Then the devil takes Jesus to a very high mountain and shows him
all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.
He offers them with a single condition.
All these I will give to you if you will.
Fall down and worship me now, the third.
Temptation is the clearest and most wicked.
Of all of them. It's the temptation to idolatry,
but but again, you can see the deeper strategy.
Satan is offering Jesus a shortcut to Sonship.
At the end of Matthew, we're going to see that all authority
in heaven and earth has been given to me.
Go and make disciples of all nations.
Baptize them, teach them to obey all that I have commanded you,
and I will be with you always, even to the end of the age.
See, Jesus Christ is Lord of the nations.
He's the king of all kings in Psalm 2 are commanded to bow to
him. To kiss the sun, to stop
plotting in vain against him. He sits in the heavens and he
laughs at their plots. And yet here Satan thinks he'll
fall to the temptation of a shortcut to kingship.
You came for a Kingdom, didn't you?
You. You came to rule, didn't you?
Well, here it is. Here it is without suffering.
Here it is without rejection. Here it is without Gethsemane,
without Golgotha. Just one compromise.
Just one bow. And it's all yours.
This is where the Gospel Matthew is so important.
Jesus is the King, yes, but he is the King who will see his
crown by way of the cross. The devil offers the crown
without the cross, but Jesus will take the cross and receive
the crown from his Father. This is the temptation
underneath so many temptation Not not always do evil for
evil's sake. A lot of.
Times it's Get good things in sinful ways.
Slander your way to the top of the corporate ladder.
Make yourself look better through backbiting, through
gossip, exercise dominion in evil ways.
Take the fruit that looks delightful to your eyes,
whatever it may be, and eat it and enjoy it.
Satan wants us to think that we can get the Kingdom through
compromise. He he wants us to think that we
can get influence through dishonesty or that we can get
comfort through disobeying. God.
Or that we can get relief through sin.
What a lie. But the devil is happy to give
you the world. He's happy to give you the.
World, if you will. Just kneel to him, brothers and
sisters. You don't want the world.
It'll leave you wanting. It'll leave you lost.
It'll leave you weary and dry, broken.
And the worst part of it is you won't realize it.
You'll be so deceived in your sinfulness that you'll think I
truly have it all. And at that point there may be,
well, there is very little hope for repentance.
You can get to a place where you begin to exchange Creator
worship for creation worship in such a way that the Lord finally
just removes the restraints from you.
It's Romans 1, and not only will you go on sinning, but you'll
give approval to those who go on sinning.
You'll encourage the minute. You'll clap for the mall, the
way to hell. If you're unsure if that's true,
just take a few moments to look at the world around you.
It's a dark place. And here the typology with
Israel comes into sharp focus. Israel repeatedly fell into
idolatry. Most famously, they did so with
the golden calf. They exchanged the glory of God
for a substitute. And here Jesus refuses to do
that. He will worship God alone.
He will not bow to Satan. So what do these 3 temptations
have in common? Well, they're not random.
I want you to know that they're a coordinated assault on what it
means for Jesus to be the faithful Son.
Take the bread. Stop depending on the Father.
Rise to the temple. Throw yourself from here.
Force the Father to serve you. Look at these kingdoms, they can
be yours. Replace the Father with me.
In every case, Satan is pushing Jesus away from humble trust and
obedience worship. And in every case, the
underlying question is, will Jesus live as the Son who loves
the Father, or will he sees his own path?
And this matters for us to see this because it shows us.
It shows us something critical about our own temptations.
Temptation is often an attack on your identity and your trust.
The devil loves to speak the language of if to you, if you
were really God's child, you wouldn't be struggling like
this. If God really loved you, he
wouldn't withhold this from you. If you were truly forgiven, you
wouldn't still feel this guilt and shame.
Now. Those are lies meant to bend
your heart away from trust and obedience.
It's a Puritan writer, pastor, theologian by the name of John
Owen. He famously said be killing sin
or sin will be killing you. That's often what we remember
because very few of us want to read the Puritans.
But you should. And you should read his book on
killing sin. That's called the mortification
of Sin. It's excellent and it's true.
You should be killing sin or sin will be killing you.
But here's the deeper comfort. And Owen points this out.
The reason we can fight sin at all is because Christ has
already stood faithful in our place.
He points to Romans 813, which says that you are to overcome
the flesh through the Spirit. You're to mortify, mortify the
deeds of the flesh by walking according to the Spirit of God.
So we're not trying to become sons by our obedience.
We obey because in Christ we have been made sons.
So what should God's people take away?
Here. One, you can expect temptation
to come at your weak points. Hunger, fatigue, stress,
loneliness, you name it. Those are wilderness conditions,
and you should not be naive when you're in those places.
You should prepare #2 you should watch for the shortcut
temptations. The devil rarely says.
Choose Misery instead. He comes to you as an Angel of
light, and he says choose the easy way.
But the easy way is often the disobedient way. #3 don't
confuse Bible words with Bible faith.
Satan quoted Psalm 91 and that should sober us.
Knowing verses is not the same thing as trusting God.
All of you probably can think of someone in your life, if you've
known through the years you know now, who knows a lot about the
Bible but lives like a son or daughter of hell.
It's not the same thing as trusting the Lord.
Real faith submits to the whole counsel of God, the promises and
the commands all together. And #4 remember what is really
at stake. Remember what Satan is really
after worship. He's after worship.
All sin bends toward idolatry. Every temptation is asking in
one form or another, Will you worship and trust God, or will
you turn to something? Else for life and Matthew wants
you to see Jesus remained faithful as the Son.
Now how did he do it? Well, it's point #3 the King
overcomes by the word of God. You go verse 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.
Verse 7 Jesus said to him again, it is written, You shall not put
the Lord your God to the test. And verse 10 Then Jesus said to
him, Be gone. Satan fruit is written.
You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you
serve. So if you've been paying
attention to the way Matthew tells the story, you might
expect Jesus to answer Satan with a show of sheer power.
This is going to be his coming out party, right?
He's the Son of God after all. He could have ended this
encounter in a moment. But that is not what we see.
What we see is something far more instructive for us.
And honestly, it's far more humbling.
Three times Jesus answers with the same phrase it is written.
And Matthew wants you to feel the weight of that.
That the faithful son does not defeat the tempter by theatrics.
He defeats him by submitting to the word of his father.
And every scripture Jesus quotes comes from the same place.
Deuteronomy. A Deuteronomy is the book that
was given to Israel for life in the wilderness.
That's not incidental. It's Matthew's theology on full
display. Israel was God's Son, called out
of Egypt, brought into the wilderness, and there they
failed again and again and again and again and again and again.
Deuteronomy is Moses preaching to that wilderness generation,
teaching them how to live as the covenant people of God,
reminding them of all that God has done for them already, and
pointing them to continue to trust him.
And now we have Jesus, the true Son, standing in the wilderness,
and he does what Israel did not do.
He believes the Word, He obeys the Word, He clings to the Word.
Jesus answers the first temptation from Deuteronomy 8
verse three. Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God that
comes from Moses. He's explaining why God humbled
Israel with hunger and then fed them with manna.
Moses says he did this that he might make you know.
In other words, God allowed the hunger to teach them dependents.
Israel learned that life is not ultimately sustained by food,
it's sustained by the faithful promise of God.
Jesus takes that truth on his lips.
And he lives it. He is.
Hungry, really hungry. But he refuses to treat hunger
as permission to disobey the Father.
He refuses to turn stones to bread because he will not step
outside the Father's will for his life.
He would rather be hungry with the Father than full without
him. And we must understand that
obedience matters more. Obedience matters more than
immediate relief. Bread is a good gift, but it is
not the greatest gift. And I love bread.
Nutrition makes really great sourdough bread, right?
It's a little too sweet for some of you, I've heard, but it's
perfect for me. All right, we'll call you out.
The greatest gift is God Himself, His Word, His
fellowship, His approval. And that is deeply practical
because temptation almost always comes clothed in urgency.
You, you need this now. You can't wait.
You can't endure. You deserve relief.
That's not even a whisper anymore.
I want you to know that if you're struggling in your
marriage, all right. Listen to me.
Say a woman is struggling in her marriage.
And she goes to get counseling from a secular counselor who is
also a woman, often times a man. They will say to her, you
deserve relief. You should do whatever will make
you the most happy. I've seen this about a dozen
times in the life of this church.
Praise God. Not every woman heeded that
counsel, but it's the testimony of so many.
So it's not even a whisper anymore.
The world is just flat out telling you you deserve relief.
But Jesus answers. My father's word.
Is more necessary than my comfort.
Next, we see that Satan quoted Scripture in the second
temptation. Jesus answers that from
Deuteronomy 616. You shall not put the Lord your
God to the test. Now that's crucial, right?
Jesus teaches us that Scripture interprets Scripture.
How do we understand the word of God?
We must know the Word of God. Let's read the Word of God.
Scripture interprets Scripture always.
A promise cannot be ripped out of the text and used as a
license for presumption. Psalm 91 is real.
It's a wonderful Psalm, and God truly does protect His people.
But it is never meant to justify reckless disobedience or to
demand that God should prove Himself on your terms.
Jesus refuses to do that. He will not make the Father a
servant to his agenda. He will not stage a religious
stunt and call it faith. Why?
Why won't Jesus do? That.
What's he showing us here? He's showing us a true son,
sonship. Trust God without manipulating
God. True faith does not use the
Bible to put God in a corner. True faith submits to God
because He has already spoken. How often do people try to
spiritualize their foolishness? God will protect me.
While walking into sin. God will provide for me while
refusing to do honest. Work.
God will forgive me while planning out their disobedience.
That's not faith, that's testing God.
Jesus teaches us to fear God rightly, to trust His promises
while obeying His commands. The third temptation, again, as
I said earlier, it's the clearest.
Worship me and the Kingdom is yours.
Jesus answers with Deuteronomy 613.
You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you
serve. And now everything is out in the
open. You see, the issue for Satan was
never really about hunger. It was never really about
heights or influence. The issue is worship.
Who will be trusted? Who will be obeyed?
Who will be served? Jesus will not bow.
He will not compromise. He will not seize the Kingdom
through idolatry. He's going to receive the
Kingdom by obedience. He's going to receive the
Kingdom through suffering, through the cross, through the
Father's appointed path. And notice the authority in
Jesus's words here be gone, Satan.
This is not bravado, brothers and sisters.
This is kingly authority, a grounded in Scripture.
Jesus is not negotiating with Satan, he is commanding him.
And the Word of God draws a hard line here.
God alone is worthy of worship. So.
What does Matthew want you to see from these temptations?
He wants you to see that Jesus fights as a man.
He doesn't discard his humanity, rather he trusts his Father.
He wants you to see that Jesus fights with the Scriptures, not
with novel strategies, but with what God has spoken.
He wants you to see that Jesus fights as the true Son and true
Israel and true Adam. He's reciting Deuteronomy in the
wilderness and obeying where Israel and Adam have failed.
This is why this passage is not simply a How to resist
temptation sermon. It's first a.
Behold your faithful Savior, Sermon.
The obedience here is not only exemplary, it is representative.
It's representative. Christ is obeying God for his
people. Where Adam fell, Jesus stands.
Where Israel rebelled, Jesus submits.
And This is why the New Testament so often ties our
ability to fight sin to our union with.
Christ. The apostle Paul says no
temptation has overtaken you. That is not common to man.
God is faithful. He will also provide the way of
escape. First Corinthians 10/13.
Now that isn't a promise that temptation disappears, brothers
and sisters. It's a promise that God remains
faithful and gives you grace to endure.
If you think back across your temptations and your sins, you
fell into this last week. You know that there was a way of
escape had you trusted and obeyed the Lord, right?
God is always faithful. He's always providing the way
of. Escape to us.
He's always giving grace. To endure.
But sometimes we desire with the flesh desires more than we
desire with the spirit desires. Hebrews is helpful.
Hebrews says that we can draw near for help because our high
priest has been tempted in every way as us, yet he did not sin.
Hebrews tells us to come boldly before the throne of grace, to
find mercy and grace in our time of need.
Here's what we ought to take from this one.
We should use Scripture the way Jesus uses it.
Like bread? It's food for your soul.
Don't use scripture as a slogan. Or I can do all things through.
Christ just strengthens me. Don't use scripture like a quick
charm, like a lucky rabbit's foot.
Use scripture as daily nourishment.
So many of us try to fight temptation with yesterday's
leftovers, but Jesus shows us the pattern.
The Word must be present in our lives.
It must be known in our lives. It must be ready in our lives.
The psalmist in Psalm 119 writes.
I have hidden the word of the Lord in my heart that I might
not sin against. Him.
Secondly, we should learn to identify the lie underneath the
temptation. It's never as simple as it
looks. Temptation always carries a
message with it. Satan wants you to think God
can't be trusted. He wants you to believe that
God's word isn't enough. He wants you to to walk as if
God's way is too hard, God's timing is too slow.
Jesus answers those lies with truth.
The third thing we should see here is don't aim merely at
behavior change. Aim at worship.
I confess this earlier. So often when we're trying to
overcome the temptations of our lives, we're merely trying to
modify our behavior, trying to walk as a moralistic people.
But the final temptation here clarifies what's really going
on. At the bottom of every sin is a
worship problem. We either worship God or we
serve something else. Fighting temptation is not
merely saying no to sin, it's saying yes to worshipping the
Lord alone. So you might think about a
compass. If you're in the woods, you're
tired, you're turned around, your instincts can betray you.
Every tree starts to look like the tree you walked in by.
Everything looks the same. So you start following your gut.
And following your gut can lead you in circles.
But a compass doesn't really care how you feel, right?
It tells you what is true. And scripture is like that.
When appetite, when fear, when pride, when desire start
spinning you around, the word of God reorients you.
This is north. This is the way to go.
Walk this direction. Psalm 1611 You have made known
to me the. Paths of life.
And at your right hand are pleasures forever more so if
you're sitting here thinking I don't feel strong.
Like that, Kyle? I want you to remember, brother,
sister, that. The point is not that you are
strong. The point is that Christ is
faithful and you are called to trust and follow Him.
That that means you don't face temptation as someone trying to
earn sonship. You face temptation as a son who
belongs to the faithful, son fighting from acceptance, not
for acceptance, and the Matthew closes this whole exchange with
a simple statement that prepares us for the next point.
Then the devil left. Him.
Satan departs. The conflict ends, not because
Jesus escaped, but because Jesus obeyed.
Point #4 The king is vindicated and served.
Verse 11 Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and
were ministering to him. Matthew ends the temptation
narrative with a sentence that is short and simple and loaded
with meaning. There.
There are two movements here, and Matthew wants you to see
both. One the enemy is dismissed. 2
The son is attended 1st The devil left him then.
The devil left him that word then.
As we said. Earlier it matters again.
It signals consequence. The devil departs not suddenly
because you're tired of tempting, but because he had
been defeated. The faithful son had stood firm
and Satan had no claim on him. This is one of those places
where the Bible teaches us quietly but clearly, that Satan
is not some equal and opposite force to God.
He's a creature, he is an enemy, he is dangerous, but he is not
sovereign. When the king says begone, he
goes. The book of James tells us to
resist the devil and he will flee from you.
And so there's a lesson here for God's people that is both
sobering and comforting. It's sobering because temptation
is real and the devil is real. We we don't play with sin.
We don't flirt with the tempter. But it's comforting because the
devil is not invincible. He is not ultimate, He is not
God. He is already a defeated foe.
And so Matthew will show us again and again that Jesus, that
Jesus has authority over demons, over sickness, over storms, over
sin itself. And here at the outset of his
ministry, he proves his authority over the devil.
And we should be careful. The devil left him does not mean
that Satan will not return. Luke tells us as he recounts the
story that he left him until an opportune time.
Matthew's Gospel will bring the conflict to head to the head
again. We'll see it in Gethsemane.
We'll see it at the cross. We'll see it in the accusations
and the mockery. But but what's see, what's being
established here is foundational.
Jesus is the faithful Son who will not be turned aside.
He's drawn the line. Satan cannot derail him.
This is why the rest of the New Testament speaks so plainly
about Jesus's victory in very, very strong terms.
The apostle John writes this. The reason the Son of God
appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.
In first John 38, Paul says that at the cross God disarmed the
rulers and authorities. He put them to open shame by
triumphing over them in Christ. In Colossians 215, though the
wilderness, victory is not the whole war, but it is an early
decisive declaration that the sun will win.
Then Matthew says, and behold, behold, Now that little word is
Matthew's way of saying, Look closely at this, stare at it,
fix your eyes on this, don't Passover it.
Behold, what are we to behold? Angels came and we're
ministering to him. Now this is more than a detail
about comfort after fasting, although I think it includes
that, but it's also a divine testimony.
The Father who led the Son into the wilderness now sends help to
the Son in the wilderness. Angels come and they minister to
Him. Heaven attends his needs.
The faithful Son is not forgotten, He is honored.
There's an echo here of Old Testament patterns.
The prophet Elijah, he fled into the wilderness, discouraged and
depleted. An Angel was sent to strengthen
him with food in First Kings 19. Here Jesus, the greater Elijah,
he receives angelic ministry as well.
But unlike Elijah, Jesus was not fleeing in fear.
He is standing in obedience. The angels come as a kind of
confirmation that the Son has trusted his Father and the
Father is pleased by him. And this is where the story
quietly exposes 1 of Satan's lies.
From the second temptation, Satan said if you'll throw
yourself down, God will send angels.
Jesus refused to test. God.
And then, in God's own timing, not manipulated, not demanded,
the angels come anyway. That's often the way of the
Lord. The Lord will not submit to your
dare, but he never fails to keep his promises.
The faithful obedience of the Son is met with the sustaining
care of the Father. Jesus's hunger is real, His
weakness is real, and God's ministry to Him is real.
And that matters because it reminds us that obedience is not
a bare knuckle fight, for God stands back with crossed arms,
hoping that you'll do well. The Father is not indifferent to
the weakness of his people, and he is not indifferent to the
obedience of his Son. He will attend you.
He will minister to you. You'll find that His grace is
sufficient in every weakness so. What does that mean for US?
Well, one it reinforces our confidence in.
Christ. Our King is not only willing to
fight, he's able to win. When you feel outmatched by
temptation, when you need to, remember that your salvation
does not rest on the strength of your grip on God, but rather it
rests on the strength of Christ, obedience for you and God's grip
on. You, Christ, stood where you
have fallen already many times. He resisted where you have
caved, and He did it as your representative.
Secondly, it teaches us something about endurance.
Often comfort comes after obedience, not before it.
If we're honest, many of us want the angels first, right?
We we want comfort first. We want the relief first.
We want the open door first. But Matthew shows us the order,
resistance, obedience, endurance.
And then God's provision in his time.
And so third, it gives you very practical hope as someone who
may be in a wilderness season currently, some of you are
obeying God right now and you feel like you're running on
fumes. You're trying to walk in
integrity, you're trying to resist sin, you're trying to
lead your home. You're trying to stay faithful
in your marriage or your work or your thought life or your
speech. And it feels costly.
This verse reminds you, it should remind you that God sees
you. God knows you, He will sustain
you. It's not always going to be in
the way that you demand or expect, but it'll always be in
the way that He has promised, the apostle Peter writes in
First Peter 5-10. After you have suffered a little
while, the God of all grace will himself restore, confirm,
strengthen, and establish you. That doesn't mean that every
trial ends quickly, but it does mean that the Lord does not
abandon his people in the wilderness.
Right. And because you belong to
Christ, you can be sure that the Father who ministered to his Son
will minister to you as well. And it's often through ordinary
means. Scripture reading daily, prayer
daily. The fellowship of the Saints,
the quiet strengthening of grace.
Think about a refining furnace, about a metal worker refining
metal. He doesn't pull the metal out
halfway through and declare it finished.
No, the heat does its work, and then when the time is right, the
refiner removes it and cools it and strengthens it.
But the point isn't that the furnace is pleasant.
The point is that the refiner is wise.
He does not leave his work undone.
And in the same way, the wilderness is not comfortable,
but it is also not meaningless, and it is not unattended.
So Matthew's taken us into the wilderness.
He's allowed us to watch the battle unfold.
We we've seen the King LED into testing, not by accident, but by
God's design. We've seen him tempted as the
Son assaulted at every point of his identity and mission.
We've seen him overcome by the Word of God, trusting his Father
and obeying where Adam and Israel had failed.
And we have seen him vindicated and served, with Satan dismissed
and Heaven's approval made clear.
And all of this brings us back to the main points.
Trust and follow the faithful Son who overcame temptation
through obedience to God's. Word.
The text does not leave us first with a list of techniques.
It leaves us with a Savior before Jesus ever calls us to
follow. Him, he shows us that he is
worthy to be followed. You see, he's not merely a king
who commands obedience. He is the King who has himself
obeyed. And so for the believer, this
passage is meant to steady your soul.
When you feel the pool of temptation against you, when
obedience feels costly, when the bloatedness seems long in, the
relief slow to come, you must see here that you are not left
to fight alone. Your hope does not rest in the
strength of your resistance. Rather, it rests in the
faithfulness of your Savior. Christ has already stood where
you stand. He's already resisted the enemy
on your. Behalf.
And now as a believer, you were united to him by faith, and you
were called by God to walk in obedience, not to earn God's
favor, but because you already have God's favor in.
Christ. So the text then implores us.
Take up the word of God. Treasure God's Word, feed on it.
Don't use it as a charm, but. See it as daily bread for your
life. Trust that the Father who
sustained His Son will sustain you as well.
I think this passage also speaks plainly to those who are not in
Christ. If you're an unbeliever, this
passage is speaking to you, and it wants you to see that
temptation is not neutral. Ephesians 2 says that before
Christ you are a son or daughter of disobedience.
It exposes the heart, and apart from Christ, every person
eventually bows. It bows to sin, they bow to self
they bow to. Something other than God.
And the good news for you today is that the faithful son who
defeated Satan in the wilderness goes on to defeat sin and death
at the cross. At the cross, he bears the guilt
of sinners. He rises in victory on the third
day. And now he calls people
everywhere to repent of their sins and to believe in him, to
trust him for the forgiveness of their sins.
And so, if you're weary, unbeliever, if you are weary
from losing battle after battle after battle, if you're tired of
hollowed out promises from Satan and broken shortcuts that lead
to nothing, hear this clearly. There is a better king, and his
way leads to life. And so the call of this passage
is simple. And it's weighty.
You should trust him. You should follow him.
You should trust the Son who obeyed where you felled.
You should follow the King who chose the cross rather than
compromise and as you. Do rest in this promise that the
One who has tasted, the One who was tested and victorious, is
the same One who now reigns, and He intends to keep all those who
belong to Him to the very end. Would you bow your head with me
this morning, Father? We thank you for Your word
today. We thank you, Lord, for what we
see of Christ first and foremost, that He is the true
Son who trusted You and followed You by obeying Your word only,
by worshipping You alone, Father.
And that's instructive for us as believers.
We too are tempted and tried in every way, but we are not
without sin. We still give way to the flesh.
We still present the members of our bodies, our minds and our
hearts and our hands and our mouths and our feet.
We, we present those things from matters of unrighteousness.
We sin against you often. And Father, it's often because
we fail to trust you and to follow You in times of
temptation. And so, Father, I asked that you
would forgive us of our sins, that you would help us to be a
repentant people, that we would turn from sin and turn to
Christ, that we would follow Him daily.
We would deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.
Would you help us to do that? By your Spirit, Father, I pray
for anyone here who is an unbeliever.
They have not committed themselves to you.
They have not turned from their sin and made Christ the Lord of
their life. They're not trusting him or
obeying him. They're doing their own thing,
God. Would you save them today from
their sins? Would you draw them to yourself,
let nothing hinder them from coming?
Would you grant them repentance? Would you give them faith in
Christ? Would you help them also to deny
themselves, to take up their cross and to follow Jesus?
Lord, we are helpless to do that apart from a work of Your
Spirit. And so we beg you for salvation
today. Grant us your spirit.
Would you regenerate us by the power of the Spirit?
Would you wash us with the renewal of the Holy Spirit?
Would you give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts that adore?
Would you give us new desires? Would you write Your word on
their hearts that they may follow you and obey you?
Me give you a moment now in your seat to pray.
Maybe you need to confess your sins from this week.
Maybe you see today where you have failed to trust and to
follow Christ and you see where you have failed to obey God
through the word of God. Instead, you've sought your own
way. Believer, would you commit
yourself to Christ today? Would you repent of your sin?
Would you trust the Lord? Unbeliever, would you commit
yourself to Christ today? Would you repent of your sins?
Would you trust Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and
commit your life to follow Him holy?
And the Father, we are grateful that you reconcile us to
yourself through Christ Jesus, that you made Him who knew
nothing of sin, knew no sin Himself to become sin for us on
the cross, to take it on Himself, to bear the weight of
your wrath in our place. So that we who knew nothing of
righteousness, who knew nothing but sin, might become sons and
daughters of the Most High. God, we thank you that you've
reconciled us to yourself. You've, you've given us peace.
You've allowed us not to cower and fear, but to cry.
Ah, of a Father, as you've made us sons and daughters, You've
adopted us as your own, You've made us coheirs with Christ.
We'll dwell eternally with you and heaven, where there will be
no more sin, no more pain, no more tears, no more heartache,
no more death. And we long for that day.
But Lord, until that day, would you keep us near your heart?
Would you help us to go where you go, to say only what you
would say, to do only what you would have us do?
It's in the name of Christ I pray.
Amen.