weekly sermon

8-3-08

How Tempting!

Out of all the things we go through in this life, temptation would have to be the hardest. I know that most of you would say that dealing with the lose of a loved one, an incurable disease, lack of food or money, or even the lack of clothing or housing would be harder to deal with. Let us think about this for one moment. With the passing of a loved one, time will heal our souls and make us stronger. If we give this issue to God, He will bring comfort, just as it is stated in Matthew 5:4, "Blessed [are] they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." If one has an incurable disease; search the Bible, the word heal or healed is used 119 times. Everywhere that Jesus went where there was sick around, Jesus healed everyone of them.

There is only one area that the devil can hurt our relationship with our loving Father. All the things I mentioned above are a direct result of the one and only thing the devil can use against us, this would be temptation. Satan knows this to be true. The devil relies so much on his tempting power that he also thought it would be his power over Jesus Himself.

Turn with me to Matthew 4:1-11, "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. (2)And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. (3)And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. (4)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. (5)Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, (6)And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in [their] hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. (7)Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. (8)Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; (9)And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. (10)Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. (11)Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him."

There are a few things here I really want to look at from these passages. First that Jesus was led up by His Spirit to be tempted. Notice the word spirit is capitalized. This tells us that the spirit of Jesus that was led up to be tempted was the spirit that is in us, which would be the Holy Spirit. Next we see that Jesus had fasted, or did not eat, for forty days and forty nights. Going without food for this length of time will bring the body down to a very weak point. Note here that the devil is very aware that this is a weak moment for Jesus. Being that Jesus was starving from the fasting that He had been on, this would be His weakest point, and the point that the devil would first want to use against Jesus.

The devil will search your very being and find the one thing that you are having difficulty with and use the cure for that one thing as the temptation against you. What I mean is, if you are hungry then he will offer you food in exchange for something else. This something else is the condition of your soul.

If we look at that particular verse, the devil was really not tempting Jesus with food, he was actually wanting Jesus to prove He was the Son of God. Yes the devil was tempting Him with food, but it was a distraction for his real purpose here, and that was to mock God. As we see, from Jesus' response, we live by the word of God, not by the bread that the devil was using in the temptation. Jesus was saying, follow God and only God.

Next we see that the devil took Jesus to the top of a temple and said, throw yourself to the ground, angles will protect you. Here again, Jesus was weak and the devil knew this, so he wanted Jesus to throw Himself to the ground to see if it would cause Him harm. Once again summoning the angels to Jesus' aide was NOT the true temptation. Again, as we can see, the devil was trying to get Jesus to do something that would prove He was the Son of God, which in turn would be mocking the existence of God. We can see that again Jesus said that we are to follow God. He did this by saying, we should not tempt God, that God is real and we should never mock that fact.

Lastly we see something that I, in particular, find very funny. The devil takes Jesus to the top of a high mountain that He may be able to see the world and all the kingdoms in it. The devil then offers all of this to Jesus if He will just bow down and worship him. Before we get into the result of this section, I will tell you what it is that I find funny. Well, I find this part of the scripture funny for two reasons. The first thing I find funny is that the devil is offering Jesus something that is already His. Remember the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." If God created the earth and all the kingdoms in it, then it already belongs to Jesus. The second thing I find funny here is that the devil actually wants Jesus to fall down and worship him. Jesus is the Son of the Almighty God, the Creator of all things that has been created. Why would anyone want to fall down and worship the created instead of the creator?

If we look once again at Jesus' response, we see that Jesus said, "worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve". Jesus knew, just as we all should know, that we are to serve God.

No matter what we go through in life, we have "the" Creator, God, on our side, as long as we follow and serve Him. The devil knows that we are all in need of something. That something puts us in a vulnerable position, and the devil knows this also. He will use this vulnerability against us in the form of a temptation to see how weak we really are at that time. Once we have been tempted by the devil it is up to us to see how we are going to respond. Will we respond as Jesus did? Will we have enough will power to walk away from the temptation and know that God is here to fulfill our every need.

The last thing I want us to notice, which is the most important part of our temptation period, is that once we get past the temptation and really follow God and worship Him, He will send reinforcement to aide us. Once Jesus passed the temptation period, angels were sent to minister to Him and take care of Him. Once we pass any temptation, God sends angels to comfort our souls and replenish what we lost during our temptation, which may even be the one thing we were in lack of that we were being tempted with in the first place.

If tempted how would you respond? Could you pass the temptation test? We have all looked at a something and said to ourselves, or maybe even out loud, 'how tempting'. Let me now offer you something very tempting, the full power of the Creator. If you walk through this life with the full power of God, then there is nothing that the devil can use to tempt us. How could we possibly fail with the power of God on our side, just as Jesus had during His temptations.

If you have never been tempted by anyone to receive the full power of God and walk through this life with Him by your side controlling all your temptations, then let me be the first. All you would have to do is give your life totally to the control of God, sit back, and reap the benefits of what our loving Saviour has to offer. Say the same thing Jesus said, get the hence satan. To do this all you have to do is say a simple prayer with me.

Say this simple prayer with me, Dear Lord, take over my life and forgive me of my sins, and give me the gift of everlasting life. Amen.

If you have said this simple prayer, then we believe that you have received salvation. We would love to rejoice with you, so please drop us a note, in our link, to let us know and confess Jesus before man, so that we may send you a few things that we hope will help you in your new Christian walk.
 

With Love in Christ,

Pastor Stone