Sermon: Mirroring Jesus’ Overcoming of Temptation

What has been your experience with temptation? Are you currently being tempted to sin? We’ve all been tempted to disobey the Lord and to doubt the Lord. We’ve all yielded to temptations and experienced the shame of that. Why weren’t we stronger (we ask ourselves)? Maybe we’ve told ourselves that the temptation was just too strong, or that we were just too weak? Or worse, maybe we’ve told ourselves that it’s something we have to live with, or even convinced ourselves that we haven’t sinned and we keep on disobeying the Lord.

It seems strange to think of Jesus being tempted and, honestly, we don’t even consider that it was hard for him to resist. He’s the Son of God. Resisting temptation was nothing for him. But there is something in this temptation of Jesus that we need to see, something that should alert us to the fact that the temptation was real for Jesus and that he had to prepare himself for resisting it. There are some lessons for us in how Jesus dealt with temptation that can help us also stand up to the Devil’s attempts to lead us down a wrong path.

How Jesus overcame temptation

The first thing we have to notice in our passage is that Jesus had just come from being baptized by John at the Jordan River. And you may recall that when he came out of the water he began praying, and as he was praying the Holy Spirit came down upon him in the form of a dove and the Father spoke from heaven saying, “You are my beloved son with whom I am well-pleased.” And, then, almost immediately, the Spirit led him into the wilderness to be tempted.

Why would the Spirit do this? Because Jesus, now anointed for ministry, had to be tested, as Adam and Eve were, to see if he could do what we, in Adam, couldn’t do, resist temptation, stay trusting in and obedient to God. Jesus had come to be our substitute, a sacrifice in our place, to pay the price due for our sin. He couldn’t do that if he wasn’t free of any blemish, if he wasn’t sinless himself. He had to be tested. If there was to be a new humanity it had to have a new “father” from its own kind, the human race, who could pass the test and be the sinless head of a new mankind.  Jesus, the last Adam, passed the test, a most severe test, another face-to-face with Satan but even more intense than what Adam faced.  And he passed the test! How did he do that? What were the factors that made him able to resist Satan’s challenges?

Luke tells us that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. I don’t have time to develop this, but there are two words used in the New Testament for the filling of the Spirit, and the one used here describes a consistent experience of depending on the Spirit and taking on His character. Jesus had not developed spiritually all on his own. He had recognized that he needed to depend on the Holy Spirit for the development of his character, for the strength to deal with life in a godly way. That may blow us away, because we tend to think Jesus came forth from the womb fully developed in godliness, not needing to grow or be formed. But we’re wrong. Luke had told us prior to this in his Gospel that Jesus “grew in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and man.” His wasn’t a static experience. He had spent time relating to the Holy Spirit, looking to Him to help him understand Scripture, listening to Him when faced with moral decisions to make, seeking His help for how to interact with people. This is how he discerned the Spirit’s directing him to go to the wilderness, where he would be tempted for forty days.

If you want to be successful at resisting Satan’s temptations, you need to begin learning to be dependent on the Spirit, begin learning to listen for Him and His leading. I remember reading that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous British preacher, when he made his way to the pulpit, would with each step utter in prayer, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” Maybe you and I need to do something similar each day and multiple times during the day, to remind ourselves that the Spirit has been given us to dwell in us and to make us holy. We are not in this by ourselves. He is there to lean on, to get help from, to ask for wisdom and direction from.

So, lesson number one on how Jesus was able to resist temptation:

1. Jesus Depended on the Holy Spirit

You may find this hard to comprehend. Maybe it’s easier just to think of it as depending on God. Whether you acknowledge the third person of the Trinity or not, you can work at depending on God. Depend on Him for strength and wisdom to train your children. Depend on Him to learn your job with excellence. Depend on Him for dealing with finances, for getting enough exercise, for learning at school, for making and keeping friends, for navigating sorrows, for enjoying joys…and for resisting tempation. As the Proverb says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct or make straight your paths.” Get in the habit of acknowledging Him in all things. Get in the habit of talking to Him throughout the day. And get in the habit of listening to whatever He wants you to know.

Jesus did that, and it prepared him for facing temptation without yielding.

The second lesson may not be as evident to you as the first.

2. Jesus Spent Time in God’s Word Daily

If you have notes or references in your copy of Scripture, I want you to notice that Jesus quoted three Scriptures, and all three quotes came from the book of Deuteronomy. Jesus was familiar with the whole Old Testament. Do you think he could only find appropriate Scriptures to quote for the temptations that came his way from one book of the Bible? No way! There are many places in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Psalms, Proverbs, etc., that he could have quoted. Why only quote from Deuteronomy? Because that is what he was reading. I imagine that as he departed to the wilderness to spend over a month there, he took with him a scroll of Deuteronomy. In the Hebrew the book was called by the first few words of the book, D^evarim, these are the words. He took a scroll that included D^evarim, Deuteronomy, on it, and read it each day of his time in the wilderness.

I have found no more important tool in my personal spiritual development than daily reading of God’s Word. Every day I’m presented with God’s view of things, how He thinks about sin, how He thinks about me, how He thinks about the world, how He thinks about relationships, church, raising children, money, war, government, salvation, witnessing, everything. Every day by reading God’s Word I’m taking an opportunity to connect with God. And this is why this spiritual discipline has been urged upon followers of Jesus through the centuries. The amazing thing about this exercise is that it doesn’t have to be super prolonged to get this benefit. Even just a few minutes a day in God’s Word can have a profound impact on your spiritual growth and on your ability to resist temptation.

I’m sure that Jesus also talked to God, probably about what he read in Scripture that day, meditated on what he read [you know, gave concerted thought to it], and probably even memorized some of that Scripture. These are spiritual disciplines that usually accompany daily Bible reading. Together they make for an impregnable fortress of resistance against temptation.

And this leads to our third lesson from Jesus preparation for resisting temptation:

3. Jesus Meditated Upon and Studied Scripture

Just as tell-tale a sign of daily reading as Jesus quoting only from Deuteronomy, is what he quoted from Deuteronomy. Let’s look at what Satan was trying to tempt Jesus with.

³ The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”

Satan first tempted Jesus to utilize his deity to meet his physical need for food.  “Since you are the Son of God and not just a human,” he implies, “just tell these stones with your creative power to become bread and satisfy your hunger.”  But Jesus recounted the words of Deuteronomy 8:3 spoken by Moses to Israel after their 40-year journey in the wilderness as they prepared to enter the promised land.

^8:1 Be careful to follow every command I am giving you today, so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. ² Remember how Yahweh your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. ³ He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of Yahweh. (Deuteronomy 8:1-3)

Moses was teaching Israel that God was testing them to teach them that God’s word is our first food and source of life.  We, like they, need to learn to trust God to provide for us, not try to manufacture our own rescue.  Satan was trying to get Jesus need to manufacture his own deliverance by using his deity, something the Father didn’t want him to do, but Jesus knew from this passage that he could trust in his loving Father to save him. Jesus had meditated on this verse in Deuteronomy and knew its application to this particular temptation from Satan. There were other passages in Scripture that spoke to this same truth, but he had been reading in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomy 8:3 was the most immediately applicable passage from his devotional and meditational reading.

Satan may try to get us to manufacture our own rescue in a way that violates God’s commands. When you are tempted to cheat on a test, lie to cover up a failure, have an affair instead of working on your own marriage, steal instead of working honestly…do you know God’s word to counter this temptation, His word that says that He is the legitimate source of our deliverance?

The same thing happens with the second temptation:

⁵ The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. ⁶ And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. ⁷ If you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Satan’s second temptation is a bold bid to get Jesus to avoid the cross on the way to the crown, but it would mean that Jesus’ sovereignty would come under Satan’s sovereignty. I won’t go into it too deeply, but Satan has been given a lot of sovereignty over the world. It’s why he is called the prince of the power of the air and the god of this world. His sovereignty is still under God’s sovereignty, but he was legitimately offering Jesus the kingdom, at least in the way he could get people to submit to Jesus. It would, however, be in subservience to Satan, and maybe Satan even believed that it would last forever. If Jesus accepted this, he wouldn’t have to follow God’s plan of being crucified first before becoming king.

But once again, Jesus appeals to Deuteronomy:

^6:10 When Yahweh your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to give you—a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, ¹¹ houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant—then when you eat and are satisfied, ¹² be careful that you do not forget Yahweh, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹³ Fear Yahweh your God, serve him only and take your oaths in his name. ¹⁴ Do not follow other gods, the gods of the peoples around you. (Deuteronomy 6:10-14)

Jesus has just been reading and meditating on this, and it is fresh on his mind. Again, there are many other passages in Scripture that teach this, but Jesus had been living with Deuteronomy in this month and ten days. What Scripture are you living with? Satan will tempt us to get what God wants for us in an illegitimate way, which in essence then leads to following Satan. A knowledge of God’s Word will deliver us.

The final temptation of Satan brings a similar response from Jesus:

⁹ The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. ¹⁰ For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; ¹¹ they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Satan has gotten wise to Jesus’ strategy, to Jesus’ resource for resisting temptation, and tries to use Jesus’ resource against him, quoting Psalm 91. This is another temptation for Jesus to avoid the cross by proving God’s special care for him by delivering him from a fatal fall from the temple and getting people to acclaim him as the Messiah.  And as Satan twisted God’s word to Adam about not dying if he ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so here he twists the meaning of Psalm 91. But Jesus had been meditating in Deuteronomy:

¹⁶ Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Massah. (Deuteronomy 6:16)

So Jesus retorts with Deuteronomy 6:16 because it is more to the point in this situation than Psalm 91 is.  You don’t presume upon God as to how He will deliver you.  Jesus knew he had to go to the cross to procure our redemption.  This silly test wasn’t the pathway to our salvation nor the answer for Jesus in following God’s plan. Satan will try to get us to put God to the test, misinterpreting Scripture as we do, and trying to avoid obeying God’s lead in our lives. I’ll never forget an unmarried couple telling me that it was okay for them to have a sexual relationship because God’s Word never specifically forbid it. That’s true, but there is so much in Scripture which assumes it is wrong and forbidden that they were all too willing to ignore. We must rightly know the Word of Truth so that we don’t fall into this temptation.

Now there is another way Jesus resisted temptation that is not immediately apparent in this passage, but a means of resistance that we must assume Jesus used, because he taught his disciples to use this means so as not to fall into temptation.

4. Jesus Prayed

In Luke 22, the night before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus did this,

³⁹ Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. ⁴⁰ On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” ⁴¹ He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ⁴² “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”

Jesus prayed. And what did he pray? He talked to God about what his temptation was. Lord, he said, I am tempted to avoid going to the cross. I don’t want to have to carry out this part of your plan for me. I don’t want to have to die an excruciating death in order to be the sacrifice for the sin of the world. I’m admitting it, Father, there is a strong part of me that wants to yield to the temptation to run. I’m scared. Is there another way? God, could you let this cup of suffering go away? Could there be another plan, please?

But it was in praying this, in opening his heart to his Father, that he was able to hear that, no, this was the Father’s plan for him, and he was able to yield his heart to the Father’s plan. “Not my will, but Yours be done.” This is the way you pray during temptation. You don’t hide the fact that you want to sin. You admit it. God knows it anyway. But you need to tell Him about it. “God, I want to injure that person I hate. I want to make their life miserable. I want to defeat them in some way, smash them down, exalt myself over them. I know I shouldn’t feel that way but I do. Lord, how do I get away from this urge to murder?” And I am guessing that God will bring to your mind any number of things, like, “You, child, were my enemy and I didn’t smash you, and this person is a human being just like you. I served you instead of serving myself. I died for you. Can you not “die” to your ego and pray for your enemy?

Jesus knew the Word of God, he spent time daily in it and meditated on it and could apply it accurately, and he was dependent on the Holy Spirit to enable him to trust and obey the Lord. Yet he also prayed to God in the midst of temptation. That was actually a way of depending on the Spirit. That was a way of bringing Scripture to mind. It was opening oneself to God and having fellowship with Him that resulted in God’s heart and mind rubbing off on him. It is the way he taught his disciples to deal with temptation.

And will you notice something else he did with prayer. He invited others he trusted to pray with him. Sometimes the quickest and most effective way to see temptation’s powerful urges wither and disappear, is to share your temptation with a trusted brother or sister or two or three, and ask them to pray with and for you. Jesus took Peter, James, and John with him to pray with him. If Jesus needed that, how much more do we. I know, it is embarrassing to have to admit to a fellow believer that you’re struggling with wanting to sin. But you won’t believe how effective that is to overcoming temptation.

 

How many pastors have we heard about lately who have succumbed to sexual temptation, or financial temptation, or the temptation of abusing their power? And these are people who surely, we think, depend on the Spirit, who spend time in prayer daily, who know or should know what Scripture teaches, and who presumably pray. And it’s not just pastors, it’s parishioners of all kinds. But I’m telling you, it is just as easy for pastors as it is for parishioners to start depending on themselves instead of the Spirit, to set aside daily reading of Scripture, to neglect the meditation on God’s Word, and to hide their sin from God and others and not, in fact, pray about it. Jesus has given us this process he modeled to mirror if we want to not be lead into temptation but delivered from the evil one. Don’t you want to be like Jesus? Doesn’t your heart yearn to be holy and righteous, to be pleasing to your God and Savior? Watch Jesus and learn. Mirror Jesus.