The Temptation of Jesus
———————————————————————————————————
Matthew 4:1-4 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.
———————————————————————————————————
The definition of “Temptation” according to Dictionary.com is:
Tempt: to entice or allure to do something often regarded as unwise, wrong, or immoral.
The definition of temptation does not imply an overwhelming force so strong that you will be overcome and unable to say no. Instead, it implies that we always have a CHOICE!…Free Will! The life that we have, the choices we have made, the decisions that we followed, fall squarely on our own shoulders. Make no mistake about it, Satan has studied us. He knows us and he will expose our weaknesses.
In our text today, Jesus has gone without food for 40 days in the wilderness. If you have never really fasted, you may not understand the hunger that he experienced and how badly he wanted and needed to eat. When Satan appears on the scene, he quickly picks up on that queue and chooses to use that human weakness to destroy Jesus. He tells Jesus: ‘Go ahead, turn these rocks into bread and have something to eat’. But Jesus’ response is a lesson we all need to store in our hearts and minds for our future temptations.
———————————————————————————————————
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone,
but by Every Word that Proceeds
Out of the Mouth of God.
Matthew 4:4
———————————————————————————————————
Jesus takes this physical temptation and converts it to a spiritual response. He creatively compares the essentiality of food to a starving person to the significance and essentiality of the Message of God. In short, he is trying to convey that like being without food can lead to our physical death, the lack of God’s word applied to our lives can lead to our own spiritual death. While a spiritual death, on the surface, does not seem to be as critical as physical death, it is actually is far worse because it is eternal.
While this principle is valuable on its own, it has deeper significance as it pertains to repelling temptation. You see, Jesus is actually demonstrating, in this statement, how this is applicable. In saying this, he himself is quoting Scripture to repel the temptation at hand! Jesus is quoting from Deuteronomy 8:3! In order to keep Satan at bay, Jesus relies on his knowledge of God’s word, and recalls it on command to remind him what God wants out of him in that moment.
Likewise, we can and MUST use it exactly as Jesus does. As we are being tempted, we must recall the knowledge of what God wants for our lives…In that moment, and use it as Fuel to power our resistence against the wiles of Satan
May we all Live by Every Word that Proceeds from the Mouth of God!
Reflecting the SON,
Dennis Hogan
Questions, comments or further explanation? Contact me at: dennis.hogan@icloud.com
No comments:
Post a Comment