Dan Herold | Matthew 4:1-11 | 3/5/2017
Every day, whether we realize it or not, we are bombarded by advertisements. After every couple songs on the radio you hear a commercial. About 8 minutes of every half hour show on TV is devoted to advertising, and that isn’t counting the product placement in the show itself. Every few pages in a magazine or newspaper has an advertisement. As you drive down the highway you see billboards alongside the road. Advertising is everywhere.
A few weeks ago the biggest professional football game of the year was played. Commercials during that game take advertising to a whole new level. In fact, there are some people who watch the Super Bowl just to see those commercials. Did you know, that on average, this year companies paid about $5 million for a 30 second commercial during the Super Bowl? And some of those commercials were longer than 30 seconds! Why on earth would a company be willing to pay that much? Did you see the Snickers candy bar commercial? It was a 30 second commercial that they attempted to shoot live, but one of the actors missed his cue and ruined the whole commercial. Why would a company pay $5 million for that sort of risk all to try to get you to buy a $2 candy bar?
Companies take that risk because they know the power of suggestion. They know the psychological power of suggesting that a person should do or buy something. If half of the people who watched the Super Bowl this year buy one Snickers bar in the next year not only will Snickers candy bars make back the $5 million they spent on the commercial, but they will make around $100 million. That’s why they take that sort of risk. They know that they have a whole lot to gain by using the power of suggestion.
This morning we heard about Satan attempting to use the power of suggestion to his advantage. In our Gospel reading we heard about Jesus being tempted by Satan…in fact we hear about 3 specific temptations. But Jesus, our substitute, resisted every temptation for us; he resisted the temptation to be self-serving, he resisted the temptation to test God, and he resisted the temptation to worship a false god.
We are told that Jesus went into the desert where he fasted for 40 days and nights. After that he was hungry. After not eating anything for 40 days and nights that’s understandable! Just think how you would feel after not eating for 40 days. You’d be cruising down the interstate just waiting for the next set of golden arches or big orange W.
But when Satan presented the closest thing to fast food that anyone in the first century knew, Jesus resisted the temptation to feed his human desires and instead waited for God to provide. Satan came to Jesus and said,
“If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to turn into bread.”
It would have been so easy for Jesus to do that! If he could turn water into wine, surely he could have turned stones into bread. But Jesus replied to Satan,
“It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Jesus knew what Satan was doing. He wasn’t just trying to get Jesus to satisfy his hunger, he was trying to make him serve his own purposes rather than God’s. Jesus faithfully resisted that temptation by using the tool God has given us. He did nothing but quote a Bible verse, Deuteronomy 8:3, and Satan was shut down and had to move on.
So next we are told that Satan took Jesus to the holy city, to Jerusalem, and took him to the highest point of the temple. Now the temple was built on a mountain, on Mount Moriah, and the highest corner sits right on the edge of the mountain, so when you are standing on the highest point of the temple you are standing on the highest point of a building which is on top of a mountain and you would be looking straight down into the valley below. And while Jesus stood there, Satan said,
“If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written: ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
So Satan is turning up the heat a bit. He was just shut down by a passage from Scripture which Jesus quoted so, in return, he uses Scripture to tempt Jesus. We face that very same temptation all the time. You can pull words from the Bible out of context and twist them to make them say what you want them to say. Satan quoted this verse from Psalm 91. It would make perfect logical sense to say you could jump off a mountain and God would save you. Satan did what false teachers love to do…he lied. He took a beautiful verse about God protecting his children from evil, and he twisted it and used it to tempt Jesus.
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But once again, Jesus saw through the lies and resisted Satan’s temptation. In reply Jesus said,
“It is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.”—Deuteronomy 6:16.
Jesus shot down one more of Satan’s lies using the best weapon there is…God’s word.
Now, if Satan were a baseball pitcher he’d be pretty frustrated with Jesus. First, Satan threw Jesus a change up and tried to get him a little off balance, but Jesus knocked it out of the park. Next Satan threw him a slider—it looked good at first and then right at the end it broke off in another direction. Jesus handled it well, though, and hit another home run. For his third and final pitch now, Satan is getting pretty irritated and he’s ready for a fight. He’s tired of getting shut down so he’s trying to put Jesus away. So, this next pitch is a 100 mph fastball high and tight. He’s gunning for Jesus now and trying to take him down.
“The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
To the sinful nature this is the ultimate temptation…unlimited power, being made ruler over all the kingdoms of the earth and all that you had to do was bow down and worship Satan—something our sinful nature would readily do for such a grand reward. But again, Satan was lying. He didn’t have the authority or the power to deliver what he had offered He was relying on the power of suggestion and hoping that the offer would be too good to turn down.
It might seem like this would be the easiest temptation for Jesus to resist since he was God and had control over all the kingdoms of the world already, but think about the situation. Jesus had been in the desert for 40 days and nights with no food. He was still human and undoubtedly very physically weak when Satan came to tempt him. And in the wider context, Jesus had set aside some of his power as true God to become true man and live on this earth. So, Satan’s temptation here is actually very well thought out. He was saying to Jesus, “Why should you not rule over all the nations of this world? What good is your Father in heaven who sent you here to live like this? Just bow down to me and I’ll give you everything you want.”
Satan still says the same things to us. He promises to give us more money, more fame, more friends, or a happier life if we just follow him. He tempts us to question God, to doubt him, and to think we could find something better to put in his place. And at times we give in to those temptations…but Jesus didn’t. As our perfect substitute Jesus even resisted this attack from Satan. And Jesus said to him,
“Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
And when Jesus said that he hit a home run off of Satan’s best pitch, Satan gave up and left. He went away and God remained faithful to his promises and sent his angels to care for Jesus.
So what do you take away from this account of Jesus being tempted? Is it a model for how you can resist temptation? In a way, yes. Jesus used the same tool that we have at our disposal to fight back against Satan, the Word. We have that all powerful tool to use, but there will still be times when we fall into temptation. So, the point of this lesson isn’t that we can resist every one of Satan’s attacks just like Jesus, but the point is that Jesus resisted every one of Satan’s attacks for us!
That’s the heart of the gospel, that God loved us so much that he sent his Son to live a perfect life for us. And what’s more, we have a Savior who wasn’t immune to sin, he was tempted in every way just like we are and he had to fight! He knows what it is like to be attacked by Satan so he can relate to us and help us in our struggles as well. But through his own struggles he won the ultimate victory which he freely gives to those who trust in him as their Savior.
The lesson we learn from Jesus being tempted in the wilderness is that as our substitute Jesus resisted every temptation for us. Our sins no longer have any hold on us because Jesus took them to the cross where they were washed away in his holy and innocent blood. Jesus most certainly suffered, he endured more pain than any of us could imagine, but at the time when he had the perfect opportunity to quit he didn’t. He didn’t quit fighting for your soul then and he never will. That is the comfort we have in our sinless Savior who fights temptation and wins the victory for us!
Amen.