Lessons from the temptation of Jesus (1)

Luke 4:1-4

¹Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, ²where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

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

⁴Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone.'

The Son of God was thoroughly tempted as the Son of Man. I would like to share the many valuable lessons that I learned when I read through the account of the temptation of our Lord.

Let's start with the weapons or temptations that Satan used. At this point, I would like for us to remember that to tempt Jesus, Satan had to use his full arsenal of weapons, the best that he could muster so that he can truly tempt the Son of God.

The first lesson here is that Satan has no other weapons than those that we already (or should already) know. He uses these same temptations on us everyday. That means, we have been forewarned! And more importantly, the word says in 1 Cor 10:13 that "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it."

But unfortunately, history and our own experience show that many of us still fall prey to the same tricks.

Let's examine his first weapon - he appears to want to fulfill our needs but the motive behind it is to cause us to doubt God.

Jesus was physically exhausted after 40 days without food. He had a strong and legitimate physical need - hunger. So Satan presented to Him a seemingly good solution - bread. Turning a stone into bread was not necessarily a bad thing. However, his real goal was to make Jesus doubt God and His identity. He said, "IF you are the Son of God ..... "

Now isn't this familiar - he used the same trick on Adam and Eve ..."Did God REALLY say ...."

Satan tempted Jesus through His strength. If Jesus wanted too, He could have easily turned the stone into bread. But to do so would tantamount to doubting God since Satan had challenged His identity. Satan will tell us that we CAN do it without God and there is no need of God. We must realize that all our strengths are from Him and we must dedicate our strength for His use and not ours.

Jesus wisely rebuked Satan. There is a lesson even in this rebuke. Jesus did not waste His time to explain or affirm His identity. Matthew 4:4 recorded it as, Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" Jesus simply taught us that we must totally depend on God's word.

Let's spend this week to ponder over these lessons. I will continue with the lessons learned from the second temptation in my next posting.

God bless.

Steven