Word of Salvation – Vol. 35 No. 39 – October 1990
Temptations On The Pinnacle
Sermon: by Rev. A. Esselbrugge on Matthew 4:5.
Brothers and sisters, young people, boys and girls.
Many years ago, a man by the name of Bobby Leach startled the world by going over the Niagara Falls in a barrel. It was a sensational stunt, especially because Bobby Leach fell hundreds of metres in that barrel, and for a short time was consumed by millions of tonnes of roaring, foaming water and he came out of it without any serious injury.
Some years later, this same man was walking down the street, slipped on an orange peel, and was taken to the hospital with a badly fractured leg.
This morning we want to look at temptation, how it can come to us as it came to Jesus.
You see, some temptations can roar around us like the Niagara, and leave us unharmed. But a little, insignificant incident may cause us to fall heavily, simply because we aren't looking for it.
Not many of us have the experiences of the great men of the Bible. And we can become jealous of them. Men like Daniel. Do you remember Daniel? Daniel in the lion's den?
The king had thrown Daniel into a deep pit with hungry and roaring lions. I know what I'd be like. I'd be terrified. I'd probably be tempted to find some means of killing myself quickly, before the lions could even begin to think of me as a delicious dinner. And then again, I might even be tempted to give in to my fear and terror and just faint. But not Daniel. Daniel turned his attention and trust to the Lord God of heaven and earth. How hard that must have been! I imagine Daniel praying to be saved. And we read that the Lord sent His angel, and shut the mouths of the lions. There he prayed... and every time a lion came close to sniff this delicious piece of meat, or to drool close to him, to nudge him with their nose, or to just lick his ankle, the temptation for Daniel to stop praying, and to scream in fear must have been enormous.
By the way, boys and girls, do you know what temptation is? Some people reckon that temptation is sin... but temptation isn't sin. Jesus our Lord was without sin, and yet He experienced the agony of temptation.
Temptation is the process of trying to make a decision between something that's right and something that's wrong.
You might be standing in the supermarket, in the lolly section. And there's no-one around, no-one who can see you. On the shelf there is a delicious looking chocolate bar and it’s loaded with big crunchy hazelnuts. Your mouth just waters at the thought of that chocolate bar. But there you are, and it costs twenty cents more than you have in your pocket. You know that it's wrong to just take it and hide it in your pocket. That would be stealing. That would be sin. You know that the right thing to do would be to stop looking at it, to stop thinking about how nice that chocolate bar would be as it melted in your mouth, and you know that you should walk away from that chocolate bar. But there it is, what are you going to do? You can't buy it. But it would be so nice and delicious... but it's wrong to steal. That's what temptation is. It's a state of agony. Will I do wrong? Will I do what's right?
What am I going to do?
And in the verse that we are looking at this morning, our Lord Jesus Christ was faced with the same agony.
We read that the devil took him to the holy city of Jerusalem; took him to the highest point of the temple, and said to our Lord. 'If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. Prove it, that you really are God's Son. And if you are, well it says in the Bible that God the Father will save you.'
Now what would Jesus do? There they stood, on the edge of the roof of the temple, which hung over the Kedron valley, looking down some 140 metres ... and below, way down in the bottom of the valley, the ground was covered with jagged rocks.
Would he throw himself down and so prove that he really is the Son of God! No, our Lord didn't. But it must have been a harsh trial for our Saviour.
Forty days before, our Lord had been on a high. He had been baptised. Along with his baptism, the Spirit of God had come down and filled him. And as the Holy Spirit had descended on Jesus ... God the Father had spoken, 'This is my beloved Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.'
There was the beginning of Jesus' special ministry on earth. Full of the Spirit, he immediately began to preach, and to call his disciples. But then, he was led by the Spirit out into the desert to engage the enemy, Satan, in battle.
Now, that's how it should be, isn't it? When we are on a high, and when we can really feel the presence of our God with us, and we feel strong with the Lord on our side ... that's when we can most effectively fight evil ... wrestle with Satan ... overcome temptation and win a grand victory for the Lord! That's what we think!
But when do we fight our hardest battles with Satan? When do we face the deepest agonies of temptation? Isn't it just when we are low and weak, and think we can't fight?
That's what happened with Jesus. For forty days the Saviour went without food. He fasted. For forty days, not forty hours like some of you are doing for World Vision. For 960 hours Jesus went without food. And not in a lovely comfortable lounge chair with the radio and television and books, and people for company, but out in an empty, parched and ugly lonely desert. This was where our Lord was led to pray and fast, and to meet the devil in battle. And then, when he was at his lowest, Satan came and began to needle him, and began to test the Saviour, began to tempt him and to cause him to be in agony of conscience.
That's when our trials with temptation and our battles with Satan are the most terrible and fierce: After an illness, or a disappointment, when we are down and feeling weak and unable to cope with additional pressures.
And do you notice where the devil took Jesus he took him, to a place that was high and holy. It's almost as if we are shown here by this, that the devil is fought on holy ground. The battle is a holy war. The agony that temptation brings requires a decision that will determine whether we will remain standing on holy ground as Jesus did, or go plunging down to our ruin on the rocks below in the chasm of Satan’s evil.
High up was where our Lord was taken. High up where He could feel the grandeur of the view and be lulled into a sense of well-being. It is the last, place where we would expect to have to deal with Satan’s evil suggestions.
So often we find that here among us too. Right here in church, where we meet together in the presence of our God, and with the Holy Spirit lifting our hearts up to heaven and it's right then, that we can feel the devil make his painful presence felt. We want to ignore that person we're not too impressed with. And we want to feel annoyed and angry at the things that we think are 'silly', things that others, or the minister or the Session do. It's right here while we are meeting with Jesus, that we can be tempted to notice people and their weaknesses. Our attention is taken away from the cross where Jesus died to remove our weaknesses of sin. We can be tempted to leave the worship service, empty, angry and cold, instead of filled with joy, peace and love for each other, because of what Jesus our Saviour went through for us.
Even immediately following the worship service, there can be those nice juicy stories to tell over a cup of coffee. It can be so tempting, can't it?
Look too, at how the devil went about tempting the Lord. He had brought Him up to the heights, and then he began to sap the foundations of the Saviour's strength with doubt. 'If you are the Son of God...!”
The devil is such a cunning fox. He goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. He plants these doubts into our minds; He asks us to prove ourselves. Are you a Christian? Are you really a child of God? Maybe you're not. Maybe you've been mistaken all along. And the thought begins to grow in us and the agony of conscience causes fear and distress, because, maybe the devil is right! And then comes the satanic suggestion.
‘Prove it’, he says. Just try God out. If you are a Christian then He'll catch you and pick you up, and won't let you get hurt. 'If you,’ he said to the Christ, ‘are the Son of God, then throw yourself down.'
And then he went on, and backed up his satanic suggestion by Scripture. There was the devil, quoting verses from the Bible, from God's own Word, to try and trick the Lord into selling His soul.
If you really are the Son of God and you really do trust in the Father's protection, and if you really do believe His Word that He will protect you, then God also says that you won't get hurt, because He says that He will command His angels to catch you and to save you. They'll not only stop you from falling, but they will very tenderly lift you up, so that you, who are only wearing sandals won't hurt yourself on the jagged rocks in the chasm below.
Yes, the devil backed up his evil suggestion with Scripture, using God's Word to try and promote his own evil intentions.
How often do we find the devil among us? Quoting Scripture, saying you aren't really Christians. ‘Christ didn't really die for you’, and causing us to doubt our safety in the Lord. How often are we made to feel guilty by misquoted and abused Bible passages that the devil tries to use, and to show us that we aren't really good enough for God, because we don't clap and dance in our worship services, or speak in tongues, or see visions, or hear the voice of God in our minds, or because we just aren't 'spiritual' enough.
The devil will use any means he can to disturb and destroy God's people. He always tries to convince people that they have to earn salvation. That they have to do certain things, or be a certain type of person before God will accept them. He will do anything to stop people from knowing and experiencing the security of being in the Lord by faith! He doesn't like it when people hear and accept the simple gospel offer of our Lord that those who dwell in the shelter of the Most High are those who believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God came to die and rise again for the forgiveness of their sins.
The Lord Jesus' response to the devil's abuse of God's Word was with a correct use of scripture. Three times the Lord was tempted to fall. Three times He resisted by appealing to God's Word.
And Jesus answered the devil, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test'.
We test our Lord by not making every opportunity to get to know His will and Word. If we are to learn from the Saviour, and how He handled the process and agony of choosing between right and wrong, then we must get to know our Bibles, the Word of God, which is the Sword of the Spirit.
I find that I must always remind you of this. We so often we go through all kinds of trials, and they are much harder to cope with, because we don't take the opportunities that are presented to us. We handicap ourselves in our fight against the devil by staying away from the preaching of God's Word, by not sending our children to catechism classes or the Christian school, or joining in fellowship/Bible study groups.
If we are able to answer the devil as he tries to lead us away from the Lord, especially when he quotes the Bible at us then we had better also know our Bibles.
Something else we learn from this temptation of the Saviour is that. He has experienced what we experience. He knows our struggles. He knows how hard it is to choose between right and wrong and knowing that, He also knows how best to be our guide and strength, and Saviour.
But the best thing of all is that Jesus the Christ, whipped Satan. He beat Him there in the holy city on the temple. And He thrashed him and mortally wounded him on the cross. He conquered the devil so that today the devil is terminally ill. On the cross Christ won. And because He won, He who conquered will also make us, who trust and believe in Him, more than conquerors over all trials and temptations, and over death as the last great struggle of earthly life.
People of God do you want that victory of Christ's? He offers it to you again right now. Simply trust in the Saviour and obey His leading. There's no other way.
AMEN
