Word of Salvation – Vol.52 No.15 – April 2007

 

Jesus Passes the Test

 

A Sermon by Rev John De Jongh on Matthew 4:1-11

Scripture Reading:  Psalm 91

Suggested Singing:  BoW 22a; 190; 240; Rej 394; 500

 

Dear Congregation.

In the first chapters of the Bible you read about the first man, Adam. Luke describes him as a son of God. And in Genesis 3 he’s tested in the Garden of Eden and fails. The consequence of that for all creation is devastating – we still suffer from it today.

Then, as part of the recovery operation in the book of Exodus, God chooses another son, his firstborn son, Israel. He sends Moses to Pharaoh in Egypt with the message, “Israel is my firstborn son, … Let my son go, so he may worship me.” And as Israel leaves Egypt and travels through the desert to Mt Sinai to meet with God, Israel as a nation is tested too. Deuteronomy 8 says, “Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you … causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna … to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

Unfortunately Israel failed the test too. Even before they reach Mt Sinai they doubt God, testing him with their lack of faith. They don’t believe he can save them from Pharaoh’s army. They grumble that the food in the desert isn’t as good as the food back in Egypt. Then in chapter 17 they come to Massah where there’s no water to drink. They quarrel with Moses again. And Moses replies, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the test?” In fact, the whole history of Israel is a history of failure. They’re meant to be God’s prophets, priests and kings, representing him before the world, introducing God’s kingdom into the world. But their history is a history of failure and testing God.

And now here in Matthew 4 comes another Son of God, another one who’s been anointed to represent God before the nations. And the first thing that happens to him after God acknowledges him as his anointed Son is that he’s led into the desert too, to be tested. The big question is – will he do any better than these other sons of God?

Point 1 – God tests Jesus

Even though the NIV heading here is ‘The temptation of Jesus’, that’s not all that’s going on here. Jesus is tempted. But as it says in verse 1, it’s the Holy Spirit who leads him into the desert to be tempted. Jesus is following in Israel’s footsteps again. God is testing him, too, as his Anointed Son. The question is whether he’ll stand up to it better than Israel did.

And we’re all tested from time to time in one way or another. Socrates even said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Testing is about making sure we’re up to the next challenge. We’re tested at school to make sure we’re ready to move on to the next grade. We’re tested at university to see if we qualify for the degree. You could even say that everything in life is a test in one way or another, to see if we’re up to the next challenge, usually something even more important. Those who prove faithful in a few things will be given many things to do. Those who prove faithful in little will be given responsibility over much.

It’s the same with Jesus here. If he fails here in the desert, there’s no chance of him succeeding at the cross and becoming the Saviour of the world. And God’s test involves the devil tempting him, just like Adam’s test in the garden and Israel’s in the desert. It’s his first major temptation after being announced as God’s Son, the Messiah.

Point 2.1 – Temptation 1: Why suffer?

 

Like a lot of our temptations, the devil starts with basic appetites – Jesus is hungry. And isn’t that one of the things people generally have trouble with – their basic appetites? People eat too much, drink too much, lust, hate. If we could just get our basic appetites under control – but we struggle with them again and again, every day. And so we end up with a country where a lot of people are overweight, have liver problems, can’t keep their relationships together, and suffer all the other problems that come along with not even being able to control themselves.

This kind of temptation worked against Adam and Eve in the garden. “The fruit was good for food, and pleasing to the eye, and desirable for gaining wisdom, so they took some and ate”. It worked against Israel in the desert, “why have you brought us out into the desert to starve when we had all the good food we wanted in Egypt?” Is it going to work against Jesus?

Jesus is certainly hungry! He’s been fasting in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights like Moses, the mediator of the Old Covenant, when he visited with God on Mt Sinai. And so Satan tempts him to turn stones into bread. Why be hungry when you have Messianic power? We know that Jesus could produce food – you see him do it later in his ministry when at least twice he feeds thousands of people at a time. What could be wrong with it? Surely there’s nothing wrong with feeding yourself?

But the reason Jesus had been given miraculous power was to demonstrate his authority as the true King – over creation, sickness, death, and even demons. And so throughout his ministry you don’t see Jesus using his power for his own benefit. He lives off money donated by supporters. And when he and the disciples need food he sends them off to buy it, or they glean from the fields they’re passing through. To use his power to help his own hunger would be to misuse it from the start. Satan is trying to bring his mission to an end even before it really starts. As well as that, the main temptation Jesus would face over the next three years would be to avoid suffering, especially the cross. Avoiding suffering now wouldn’t be a good start.

And so Jesus answers Satan with a quote from Deuteronomy 8. It’s the lesson Adam and Eve learnt the hard way in the garden. It’s better to listen to God’s word than to your stomach. It’s the lesson God wanted to teach Israel in the desert too by only giving them manna each day for that day. Food isn’t the most important thing; God’s promise to provide is a lot more important. It’s the God who provides the food who’s important – we need to do what he wants rather than just what our stomachs want. And Jesus needed to trust that God would provide how and when was best, in a way that was legitimate. And you see in the last verse, after the testing was over, that he did.

There are two important lessons that we need to learn too. When God gives us abilities and resources, he doesn’t do it just so we can use it all for ourselves. He does it so we can serve others. So if God has given you abilities like teaching, serving, encouraging, leadership, mercy, or whatever, he’s done it so you can bless others. The lists of spiritual gifts scattered throughout the New Testament always come with the challenge to use them for the common good of all believers and the wider community. We need to work out how to use the things we’re good at for the good of others. And if God’s given you more than you need, which is probably all of us – money, food, possessions – the challenge again is to use it for the good of others, contributing to the needs of others.

The other lesson for us is to put what God says in the Bible before our appetites the same way Jesus did, and use that as our weapon against Satan’s temptations. The more important thing is not what we think we need, or how we feel, or what we might like, but what the Bible says about that. It’s more important to trust God, trust the Bible, and trust God’s provision, than worry about what we want. It means knowing our Bibles well, and being committed to living out the truth. It means putting God’s kingdom and his righteousness first.

Point 2.2 – Temptation 2: Test God’s provision

In the second temptation, you see Satan picking up on what Jesus is doing – even quoting the Bible himself. And since Psalm 91 gives such a glowing recommendation of how God will care for those who trust him, he challenges Jesus to throw himself down from the highest point of the temple and prove it.

You can find places in the Bible where people do test God. Gideon put out his fleece. God even tells King Ahaz through Isaiah to ask him for a sign that Israel will be spared from their enemies. So why shouldn’t Jesus test God?

But these other tests don’t mean that testing God is always the right thing to do. Should Gideon have tested God, or should he have just trusted him? In fact, the generation of Israelites in the desert at Massah missed out on entering the Promised Land because they kept testing God instead of just trusting him.

And if you read Psalm 91 carefully, you realise that the one whom God keeps safe in spite of traps and plagues and terrors and enemies, isn’t the person who tests God, but the one who trusts him. Verse 2 says, “I’ll say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust’.” You don’t need to test the one you trust.

So with his quote from Psalm 91 Satan is actually tempting Jesus to not do what Psalm 91 says – instead of trusting God, Satan is tempting Jesus to test him. But Jesus doesn’t fall for it.

And again, we need to learn the same lesson. We need to learn to trust God and take him at his word, rather than test him. We need to trust him enough to take that next step of faith, and not hold back waiting for the results to be guaranteed first. When God tells us to be people of Christian character, we just need to accept that that is the best way, and that he will bless us if we take it. If we have to test and prove everything first, we’ll never get around to becoming the kind of person God wants us to be.

When God tells us to live a certain way, to do some things and not do others, we need to just trust him and do it. And when God tells us to make him and his kingdom our first priority – to be his people, to lead others to faith, to help others grow as Christians – we need to just trust that that is the best path we could take in life. If we want cast iron guarantees first, we’ll never do it. It’s only in actually taking that path that we prove beyond a doubt that God is faithful to those who trust him and doesn’t need to be tested.

Point 2.3 – Temptation 3: Take the easy way

Satan’s third temptation really isn’t very subtle. He basically offers to give Jesus everything he came for if Jesus worships him. In John 12 Jesus describes Satan as the prince of the world, and here the prince of the world is offering the whole world to the one who came to be King of the world – and without a fight at that – all Jesus has to do is worship him. Maybe it wasn’t all that subtle, but what a temptation it must have been – no more struggle, no fight, no cross, no death, no suffering hell for us!

On the other hand, what a compromise – worshipping Satan instead of his heavenly Father! Please notice that this was the compromise Israel had made over and over again. They’d been disloyal to God over and over again in the hope of political gain. Think of King Solomon marrying hundreds of pagan princesses from the countries roundabout trying to make peace for Israel. And think of the treaties Israel had wanted with Egypt, Assyria and the Babylonians, thinking they’d be more help than God.

It’s the compromise we make too often as well. We know the right thing to do in a particular situation, but we think we’ll get more advantage from some other way. And so we do it. We cheat on our tests. We lie about our age. We work for cash and don’t declare it. We think that doing it Satan’s way will give us an advantage over God’s way. When we do we are bowing to him and the way he does things instead of to God.

Fortunately Jesus goes back to his Bible and quotes from Deuteronomy for the third time, “Worship the Lord your God and serve him only”, and that brings these temptations to an end.

Point 3 – Jesus’ trust vindicated

And then in the last verse God honours Jesus’ trust. Jesus has gone through a difficult 40 days but God is true to the promises in Psalm 91, and sends his angels to attend to him. They probably feed him and give him any other help that he needed.

And maybe we’re still left with questions about Psalm 91 and how we’re supposed to understand it. But that’s only because it’s one of those psalms that points us to a future that will be better than our present. It points us to the land we’ll find on the other side of death and the way things will be there.

The thing to remember is that in Jesus all of God’s promises are fulfilled. We don’t always see it now, but we will see it in glory. Everyone who trusts God through Jesus can face the tough times. We can face danger, enemies, sword and sickness, even death, knowing that God keeps his promises in eternity for us too. God honours those who honour him. God is faithful to those who are faithful to him.

Conclusion: Jesus succeeds where Israel failed

It reminds me again of the movie ‘Chariots of Fire’. A Christian sprinter makes sacrifices for God. He won’t run on Sunday and misses out on his event at the Olympics. But they can fit him into another one. And as he sets up just before the race someone slips a note into his hands, “God honours those who honour him.” And even though it’s not his strongest event, he wins. He was tested, he passed, and God honoured his trust.

Here in Matthew 4, Jesus, God’s anointed Messiah, has his trust in God honoured because he honours God. This is the first battle he has with Satan now that his ministry has started in earnest. And even though with Adam the first battle went to the devil, this time it’s been won by Jesus. Jesus is bringing God’s kingdom into the world in a way that Adam, and after him Israel, failed to do.

Amen.