The Devil Vs. the Second Adam Matthew 4:1-11

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There is a great enemy in this world. He hates God, and he desires to have the power and authority that only
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God has. This enemy is known as Satan or the devil. Since he hates
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God so much, he despises those created in God's image. We humans are of course created in God's image.
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This means that we reflect God in ways that other creatures do not.
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Satan's first attack against God after he was expelled from heaven was to go after God's image bearers.
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He tempted the first humans, Adam and Eve, and they gave in to the temptation and fell into sin.
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Romans 5, 12 -19 explains that Adam was the representative head of the human race.
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When he sinned, the whole human race sinned, and his sinful seed would be passed down to every human who ever lived.
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The first Adam failed, and the whole human race would pay the consequences.
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But thankfully, a second Adam would come on the scene. He was predicted in Genesis 3, 15.
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That verse predicted that he would crush the head of the serpent, Satan. In our sermon text today, we are going to see
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Satan tempt the most important human being who ever lived, the second man, the second
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Adam, Jesus Christ. His goal in tempting him is to ruin
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God's plan of redemption. The second Adam, Jesus, is the only hope for God's image bearers to be rescued, and Satan knows this, so he tries to do the impossible, tempt the
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God -man to sin. We will see this temptation in Matthew 4, verses 1 -11, so I encourage you to turn there with me.
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What we will see is where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded. We will learn from our
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Savior how to fight against the devil's lies with God's truth.
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This sermon is titled, The Devil Versus the Second Adam, and if you're using a red
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Bible in the pews, it's on page 961. Our big idea, our proposition is this, we must listen to God's word in the face of Satan's lies.
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And we will see three truths this morning, and it's very interesting, each of these truths that Jesus says is in response to a lie that Satan tells.
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Each of them are a correction. The first truth we will see is to rely on God alone, not self, and we'll see this in verses 1 -4.
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But before we jump into our text this morning, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon.
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In fact, last week, Paul preached from New Life, so I'm not giving a recap of last week's sermon, but from two weeks ago, what we saw was that Jesus was baptized by John the
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Baptist. Jesus came to John to be baptized, and John wondered why Jesus would come to him.
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John told him, I need to be baptized by you, not the other way around, but Jesus insisted on having
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John baptize him. He told John the meaning of his baptism. The meaning is to fulfill all righteousness.
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Two weeks ago, we unpacked what this meant. The first thing we needed to see is that Jesus was endorsing
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John's ministry. What we saw is that the religious leaders, the Jewish religious leaders, the
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Pharisees and the Sadducees did not endorse John's ministry. So when
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Jesus goes to John to be baptized, what he is doing is he's endorsing John's ministry.
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He's endorsing the ministry that says that true faith comes through repentance.
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And when you repent, you are baptized in the waters. And this is how you have a right relationship with God.
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This is what Jesus is endorsing. We also looked at the meaning to fulfill all righteousness.
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The second part of this was that Jesus was identifying with sinners when he was baptized.
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And he does this because as he starts his ministry here, he is pointing ahead to the future when he would die on the cross for our sins and he would be raised from the dead.
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And what water baptism symbolizes is that it symbolizes the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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So that when we are baptized, what is taking place is that we are being baptized with Christ.
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We die with Christ and we are raised to new life in him so that sin no longer has power over us.
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We also saw the Trinity endorsed Jesus, specifically the
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Father and the Spirit. The Spirit endorsed Jesus through a representative dove coming upon Christ.
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And the Father endorsed Jesus by speaking from heaven. This is my son with whom
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I am well pleased. What we needed to see two weeks ago is how incredible it is that Jesus identifies with us as he becomes our sin bearer.
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We also needed to see that we must take God at his word concerning who
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Jesus is. He truly is the Messiah, the Son of God, as the
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Father and the Spirit testified. Now this leads us to our text today. We are going to look at a remarkable passage focused on the temptation of Christ.
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Let's look at this important event very early on in Jesus' ministry. The first two verses, verses one and two of chapter four.
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Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
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And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. After Jesus' baptism, the first order of business that God has for Jesus is for him to be tempted.
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God is preparing Jesus for his three plus years of ministry. This made me think of my preparation for ministry.
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You don't just become a pastor. Many years go in to prepare one for this calling.
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Before I came here, there was about a six -year process that prepared me to pastor this church.
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That included four years of seminary and serving as an assistant pastor during that time.
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Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness is his seminary.
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This was the best seminary training that anyone has ever received. As God sent
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Jesus into the wilderness to fast and have communion with him,
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God prepared Jesus for what he was about to face. The adversity he was about to face.
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The Lord used this to strengthen him for the trials ahead. What we just read is that during Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness, he fasted.
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And many of you know what it means to fast and that is that you stop eating food for an extended period of time.
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The purpose of fasting is to have a greater reliance on God. The hunger pains remind you of your need for God that he ultimately satisfies you, not food, and he sustains you, not food.
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The longest fast I've ever done is only a couple of days. So I can't imagine how
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Jesus did 40. We know that Jesus had water. Otherwise, this would have been impossible.
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Water is more important than food when it comes to survival. You could go very long without food as we see here, but you can't go long without water.
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Now, Jesus being sent into the wilderness sounds familiar from an episode in the Old Testament.
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The Lord led the nation of Israel into the wilderness for 40 years. And Jesus as God's son is also led into the wilderness, but only symbolically for 40 days.
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God sends Jesus into the wilderness to be tested. The way that he would be tested is
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God the Father allowing Satan to tempt his son. James 1 .13
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teaches us that God tempts no one to sin, but the one who is the primary tempter in the world, as this text tells us, is
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Satan. What this tells us is that God has Satan on a leash and lets him do things to serve
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God's greater purposes. Otherwise, Satan would have been gone a long time ago.
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But we know about Satan from scripture and how horrible he is and that God defeats him through Christ at the cross, but officially he's defeated at the very end when he's thrown into the lake of fire.
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What we know from scripture about Satan is that he is a destroyer. 1
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Peter 5 .8 tells us that Satan crawls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
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Satan tempts people with sin and destroys their life and leads people on the road to hell.
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This is very serious. This happens every day everywhere all over the planet.
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Satan and his demons tempt people leading them to sin. As we see in this text,
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Jesus as one who is fully human is also tempted. He knows what it's like to be tempted so he can sympathize with us.
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We saw two Sundays ago that our sin bearer Jesus identifies with us. Hebrews 2 .17
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and 18 says concerning Jesus he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people for because he himself has suffered when tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted.
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Hebrews 4 .15 and 16 says we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.
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But one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
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Jesus knows what it is like to be tempted by a very powerful adversary. We see this in our text as I mentioned in the introduction the first human who ever lived
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Adam failed when tempted. But thanks be to God that he sent his son to be human to succeed where Adam failed.
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That's why he's called the second Adam. Both men were tempted by the devil, but one gave in and the other would not.
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What Satan is trying to do here is to ruin God's plan of redemption.
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If he gets Jesus to sin then all humanity is hopeless and Satan wins.
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We are going to look at how Satan tempted him and see what Jesus did to resist him. So this time we're going to look at the three temptations of Satan.
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And we'll look at the first and Jesus' response in verses three and four. And the tempter came and said to him if you are the son of God command these stones to become loaves of bread.
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But he answered it is written Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
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It is fitting that Jesus was tempted after fasting for 40 days. When one is tired or hungry one is more likely to be tempted more likely to sin.
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So God is testing Jesus by allowing him to be tempted by the devil at a time when he would be hungry and tired.
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And Satan first tempts Jesus through a food temptation. Satan tells
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Jesus to turn the stones into loaves of bread since he has the power to do so. First what
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Satan is doing here is telling Jesus to use his power. But Jesus' entire ministry was one of submission to his father and he would only use his power when it was his father's will.
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So Satan is calling Jesus to doubt God, his father.
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Just like Satan did with Adam and Eve in the garden. In Genesis 3 -1 he told
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Adam and Eve, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
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He was calling them to question what God truly said. What Satan is essentially telling
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Jesus in this temptation is that as God's son why should you starve in the wilderness?
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God fed Israel with manna during their 40 years in the wilderness. Why would he not also feed you?
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Jesus was being tempted to doubt the father's goodness toward him. As Jesus is tempted he quotes scripture back at the devil and we should follow
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Jesus' example. We'll see this throughout the sermon. The specific passage he quotes is from Deuteronomy 8 -3.
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What we will see in Jesus' three responses to each temptation is a quotation from the book of Deuteronomy.
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He does this because the passage in Deuteronomy describes
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Israel's 40 years in the wilderness and Jesus is identifying with God's people.
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He's identifying with Israel as he, Jesus, spends 40 days in the wilderness symbolically.
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What Jesus quotes from Deuteronomy 8 -3 is that man does not live by bread alone but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the
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Lord. What Jesus is telling Satan is that dependence on God is the only way to obey
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God's will. We should wait on his provision for our lives and not seek our own satisfaction when we think we need it.
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We often think we need it now when the Lord says just wait on me and trust me.
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I love Lamentations 3 .25. It says, the Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
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In Psalm 34, what it says is that those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.
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We should not go outside of God's will and be impatient and think,
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Lord, you don't know what you're doing with my life. I want to do something else that's going to make me happier. The Lord teaches us to trust him.
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He's going to take care of us. And we must listen to Jesus' teaching for our own lives.
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What Jesus would later say in Matthew 6 -33 is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
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Jesus knew that he was going to eat but turning these stones into bread wasn't the way to do it.
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To do that would be to disobey his father and he would sin. What we see
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Jesus doing is proclaiming the truth to Satan. What he's telling Satan is my father is going to take care of me and I will not disobey him to supply my need.
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Jesus would eat soon, but the means through which Satan suggests would not be the way he would eat. In verse 11, as we'll see at the very end here, when the angels start ministering to Jesus, this is the time probably when he ate after 40 days of fasting.
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When we are tempted, we need to speak truth to ourselves. This is why it is important to know the
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Bible. How can we obey God if we do not know what scripture says? Jesus did not have a
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Bible before him. He knew scripture and was ready when this trial came upon him.
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Every sermon you listen to, every Bible study you attend, every time you read the
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Bible, it is an opportunity to fill your heart with God's word.
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This is also the reason we are doing the verse of the month. We started that recently here at Eureka. To know
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God's word and quote it to yourself is a must to obey God's will in your life. So what we see here is that Jesus succeeds the first temptation by correcting
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Satan that man must trust God, not self, to navigate through life. We must listen to God's truth in the face of Satan's lies.
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And the first truth to listen to is to rely on God alone, not self. The second truth we must listen to as we listen to God's truth and in the face of Satan's lies is to resist asking
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God to prove himself. And we'll see this in verses 5 through 7. Now that Satan failed in his first attempt, attempting
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Jesus to sin, he tries to lure in Jesus a different way. Let's see that in verses 5 through 7.
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Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle, the highest point of the temple, and said to him,
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If you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
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He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.
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Okay, let's stop at the end of 6. Now what Satan does is twist the scripture.
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That's what he does. He lies. He always lies. He quotes to Jesus Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12.
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And what the passage teases is that God's people will be protected during judgment.
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And one of the ways that God protects his people is by sending his angels to protect them and metaphorically to bear them up.
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But Satan uses these verses to say that you will be protected by angels if you throw yourself off a high building.
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That's not at all the meaning of Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12. He's twisting the scriptures.
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This is a lesson in Bible reading. We must always understand the meaning of a verse in its context.
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If you take a verse out of context, you can make it say whatever you want. False teachers do this all the time.
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And Satan does it right here. And by the way, Satan is the one who fuels false teachers.
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So it's no wonder that we have all these teachers out there who tell lies and twist the scriptures.
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Now once again, what Satan is doing here is appealing to Jesus' divine prerogative as God's son.
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He tells him you are suffering in the wilderness and no one to this point is following you.
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Something is wrong with God's plan. You're the son of God. You know what you need.
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You need a following. What Satan tells him is how about I take you to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem where all the people are.
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I'm paraphrasing here. And Satan tells him and when you throw yourself down you won't die since the angels will catch you.
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You will be instantly famous like you deserve to be. This made me think of temptations that we get.
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Sometimes we think you know what? I deserve better. Then we are tempted to go away from God's will where God always means best for us.
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And we aim to make things better for ourselves or we seemingly think that they're better for us.
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And we go down the path of sin. And this is so built into the fabric of our culture.
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A while back I was at my in -law's house over in Wyoming, Minnesota. And I was sitting there and my brother -in -law was drinking a
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Dr. Pepper and on the top of the can it said you deserve this.
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And it made me think wow this really is built into our culture. This lie that you know what you can do whatever you want.
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Just spoil yourself. And what this is teaching the people to do is to express yourself in a sinful way and to indulge yourself in a sinful way.
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That's not God's way. That's not God's will and we must resist.
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We must not encourage others to do that and we must not do it ourselves.
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Satan here is so deceitful. In the future
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Jesus experience will be so much better than his experience in the wilderness. And that is the understatement of all understatements.
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If he accomplishes his mission of redemption, he will have a multitude of people that no one can number whom he saves that will reign with him forever.
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He doesn't need a following. That will come as he is faithful to his father's plan.
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This is so with us. That will come as we are faithful.
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What will come is that God will pay us back a hundredfold for any of the adversity we face following him in this life.
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We should not indulge in sin thinking we deserve something better. A better path.
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We should not think things would somehow be better if I did things my own way. If we do things
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God's way, the best possible path for our life will happen. Now Jesus sees what
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Satan is doing in this temptation. Jesus knows that Satan is twisting the scriptures and he knows that Satan is trying to make him feel bad about his situation.
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Jesus knows that Satan is asking him to test God. This is why he says what he does in verse 7 in response to Satan.
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In verse 7 Jesus says to him again, it is written you shall not put the
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Lord your God to the test. We already saw
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Jesus quote from Deuteronomy 8 3 and now we see him quote from Deuteronomy 6 16 where he tells the devil you shall not put the
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Lord your God to the test. Jesus knew that by throwing himself off a high building and asking
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God to send angels to catch him would be testing God's provision over his life.
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It's like saying Lord, I don't know if I trust you to take care of me. So I'm going to test your care for me by jumping off a bridge to see if you catch me.
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A number of years ago when I was in college, I used to work at a retail store and I remember one particular day this was back when my faith was young.
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My faith was young in the Lord. I remember one particular day when we had this pod in the back that stored a bunch of supplies from from our store and I I was sent back to do a project back there and I was trying to lock the lock on the latch on the pod and I couldn't get it to latch.
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I couldn't get the lock to stay and it was frustrating to me so much so that I said
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Lord, would you show me I remember thinking this, you know, Lord would you show me that you are here, you know,
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I say that I believe but I want proof that what I believe is true and if you help me with this lock then
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I will know that that you are here. For me to say that I was sinful.
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I was testing God and years later I came to realize that what I was doing on that day was testing the
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Lord. To do this is not trust but sin. This is what Satan is trying to get
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Jesus to do. To doubt God's provision and plan for his life by testing whether he truly cares for him and that he knows what he is doing with his life.
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What Jesus tells him is you should not test God but trust God. How many times do we do this in our lives?
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We say Lord, would you just show me that you are there? Would you just show me a sign?
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Would you just do this for me so that I know I can trust you? To say those things does not come from faith, but from doubt.
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Faith says Lord, I know that it may not seem like you are here, but I know that you are here because your word says you will never leave me nor forsake me.
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So what we see here once again is that Satan fails and Jesus succeeds. We must listen to God's word in the face of Satan's lies.
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The second truth we must listen to is to resist asking God to prove himself.
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Our third and final truth as we look at the third temptation that Satan offers Jesus. The third and final truth is this, worship the creator not the creature.
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And we'll see this in verses 8 through 11. Now in the third temptation, Satan goes all in.
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This is what he tells Jesus in verses 8 and 9. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.
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And he said to him, all these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me.
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What we just saw Satan do is take Jesus to the highest point of the temple. Now he takes him to the highest mountain and he shows him all the kingdoms of the world.
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And he tells Jesus, I will give these to you, but only under one condition.
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And it's a big if. I will give these to you if you bow down and worship me.
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When we look at this, we must understand that this is another lie told by Satan.
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John 8 44 says that Satan is the father of lies. This is what he does.
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This is his native language. And it's what he's doing in these temptations.
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1 John 5 19 says that the whole world lies in the power of the evil ones.
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So in one sense, the devil does have power over this earth. God has him on a leash and he and to serve
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God's good purposes, he lets Satan do certain things. So Satan does have a lot of power.
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However, he makes it sound like he has unlimited power. But only
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God has unlimited power. Satan has no ability to offer kingdoms to anyone.
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Only God can do that. Daniel 2 21 says that God removes kings and sets up kings.
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So Satan tells the lie to Jesus that he has the power to offer all the kingdoms of the world to him.
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This text tells us something about Satan. This is what he desires.
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He desires to be worshipped. Satan is the most arrogant and hideous creature who has ever existed.
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What scripture teaches in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 is that the reason he rebelled against God is because he was not okay with his place, his place in heaven.
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He desired to be worshipped in the place of God. And even after he was expelled from heaven, he continues to desire to be worshipped.
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And we see that here. The irony here is that the one standing before him is the one who is worthy of worship, the
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God -man Jesus. The creator deserves worship, not the creature. And you might say, how can a creature desire worship that is only meant for God alone?
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This should sound very familiar to us if we are honest. The desire to be worshipped in us is very much like it is with Satan.
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In the Garden of Eden, Satan told Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 -5 that they would be like God knowing good and evil if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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Were Adam and Eve appalled by this temptation to become like God if you eat from this tree?
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No. They liked hearing it, so much so that they ate from the tree.
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This desire is seen in us when we want attention at an unhealthy level, when we crave praise, and when we think that life is about us, everything revolves around us.
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Our culture worships celebrities, and many celebrities receive it. So, Satan is not unique in desiring worship.
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It is deep in our sinful nature, and it is something that must be put to death. But what
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Jesus tells Satan in verses 10 and 11 is who truly deserves worship. Let's look at these verses.
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Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the
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Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him, to Jesus.
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Jesus once again quotes from Deuteronomy to identify with the Israelites and their wilderness experience.
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This time he quotes from Deuteronomy 6 .13, that only the Lord shall be worshipped. So, what we see here is that each time
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Satan tempts Jesus, he picks a verse that's appropriate to respond to the lie that he tells.
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And this teaches us to do that in our lives. We need to pick God's truth from his word to combat the devil's lies.
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So, we need to fill our heart with God's word. The creator alone is worthy of worship and not the creature.
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That's the truth. And so, Jesus tells him that. Only God is infinitely excellent in every way, and only he is deserving of the highest praise we call worship.
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As Psalm 48 .1 says, Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised. We must listen to God's word in the face of Satan's lies.
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And the third truth that we must listen to is to worship the creator, not the creature. So, to summarize our sermon this morning, as we've seen this text in Matthew chapter 4, verses 1 through 11, we must listen to God's word in the face of Satan's lies.
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We've seen three truths that are each a correction to the lie that Satan tells. Each of these combats him.
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The first truth we saw is we must rely on God alone, not self. The second truth is we must resist asking
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God to prove himself. We must always trust him. The third truth is we must worship the creator, not the creature.
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Every sermon should be a very practical one, but this one is especially. And that is so because we face a real enemy as we go through life.
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But in Christ, we are victorious. We are victorious because he succeeded where Adam failed.
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When Adam was tempted, he gave in to sin and every human that came after him was born a sinner.
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But where Adam failed, Christ succeeded. What we read in verse 11 is that when
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Satan failed on the third temptation, he knew he could go no further. He fled and the angels came ministering to Jesus, presumably giving him food to eat after his 40 -day fast.
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As we read earlier in the service, sin came through the first Adam, but salvation comes through the second
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Adam. If you belong to Christ here today, you are victorious because Christ won the victory at the cross and through his victorious resurrection.
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When you face attacks from the devil, you are able to succeed since Christ is with you through the
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Holy Spirit. For everyone here who belongs to Christ, the Spirit will point you to the promises in scripture that will bring to a halt
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Satan's temptations. He can go no further once you speak God's truth back to him.
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As James 4 -7 says, resist the devil and he will flee.
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When you see his lies for what they are and believe the truth, he has no hold on you.
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And we must follow Jesus' example. Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith and as he sets this example, we must follow in his steps by combating
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Satan's lies with God's truth. Now next Sunday we will have our
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Christmas service and since we are in Matthew right now, we kind of had
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Christmas before Christmas because we saw the story of the Magi, the three wise men as they came from the east to meet
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Jesus. We already looked at that several weeks back and so next week what we're going to do is we're going to look at the other perspective of the birth of Christ and that is from the perspective of the shepherds.
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And this comes from Luke chapter 2 and I look forward to looking at that with you
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Lord willing next Sunday. Let's pray together. Father in heaven,
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I thank you for your word and how helpful it is to help us navigate through the life of faith.
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Lord, we are told so many lies and it's not just by Satan but by the world and we believe lies in our own sinful flesh.
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And so may we speak truth to ourselves when we are faced with these lies and may we do it with the help of your
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Holy Spirit. May we indeed follow the example of your son Jesus Christ and and Lord we offer you praise for Jesus Christ, the second
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Adam who succeeded where Adam failed, who makes us right with you.
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What an enormous blessing that is and it's in your son's glorious name we pray.