Sunday Sermon: The Temptation of Jesus Part 2 (Matthew 4:1-11)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. Still standing, open in your

Bible once again to Matthew chapter 4. And I'm going to come back to the same passage we were looking at last week.

Matthew 4 verses 1 through 11, the temptations of Jesus. Before we get to that,

I wanted to mention something here and mention it at this point in the service so that it gets in the recording, just in case there isn't anybody that hears me make this announcement this morning.

If I delete you on Facebook, don't take that personally. I'm trying to get away from Facebook.

That's all. That's the announcement. So, Matthew chapter 4 verses 1 through 11.

Once again, reading on the temptations of Jesus. Then Jesus was led up by the

Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

And the tempter came and said to him, if you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the

Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.

Jesus said to him again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And he said to him, all these I will give to you if you will just fall down and worship me.

Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the

Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come again to your word and we desire to know and understand what this means, how this is significant for us in understanding

Christ's impeccability, the call upon us to live in righteousness.

And I pray we would be convicted of heart and desire to follow in the steps of our

Savior. Forgive us our sins this morning and lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.

And all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated. I received such good feedback last week and a lot of thought -provoking questions and even had some great discussions following last week's sermon.

So I thought it was necessary to come back again to the temptation of Christ as we have it here in Matthew 4, verses 1 through 11.

Last week was a difficult week for a lot of reasons. I was very distracted, most notably because we were saying farewell to a man who had been a part of our church for 22 years.

Nothing that I said was going to be sufficient praise for Dave and Vicki Blesner and what they have meant to our congregation, even if you've known them for a short time, even if you had known them for only a few weeks, you,

I think, could see and recognize the kind of treasure and benefit they were to this church. So whether it was in regards to what they've given this church or what they've meant to me as friends, just whatever

I said wasn't going to be enough. The week that they were leaving was the week I was going to be in Matthew 4, 1 through 11.

So how do you tie in the temptations of Christ with a brother and sister finishing well in the decades of service that they've given to this church?

So as loosely as that was done, I think it's good for us to consider this section again and do so with greater focus.

Some of what I'm going to say today may sound like a repeat of last week. That's all right. As Paul said to the

Philippians, it's no trouble for me and it's good for you. And others of you were not even here last week, so this is brand new for you all together.

But as we meditate more intently on the significance of these three temptations, we will consider how they are like the temptations that we face, but also

I'd like to consider how they are not like the temptations that we face.

And we'll talk about this toward the end of the sermon as well as while we're looking at these temptations. So we begin once again by reading in verse 1,

Matthew 4, verse 1, that Jesus was led up by the

Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Recognize that the

Son of God was led up by the Spirit of God into the wilderness to be tempted, but He was not tempted by God.

The Son of God led by the Spirit of God to be tempted by the devil, not tempted by God.

He was to be tempted by Satan. We read in James 1 .13, let no one say when he is tempted,

I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one.

Yet it's interesting to note that the verse right before that says, Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which

God has promised to those who love him. So God does not tempt us, but He will lead us into a place of testing.

And we have to understand that place of testing will involve temptation. Whenever we read about being tested in the scripture, it doesn't merely mean that in a time of struggle, that we're being tested that we might put our trust in God and not in the trust of our circumstances or in the trust of man.

It's not merely that, although it may be that kind of a circumstance, but that testing may even be temptation to see whether we would submit ourselves fully unto the

Lord instead of giving in to the temptations of our flesh, thinking that we need our flesh to be satisfied to receive our joy instead of making

Christ our greatest joy. In Deuteronomy 13, 1 through 4, we read about a testing that God had given to the children of Israel, and I mentioned this to you briefly last week.

Here's what we read. If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the

Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the

Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the

Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.

False teachers, in this sense, as we come to understand it from this passage in Deuteronomy, false teachers are a test.

Will we love the Lord our God and obey his word as our hearts desire, or will we go after the false teacher who is promising us to give us everything our flesh desires?

We read in 2 Thessalonians 2, 11, and 12, God sends those who are depraved in heart a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

Is your pleasure and your desire the righteousness of God, or is your pleasure and your desire the unrighteousness that Satan tempts you to walk in?

It may satisfy your flesh, but it is contrary to God and will bring you into judgment.

In 2 Timothy 4, 3, we read, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

Why do people listen to false teachers? Because they desire to please the flesh rather than please

God. They want to please themselves instead of please the Lord. Your flesh desires something, and you try to find the teacher who will appease what your flesh desires.

My friends, I beg of you, don't do this. Because as according to what we read here in 2

Thessalonians 2, what will eventually happen is God will send you a strong delusion so that you may believe what is false so that judgment may come upon you for loving unrighteousness instead of righteousness.

It's a slippery slope. And you think that you have the power and the will to overcome, but you do not.

Know the Word of God, listen to the one who teaches you the Word of God, and then test what they teach you with the

Word of God. If you love God, you will listen to people who love God. If you love titillating the flesh more than you love

God, you will listen to those teachers who will give you what your flesh desires. And they will lead you to your destruction.

Paul describes them in 2 Corinthians 11, 15 as servants of Satan. In 2

Corinthians 12, 7, he calls them messengers of Satan. Here in the wilderness, Jesus himself was to be tempted by the devil himself.

This is diabolos in the Greek or hasatan in the

Hebrew. They both mean the same thing, the accuser or the slanderer.

The Abbott Smith Greek lexicon of the New Testament points out that while the devil, while that word devil can be applied in a generic sense, here the article the, as in the devil, ascribes devil as his very name.

Therefore, we might understand Satan to be the chief accuser. Now, perhaps you've heard someone say, or maybe you've said it yourself, the devil made me do it.

Have you ever heard anyone say that? You're saying, no, I've never heard,

I've never said that before. I've heard other people say that before. Well, there's a sense in which that is true, and there's a sense in which it isn't.

It's true in the sense that the fallenness of this world is the devil's handiwork.

The devil tempted Eve, she ate the forbidden fruit, she gave some to Adam, her husband who was with her, and he ate and mankind fell.

God subjected the world into futility, and we've been under the curse ever since. The sin nature that we are born with is the devil's handiwork.

Your default position is to follow the devil. Ephesians 2 says that we were following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

That's our default position, to follow the devil in his ways, instead of God and his righteousness.

So it is true in that sense, the devil made me do it. But it's not true to say the devil made me do it, as if to say you are not responsible for the choices that you make.

I read to you a moment ago from James 1, 12 -13, verses 14 -15 say this, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by the devil, by his own desire.

Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin.

And sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Something we're going to talk about as we go through this here, as we consider this even further, is that you let sin dwell in your mind.

Even the thought itself is sin, if you don't take that thought captive and make it obedient to Christ, as we're instructed to do.

You let that thought simmer in there because you like it. It's like sucking on a

Tic -Tac. You enjoy the flavor, and so you just let the thought be there.

The thought itself becomes sin when you desire what God does not desire for you. And so when that desire, as James is saying here, when it has conceived, it gives birth to sin.

It means it grows. It becomes action. And when it is fully grown, those actions will even bring forth your destruction.

This is where sin comes from. It does not come from Satan. It comes from your own wicked heart. Jesus said in Matthew 15, 19,

For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.

But here's good news to fit the gospel in this explanation of sin and where it festers.

We read in 1 John 3, 8, The reason that the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

Jesus was even accomplishing that here in the wilderness, being led by the

Spirit to be tempted by Satan. This was being done, remember, what Jesus said to John, to fulfill all righteousness,

Matthew 3, 15. Maybe Satan knew that. Maybe he did not. But this encounter in the wilderness is the beginning of his end.

Verse 2 says, And after fasting forty days and forty nights,

Jesus was hungry. Go figure. If you fast forty days and forty nights, you're going to be hungry.

But this is still very important. It's like, Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights. Of course, he's going to be hungry.

But this demonstrates to us the very human nature of Jesus. And that's important for us to understand.

When we understand Christ as God incarnate, this means that he was vera homo vera

Deus in Latin, or very man, very God. You've probably heard it said fully man and fully

God. But I came into understanding a few years ago that explanation is rather confusing.

A glass can be either full of water or full of air, but it cannot be full of both at the same time.

So likewise, it's confusing to say that Jesus was fully man and fully God. It's better to say that he was very man and very

God. He was every way human. And he was in every way

God. The form of God, as we read in Philippians 2, he set aside in submission to the

Father. But this doesn't mean that he lacked the attributes of God or he did not possess them.

Philippians 2 actually tells us it was his right to possess them, but he set those things aside.

After all, we know he was sinless from his conception to his glorification. And even

Jesus said in Mark 10, 18, no one is good except God alone. So his impeccability is perfectly intact as very

God. Yes, he is man, but he is very God. He is good, we are not.

Jesus is the only good man who ever lived. But I think one characteristic of the nature of God that we recognize that Jesus doesn't embody here, if we're just looking at Matthew chapter 4, one attribute of God that Jesus is not demonstrating is his omnipresence.

At this very moment in the wilderness, Jesus is not omnipresent. He is in the wilderness.

He is hungry and starving in the wilderness. He is very human in the wilderness.

Does God get hungry? Of course not, but a man does. And that's demonstrated here by Christ in the wilderness.

This is important to keep in mind, lest you think that Jesus is only God and not ever man.

Jesus is as much God here in the wilderness as he is God now on his throne in heaven.

But you must remember that Jesus is also a man. 1 John 4, 2 says, by this you know the spirit of God.

Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess

Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and is now in the world already.

It is antichrist to deny that Jesus is God in human flesh. Some people do believe that Jesus did not actually experience what he experienced in his flesh.

He wasn't really hungry in the wilderness. He didn't really suffer on the cross.

This is a false teaching known as docetism, which implies that Jesus was just an apparition or he was a phantom.

It goes all the way back to the first century and it has its roots even in Gnosticism, the idea that the soul and the body are not interconnected.

It's likely that this very belief is what prompted John to write in John 1, 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us.

My friends, apparitions don't get hungry. Apparitions don't need to eat.

This is the very reason why after Jesus' resurrection, he broke bread with his disciples and ate with them to show them he wasn't a ghost.

He really suffered a physical death and his physical body was physically raised from the dead and he physically appeared to his disciples and said, let's eat.

Here in the desert, Jesus wasn't a spirit either. He was a man led by the spirit into the desert where he became hungry.

If Jesus was not a man, he could not be hungry. And after 40 days of this, in this lowest moment of his hunger, he's in pain, he's in anguish.

How susceptible are we to temptation in those moments of pain and anguish?

Again, this was being done to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus is tested in the wilderness, as I pointed out last week, just as Israel was tested in the wilderness.

But where Israel failed, Christ will be faithful. He is fasting for 40 days just as Moses and Elijah fasted for 40 days.

Because Jesus is the greater Moses, as talked about in Hebrews. He is the greater

Elijah. Look at the first temptation in verse 3. And the tempter came and said to him, if you are

God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Now, as we examined last week, Jesus was citing Deuteronomy 8 .3, where Moses said to Israel, and God humbled you and let you hunger and then fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the

Lord. Israel came out of slavery in Egypt. They went out into the wilderness and they got hungry.

And instead of trusting in the promises of God, they complained. They had heard the word of the

Lord from the prophet Moses. They were told of a promised land flowing with milk and honey. But after a few days of wandering, it wasn't even 40 days like it was with Jesus here, they started to complain.

What in the world did you bring us out here for? To die? We were better off in Egypt.

Sure, we had slave masters and taskmasters, but at least we weren't dying of hunger. And even though they complained,

God gave them manna, bread from heaven. And we know that this manna was a type of foreshadowing of the coming of Christ.

John 6, 32 through 35, Jesus said, Truly, truly,

I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but my

Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

And they said to him, Sir, give us this bread always. And Jesus said, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Jesus is the word who became flesh and dwelt among us. He is the bread from heaven, the bread who gives life everlasting.

Man shall not live on bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.

That is as true for us now as it was for the children of Israel. And this was the answer

Jesus gave the devil when the devil tempted him. That should be our go -to whenever we are tempted, my brothers and sisters.

We must constantly remind ourselves of the promises of God. We must remind ourselves of the commands of God, and that we've been commanded to follow his commands.

This world has nothing to offer us that can even compare to the treasure of Christ. We find the forgiveness of sins in Christ.

We find fellowship and peace with God in Christ. We find meaning and purpose in Christ.

We find our greatest joy and our deepest needs met in Christ.

We find everlasting life in Christ. We find the promise of an eternal kingdom where there's no more sickness, no more disease, no more scares of coronavirus, no more evil, no more temptation, nothing but perfect bliss forevermore in Christ.

Now, sure, the world has some neat things, and sometimes we can find joy and elation in the things of this world, but we know that joy and elation is transient.

It will last only for a little while. I think it is good for us to experience good things because it's kind of a glimpse, a little picture of what eternal joy and bliss will be with God forever in glory.

But in that way, the things that we enjoy in this world roll up into praise to God, whereas the person who does not know

God, whenever they experience joy and bliss, they experience it in things, and they look for the next thing that is going to bring them joy and bliss and ultimately never be satisfied.

Their joy terminates on the experience, but you can certainly even own little gadgets that might bring you elation or happiness for a little while.

I bought a Nintendo Switch for my kids this week. It's pretty neat. We've had fun playing it, but whatever joy it brings us is not going to last.

You know how long it lasts? It lasts about two minutes before the software freezes up and the system shuts down.

Yep, I bought a defective game system and now I have to send it back to the retailer. So that's how much joy it brings, about two minutes, and then that joy turns into frustration.

I thought, hey, what a great real -world analogy for just about anything that we could desire to possess in this world for our satisfaction.

Now, I didn't come into that understanding until last night after my wife had already gone to bed and I was done being frustrated trying to get this game system to work.

But as I was thinking about it, pondering these things and reflecting upon the passage that I was going to be bringing the next day,

I thought, hey, God is not opposed to our having fun or even owning the latest gadgets.

But when it becomes a problem is when we think we're entitled to those things, we envy our neighbor's things, we think life would be better if we could just have those things, then the very desire for those things becomes sinful.

We don't even have to have the thing and the thing is already causing us to sin because we want it, thinking that the thing is going to be the thing that brings us joy.

But it's not. This applies to just about every sin.

Not just little gadgets or trinkets that we could own, but apply any sin to this. Lust, you think your life would be better if you could just have that person.

Hate, you think your life would be better if you could just destroy that person.

Lying, you think life would be better if you could alter the truth.

Giving up, you think life would be better if you just stopped trying.

But life is not about doing our will. It's about doing God's will.

And meaning and purpose that we find in this life, we don't find in things or fulfilling our fleshly desires.

We find meaning and purpose in following Christ and worshiping

Him because He alone is worthy of our worship. When you make your own flesh your highest priority, then you make yourself

God and you worship yourself. How was the devil tempting

Jesus here? He was saying to him, help yourself. Serve yourself.

Do what is best for you. You're hungry? You're God. You can turn these stones into bread.

So do it. Prove it. Give in. Make your hunger stop. And what was

Jesus' reply? Bread doesn't give me life. God's word does.

If there's any of these three temptations that should be the most relatable to us, it's this one.

This is exactly the way that we experience just about every temptation that wells up from deep inside of us.

Our flesh wants something that is not of God. And we hear that voice in our head saying, just do it.

Just give in. Just go after that sin. What difference does it make?

You can have it and satisfy your desire. And hey, if you feel bad about it,

God will just forgive you for it, right? How should we respond to it?

The same way Jesus did with the word of God. My friends, anytime sinful desire wells up in your flesh, you must run to the word of God.

Whenever the devil lies to you, you must remember what God has promised you. Your body will die.

All the stuff in this world will disappear. But the promises of God found in his word will be forever.

As we read in 1 Peter 1, 14 and 15, as obedient children, as obedient children, right?

Obeying God. Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance. But as he who called you is holy, so you also be holy in all your conduct.

Verses 24 and 25. All flesh is like grass and the glory like the flower of grass.

The grass withers, the flower falls. But the word of the Lord remains forever.

Look at the next temptation of Jesus in verses 5 through 7. Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him,

If you are the son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written,

And Jesus said to him, The temple, if you will recall, was built on Mount Moriah.

It really was the highest point in that area. From the top of the temple, you could have seen all of the land around it.

And that was intentional. God chose that spot for his temple to be built there so that as the children of Israel existed in that land from afar, they would be able to look to the place where God dwells, the temple that was there on Mount Moriah.

And so Satan brings Jesus there. And this temptation is a little bit different than the previous temptation.

This time, even he quoted the word of God. Even Satan quotes

God's word here. As from Psalm 91 verses 11 and 12, it's kind of like Satan was saying,

Fine, you want to quote the word of God to me? I can do that too. Several years ago,

I was attempting to witness to an atheist, and every argument that he raised, I had a biblical response. And he became very irritated with me quoting scripture.

And he said, I probably know the Bible as well as you do, so you may as well not even quote it to me.

And I said, Okay, fine. So we continued talking, and I continued quoting the Bible to him, but I wasn't including the reference anymore.

And not only was I continuing to give him the word of God, but I was also demonstrating you don't actually know

God's word as well as you claim you do. Otherwise, you would have known that I'm quoting to you the word of God. Satan's use of scripture here didn't discourage

Jesus from using it. And whenever somebody tells us, Hey, I don't believe the Bible, so you may as well not quote it to me, that shouldn't discourage us from using it either.

Bode Bauckham gives this illustration. It's like two knights battling with one another with swords, and one knight says to the other,

I don't believe in thine sword. So what do you do at that point? You go,

Oh, well, okay, you don't believe in my sword, and you put it away? Or you cut him.

Now you believe in my sword. And we shouldn't shy away from using the word of God.

For the book of Hebrews says it's sharper than any double -edged sword, and it penetrates to the heart, the bone and marrow, the very spirit of a person, convicting them of sin so that they might know the life -saving message of the gospel of Christ.

This is how we share God's word with others. So likewise, Satan is not discouraged here from using the word of God.

He responds with Deuteronomy 6 .16, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him in Massa.

Massa was where the Israelites grumbled until God gave them water from the rock. So notice that previously,

Jesus' response to Satan was in reference to bread. This time, Jesus' response to Satan is in reference to water.

He is the bread from heaven. He is the living water. Again, John 6 .35,

I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Now, while we might be able to associate the previous temptation, we might be able to associate with it.

We see the similarities between the way that Jesus was tempted and how we might be tempted. This one doesn't appear to be as relatable.

Dr. Albert Moeller, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he says the following, We can immediately identify with the temptation to try to achieve self -sufficiency, to place our physical urges and desires and needs above our spiritual needs, to seek in our own way to turn stones into bread.

We lack the supernatural power to do that, but we do have the natural power to feed ourselves physically at the expense of feeding ourselves spiritually.

We also have the constant temptation, especially in a context such as ours, to trust in our own self -sufficiency.

So then Dr. Moeller goes on looking at these temptations and says, But how do we understand this temptation?

Satan telling Jesus, Prove that you're the Son of God by throwing yourself down, because your

Father would never allow anything bad to happen to you. He will command his angels concerning you to bear you up.

Notice that this has been the nature of Satan's temptations thus far. If you are the Son of God, verse 3, and then in verse 6,

If you are the Son of God, prove it. Throw yourself down. Now think about this very carefully.

How small a thing would this be compared to the suffering of Christ on the cross?

Would the suffering of the cross not be a way bigger deal than Christ throwing himself down off the top of the temple?

Absolutely. And the verses that Satan referenced, these very passages that he calls to from Psalm 91, these were messianic passages.

They foreshadowed the coming Messiah. Satan used them to say, Hey, if the

Lord is your dwelling place, that's the way Psalm 91 begins, then no evil shall be allowed to befall you.

That's verse 9. He will command his angels concerning you. That's verse 10.

And on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. Verses 11 and 12.

So if you are the Son of God, then you have come on a mission, and God is not going to allow that mission to be thwarted.

So why don't you prove it? Prove it to yourself and prove it to everyone here that you are indeed the promised

Messiah. You will have all the validation and assurance that you need, and everyone else will be assured that you are who you say you are if you just throw yourself down.

But Jesus responded to Satan's abuse of Scripture with the proper use of Scripture.

He said, You will not put the Lord your God to the test. In other words, Jesus was saying, As the obedient son to the

Father, I am not going to put my Father to the test. I believe my

Father's promises are true because I know the nature of the Father, and it is in the very nature of God to fulfill everything

He has promised. Now again, think about that in view of the cross.

Jesus will willingly lay down His life and suffer all the things that He will suffer, knowing that the

Father will raise Him up on the third day. Jesus was saying to Satan, I don't need to prove here that my

Father will save me there. The Father will save me.

Do you know how Psalm 91 concludes? It finishes this way. Because He holds fast to me in love,

I will deliver Him. I will protect Him. Because He knows my name.

When He calls to me, I will answer Him. I will be with Him in trouble.

I will rescue Him and honor Him. With long life, I will satisfy Him and show

Him my salvation. How that relates to us, my friends, is that same promise that the

Father gives to the Son He gives to all of us who believe in the Son. If we hold fast to God in love,

He will deliver us. He will protect us. When we call to Him, He will answer us.

He is with us in trouble. He will rescue us and honor us. We will have long life, everlasting life, for the

Lord our God has shown to us salvation. Sometimes we do put

God to the test. We might say something like, God, I'll do this for you if you want me to, but I need you to send me a sign.

Let me know you're there. Prove yourself to me. Give me this and I'll do it. That's putting the

Lord our God to the test. And then you know what we do after that? We go find teachers who claim that God has given them signs.

Hey, listen to me. God spoke to me and told me that He wants you to have your best life now. Hey, I heard

Jesus calling. Buy my devotional book and I'll tell you what He said to me in the voices in my brain. Hey, watch me swing my

Nehru jacket around and heal all these people. Hey, I went to heaven and I saw

God and I've come back to write a best -selling book about it. Hey, teaching's kind of boring.

You need a church where the music makes you feel good, right? These are some of the signs that we chase after.

And we put the Lord our God to the test. What we fail to realize is that God has already proven

Himself in His Word. We don't need signs. We don't need extra biblical revelations.

His Word is fully sufficient. Listen to what Martin Luther said.

I need not visions, dreams, nor even angels. I am well satisfied with the gift of the holy scriptures which give me abundant instruction in all that I need to know both for this life and for the life that is to come.

Jesus died on the cross for your sins. God raised Him from the dead so that all who believe in Him will not perish under the judgment of God, but they will have everlasting life with Him in glory.

There's the sign. And you don't need any other sign than that. You know what? You know who said that?

Jesus did. In Matthew chapter 12, the scribes and the Pharisees say to Jesus, Teacher, will you give us a sign?

Show us who you are. And Jesus replied, An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet

Jonah. And that, of course, was in reference to Him being buried in the heart of the earth for three days and coming back from the dead.

There's the sign. And we need that and no other. Finally, last temptation.

Consider this last one in verses 8 through 10. Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed

Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me.

And Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your

God and Him only will you serve. After service last week,

Alistair came up to me and made an interesting observation. And this wasn't something that I thought about when I was studying this. Did you see that in the first two temptations,

Satan said to Jesus, If you are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God. But in these last temptations, he doesn't say that.

He says, All these I'll give you if you fall down and worship me. It's almost like Satan was trying some sort of psychological manipulation.

You're not the Son of God. See, you haven't turned stones into bread. You haven't thrown yourself off the temple.

So here's what I'll give you. I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world if you'll fall down and worship me. I will make you

God. Was that not the same thing that Satan basically said to Adam and Eve in the garden?

You eat this fruit that God has told you not to eat. The reason why he doesn't want you to eat it is because it'll make you

God. And so Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation and they sinned and they fell.

And that sinfulness has been in mankind ever since. But where Adam failed, Christ succeeded and becomes the greater

Adam. All the way through, all three temptations. Looking at this last temptation in particular, the temptation here is political power and control.

You know, the Bible doesn't actually tell us what kind of authority the devil has, but we know that none of his authority is inherent authority.

Only God has inherent authority. He is the creator of all things. Satan is a created thing.

So whatever authority Satan has, it has been given to him. But notice that Jesus did not respond to Satan by saying, you don't have any authority to give me this stuff anyway.

That isn't what Jesus said. Satan offered him political power. But remember that when

Jesus was on trial, he said to Pontius Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. John 18, 36.

So Jesus trusted the Father for a kingdom that was greater than any earthly kingdom.

And my friends, we must as well. For if we endure to the end, we will reign on high with Christ on his throne in this kingdom of heaven, in this eternal paradise.

Revelation 3, 21. Jesus says, the one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne as I also conquered and sat down with my

Father on his throne. As we'll get to the Sermon on the Mount in a couple of weeks,

Jesus said in the first of the Beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, those who are humble, those who rely upon God for their every need, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

In chapter 6, Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well.

Now, working in politics is not a sin. So don't think that's where I'm going with this.

I believe that we do have Christians working on Capitol Hill. Not many. But there's some.

The sin, though, would be to prioritize political gain over spiritual gain. To think that an earthly government is our highest joy.

You may not aspire to hold any political office, but any one of us can place politics over Christ.

We can place our own political party over pleasing and serving Christ. In case you haven't heard, we're in an election year.

Anybody not know that? And every single election year, we hear somebody say, this is the most important election in the history of our nation.

Folks, isn't that what they said about the last election? Isn't that what they said about the election before that?

Eight years ago, we had to choose between a Mormon and a socialist. Four years ago, we had to choose between a pornographer and a

Jezebel. This year, our options seem to be a little clearer, given that the Democratic ticket will either be a baby -killing socialist or a baby -killing communist.

But no matter what happens, when you wake up on Wednesday morning, November the 4th, guess what?

Christ will still be king. And guess what? You will still have as much responsibility to live in righteousness and share the gospel with your neighbor on November 4th as you had on November 3rd.

It doesn't matter who's in control. Paradise is not the United States of America. It's Texas.

I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. My Texas friends are always sure to remind me of that, though.

So to put hope in government is to put hope in man.

And do I need to cite examples to demonstrate to you just how hopeless that is? Martin Lloyd -Jones was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London during World War II.

He would hold church and preach while German planes were dropping bombs on the city.

And yet Lloyd -Jones said the following, The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment and that to change the man, all you have to do is change his environment.

And that's a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in paradise that man fell.

For Adam and Eve, everything was perfect. And they still wanted that one thing they couldn't have.

And all of creation has been subjected to futility ever since. Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't want moral goodness in our culture.

We should. I'm not saying that we shouldn't defend our rights. We should do that, too.

And I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't vote. We should also do that. Just not for a pro -abortion

Democrat. So then what am I saying? Well, simply this.

Same words that Jesus said, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

I'll come back to this point of righteousness as we close the sermon, but let me not overlook verse 11. If I do this again, my wife is gonna get me on this because she was really curious about verse 11.

Verse 11 says, The devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. I kind of skipped this last week, but both

Sonia and Becky asked me later, Hey, what does this mean? We want to know. What does it mean that the angels came and were ministering to Jesus?

Well, I have to believe that they brought him some food, first of all. And like I said,

Jesus' time in the wilderness fasting for 40 days was not too unlike when Elijah was in the wilderness fasting for 40 days.

And how did Elijah have food brought to him? An angel came and touched him and said, Get up and eat.

So likely the same is true for Jesus as well. The angels ministered to his physical needs.

But even more than this, I want you to notice something. Jesus had resisted the temptations of the devil, and the angels came to him.

The devil is the embodiment of spiritual evil. The angels are the embodiment of spiritual good.

And they didn't just attend to his physical needs. They also came to him in reverence.

Did Satan bow before Jesus? He did not. But when

Jesus resisted the temptations of Satan, who did come and bow before him? Angels.

Angels came to him. They'd have come to him to receive commands from him.

Jesus didn't turn the loaves to bread. He didn't throw himself from the temple to have the angels bear him up.

He didn't bow to Satan for the kingdoms of the world. And here, the most holy servants of the kingdom of heaven came to serve him an assurance of what he had just accomplished here and done so for the sake of righteousness.

After Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended on him as a dove. The Holy Father was heard saying, this is my beloved

Son in whom I am well pleased. And after resisting an evil spirit, Jesus is ministered to by angelic spirits.

Over and over again, these confirmations that he is the perfect sinless Messiah fulfilling all righteousness.

And so we consider once again the righteousness of Christ that he demonstrates here that we also should walk in.

We are told to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. What does this mean?

As it says in 1 John 2 29, if you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.

In 1 John 3 10, it says, by this it is evident who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil.

Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

And I've asked you before, and I ask you yet again, what is righteousness? It's what is right.

It's what God says is right. We have an example in Christ to follow.

We have many other commands that are given in scripture that we are to follow. And you've heard me say time and time again, and it is absolutely true, we are justified by faith and not of works.

But my brothers and sisters, there are still works for us to do. And Peter goes on to say in 2

Peter 1, do the works of righteousness to fulfill the calling that you have received in Christ.

If you are Christ's and not Satan's, then you will demonstrate that by doing the works of Jesus.

And so we must likewise walk in righteousness as Jesus walked in righteousness.

If you come this morning as a sinner, and you do, understand this assurance in 1

John 1, 9, that if we are faithful to ask forgiveness for our sins, God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and forgive us of our sins.

We have a perfect high priest who is not unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses.

Forgive the double negative, but I'm not going against what scripture says. The scripture uses the double negative.

So in this case, it's okay. Satan is the tempter.

We will constantly be tempted just as Christ was tempted, but Christ resisted.

And in Christ, we have the power to resist the temptations of Satan as well. Turn to Christ, cling to him.

And as James says in James 4, the devil will flee from you. Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, growing together in Christ when we understand the text.