1) How frequently do you encounter temptations? What are some of the various guises that temptations come in?

[Discussion Starter]

2) In what way might it be comforting for you to know that Jesus Himself was no stranger to temptation?

And as Jesus begins his public ministry, to be the one who would overthrow the devil and his power, the Holy Spirit’s way was first of all to lead Him face to face with the power of Satan and with temptation and with sin. The Book of Hebrews makes it very plain that throughout His life, Jesus was tempted in every point as we are: Hebrews 2:18, “For because he himself has suffered and been tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted.” And again in 4:15, “For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.” So it seems clear that Jesus’ temptations were not limited to these three temptations in the wilderness. He faced temptations at many points. In the final verse of Luke’s account of our passage Luke says, “And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.” After these three temptations the devil did not depart from him permanently, but only for a while. It is something well for us to remember. We may experience a great victory over a temptation or a sin and the devil leaves us, but you can be sure that he has left for only a time and when an opportune moment comes, he’ll be back. We can have victory over him but he is a constant enemy all our lives through as he was for Jesus. The wonder of wonders is that the eternal Son of God coming into the world, taking on flesh, opened Himself to every dirty, nasty temptation that man has ever faced – yet He was without sin.

3)Why do you think the first thing the Holy Spirit did after coming upon Jesus was to lead Him into the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil?

Matthew 4:1____. At His baptism the Holy Spirit had just descended upon Jesus. Jesus stands in fullness to the Holy Spirit. And what does the Holy Spirit do? He leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. We notice that it is not the devil who initiates this whole thing. One theologian has said that the devil would have escaped if he could have. Rather, the initiative is the Lord’s. Back in the G arden of Eden, Satan came and challenged the first Adam. Out here in the wilderness the second Adam Jesus goes out and challenges Satan. And Jesus knowing the difficulty of the temptation, the strength of his adversary, fasts 40 days and 40 nights before confronting him.

4)Read the first temptation: Matthew 4:2-3. What was at the center of this first temptation? Why was this temptation so dangerous? In what ways am I focusing on the material things of this world rather than the spiritual?

V. 2-3____. Do you remember the way the devil first tempted Adam and Eve? It was first of all to make them doubt and question what God had said. “Did God really say you would die?” He attacked their sense of the truthfulness of God’s Word. At Jesus’ baptism just before this, God had said, “This is my beloved Son…” And how does Satan begin? “If you are the Son of God…” He is undermining from the very start, trying to make Jesus lose His confidence that He really is the Son of God and also making Him think He needs to prove to the devil that He is the Son of God. The first temptation here seems to be to use God’s extraordinary power to satisfy His ordinary hunger even though He had been purposely fasting all this time – and also perhaps to prove to the devil who He was.

Now Jesus was very hungry and it would have been real nice to have a loaf of bread. But Jesus was thinking far beyond His own hungry stomach. If Jesus had turned those stones into loaves of bread, He would have been sending a wrong message about His whole ministry and why He came into this world. He would have been ignoring the central problem He had come to solve. People would undoubtedly have expected Jesus to go on from there and abolish hunger, or raise the standard of living in that part of Galilee. They would have looked for a very different kind of ministry from Him, a social welfare oriented ministry. But hunger and nutrition were not the main problem Jesus came to deal with. Jesus came to deal with a far deeper problem. He came to deal with people’s relationship with God.

V. 4 ____. Notice what Jesus is saying and what I am saying and what I am not saying. I am not saying that bread and nutrition, that the material is not important. It is important, after all God is extremely interested in our physical needs. The temptation here, the snare is to put an undo interest in the material and material things. Rather our lives are to be oriented around the Word of God, around every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

5) Read the second temptation: Matthew 4:5-6. What was at the center of this temptation? How can one know if Scripture is being used wrongly?

The second temptation was to throw Himself off the temple, v. 5-6____. The first thing to notice is that Satan is good at quoting Scripture and we must always be aware that Scripture can be the instrument of the devil. Just because someone uses Scripture – a theologian, a pastor, or the co-worker working beside you in the office – it is no reason to say that he is using it correctly. Scripture must be seen in its straightforward meaning and seen in its entire context because the Bible as a whole is a unit. Consequently, Jesus doesn’t even answer this, He just sweeps it aside and we too must learn to have perception as to when the Scripture is used wrongly, for it can be the most exquisite instrument of the devil.

Now this second temptation, I suggest, is the temptation to use the supernatural for pride. This would have been a spectacular thing to do. Can you imagine going to the pinnacle of the temple and casting yourself off? It would be a real PR stunt – feat! It would have done wonders for Jesus’ publicity who at this point was completely unknown. You can imagine the headlines in the evening paper: “ Nazareth man unhurt after 430 foot plunge!” – the sort of commercialism this would inspire. It would have been a great public event that would have stopped everybody and made everybody say, “Oh, my goodness, who is this man, he must be someone very, very special.”

6)Pastor Dave says “pride stands at the center of our problems”. Is that over simplistic? Why or why not? In what ways have I or am I using spiritual things for the sake of pride?

Pride stands at the center of our problems. Pride is I placing myself at the center of things so the world revolves around me. Pride is my desire to be the top person. God is really the center of everything but pride says, “I want to be the center.” We really want to be in practice God.Not sure of what is being said in the previoius sentence. This is true of the non-Christian but we who are followers of Christ must say with tears, this is true of us too. The most tragic thing for the Christian is that we can try to use spiritual things for the sake of pride. We can ask for gifts of the Spirit for the sake of pride. We can try for holiness of life for the sake of pride. We can ask for an increased power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for the sake of pride. We can seek spiritual growth for the sake of pride. Many a person can ask that he understand the Scripture better for the sake of pride. No, not many a person, but we do. None of us have escaped this. Pride and especially spiritual pride is the most crippling of all the sins of the Christian. None of us has not desired to be top man in these areas.

7)Read the third temptation: Matthew 4:8-9. What lies at the heart of this temptation? What kind of a world would we be living in had Jesus given in to this temptation?

The third temptation comes in verse 8 and this one I would say is the devil’s trump card. V. 8-9____. At this point there is no longer any sham about “If you are the Son of God.” The devil has dropped that tact. He now puts his ultimate temptation before Jesus – and I pray that we see this clearly. He is saying to Jesus “Let’s work together.” So far we haven’t got along very well but let’s work together. “You worship me and I will give you my power over all these nations of the world you see before you.” Let’s work together.

The temptation for Jesus is that He would be ruler of the whole world NOW – right then, 27-28 A.D. He would be ruler then, but He wouldn’t be the Savior of anybody.

Do we understand the ramifications of this? If Jesus had given in to this temptation the whole world would now be one religion. And that religion would be called Christianity. The devil is promising, “You worship me, fall down before me, and I will give you all of my power over all these nations and they will follow you.” So Christ would have been the head over every world religion or there would have been just one world religion – Christianity. And without thinking we are tempted to say, “But that would be great!” No, because it would be a very, very, very different religion than the Christianity we have known. In this Christianity, there would be no Good News – no promise of God’s forgiveness. It is hard to speculate what it would be. I suspect it would probably be moralism – a lot of do’s and don’ts – very legalistic. We can speculate. But the thing you can be sure of is that there would be no Gospel, no redemption, no freedom from guilt, no forgiveness. Why? Because at the heart of Satan’s plan was for Jesus to by-pass the cross; to accept the shortcut in order to escape suffering.

You see God’s promise to Jesus is that one day He will rule over this world. Scripture says that the devil is the prince, the god of this world now, so in a sense he has a power and dominion over this world now. But Christ is meant to rule. The point of the temptation was how the power to rule was to be fulfilled. The devil is saying, since I am the god of this world now, I will give you my power over this world and you can rule now. The devil would give Jesus his power to rule. God is saying, “Jesus, you will rule over all the nations one day in the future but first you have to go to the cross.” The teeth of the temptation is to bypass the cross, to not have to go through the suffering of the cross and to rule now. Jesus’ dominion over the world is already promised to Him but Satan promised it to Him much sooner without having to go to the cross.

If Jesus had given in to this temptation, we would be lost today. There would be no one to save us. Religion would be an absolute sham. If Jesus had taken the road of least resistance, everyone of us would simply face the judgment of God alone, with no Savior to turn to, no high priest to intercede for us, no shepherd to lay down His life for us. You see Jesus saw through this – the promise of one world religion, of universal Christendom following Him. So He dismisses the devil, “Get out.” And in doing this Jesus reaffirms His commitment to go to the cross.

8) How real is the temptation for the Christian to take shortcuts and attempt to do spiritual work for Christ without suffering? Where in your life have you or are you taking short cuts?

But there is also something here that bears upon the Christian’s life and that is that we must never forget that Jesus does make a relationship between His death, His going to the cross, and my suffering – not that something is added to Christ’s substitutionary death, nothing need be nor can be, but after we are saved we must not take any shortcut and attempt to do spiritual work for Christ without suffering. There is a preaching of the Gospel as though after accepting Christ as Savior, there is no suffering. It is not true. We are still surrounded by the kingdom of the old king. Why should we think there will not be battle and suffering in our service of our Lord? In a fallen, revolted world, serving God cannot be done without suffering – for it will come. Self-denial is necessary or there will be no fruit. How quickly we are tempted to disengage ourselves from the hardships of the battle. How quickly. No. Christ went to the cross and the follower of Christ must be willing after taking Christ as Savior to take up his cross daily and follow Him. And it is when we stand in this place we are ready for the real power.