Jesus' Third Temptation in the Wilderness
- Tim Cain
- Jan 23, 2010
- Series: Topical
Kaleo El Cajon
Matthew 4:8-11
January 23rd 2010
Tim Cain
Today I want to talk about the things that we cling to. The things we long to control and revolt whenever they are threatened. How do you know what you are clinging to? Well, one of the best ways of revealing those areas of our life that we cling to is by looking at the things that emotionally affect us. What things frustrate us, what things make us anxious, what things make us angry inside? What conversations play over and over in your mind before and after you have them? What things keep you up at night analyzing? What things make you want to just turn off your mind and go to bed? You see for many of us we are not clinging to physical stuff as much as we are clinging to our reputation and what other people think of us. Or we are clinging to our rights, to the things that we think we deserve. Think about it, what do you find yourself arguing about, either in real life or in your head?
You see from day one we are born with a desire to be independent, a desire to control our own destiny and we react very strongly when we feel like our ability to control that destiny is threatened. That is where we get our idea of rights from and America is all about our rights. Many of us find that we carry around in ourselves a very strong passion for fairness and we find that when someone threatens something that we think we deserve we grow extremely defensive. I know I do this all the time. We will be driving somewhere and Abbey will be talking and then she will look at me and say, “Who are you arguing with in your head.” And she will catch me, she will catch me having full on conversations with people in my head and of course she usually interrupts me just as I was about to win somehow. I love to be right. I cling to being right. I cling to having my life together. I cling to what other people think about me. There are deep passions inside me that cling to these things and they are so easily justifiable in my mind. And I know I am not the only one. Do you know how I know I am not the only one? I have had countless conversations in the last few years with people about specific sins in their lives and many many times I have seen people cling to their sin and grow very defensive.
All of us hate having our sin revealed because we love to cling to the idea that we are doing a good job. We love to cling to the idea that we are making God happy by our actions. You see even if we were willing to admit that we were terrible sinners when we came to Jesus, most of see ourselves as having gotten our lives together and now we are doing pretty well. Praise God that he forgave us all our past sins and now we are somehow repaying him by living godly lives. Of course we would never say we are repaying God with our godly lives because that would not be theologically accurate and yet that is certainly how we live. It’s obvious that we live that way because when someone points out that our lives are not as godly as we think we freak out. We freak out because we need our godliness. We need it because we have stopped relying on the cross and have begun to rely on ourselves to please God.
And when this happens, when we leave the cross and try and please God and others with our actions, one of two things happens. We either become very self-righteous because we believe we are succeeding or we despair because we recognize what failures we are. And so our churches are full of self-righteous people who are impatient, proud, judgmental, and extremely defensive if anyone ever tries to point out an area of growth in their life. And then there are those who despair over their sins. They try so hard to please God, but time and time again they find themselves failing and they look around at everyone else who seems to have it all together and they don’t get what their problem is. And they are told that they need to try harder, to be more disciplined, to stop being stupid and sometimes they get excited about a message or something and redouble their effort but soon they fail again and find themselves worse off then before. Often these people don’t stick around church for too long. They try for a while but eventually the God who is mad at them for being such failures is not a God that they enjoy singing to. And spending time with self-righteous people who look down on them doesn’t really appeal to them so they begin to distance themselves from community and eventually they often leave the church. What both of these people have in common is they have neglected the cross.
Both of these people are trying to please God without the cross. One foolishly thinks they have succeeded while the others understand their failure and despair. But both are trying to please God on their own. Both have forgotten the cross and are caught up in their own independence and pride. The self righteous are obviously proud, believing they are good enough to please God, but make no mistake the despairing are also proud. They are proud because they feel their sin is too big for God to forgive. Both desperately need the cross and yet they struggle so deeply with going to the cross. Why? What is it that keeps us from the cross? Today I want us to look at Jesus’ third temptation. It is a temptation to avoid the cross. It is the temptation that will follow him throughout his whole life. This will be Jesus’ greatest temptation, and the Bible tells us that it will be our greatest temptation as well. So, let’s take some time and look at what this temptation looked like in Jesus’ life.
So, lets look at Matthew 4 and see what Satan’s final temptation would be. Remember God has told Jesus that he loved him, and then he has sent him to the desert where he was tempted by Satan. And Jesus had fasted for forty days, he was hungry and Satan came and tried to get him to give into his physical hunger by making stones into bread. He tried to get him to act on his own instead of trusting that his Father would take care of him. But Jesus knew that his Father was good, that he would take care of him, that his way was best, that listening to him and meditating on him was better than food. Even though his body was genuinely and deeply hungry he knew his God was better than food and so he chose to remain hungry in order to rely more deeply on his God. And then Satan attacked Jesus’ desire to experience the love of his Father. Satan took him to his Fathers house, to the temple and Satan knew that Jesus longed to experience the love of his father in a real even physical way. He knew that Jesus longed to feel the presence of his Father. And so he took him to his fathers house and told him to jump and if he jumped God would send his angels and he would experience the love of his Father. Satan said, “You want to experience the love of your God, I mean really feel it, jump and you will know it.” But Jesus refuses to put his Father to the test. He refuses to demand that God prove his presence. Instead he believes that his Father is good and that he will reveal his presence in experiential ways in his own time. Now these temptations were real, and they were deep. But this third temptation, this third temptation takes the first two temptations to a whole new level.
Lets take a look at this third temptation. Satan takes Jesus to a high mountain and there he shows him all the kingdoms of the world. Now these kingdoms had already been promised to Jesus. In Psalms 2:8 it says, “Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” So God had promised Jesus the nations. In fact Jesus had come for these. He had left heaven to come to earth in order to rescue men and women from every tribe, nation and tongue. He had come for the nations. And so here Satan is offering Jesus what God has already promised him. So, the temptation is not really about the nations. Satan is not offering Jesus something that his Father wouldn’t let him have. That is not the temptation. Jesus knew he was going to get the nations; the temptation was how would he get the nations. Now Satan is offering Jesus the nations if he will only bow down and worship Satan. Now in and of itself that is not that attractive of a prospect is it? I mean Jesus probably was not sitting in the desert thinking, “If only I had the opportunity to worship Satan, wow, that would be a tough one to resist.” No, no I am sure Jesus would have rather made stones into bread then worship Satan. There is nothing attractive about worshipping Satan. So, if the temptation is not whether or not Jesus would get the nations because God had already promised he would get the nations, and the temptation is not that Satan is so attractive that Jesus wanted to worship him, then what is the temptation? What could possibly make Satan think he had a chance with this one? What was the temptation?
Jesus temptation was to avoid the cross. Jesus temptation is to avoid the cross. He would have the nations either way but the temptation is will you bow to Satan or will you go to the cross? Will you rule the world as a political ruler, will you display your glory and be worshipped and honored by people as you rule over them politically? Will the shouts of hosanna and the cheers of men be yours for a lifetime, which is the best Satan could offer. Or will you rule the world as Savior? Will you go to the cross and there purchase with your blood men and women and children from every tribe and tongue and nation and will they serve you as a kingdom of priest for all eternity? How will Jesus get the nations? Will he get them God’s way or will he take a shortcut?
Now what I want you to see is that this is a huge temptation and the reason that it is a huge temptation is because the cross is such a huge burden. This temptation will follow Jesus the rest of his life. Even though he rejects it here in the desert and sends Satan away, it would not be the end of this temptation. Over and over again we find that Satan will try and get Jesus to avoid the cross. I want to take a moment and follow this temptation throughout Jesus life.
If you go to Matthew 16 you will see this same temptation coming back again. And just like the first temptation it comes at one of the highpoints of Jesus ministry. Satan’s first temptations of Jesus came just after he was baptized and God had spoke from heaven and told Jesus that he loved him. Here in Matthew 16 we see that the disciples are asked who they believe that Jesus is.
I want you guys to picture Jesus. He is with his disciples; he has spent a few years now pouring into them. And now comes a time of testing. And he asks them who they say he is and Peter speaks for the whole group and says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” And Jesus responds, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” And I can just picture Jesus. He has been on earth for thirty some years now, he misses his Dad, and he misses the sweet communion that they shared for all eternity when he used to dwell at his Father’s side. And Peter’s words remind him of his Father and of their intimate relationship. And this only reminds him of the reason that he is on earth. He did not leave his Father’s side for fun, he left it for a specific purpose and now he begins to make that purpose plain to his disciples. And though he is the Son of God, he comes and from this time on he begins to tell them that he “must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Guys imagine the physical and emotional conflict that Jesus must feel as a human being. He must go and suffer. Do you think his body wanted to suffer? Do you think his back wanted the whips, do you think his head appreciated the thorns? No, guys as Jesus considered his suffering and death there was a real physical conflict. His body didn’t want to suffer. He was the Son of God; he had never endured physical pain before he came to earth. His body didn’t want the cross. His hands didn’t want the nails, his lungs didn’t want to be crushed, his ligaments torn, NO! It was one thing to be hungry and say no to food but here a physical suffering far worse then food is coming, and though conflicted, Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem and begins to speak of this to his disciples. And Satan knows the conflict. He knows how difficult the cross is going to be and how physically conflicted Jesus is going to be. And so he comes to him as deceptively as he can. He comes to him in the very instrument that God has just used to speak truth to him. Satan takes the very instrument that God has used to encourage Jesus and now he uses Peter to tempt him. And Peter comes to Jesus and tempts Jesus to think of things from a natural perspective. Satan uses Peter to tempt Jesus to think of things from a purely natural human perspective. He comes and he says, “Far be it from you Lord! This shall never happen to you!” Peter comes and says, NO, this is not how God will allow his Son to be treated. Peter comes and says, NO Jesus, God loves you and love would never let you suffer and die like that. This will never happen to you. And Peter thinks that he is speaking for God. He thinks that he is encouraging Jesus during a depressed moment where Jesus was seeing the glass half empty. But Jesus sees through it all. Jesus knows that this is not Peter speaking. That Satan himself has come and was tempting him with the same temptation he had tempted him a few years earlier in the desert. He had come and tempted him to avoid the cross. He was tempting him to look at things from a merely human perspective and so avoid the cross.
You see Peter is looking at the situation from a purely human perspective. You can tell that he is because he didn’t really hear everything Jesus said did he? Peter only heard suffering and death and that is where he stopped. You see that is where the human perspective will always stop. It will always stop at death. From the human perspective there is nothing after death and so it always stops at death. That is why from a human perspective life is of supreme value. Life must be clung to at all cost. And because life is of extreme value, love always protects life and if love always protects life than for God to love his Son must mean that he will protect his life. Do you see how Peter is seeing the situation? God loves his Son Jesus, Love always gives what is best, Life is best, and therefore God will protect Jesus life. So, when Jesus starts talking about suffering and death Peter rebukes him. But you see Peter didn’t here the whole story. Peter missed the part about the resurrection. Peter missed the part about after three days he will be raised. That is how the story ends. The story doesn’t end in death; it ends with Jesus being alive, alive forever more. It ends with glory though it walks through death. That is what Jesus is focusing on. Jesus is looking at things from God’s perspective and he realizes that in order to purchase a people for God, in order to be a savior and not merely a king, he must die and that his death doesn’t mean God does not love him.
That is what Jesus is fighting to believe, his death does not mean God does not love him, because God will prove his love by raising him up again. Even though his death would be excruciating his Father would come through for him. He would. His father would prove his love for him by raising him from the dead on the third day. I love how Jesus talks about the third day. I don’t think it’s just for the disciples. I don’t think its so that they could count down the days. I believe part of his saying it is for himself. The disciples won’t figure it out anyway, but he says it partly for himself. It is his statement of faith. Yes I will die. I will obey my father. I will do it his way. Even though everything in me longs for another way, even though there is no greater suffering than the suffering I will experience, even so, my hope is in my Father that on the third day he will raise me up again. My God will not abandon me to the grave, he will not let his holy one see decay, My God will raise me up and he will do it on the third day and because I believe that I can die. Because I trust that my God will not abandon me but will raise me up again I can go to the cross. You see what is so painful about the cross is not merely that Jesus will experience excruciating physical agony; it is the fact that Jesus will experience the rejection and the wrath of God against sin. What is so horrifying to Jesus about the cross is that he is going to have to touch disgusting sin, God is going to place it in his body. What makes the cross so tragic for him, so difficult is that his father who he loves so much is going to pour out his wrath against his body. His Father who he has lived with for all eternity is going to turn his back on him. His Father is going to let him die; he is going to curse him with the wages of sin. The wages of sin that he never committed but is bearing in his body so that he can save his people. That is what Jesus is so conflicted about. His Father is going to turn his back on him, he is going to die. He is going to have to give up his spirit. All control, all ability to take it back, all of it is going to go for he is going to die. Jesus is going to die. And the only way he is going to be able to die is by faith. He must entrust himself to his Father. As he gives up his spirit that day on the cross he is saying, “I believe that my God will raise me up on the third day.” I believe it. I believe it. My father loves me, even though you won’t be able to see it on that dark Friday afternoon when the earth quakes and I hang naked on a cross, even though you won’t see it then you will see it. Come Sunday you will see. He will roll away the stone, he will raise me from the dead, I will go and once again sit at his right hand, he will give all the nations to me, and he will give me a name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue confess that I am King of Kings and Lord of Lords.”
Jesus is able to reject Satan’s temptation because he trusts that his God is for him and that even when he can’t see it even when it means death, even then he can trust his God for he will raise him from the dead. Guys what I want you to see is that Jesus believes that his God will raise him from the dead and so he is able to go to the cross, Peter misses this point and that is why he doesn’t want Jesus to die. Peter misses the fact that God is bigger than death. Peter misses the fact that God is in control and his way is best. And Jesus rebukes Peter and he rebukes him very harshly. He calls him Satan. And he doesn’t just call him Satan; he has Matthew right it down because he is trying to unveil for us Satan’s greatest temptation. You see Satan’s greatest temptation of Jesus is also his greatest temptation for us. His temptation for Jesus was to look at things from a natural perspective and so run away from the cross. Satan was tempting Jesus to avoid the cross, because the cross meant death and he wanted Jesus to be afraid to die. He wanted to put doubt in his mind. He wanted him to wonder if his God would really raise him from the dead and he hoped that the doubt would keep Jesus from going to the cross. You see once he gave up his spirit he was placing himself one hundred percent in the hands of his Father. He was saying, “Not my will but yours be done.” You see that is what the cross was for Jesus; it was the place where he demonstrated his complete and total dependence upon the father. It was there on the cross that Jesus called out in a loud voice “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” and having said this he breathed his last. That is what the cross was for Jesus and that is what the cross is for us.
You see right after Jesus rebuked Peter so harshly, he let Peter know that the cross was not only his call, but it was the call for all his followers. The very next verse says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” You see the cross is not just where Jesus died, it is where we die. Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ” again he says, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I to the world.” The cross is where we die. What I mean is the cross is the place where we give up control. The cross is the place where we stop seeing things from an earthly perspective and truly put our hope in God and him alone. The cross is the place where we give up our spirit. That is why the cross is such a hard place for us to go. At the cross we give up control. At the cross we say, “I am not, cannot, and will never be good enough for you.” I can’t earn you love. At the cross we give up our reputation and admit that we are truly dead in our sins and we need Jesus. At the cross we see our darkness revealed for all to see. There are no good people at the cross. There are no innocent people at the cross. You see many of us have been to the cross, we have been there when we first came to Jesus but we couldn’t sit still. We couldn’t completely give up and so after seeing Jesus on the cross we have been inspired to go out and live a good life and make him proud. We have left the cross. We have left it and are now trying to make him happy on our own. We thought once our past was wiped clean and we started all over we would be able to do more good than bad and make him happy. We have left the cross. Satan’s greatest temptation is to lure us away from the cross and back into self-reliance. That is why we cling to things. We cling to things because we are trying to make it on our own and we feel like we need them. And it’s so dangerous because it’s not like we don’t talk about God or try and live good lives etc. We do. We go to church, we go to Missional Community, we pray, we do devotions, we may do it all but we find ourselves doing it in our own strength. We may even talk about the cross a ton but we are still clinging to our way.
It is so easy to walk away from the cross. I see it everyday in me and I hate it but I still do it. Just try and call me out on a sin and whether I show it or not inside I will struggle so hard not to want to tell you about your problems which I think are way worse. Try congratulating someone else on something that I also do and I will wonder if they are better at it or if I am better at it. Oh my friends what an ugly place it is when we walk away from the cross. Think of the things you cling to. The times you feel anxious, the times your stomach goes in knots, the times you feel better then other people. Think of the times maybe even here at church that you have been distracted, that you have been frustrated, that you have felt you were better than someone else here. Oh my friends our self-reliance is our greatest enemy. It lurks everywhere. Satan’s chief goal is to pull us away from the cross. He doesn’t care if we talk about God or Jesus or go to church as long as we avoid the cross. Look at the Pharisees, the most religious, moral, disciplined, giving, committed people on earth and yet they were called sons of the devil. Sons of the devil because they were offended by the cross. They wanted God without the cross, not realizing that God can only be approached through the cross. The cross is where we find God and so when I talk about clinging to the cross I am talking about clinging to God through the cross.
And if you look at the New Testament you will find that our call is to be a people who cling to the cross. Who die to ourselves at the cross. Paul says that he has been crucified with Christ and that his only glory is in the cross where the world has been crucified to him and he has been crucified to the world. At the cross we die to our self reliance. There is no self-righteousness at the cross. No pride at the cross. You can’t. You can’t look at the bloody body of your savior hanging on the cross in your place and be proud. And yet there is not despair at the cross. No despair. When you see your savior at the cross you know he is better than you. You know his righteousness is bigger than your sin, you know his blood is able to forgive you. But the cross is hard for at the cross we truly give our spirit into God’s hands. We truly place our hope in him and like Jesus; we must see things from an eternal perspective. You see the only way for you to die to your self reliance is for you to believe that God will not leave you there. That God will raise you from the dead. The only way to be crucified with Christ is to believe that when you are, Christ himself will come and live through you.
You see when we cling to the cross everything else falls into proper perspective. When we cling to the cross our grip on everything else is loosened. You see when I am at the foot of the cross you can confront me on any sin in the whole world and if its true I will say, yes, yes you are right. But not only that, look, look behind me, do you see that? Do you see the most beautiful, innocent, lovely, worthy, glorious being in all the world, do you see his blood gushing down, do you see his pain, the agony on his lips, do you see him suffocating behind me? I promise you my sin is worse than you could ever imagine. Yes, Yes I did do that and I am sorry. I wish I hadn’t. But I did. And that is why I am standing here. I am standing here at the cross because I need it. I am a failure. And I need the blood of the Son of God to wipe away my sin. So, yes you are right and I am so sorry. But, I am not despairing. In fact I am rejoicing. Rejoicing not because I am a sinner but because there is one who is able to wash away my sins. There is one whose blood speaks on my behalf, it speaks righteousness for me. And I love him, and I will glory in his death for me. And I will not move from this place, for here I find all I need. And I will call other sinners to come and find mercy here. And I do not call them because I am better than them, I will not leave the cross to get them, but I will stand here and shout from here. And that way when they look to hear what I am shouting about they don’t see some proud self righteous condemning person telling them about how sinful they are, they see a sinner, a failure, calling them to come and find hope where he has found hope.
Oh my friends don’t leave the cross. Don’t wander from its hope. Don’t. You need it just as bad today as you ever have. Stay, stay at the cross and make it the only thing you cling to. Cling to it. Cling to it with all you have for if you do it will never be taken away. Do not allow Satan to lure you from its mercy. Don’t let him breathe self-reliance and independence back into you as he has done so many times before. And, for all of you tonight like me. For all of you who have noticed that you have wondered from the cross. For all you who find yourself time and time again clinging to stupid things. For all of you who have failed to resist Satan’s temptation to avoid the cross I have good news for you. Your savior resisted Satan’s temptation for you. And he went to the cross for the times that you would wander. And he hung there for the times you would walk away. And he calls now for you to return. His blood is enough for those who have wandered. His blood is sufficient for wanderers. Come back to the cross and find mercy there in your time of need. And let us be a people who glory only in the cross. Let us be a people who have truly been crucified with Christ. Let us know that we can trust our savior. We can commit ourselves into his hands. We can lay down all our good deeds and all our sins at the cross and their bathe in his blood and change into his righteous clothes. Just let go. Let go of your desire to earn his approval, get rid of your desire to look good to other Christians, get rid of your passion to be right, get rid of it all. At the cross there are no good people, no self sufficient people, only sinners who are trusting in Jesus as their only hope. Kaleo church let us be a people all about the cross.
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