COMMENTARY ON THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS (PART 1) Free Reprint Article

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COMMENTARY ON THE TEMPTATION OF JESUS (PART 1)

by Gabriel Abina
1/09/2018 / Bible Studies

And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, “If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.” And Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee: And in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Luke 4:1-12 (KJV).

The temptation of Christ by the devil in the wilderness carries an ever green message for the believer who intends to live a constant victorious life. The three attempts by the devil were to shift grounds and possibly sift him like wheat (Luke 22:33). That is to check if he was the genuine article. Note that every single man who has walked the earth right from the time of Adam to this present age has fallen to the tricks of the devil, however their spiritual stance. The devil attempted this with Jesus to see if by being in the form of man and sharing his frailty, he would fall short too. Remember that falling short of God’s standard is the same as sin and once sin is found in him, he couldn’t be the saviour of the world.

As long as we walk the earth, we will continually face the onslaught of the devil’s temptations. Therefore, it is imperative we look into the three attempts at tempting Jesus. This is because the intentions within the tricks and the tricks themselves have remained the same, though the circumstances and the machinations have changed.

THE FIRST TEMPTATION

From the first temptation we see the following:

Satan will always attack our vulnerability 2. He will always attack our faith (the identity problem) 3. He always pushes survival mentality (makes us feel we are responsible for our survival).
1. Satan will always attack our vulnerability

And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, “If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.”

Here we see Christ in a vulnerable situation-he was terribly hungry. The Bible says he ‘hungered’, a connotation of an extreme hunger. This makes sense seeing he had been fasting for forty straight days. Anyone who has ever gone on a marathon fasting will understand this. Indeed, during fasting the body is weak and dehydrated, since it is denied of both food and water. Therefore, having gone through this exercise it was only natural for him to be hungry and desire food.

This was the devil’s opening for the first shot. He didn’t bring clothing or material wealth. He knew at that point those would be useless. What Christ needed was food and that was what he brought – or at least, the idea. The devil knew that no man in his right instincts would reject a good food offering having being hungry for forty days! Adam Clark comments:

…now as hunger naturally diminishes the strength of the body, the mind gets enfeebled, and becomes easily irritated; and if much watching and prayer be not employed, the uneasiness which is occasioned by lack of food may soon produce impatience, and in this state of mind the tempter has great advantages. The following advice of an Arabian philosopher to his son is worthy of attention. “My son never go out of the house in the morning, till thou hast eaten something: by so doing, thy mind will be more firm; and shouldest thou be insulted by any person, thou wilt find thyself more disposed to suffer patiently: for hunger dries up and disorders the brain.

The English say “A hungry man is an angry man”. There is another saying that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. These sayings cannot be truer. Never try the patience of a hungry man!

However, the main point of departure is the vulnerability of Christ. He was physically weak and sapped of strength, a result of his extreme hunger. The devil wouldn’t have used such trick on him or chose such moment if he didn’t see that food was his greatest human need at the time. The same is applicable to our lives as well. Satan attacks us when we are in our weak moments; when our needs and trials are knocking us about. He attacks when we are alone, so to speak, mentally and physically; when our guards are down. When are sapped of strength.

If we look through the Bible we see such pattern. Eve was tempted when she was alone separated from Adam (Gen.3:1-6) and Christ was tempted again through Peter as the weight of the cross he was about bear weighed on his heart (Mat.16:22). The tempter is a cunning sniper, carefully selecting his target and timing. He is like the hawk, carefully hovering over the chickens, monitoring their movement with their mother. In a split second, he swoops down and picks the vulnerable chicken which had strayed or not staying close to the mother

2. He will always attack our faith (the identity problem)

You will notice that the first statement of the devil to Jesus is “If you are the son of God”. That statement was a statement of doubt. He is like “hey, chump, I hear you call yourself the son of God. Are you sure, cause I don’t think so”. That could drown any man’s belief or self confidence.

Adam Clarke renders it that Satan might not have known whom Jesus was. I don’t think so. Satan had lived too much in heaven not to know about Jesus or recognize him (maybe he couldn’t because of his human body,). Furthermore, he is always lurking around to gather information, so he would have monitored Christ from birth. Thus, I am sure he would have known Christ as the genuine article. If we look at the question itself, we will see it carries the presupposition that Christ might be the son of God. His intention is not to deny the Sonship of Christ; on the contrary, his intention is to drive into him a sense of self doubt. If he succeeded, Jesus couldn’t have done anything.

Satan’s ploy is to attack our faith or confidence. He knows that our strength lies in calmness and quiet confidence in God (Isaiah 30:15). Thus he attacks our confidence or faith.* By the time we doubt who we are both physically-capability, strength, dreams, visions, etc and spiritually-as children of God having heaven at our disposal, we would be depressed and defeated, unable to achieve God’s purpose for our lives or raze his kingdom. Once he succeeds at this, he scores a major victory against us. Our guards would be down and we would be defenseless. We would already be defeated before the battle.

Paul warns of this in Ephesians 6:16, “Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.” Note that Paul is saying here that the only way we withstand the devil’s onslaught is by holding up our shield of faith or confidence. Peter says we must rebuke him steadfast in the faith (1Peter 5:9). Think about it, if your enemy depends on a certain weapon for his defence and victory, wouldn’t you strike at it and fiercely too? And that indeed is what faith is to us 1John 5:4.

He always pushes survival mentality (makes us feel we are responsible for our survival).

“If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread.”

“Well, you claim you are the son of God, I don’t believe you. But I think this is the best moment for you to prove it. That is if you are really who you say you are.” Can you hear that resounding through the entire statement? Like I said in 1 above, Jesus was hungry and vulnerable. So the devil told him, “If you have such enormous power, why don’t you use it to help yourself out?”

That is the devil’s ideology-existentialism. He wants us to believe that we only have a purpose because we exist. Thus, whatever we have at our disposal must be used to ensure that survival. He doesn’t want us to think higher than ourselves and the immediate; because that gives him power to control the future.

Our world today is controlled by that ideology. It is what has given birth to human absolutism. We have exalted ourselves above all there is because we think we are all there is. We have relegated God to the grave because the devil has made us believe that we don’t need him.

Satan always wants us to shift focus from God to ourselves. He wants us to believe we are self sufficient and self dependent. He wants us to believe we are we what we desire to make ourselves and whatever we achieve is because we could-because we are capable. Satan wants us to believe that our achievement is based on our efforts and our efforts only. By so doing, he shields from looking forward to the future, keeping us captive of the immediate like he did to Esau (Hebrews 12:16).

By pushing the survival at all cost mentality on us, he has succeeded in creating chaos of our world. The tell tale marks are everywhere: wars (internecine, ethno-religious, political, etc), greed, betrayal, murder, etc. This is why some see themselves as the big shark and others as the small fries. This is the root of “dog eat dog” lifestyle of man.

But do we exist for food only? Do we exist just to survive? Has our specie survived till date because we could? Read Christ’s Essentialism in response to the temptation in the next article.

* Here I use confidence and faith interchangeably

Gabriel T. Abina is a lively Christian writer, whose desire is to be a voice for God in this generation. A graduate of Hist. & Int. Stds, he has two completed manuscripts: In The Eye of the Storm & Rahab: God's Grace Unveiled, and currently on some others. He blogs @ gabrieltabinablog.wordpress.com

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