Faithful on Fridays Blog

Part Two

Any good story has interesting characters (the ‘who’), a setting you can visualize (the ‘where and when’), and now the plot or the ‘what happened’ in the story. We’ve been digging deeper into the temptation of Jesus (Matt. 4 and Luke 4) so let’s learn the facts: what happened?

An intriguing plot, from beginning to end, always adds facts to a story; let’s discover them. Fact one: Jesus was led by the Spirit into a 40 day fast in the wilderness. Fact two: the devil was granted permission to present Him with three temptations. Fact three: Jesus responded to each one with victory. Fact four: the devil gave up and left Him.

Let’s go deeper into those three temptations. Satan’s first attempt was to entice Jesus to prove He’s the Son of God by performing a simple miracle of turning stones into bread. He chose the perfect time and place, however, Jesus’ response was the powerful strategy of quoting Scripture directly to the temptation declaring He needs God’s Word more than food. 

The devil caught on to Jesus’ strategy of using Scripture so he tried it too. Taking Jesus to the highest place of the Temple he gave Him the opportunity to offer evidence He’s the Son of God by falling off and depending on angels to rescue Him. Isn’t that what’s written? Jesus counteracted with Scripture once again, “Don’t test God.” 

Even though Matthew and Luke differ in their order Matthew lists the final temptation as one of authority; Satan had better try another angle since the first two failed. Taking Jesus to a higher place, a mountaintop, he reminded Jesus of his authority over all the kingdoms of the world. He promised to give Jesus the rights and wealth of these empires if He’d simply worship him. Jesus didn’t refute Satan’s declaration because He knew it was true; God delegated temporary authority to Satan but the time had not arrived to annul it. Jesus answered him a final time with Scripture declaring worship is reserved only for the Lord, your God. 

There was a definite ending to this story of Jesus’ temptations which included angels serving Him in His physical weakness but more than that Luke tells us he left Jesus until another opportunity presented itself. 

This short tete-a-tete, a private conversation between Satan and Jesus, gives us the opportunity to imagine, analyze, and apply the plot to our own temptations. When we take the time to study and think, not just a quick read, we’ll find many similarities to our own weaknesses and temptations. Matthew records Jesus demanding Satan to ‘beat it!’; don’t miss that. He has the higher authority and the devil must obey, in a similar manner, God’s given authority to His children to demand he leave us as well. Take advantage of your God-given authority more often telling the devil to “get out of here!” This simple plot prepares us for the conflict next week; don’t miss it.