"Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Matthew 4:10

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Matthew 4 

Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.
Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.
Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee; And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying,
The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up.
From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, 
Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.

And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him.

And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them. And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan.
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"After the forty days were ended, Jesus was hungry. Then came the tempter, with four thousand years of experience of how to tempt man. He knows our weak spot. Oh yes. Down in the bottom of every heart there is a little bit of lust after something. To that the devil appeals. Satan knows exactly how to tempt every one of us. With one man it is love of money; with another some fleshly lust, perhaps a glass of whiskey. Another man he knows is upon the very verge of a moral precipice, and he will present a lure and drag him over. Satan knows the weak points of every Christian too. I do not think he exactly tempts sinners, but he knows how to work for their downfall. He does tempt the children of God because he knows they have escaped his grip. Unbelieving sinners he effectually controls, for of such it is written:
“In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them” (2 Cor. 4:4).
So he leads them on to destruction.

And now, look well at Christ, hungry, and note how the enemy assails Him.
“And the devil said unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread” (Luke 4:3).
There are two ways in which you may look at that word “if.” Casting a doubt on His relationship to God, or getting Him to act on the fact of that relationship. I think the audacity of Satan is sometimes surprising. He says to Jesus, “If Thou be the Son of God.” That too is the way in which he will seek to upset you. He will with you raise the question whether after all you are a child of God. To the Lord he says here, “If you are really God’s Son, command this stone that it be made bread.” That is, God has kept you hungry, now then, your opportunity has arrived, take yourself out of God’s hand, for you are able to make those stones into bread, and satisfy yourself. No miracle apparently had been wrought by the Lord Jesus up till this moment, but Satan had a true idea of who He was. He sought to upset this blessed One, and to trip Him up in the most plausible way possible.

There is no sin in hunger. It is incidental to man as he passes through this scene. If the Son of God become a Man, and enter into the world where men are, He must at least expose Himself to the vicissitudes of human life. Well, He was hungry. “And now, help yourself,” was Satan’s suggestion. Oh, hear what Jesus says. He had said before,
“Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God” (Psa. 40:7-8).
He was only here to do God’s will, hence when Satan says to him, “Command this stone that it be made bread,” His answer is very beautiful—
“It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” (Luke 4:4).
Notice, dear friends, the Lord Jesus not merely quotes Scripture, but He quotes it as Scripture. Mark what He says. He does not merely say, “Man shall not live by bread alone,” but
“It is written.”
He had the most profound respect for what God had written. I should like you to notice that, dear friends, because we live in a day when people say the books of Moses are not to be received. They are just human compositions. Know you this, that the answer with which Christ overcame the devil was quoted from one of these books? The first quotation is from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, and the other two instances named here are from the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy. Christ puts His emphatic stamp upon Moses’ writings over and over again, affirming their authenticity, and that they were God’s word.

And now you be warned, you young men, for today the devil is busy casting doubts on Scripture. Some people say the Word of God is not to be relied upon. Look at this blessed One, He should know its value and reliability. All that He ever was He brought into manhood. He was the incarnate Son of God, and therefore, as God, He knew perfectly what was and was not Scripture. He takes the place of dependence, and then He quotes that striking verse which Moses uttered to the children of Israel:
“That He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live” (Deut. 8:3).
The devil meets Jesus in the wilderness where Israel had been, and he tempts Him, as he tempted them. His resource is Scripture, the sword of the Spirit, God’s Word. He hangs on God’s Word. He is here the truly obedient, as well as the absolutely dependent One, and Satan is foiled. How are you and I to meet Satan? Exactly the same way.

We will now pass to the second temptation which Matthew gives. Satan is very wise. He is very crafty. If you foil the enemy once by dependence upon God he will still come back to you. If he does not get in at the front door, he will come again and try to enter by the back door. And what will he come with next time? Very likely a text, since he finds that you believe in Scripture. So is it here.
“Then the devil taketh Him up into the holy city, and setteth Him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto Him, If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down” [again notice the “if”]: “for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning Thee: and in their hands they shall bear Thee up, lest at any time Thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Matt. 4:5-6).
This mangled quotation is taken from the 91st Psalm, which describes our Lord’s pathway as the Messiah. Turn back to it for a moment. See how it starts.
“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psa. 91:1).
It is an oracular description of what Christ would be as Messiah upon earth. He then speaks:
“I will say of Jehovah, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust” (Psa. 91:2),
and indeed Jehovah was His refuge. The Spirit then addresses Messiah thus:
“Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence” (Psa. 91:3).
If I might so say, here, in this wilderness episode, is the fowler seen spreading a snare.

Further down in the Psalm we read,
“Because thou hast made Jehovah which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling” (Psa. 91:9-10).
And now observe those words:
“For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Psa. 91:11-12).
Satan did not quote the whole of the verse. He left out those four words “in all thy ways.” Ah, how crafty is the enemy. To the blessed Lord he as it were suggests: “The scripture is plain that that promise applies to You. Now is Your opportunity to show that it does apply to You.” He suggests to Him that He should fling Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, and thus He would prove that the scripture had its application to Him, and thus make Himself an object of great interest to men.

It is, however, never the way of a saint to put God to the test; so the Lord Jesus says,
“It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,"
quoting this time Deuteronomy 6:16. 

Do I need to put God to the test to know that He loves and cares for me? No. And there is the whole point of this temptation of the Lord. If Satan suggest this text to Him, boldly misquoting Scripture, His blessed dependence upon God preserves Him, as He says,
“Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.”
I do not need to put God to the proof.

I do not doubt Satan thought He had got a very strong point here with the blessed Lord, but when the heart is right it is always kept. There was nothing in His heart but a desire to do the will of God, and He was maintained in the most beautiful, perfect trust in God. He says in effect, “There is no need for me to put Him to the test.” Blessed, perfect, holy Man, He knew the heart of God. He knew the love of God. He trusted in God. And what was the result at that moment? He is preserved from the snare of the fowler, and the enemy is utterly beaten. And that is the only way you and I can beat the enemy, by confidence in God and the humble use of Scripture, which then becomes the sword of the Spirit, by which the foe of our souls is driven off.

But now there is a third attack recorded. If you have beaten Satan twice, he will come again. A third time he comes to the Lord.
“Again, the devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto Him, All these things will I give thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me” (Matt. 4:8-9).
How many a man has fallen down and worshipped Satan for a very little. Have you not noticed that? The god of this world easily deludes men. But here, what was it? Satan proposes to Christ, as he shows Him the kingdoms of the world, in a moment of time, and the glory of them, to give them to Him if He will fall down and worship him. You know that men like glory, power, and authority. Christ, however, is the only One who is worthy of these; hence in the Book of Revelation, they are, in the songs thereof, ascribed to Him alone. All that men set so much stress upon, but which they generally use to their own self-exaltation, heaven’s voice, by-and-by, is heard in one blessed note, one universal strain, ascribing to Jesus, as they say,
“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing” (Rev. 5:12).
That is to say, other men’s hands have held those things and abused them; but finally the universal judgment is that there is but one hand worthy of holding the scepter of power, and it is the hand of the Man that first overcame Satan in the wilderness, and then was nailed to the cross to atone for sin and save sinners. It is our joy to anticipate that day and say now that His is the only hand that is worthy to hold the scepter of authority and power.

But look at the craft of the enemy as he endeavors to turn the Lord aside. He seeks to get for himself that which is due to God, the Creator. Satan is a creature, but here he seeks to get for himself what belongs to God alone. Each temptation reveals some peculiar beauty in Jesus. In plain language, if I get obedience evinced in the first temptation, and dependence marking the second, it seems to me in the third that you get the most beautiful unfolding of the fidelity of His heart to God. Man is to worship God alone, therefore He says,
“Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. 4:10).
And what does Satan do? He leaves Him. Observe this, he is overcome; he is foiled; he is defeated."

Walter Thomas Prideaux Wolston
Satan's Forty Days: Temptation and Defeat; 
or, the Strong Man Bound and His Palace Spoiled




Photo Sunrise on Sea of Galilee by Ksenia Smirnova via flickr 

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I'm a Christian saved by God, by His Sovereign grace. I want to encourage all to read, to hear, to believe, and to feed upon the only Words in all the world that are truly spirit and life, living and active; to know the One True God: God the Father, His Only Begotten Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit; Who has graciously given us the Holy Scriptures
“All Scripture is God-breathed..."
2 Timothy 3:16–17; cf., John 3:31-36; John 6:63; John 14:26; John 17:3, 17; Romans 1:1-6, 16-17; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16; 1 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Thessalonians 2:13-14; 2 Peter 1:20–21; Hebrews 4:12-13. As for the commentaries I post and refer to; with much gratitude, as they have done for me, it is my hope and prayer that they serve to edify all who read them.

Shalom, beccaj
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