Temptation No.3 Testing the Lord God

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say the Lord. He is my refuge in my fortress, my God in whom I trust.

Surely he will save you from the foulest snare and from their deadly pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge. His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

You will not fear the terror of night, nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.

If you make the Most High your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will befall you. No disaster will come near your tent, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

You will tread upon the lion and the cobra. You will trample the great lion and the serpent. Because he loves me, says the Lord, I will rescue him.

I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him. I will be with him in trouble.

I will deliver him and honor him. With a long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation. And had him stand on the highest point of the temple.

If, or since, you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down, for it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus answered him, it is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. If I was to be asked to summarize the main philosophy, the main objectives of the twentieth century, I think I would do so in three couplets.

Be successful. Be sensational. And in order to achieve that, be selfish.

Be successful. The man who founded the so-called Scientology religion put that down in terms of making money as the prime thing that was necessary in our century. Be spectacular.

To achieve the goal, you've got to flex your muscles, you've got to make an impact. And in order that you get a large share of the cake, it might well mean that the weakest will go to the wall. Don't worry about that.

Be selfish. It seems to me that if you invert that, you get exactly the temptations that the devil puts before our Lord Jesus. Stones? Turn them into bread.

For yourself, be selfish. Throw yourself down from the tower. They'll believe a stunt man.

Be spectacular. The kingdoms of this world, the adulation of the crowds, they will be yours if you honour me. Be successful.

The devil came alongside our Lord Jesus and hissed these temptations. Not during this period, concluding his time in the wilderness, but I suggest throughout the whole of his three years of public ministry. You see, the bread that he multiplied remarkably during the feeding of the thousands led to them wanting to make him king.

There was a time when the Zealots, the sort of national front party of Israel, would have taken the Lord Jesus as their leader. And after the revolution, he could have been in control of the known world. When he's on the cross, those who put him there said, come down.

Tear yourself away and we'll believe. You see, this triplet of temptations, they really, if you like, are like the telescope squeezed up. You can pull it out and discover that throughout the 36 months of the public ministry of Jesus, those same temptations are being dangled in front of him and they'll come to you as they come to me.

Be successful, be spectacular, be selfish. But you see, Jesus is no Esau who will sell his inheritance for a bowl of pottage or for a loaf of bread. He's no Nebuchadnezzar who will strut around Babylon speaking of the known world and saying all this belongs to me.

Jesus is no Samson who will take his power and exploit it in his own interests. These temptations, you see, which distill the devices, the schemes of the devil in his attack on the Lord Jesus, he repulses all the time. They're just a concentrated illustration of the way that the evil one kept coming at our Savior again and again.

Well, let's continue our little series in this area, shall we? I want, first of all, to show you how Matthew connects the fifth through to the seventh verses with what proceeds. Then I want to show you how the devil contrives to exploit the seeming weakness of the Savior. And then I want to show you how the Savior controls the whole situation and turns tables on the devil.

First of all, then, as we look into these verses, how Matthew connects what follows with what has gone before. Look at verse 5, will you? Each word is most important. I wish I had enough Bible studies on a Sunday morning, enough time on a Sunday morning, to give you exhaustive studies just on one word and move along at that snail's pace because it would do us good, I think.

But time doesn't allow that. But let's take some of these words at any rate. Then the devil took him to the holy city.

When? Then. You remember I stressed that on the first occasion I brought this passage to you, looking at the first verse. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert.

When? Well, after he'd been baptized, after the ecstasy of hearing his father say, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. After the wilderness, or rather after the waters, the wilderness, after the blessing, the buffeting. So the first temptation is released.

Then the devil took him to the holy city. You see, the devil always builds on, in terms of his strategy, what has gone before. Jesus has been able to repulse him.

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil takes him to the holy city. Is that really what you believe? That man can live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God? I know some words that proceed from God's mouth.

Why don't you act on them? So this is the connection. Then the devil took him to the holy city. The devil is the wisest of creatures.

Incidentally, do you believe in the devil? I thought the Church of England Synod did better than I expected them to do, if I may say that, speaking as a non-conformist this past week. I wish they have done exceedingly better, but better than I expected them to do, in terms of the situation that they were handling. But do you know, it wasn't that many years ago when a group of clergymen got together and wrote a letter to a significant paper in the United Kingdom to indicate that they no longer believed in the devil.

He loses existence, does he, because a group of Anglican theologians reckoned he's no longer there? This really is quite extraordinary, isn't it? But there are many people who are sticking at the demand that the Bible places upon them to believe not only in the good power of God, but the evil power of the devil. Jesus most certainly believed in the devil. He was troubled by the devil.

Have you? Have you been troubled? You see, I have to confess in my own experience that there have been times, not that many, but there have been times when I have felt the reality of evil. I recall once, in a third-world situation, trying to help a man who I think was satanically oppressed. I spent hours with him.

We walked for miles, and I endeavoured to get whatever was troubling him out of his system. That night which followed happened to be one of the leading Hindu festival celebrations, and I was alone in a little hut at the back of Beyond. The darkness was black indeed, but there was something in that room which was so ugly and so frightening that I tell you, and those who know me well and come to this tabernacle often will testify to the fact that I don't go in for dramatic stories, personal stories that cause me to cry out for the blood of Jesus, for protection.

You see, the devil is a very powerful being. He's a very real being, and this is what the temptation accounts illustrate most forcefully in the experience of our Lord Jesus. Then the real devil took him to the holy city.

Since you are the Son of God. We've heard him use this expression before, haven't we, in the first temptation. If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.

Alright, since you are the Son of God, since you believe that every word that falls from the mouth of God is something that you can live by, demonstrate it now as you're placed on a pinnacle overlooking a precipice in the temple at Jerusalem. You see, the first temptation by the devil of our Lord Jesus was to distrust the Father, not so. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

If God is your beloved Son, or rather if God is your beloved Father, why does he allow you to live like this? You see, he's taken away this mysterious supply of stamina that has kept you going for 40 days. That's been lifted, and now you're not just peckish, you're famished, and he's not come to your aid. Distrust him.

Now, Jesus repulses that one by using the words that I have just referred to. So, then the devil exploits what Jesus says. Alright, you live from every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, then let's test those words.

Jesus was taken to the holy city, and the devil causes Jesus to be tempted, not in the area of distrust, but in the area of presumption. Coerce your father to act, and to get him to do this, the devil will quote scripture. But I proceed too quickly.

The devil took him to the holy city. Most commentators think this is in vision. I dissent from the viewpoint.

It seems to me that this must have the area of the literal about it. Our Lord somehow or other submits to the leading of the devil, and they find themselves in Jerusalem. Notice that Matthew, as he writes, refers to Jerusalem as opposed to Luke, as the holy city.

Matthew, of course, is a Jew, and he knows the significance of the holy city, the city of the great king, the place to which all the tribes go up, the holy city, where there will be a final encounter between Jesus and Satan, at the end of the Sages' public ministry. Isn't it fitting that there is a prelude to this? If you like, a little rehearsal, so to speak, at the beginning of his ministry, because again in balance will be the Lord Jesus and his relationship to the Father. So, the devil contrives to get the Lord Jesus into a state of presuming upon the grace of his heavenly Father.

He took him. He took him to the holy city. He took him from the wilderness to the metropolis.

He took him from solitude to the multitude. For what reason? Well, for this reason, some of us believe that if we could only get alone, then we would be out of the devil's grasp. That perhaps is the fallacy of the hermit movement.

Getting away from society, you get away from your problems. Here's the desert island. Go there and you'll be all right, because there's no sin there.

There will be, because you'll take it with you. You can't escape from the devil, not in solitude. But there's the reverse of this, isn't there? If only I can be with the crowd, then he'll no longer trouble me.

You know, my affairs will be conditioned by what the crowd is doing, what my contemporaries are involved in. I'll run along with them and perhaps no longer will I have the trouble of Satan with him dogging my footsteps. No.

Whether it's in solitude, whether it's with the multitude, you will have the same problem as the Lord Jesus had. There is no city on earth so holy as to exempt and secure us from the devil's temptations. So our Lord is taken to the holy city, and the devil has him stand, middle part of verse five, has him stand on the highest point of the temple, perhaps just by Herod's portico, where that remarkable edifice stands some 450 feet up from the valley at the bottom.

It's a sheer drop. It's a precipice. And there you find our Lord Jesus with Satan.

Satan contriving to get him to be presumptuous. Now, you can so emphasize the deity of the Lord Jesus that you forget his humanity. You see, he's human.

He's your human, in as much as he has limitations that you and I have. You say you find that hard to understand and wonder what heresy is being peddled this morning. Listen to me carefully and you'll understand what I'm getting at.

Have you ever been hungry? He was hungry. Have you ever been thirsty? He's been thirsty. Have you ever been fatigued? He's been fatigued.

Have you ever had your nerves stretched like the strings over a violin bridge? So the Lord Jesus has gone through the same experience. You know, I have many weaknesses in my psyche. And one of them is this, I suffer from a sort of overdeveloped vertigo.

That means I get dizzy at heights. I don't like, and I can just tolerate this, and I'm being serious, I don't like high pulpits. Some of you may feel that it's rather romantic to go to third world countries as I do occasionally.

And in one sense it is. It's beautiful to be there. It's nice to meet other people.

But if there's one thing I cannot abide, it's those little planes. Really can't. And my vertigo is magnificento.

Did Jesus get dizzy? You see, I've been where he's been. In fact, I got dizzy at Masada, which are Jewish ruins just some miles from Jerusalem, looking down on the sheer precipitous drop. You know what's a strange thing about being dizzy? There's a tendency to want to let yourself go.

Not so? If you are the son of God, he hisses, throw yourself down. Diabolical, isn't it? Don't you understand, my friend, that whether you're with me literally considering this passage of Scripture, or whether you will allow me to spiritualize just for a moment, the temptation is there at the latter level. I mean spiritually.

You see, the highest place that you assume can become the place of greatest difficulty. You give a man prominence, give him influence, or a woman for that matter. Allow them to be successful in their earthly life.

Allow them to have the adulation of the crowd, the estimation of the people. There are very few people who can cope with that sort of altitude without toppling as a result of the dizziness. It goes to their head, we say, don't we? That's an expression that we have, a colloquialism.

It's very difficult for someone to be high and exalted by men and not be dizzy and topple over. The hiss of the devil, it comes along, it's into every pulpit in the country. It asks a man to take credit for himself and not to bring it at the feet of Jesus.

That's why we need to pray for our leaders, not just in the religious context but also in the economic context and the political context. I never wonder why men fall. I know why they fall because I hear the hiss of the serpent.

If you're the son of God, throw yourself down. The devil contrives to bring Jesus under his spell. God casts down that he might raise up.

The devil raises up that he might cast down, says an older preacher. Here you are Jesus, don't just stand on the promises, jump on them. And the devil goes to Psalm 91.

He will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands. Hear me and bear witness. How many times have I said from this pulpit, don't just act on what I say, check what I say from Scripture.

But the devil can quote Scripture, can't he? It's not just the quotations of Scripture, it's understanding what Scripture actually says as you contrast one verse with another verse and you don't plunder the meaning of any particular verse by refusing to put it into the context and judging what it means from other parallel statements in the Word of God. So here's the devil. What is this, says an older preacher? What is this, Satan with a Bible under his arm and a text in his mouth? Is Satan in the Gideon chapter in Jerusalem, that he can quote Scripture at the Lord Jesus? I'll tell you something, one thing Satan is not ignorant of is the content of Scripture.

And often one thing that we are ignorant of is the full counsel of God's revelation, because we don't apply ourselves to Scripture as much as we should. The devil, of course, was quite right, wasn't he? Psalm 91 does say, as you read it in the Old Testament, speaking of God and it's a messianic psalm, that means it has to do with the coming of the Lord Jesus. The devil can spot the messianic psalms.

Verse 11, for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. See, the devil contrives to get Jesus to be presumptuous, and he seems to have Scripture as his warrant.

And not only Scripture, he has culture. You see, according to Jewish tradition, when Messiah comes, he'll stand on the roof of the temple. He'll suddenly come to the temple.

Now here you are, Jesus, you've come. Possibly the time of the temptation was that of the evening sacrifice. There are multitudes, multitudes there.

As we were hearing earlier on around the Lord's table, thousands of pilgrims who came to Jerusalem. What more significant occasions than for you to throw yourself down, and angels will sort of come and act as an angelic parachute so that you just glide safely to the bottom and you don't bruise your toe or cut your skin at all. Then they'll recognize who you are.

Bring God in on the act, Jesus of Nazareth, and there's good justification for doing so. How subtle are the ways of the devil. But then, my friend, you know, don't you? You know he's subtle.

Whether you're 15 years of age or 50 years of age, you know the inroads that he makes into your life. He does know your psychology. He does know your Achilles heel.

So what do we do? Say game, set, and match to the devil? Matthew has connected this temptation to the previous one. We've seen how he connects it. We've seen how the devil contrives to bring the Lord Jesus, in effect, under his influence.

Which leads me to how the Savior controls the situation. Sometimes you can read stupid things, can't you? Particularly if you're on holiday. I was once visiting my dear mom and daddy-in-law in South Africa, and I was bathing at a place called Fish Hook, a beautiful beach.

I was reading the Reader's Digest, and it had an article on sharks. Interesting to read about sharks, particularly when they sort of fraternize the ocean around South Africa. What to do when you're attacked by a shark? Number one, don't panic.

Honestly, I'm not joking. Nearly fell in the water as I was sitting on the side of a rock when I read this. I mean, if I saw a shark, the only thing I want to do is to get out of the way as quickly as I can, and I know I wouldn't beat the shark because the shark is so quick.

What do you do? When you hear the hiss, Jesus of Nazareth, the hiss of the devil, he doesn't panic, does he? You see, he's been 40 days, 40 nights, what doing? Not sleeping all the time. He's been in a holy intercourse with his father. He's a great mind, the greatest mind that ever there was.

He's mulling over what he's already learned. You see, the Word of God is hidden in his life, in his heart. Jesus is a man of the book.

He quotes from Hosea, he quotes from Zechariah, from Jeremiah, from Isaiah, from the first five books of the Bible of which you would have known by heart. Thy word have I hid in my heart. Shall I tell you something, teenager or old person? The reason why you so often fail, you don't know what he knew.

Not because you can't, but you don't take the time out that you ought to. Studying the Word of God. Here, let's hurry up.

I want to give you a principle and a practice. The principle is this, all temptation is tailor-made. All temptation is tailor-made.

Remember what I said the other week? The devil tempts you as you are and because you are as you are. I'm quoting John Blanchard. Let me just revise that a little bit.

He tempts who you are and why you are as you are. Who are you? Jesus of Nazareth. Why are you there on the pinnacle of the temple? Because of the potential of your releasing power, the power of heaven by coercing your father.

Therefore, jump and those people will believe in you. He tempts you as you are and why you are as you are. I'm a teenager.

I'm in my late teens. I've got a girlfriend. I've got a boyfriend and we really do love one another.

Why not just throw aside the conventions of the Christian ethic and live together immediately? You see, he directs that attention to you where a 70-year-old probably wouldn't be so troubled. For the 70-year-old, it's a different ball game. He'll single you out where you are as you are and he'll direct the temptation.

It will be tailor-made. He doesn't deal on a mass production principle. We're not ignorant of his devices.

How the Savior controls. One, a principle. Two, the practice.

Jesus, who has now suffered a tailor-made temptation, will show us how to handle it and he does so by his knowledge of Scripture. All Scripture is carefully given. I was with some theologians in the States some weeks ago, some of the best brains in America and we were discussing and thinking through the whole subject of hermeneutics.

You say, what on earth is that? It's understanding Scripture as it really is. You see, you can turn into any number of TV broadcasts in the States and listen to some of the stuff that comes over on BBC, which is generally of a better quality than in the States, and the Scriptures can be quoted but quoted so inaccurately that actually what the preacher is saying is a load of drivel. Scripture needs to be checked with Scripture.

It's not the lucky dip principle. So many times pastorally I've had to almost hurt people to show them that what they heard in a particular meeting was inexact, not because there was no biblical proof, but because the man took a Scripture and exploited it. You take a text out of its context, you've got a pretext and the net result is you've got some very, very confused Christians.

The devil will use Scripture but he'll abuse Scripture in his very use of it. And so what does Jesus do? Well, he skips over Psalm 91, he'll come back to that in a moment, and he goes to Deuteronomy 6. And there he quotes from an incident where the Hebrews have been tempting the Lord God as a result of running short of water in Sinai, you remember? And they got so angry with God that they tempted God. And when Moses summarizes the event in Deuteronomy 6, you find the incident in Exodus 17, he says you shall not tempt the Lord your God, you never coerce God.

Ananias and Sapphira were coercing God in the way that they lived in the early church. Read through the early chapters of the Acts of the Apostles and you'll discover the incident. And so what does the Lord do? It is also written, he says.

Not just it is written, this is his second quotation of Scripture in the beginnings of his public ministry, it is also written certain. Do not put the Lord your God to the test. You see, Psalm 91 talks about those who dwell in the shadow of the Almighty, those who know the covering of God.

It's a messianic psalm, it speaks of Jesus, by extension it speaks of you, but it doesn't allow you to be capricious. The ways down which you go, the attitudes that you have, the decisions that you take as a Christian must always be taken in harmony with the will of God. Now this is obviously not what the devil is getting at.

He doesn't want Jesus to follow the will of God, he wants Jesus to follow the will of Satan. He wants Jesus somehow to become selfish and follow his own will as though his own will could be divorced from that of the Father. And so Jesus comes back to the devil and he says, I know that psalm, I know what it means, I know how it applies, I am resting in the secret place of the El Shaddai.

The Father God is still my Father and whether it's stones into bread or throwing myself down from this temple, anything that is out of accord with what Father wills, I will not have nothing to do with, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. But you see Jesus doesn't just quote Scripture, he's not only a theologian, he's a pastor, he applies. The Hebrew of Deuteronomy 6 is plural, it's addressed to all the Israelites, you as a company shall not tempt the Lord your God.

Jesus is now speaking to Satan in the singular, you, you shall not tempt me, the representative of deity on the earth, you're not to tempt me, Satan. I will not achieve my objective by doing what you are testing me, tempting me to do. So the Lord Jesus delivers the rebuke from Satan and he puts him down and it's game set and match to the man from Nazareth not to the one from hell.

Let's conclude by just two minutes of application. The first temptation of our Lord was to distrust the Father, the second temptation of our Lord was to, to, to presume upon the Father. I don't believe there are many here who distrust the Father either, but my dear beloved friends, how many here presume upon God? You can't live as you would want to live and expect God to get you out of every difficulty when what you are doing you know to be clearly contrary to Scripture.

If you take your body and break your body by doing things which are wrong, you can't then come to Jehovah Rapha and say, please heal me. If you work every hour that God sends and you don't take any sleep or any rest whatsoever, you can't come to the Lord and complain about the lack of health that you suffer from. You see the promises of God have conditional clauses incorporated into them.

You tell me that holiness is what you desire, then why do you watch that on the television or read that in the paper? Can you really cope? Are you stronger than the preachers? Are you stronger than the old people? Is it that somehow you've insulated your psyche so that you can resist all these sort of pressures? You can't complain to God when the tempting situation is not one that you find yourself thrust into as a result of forces beyond your control, but rather something that you move into as a result of your express will. You're on your own. You can't plunder the Old Testament and the New Testament and bring these Scriptures to your life and say, Lord, you do this because you said that, because God will turn around and say, aye, but I also said this, and this relates to that.

You see it's Scripture compared with Scripture. You can't come to the Bible in a lucky dip fashion. It's not a book of magic.

You can't presume upon God. You say you're finding it hard to grow as a Christian and to know the presence of God, and you play footsie at the communion table when Jesus said, do this in remembrance of me. I'll meet you in the bread.

I'll meet you the wine. Do it in remembrance of me. You say you can't handle debate when the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door or the Mormons come to your door.

Though you have been in an evangelical church for 30 years, you never hid the Word of God in your heart. You see the promises of God, I must close. The promises of God are absolutely real and true.

We can resist the devil. We can be victorious, but we must take the whole counsel of God and live according to it, according to all your ways. That was a little bit of Scripture that the devil missed out when he quoted Psalm 91 to Jesus, because the devil will never quote Scripture dead accurately.

He'll twist it, but the Lord Jesus knows, and as a result, he corrects Satan, and he doesn't just correct him. Oh, the holy cheek of the Lord Jesus, you shall not tempt the Lord your God. Out of the way, Satan.

I resist you on my authority and the authority of the Word. May God help us to do the same. Amen.

Let's turn to 3.30. How firm a foundation. Ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in his excellent Word. What more can he say than to you he hath said, you who unto Jesus for refuge hath fled.

A brilliant hymn that links in well to the challenge that I've endeavoured to bring from Scripture. 3.30. Father, grant to us the ability to resist all forces of evil in our lives. Grant to us a sweet understanding of your Word and a holy hunger for the bread of life, and send us out into this world, into this week, this coming week, refreshed, renewed, determined to live for you.

Bless all the dear friends here, whatever strains and pressures there are upon the lives of your servants. Just lift them and come close to us, Lord Jesus, because we pray this in the name of the one who lived, bled, died, and was raised again for us. Your name, Jesus of Nazareth.

Amen. Amen.