Monday
Monday
The Temptations
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.
Matthew 4:1
Jesus went straight from the waters of Jordan to the desert of Judea, where he was savagely tempted by the devil. The assault took two forms.
First came an assault on his identity, on who he was. The words of his Father were still ringing in his ears—“This is my Son”—when the voice from heaven was challenged by a voice from hell. The devil sneered, “If you are the Son of God …” (v. 6), implying that he was not. It was a deliberate attempt to sow in Jesus’s mind the seeds of doubt. To counter them, Jesus must have kept repeating to himself the words of his Father, “This is my Son.” Still today the devil attempts to undermine our self-conscious identity as God’s children. For he is diabolos, the slanderer. We need to turn a deaf ear to him and listen instead to the great affirmations and promises of God in Scripture.
The devil’s second assault was against the ministry of Jesus, against what he had come into the world to do. We saw yesterday that the heavenly voice identified Jesus not only as God’s Son but also as God’s servant, who would suffer and die for his people’s sins. But the devil proposed other and less costly options. Why not win the world by satisfying its hunger, by a sensational display of power, or by striking a bargain with the devil—in each case bypassing the cross? The devil loves to persuade us that the end justifies the means.
Jesus refused to listen to the voice of the devil. Immediately, instinctively, vehemently, he rejected each temptation. There was no need to discuss or to negotiate. The matter had already been settled by Scripture (“It is written”); each time, he quoted an appropriate text from Deuteronomy 6 or 8. Still today there is a confusion of voices. The devil speaks through the secular culture surrounding us, and God speaks through his Word. Which shall we listen to? It is by our daily dogged discipline of Bible reading that we allow the devil’s voice to be drowned by the voice of God. “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
For further reading: Matthew 4:1–11