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…and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down… Many ministers of God should be familiar with the temptation to do the dramatic to showcase the anointing of God upon themselves. Indeed many might have fallen several times for this old trick and some might have gone on to justify such slips, leading their own selves further away from the ways of the modest Saviour. They think ministry must be entered upon noticeably and miracles done of God by their hands must be endlessly recounted, and all acts of service must be noticed and applauded. Such humouring of the ego does only a disservice to the ministry as a fixation with recognition is an almost insatiable hunger that feeds on several flesh-minded and financially and spiritually costly public relations gimmicks. It also draws the minister away from needful spirituality, rendering him inflexible for God’s use. They would rather operate in that in which people have already recognised them than heed of the call of Go...

Then the devil took Him up into the holy city and set Him on the pinnacle of the temple. It may come as rude awakening for many who are not familiar with this and the story of Job, to learn that with God’s permission Satan is able to touch our bodies and even carry us to places we have not planned to go. As the devil took Jesus or led him to the top of the temple so are we prone to the kind of trial of our faith that may directly touch our body with disease and other uncomfortable affliction. He can with one deception or the other lead us unawares into corners and situations we have not premeditated upon. We observe in this particular instance too that the scene of the temptation has changed dramatically. From an obscure and lonely desert, Jesus now finds himself on top of a much frequented temple. Any spectacular act He did here would be witnessed and probably applauded by a lot of people. And He seemed to be proffering on Jesus an opportunity for instant recognition and acceptance by...

“…but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”. At this point we see Jesus declaring His confidence of in the Word of God from which bread itself came. The Word of God is active in creating life, sustaining life and raising the dead. It is more to be relied on for sustenance than any other thing that God made. This is because God binds Himself by His Word (Ps 138:21; Is 55:11). For if God is not true, if His Word cannot be trusted, what is the foundation and the heritage of the righteous or the hope of those who trust in Him? By echoing every word, Jesus emphasizes that God does not just speak, unless He will accomplish what He speaks. He holds Himself accountable for every single declaration He makes, has made and will ever make. People therefore ought to find out what God has really said and put their trust in His promises. Here we observe again that Jesus quotes the scripture accurately, indicating His acceptance of the Word of God. Psalm 1 praises the blessed man that he ...

“Man shall not live by bread alone,…” Here, Jesus is quoting Deuteronomy 8:3 where God was by the mouth of Moses explaining why he let the Israelites travel through the wilderness where there was no food and He had to feed them directly from Heaven with manna. Bread sustains life, but it does not give life. The source of life is God Himself, and he made food to support life. God Himself lives without bread, and is able to support life without the bread man appears to have become dependent on. Moreover, do people not age and die even in the midst of abundance of food? Food neither raises the dead nor supports life indefinitely. By extension, man does not live by natural provision alone. He has supernatural ability to provide for natural needs even when nature reaches its provisional limits. He fed wandering Israel with manna (Ex 16:14, 15); He fed Elijah by ravens and an angel and sustained him thence for forty days without food (1Ki 71:4; 19:5-8); He sustained the health of Moses again...

But He answered and said, “It is written…”… Psalm 119: 9 is a classic text for many. It reads: “How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to Your word.” It captures the life of faith concisely. To begin with, there would be no response to God if He had not spoken; there will be no knowledge of God or His will; and there would be no need to obey Him. All righteousness is known from His Word. How will a person know whether what He is doing is right or wrong? By checking His motives and actions with God’s Word! The laws of nations and human society at every level morph and vary endlessly. For example, in some nations, it is lawful to execute murderers, whereas in others is not. What is the common standard acceptable to God? He leaves us in no doubt about this. His will and mind is written. It is written by men He inspired and spoke to by His Spirit. If a person is in doubt, all He has to do is to check with the written Word. This is exactly what Jesus is endorsing and ...

“…command these stones to become bread…” Satan seems to be telling Jesus that he had every right and ability to satisfy Himself at any point in time, and needed not to let nature tell on Him as it does all men. He should do the dramatic, perform a miracle, and quench his hunger immediately. As children of God, do we not often feel that it is unjustified that we be in need? Such conclusion often opens us up to desperate action. Forgetting prayer and normal thinking, we launch into commanding into existence things that may even exist already. For bread was available. All Jesus needed to do was to leave the wilderness and find a bread market or go home, if He wanted to eat. Regarding miracles, although they appear to be performed quite spontaneously to meet pressing needs, Jesus particularly demonstrates in resurrecting Lazarus that they are essential supernatural happenings permitted by God usually in answer to prayer (Jo 11:41-44). And prayer is carefully thought-out request placed befo...

“If you are the Son of God…” This is certainly an invitation to doubt God and God’s Word. By starting a challenge with that mild ‘If you are a child of God, …’Satan seeks to draw us out to doubt that which we have received by faith, our most important relationship with God. Now, we are also children of God. In what manner should we express our privileged relationship with God in situations of need? Should we do the bidding of everyone who challenges us to prove our relationship by doing this or that? Certainly not! What God says we are is what we are . We need do nothing to prove who we are in Christ. As children of God, we know who we are. We express our relationship with God only by seeking and obeying His will, even in our moments of need (Php 2:15). Such provocations do come always in different shades, and is it something of a coincidence that two out of the three statements Satan made to Christ were prefaced with “If you are the Son of God…”? What about “If you are a man of God”; ...

…he said, “If you are …” Satan premised two of the challenges he posed to the Lord with “If you are the Son of God…” This is an invitation to take an ego trip. Satan knew Jesus is the Son of God and Jesus knew same. He was therefore provoking Him to use the supernatural attributes that accompanies His position for self-gratification; to do things ordinary humans could not do, right there. It did not matter whether God wanted that done or not. Most definitely, one that has the Creator of the earth as His father lacks nothing and is capable of everything, but by the permission and will of the Creator. Jesus had come to live as a man and to respond to circumstances in everyway as God will have His children respond to Him. He came from glory, but had to live by obedience. It is also an invitation to lazy window-dressing. It was by the totality of His life on earth that Jesus was to show who He was, his mission on earth how it means to be a Son of God, not by a single spectacular act. Satan...

Now when the tempter came to Him … The Holy Spirit abides with us always (Jn 14:16). Satan does not. He comes to push hard at our faith. He goes and comes. He sends his fallen angels to come to us in the attempt to accomplish a nefarious purpose for a while. Satan was not shy of the Son of God, even though he knew who He was. He attempted to bring him down. He certainly will not be shy of us who walk in the Lord’s footsteps, no matter the degree of faith we have attained. He will keep coming hoping to floor us by and by. Even the most renowned of God’s people suffered trials at his hands. With Abraham (Gen. 16:2), Moses (Num. 20:8-13) David, and others he scored different degrees of success and defeat. The sense of permanent evil for the children of God is as false as it is paralysing. The Bible tells the believer the truth: “sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. 6:14).

…He then became hungry. After Jesus had consummately communed with God and then turned His attention to His immediate earthly circumstances, he noticed that he was hungry. Hunger is a common sensation of weakness and strong desire for food, sometimes any food, after a long deprivation of oneself of food. The need for food is said to be the most basic of human hunger. The others in succession are the need for clothing, shelter, security, company, acceptance or elevation, and the fulfilment of one’s views of the best social order. Human hunger can therefore be said to be insatiable, since the fulfilment of one predisposes a person to fulfil the next, and such hunger occurs whether the provision to satisfy it is available or not. In so far as such needs are felt by man he will strive to satisfy them, basically for self-preservation or self-improvement. Such striving opens the door for suggestions from Satan as well. James 4 spells out how some believers, disregarding their identity are dr...

And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights,… Such fasting as Jesus imposed on himself was of prayer, self-examination, contemplation of the work put before Him. It was for seeking direction of God for each circumstance as God would permit Him to know. It was of drawing on the wisdom of God to prepare for the battle ahead and for meditating on the Word of God, the weapon available to him for dealing with the enemy’s strategies. It was like a long revision before a major examination. Did Jesus, being the Son of God need to do this? We can safely conclude here that since He did it He needed to do it. The first lesson here is that if you become a son of God, on this earth, you are not exempted from the battle of faith. In fact your battle of faith is just about to begin. You must be prepared for taking part in the work of redemption and hold on to the end. You should prepare to go through what the Master went through, and the best example you can have is how your Master went throug...

… to be tempted by the devil … The apostle James wrote “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man” James 1:13. There is an agent behind every temptation, and here we learn that that agent is the devil. He it is who when we are in difficulty or in very human situations, proffers enticing suggestions which when we comply with results in our disobeying God. He it is who is interested in our disobedience to God. In 1Pe 5:8, he is called our adversary, or one who contends with us to make our testimony and faith in God come to nothing. He is called, "The prince of this world," Joh 12:31; "The prince of the power of the air," Eph 2:2; "The God of this world," 2Co 4:4; "The dragon, that old serpent, the devil," Re 20:2; "That wicked one," 1Jo 5:18; "A roaring lion," 1Pe 5:8; "A murderer," "a liar," Joh 8:44; "Beelzebub," Mt 12:...

…into the wilderness … The wilderness or desert is a place that naturally prohibits human habitation because of the scarcity of water. It is seldom a place for relaxation because of the extremities of weather: afternoons can be unbearably hot, the nights unbearably cold and the winds do get quite strong due to the absence of trees. It is into such a place of natural human want that the Spirit thrust Jesus for forty days, cut off far from the pleasures of life, even away from the basic comfortability level. Would Jesus naturally impose such discomfort upon Himself? He would, if that is how He would take himself away from the hustle and bustle of daily life, in order to commune with God. Does the Spirit lead us into wilderness situations? Here we know He does. Normally, we believe that when we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit of God, we arrive at “green pastures”. Seldom do we think that in following the leading of the Spirit, we might or rather shall pass through the valley of tear...

…was led up by the Spirit The Holy Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness for the purpose of His testing by Satan. This implies that the temptation of Jesus was sanctioned in the same way that God sanctioned the trial of Job, and sanctions the trials of all those He calls children or sons. Such trial is a proving of who we really are to the world, for the real children of God ought to respond to the temptations by which Satan holds the children of darkness captive differently. It is not a trial to destroy us. Permitted by God, it is measured and controlled to build us up. Peter wrote to the believers who were under stress to be mindful of the fact that the distresses and trials they were going through were necessary (1Pe 1:6) and not strange (1Pe 6:12). Paul even carefully sequenced the successive benefits of trials, temptations and sufferings (Ro 5:2-5). We are assured that God will not permit us to be tested beyond our ability to endure ( 1Co 10:13) Elisha’s vision in 2Kings 6: 15-17 is ...

Matt 4:1 Then Jesus … Jesus was tested immediately or soon after God had declared at His baptism that He is His Son and should be obeyed. This seems to convey to us the sense that any endorsement of our worth, ministry of gifting by God will be swiftly challenged by Satan. We need therefore to be extremely on guard for our faith if God by our hand does any miraculous sign, or there is any prophesy about us. We see typical examples in Job 1, Daniel 4 and Acts 2-4. Satan puts Job through the drill just after God had declared him blameless, and Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego, suffer a trial of their life soon after they had triumphed by refusing the king’s food. In Acts 4, shortly after the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit had done great miracles by the hands of the Apostles, they found themselves before the High priests, pressed to disobey the Holy Spirit.

He was tested in every way as we are, yet He was found to be without sin; and a gain amidst the multitude of malicious accusations and accusers Pilate found Jesus blameless. The nature of Jesus: Being God who lived among us as a man, He came from Heaven where righteousness is the lifestyle. God’s power was fully in Him and He knew who He was, what He had come to do and the standard of faith and obedience required of Him. On earth, He had the full nature of man, susceptible to hunger and other possible infirmities common to man. An overview of the Temptation of Jesus: His temptation and its record in the scriptures serve primarily as an example to us who through the new birth are made like Him: If the son of God was tempted, every child of God will also be tempted. The temptation itself exposes to us a great deal about how (i.e. the methods by which) Satan seeks to overcome us and destroy our faith in God. His display of weakness identifies Him with us, and His spotless forbearance unde...